Busy, Busy Saturday

**Brit - you might wanna skip this one until the snow melts. I'm just sayin'.

That's my sister lugging our morning haul back to the car. Most of it, I'm relieved to say, was Mom's. But, the three of us had a great time at the annual plant sale at Leu Gardens. It takes hours to walk through the booths and by the end of it we were sweaty and sunburned, but satisfied. We certainly had something to show for it, didn't we?

I'll be spending part of tomorrow planting. (Just making it through the sale was enough for today.) I'm particularly excited about this plant, though. The name escapes me at the moment, but its a fruiting bush. It gets little berries on the trunk that taste like grapes. Two came home with me - one for myself and one for my father-in-law - and one with Mom.

Of course, we left the three dogs at home while we were there. Half way through the morning, Alex called to tell me our friend had found the two young dogs out in the street. They had torn through the screen we'd secured to the gate to keep Gwen from walking through it. He replaced the screen with low gauge chicken wire and moved the big trash can in front of it, before leaving for his own errands. By the time we got home, I found this. And they had somehow pulled the bamboo plant that sits outside the gate down and had chewed at it. Ferociously.And they were dancing at that gate, so proud of their handiwork, when we got home. Not Gwen, though. The experienced old lady that she is wanted it very clear that she had no part in either the original escape or the final destruction. In fact, she was pretty darn glad to see those young 'uns go home.

Introducing Pippen

It's 1:30 in the morning, and I've been in bed, awake for over two hours. I've listened to two disks of Harry Potter and the rhythmic snores of the man and the dog. Thankfully, tomorrow's a holiday, and I've decided just to cry "uncle" and give it up for now. I'll go back to bed when I feel sleepy and just grumble at Alex when he tries to wake me at an hour that I would normally consider decent.
Instead, I'll introduce you to Pippen. My Mom has patiently been awaiting her chance for a lap dog, and Friday he came to live with them. We think he's about five or six months old. He's a Whippet who apparently got lost and found a family that already had its quota of dogs. They found Mom, and Mom and Pippen were clearly a match made in heaven.
Like her, he loves the garden and is fascinated by plants. We have already begun negotiations over the definition of stick and plant. He doesn't, however, have any interest in actual chew toys or bones. Nothing I did to demonstrate the joy that is a rope inspired any curiosity whatsoever in him, though he was fascinated with the camera. I had to use the telephoto lens to get good pictures of them, because otherwise all I could get was a snuffling nose.He was quite inquisitive all around, in fact. He was very interested in anything we were doing and assumed anything we had must be great fun. Pippen, like Gwen, is definitely a people's dog. While he liked having the other dogs around and found them interesting, it was most important to him that the people be close by, Mom in particular. He needed no time at all to bond to her. Then again, while clearly favoring her, he didn't exactly have a hard time getting comfortable with the rest of us, either.It was busy few days for a little pup, and he was happy to take a soft lap wherever he found it. He obviously knows a sucker when he sees one.