Dackel Princess

Arizona

In the second year of our marriage, we lost our White German Shepherd, Rex, when he passed away at age 10 1/2. We did some researching and located a new puppy out in Arizona. As I had never been to Arizona, we planned a trip around the state to see all the highlights, the Grand Canyon, the meteor crater at Winslow, Oak Creek Canyon, Flagstaff, Sedona, and Montezuma’s Castle, cliff dwellings from a long extinct tribe.

Two days before we left I heard the cats fighting at the foot of our bed and I jumped up and when I came down I landed incorrectly on my foot and broke it! Hubby was not at all happy because this certainly would make the trip difficult. But here is what happened.

Upon arriving in Manchester to take our flight out, a Porter met us at the curb and wheeled me to the gate. I was pre-boarded and given a nice crate to rest my foot on. Everyone was so nice.

When we arrived in Phoenix, I was met with a wheel chair, and wheeled to the car rental company. The car rental agency gave us a handicapped placard for our car, giving us the best spots in all of Arizona to park. At each state park we were met with a wheel chair and smiles. What a great way to go.

We traveled down to Tucson to pick up our puppy and the woman who raised the pup asked if we had seen Tombstone? Since we hadn’t, she offered to keep our new puppy, Max, for us so we could visit this famous town.

Tombstone is a real western town. With a saloon and of course the OK Corral, we found the town, really interesting. At a saloon there was a photographer who took pictures in period dress. I wanted to have our picture taken in costume. Hubby said that was fine, as long as he got to be a gun slinger!

It was so much fun to do and I love the picture of Hubby and I. It still hangs in our office.

We also went to Boot Hill Cemetery where Hubby saw a headstone, “Here lies Lester Moore, four slugs from a .44, no Les, no more!” Yes, that still cracks up Hubby!

Once we got done posing, we headed back and picked up our boy Max and flew home. Max was a dear big boy (128 pounds fully grown!) for nearly 13 years. In many ways that picture of Hubby and I reminds me of Max when he was a puppy.

Max at sunset in his later years.

Just 10 More

(See Saturday Scavenger Photo below)

I have ten more entries until I reach my 1000th post. So after all this time, and after all this writing, what do I think?

I think that writing in this blog has been one of the best things I have ever done. Writing down my joys, my sorrows, my accomplishments and my failures has truly helped me grow as a person.

It’s not only when you write the post, but later when you go back and read again what you have written. I feel a little like George Bailey in “It’s A Wonderful Life”. The life you have lived may not have been perfect, but with people around you whom you love and care about, life really is pretty wonderful.

Saturday Scavenger Photo

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COOKING

Here is Hubby cooking hot-dogs and hamburgers on our deck. There is nothing we like better than cooking out in the summer!

Rainy Days & Fridays

Another gray day here in New Hampshire. Hubby spent the day working on his fruit trees, while I spent the day doing the laundry. How can two people make such a mound of laundry in just one week? We also picked up my car at the garage, where it had gone to get inspected. This marks the first time I have driven without glasses! It felt good and strange all at the same time.

Apple Blossom Buds

After lunch I felt very tired and sat down in my chair with Anneliese and Arnie and before I knew it an hour had gone by. I heard barking at the basement door and went over and there was Greta. How she got into the basement we aren’t sure, but she definitely wanted to come up!

I sat back down with Arnie and worked stripping his coat. Anneliese’s coat is beautiful and she will need very little grooming to get it in shape, but Arnie tends to be like a little raggedy man and he needs his fur stripped down. I am so lucky that he likes this and doesn’t fight me. I worked for about half an hour and already his back is looking very nice.

Anneliese

I’d planned to make an easy dinner tonight and currently it is under way. A while back I made breaded and fried eggplant. I had a lot left over, so I put the slices in waxed paper and then a freezer bag and froze enough to make eggplant parmesan for Hubby and me. Today I took out the frozen slices and in a casserole covered the frozen slices with sauce, cheese, another layer of eggplant, etc. Now it is in the oven cooking and I’m hoping that this will work out. Doing it this way made the preparation time fast and the work easy.

My doctor has called in a prescription for antibiotics for my sinus infection. It’s a 7 day dose and then I should be right as rain. (Where did that phrase come from?)

Happy Friday everyone! Have a good weekend!

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To my stepdaughter Jessica, Happy 29th Birthday!

Rain, Eyes & Baby Teeth

Wednesday Hubby drove me to Boston to see Dr. W. for my one week post operative check up. There is one thing I must say before I tell you about the trip.

1. I was so glad Hubby was driving!

The day dawned foggy and rainy and cool. We got up had our breakfast and dressed and got ourselves ready to go. On the trip down we talked and talked, catching up with the past weeks events, arriving in the city with plenty of time to go out to lunch.

We noticed a German Restaurant nearby and decided to give it a try. It was fairly good, although we both got food poisoning, proving that it wasn’t nearly as good as we thought. It’s funny but of the three restaurants we have been to in the area, the only one we haven’t gotten food poisoning from has been the Indian restaurant. Guess where we will be eating next time?

We got in to Dr. W.’s office a tad early and her technician took me right off. He checked the eye pressure and examined my vision. Amazing how my distance vision is coming into focus in just one week! I knew it had, as coming down in the car, with no glasses I could see perfectly clearly all the leaves on the trees and the signs along the road.

Next the doctor who assisted with my surgery examined me and he was very pleased. He said the lens is sitting well and the eye was healing nicely.

Then we got to see Dr. W. She is thrilled with my eye and after hearing about my fever (I still have it) said she wants me to go in to see my regular doctor, Dr. D. to get my sinus’s checked.

I’d brought with me some Heavenly Jam, my Moonglo Pickles and Brandied Peaches and she was thrilled! She just loves my cooking and her husband loves my pickles.

We made it out of the city before “Rush Hour” and just as we got north of route 495 the skies opened, darkness fell and the winds blew. The rain fell so hard it was like a sheet of water was just being poured from the sky. There was also hail and the traffic slowed to a snails pace.

I was so happy Hubby was with me and driving!

The ride home took much longer due to the terrible weather and we were lucky to get Emily to come over after school and walk the dogs for us. The pups were happy to see us when we got in, but their needs were not as urgent as they would have been, had Emily not come over to care for them.

Greta and Anneliese

I sat drinking some tea, and I noticed Arnie was playing with something. I got down and looked at it and then picked it up to see what on earth he had. You will never guess!

Anneliese and Arnie

It was one of his baby teeth!

I’ll tuck it away in my book of puppy memories. It makes the end of this day, somehow sweet and puts a smile on my face.

This & That Wednesday

We’ve started to plan a trip to Nova Scotia in July. Hubby’s family is from that beautiful spot, and this summer they are having a family reunion. This is the fun side of the family! I am really looking forward to the time we will have there and seeing all of our wonderful family!

Our usual house sitters won’t be back yet from their trip, so the biggest challenge is finding someone crazy enough to stay here with our pooches and house sit. I thought and thought and wasn’t sure what to do, when one of our neighbor’s stopped by with her daughter-in-law. Her daughter-in-law seems to think she would be fine and have no trouble handling the crew, so perhaps I can go off with Hubby for a few days and relax.

Wednesday finds me headed back to Boston for a recheck on my eye. I’m sure all is well and this will be just a formality, but Dr. W. insists that she see you 1 day after, 1 week after and 1 month after the surgery to check on eye pressure, the stitches, etc. Hubby will drive me and if I am a very good girl perhaps he will take me out for lunch at the Indian Restaurant near her office.

Hubby finished mowing the lawn last night and I went out to take a look. It was so beautiful. Springtime is like that. Flowers are blooming, the grass, the tree leaves, all are turning that deep emerald green and when you look out over on the lake you can see the circles in the water telling you that the fish are rising.

The earth has once again been reborn.

Fruits & Vegetables

We went for a ride today in search of another fruit tree for Hubby’s small orchard. Well, it once was a small orchard, but since he has expanded, it is now a medium sized, back yard orchard. Although not all of the trees are productive yet, many are, and in a few years we will be functioning as a small fruit enterprise. I can see Hubby packing up his fruit for the town’s farmer’s market and all of this done with the biggest of smiles on his face. He really loves the care of the trees and the harvest of the fruit.

Our Orchard now has:

3 MacIntosh
2 Cortlands
3 Empire
3 Macouns
2 Golden Delicious
1 Gala
1 Spy Gold
2 Winesap
1 Cox’s Orange Pippin
1 Red Stayman
1 Enterprise (A surprisingly good Apple that has a long shelf life)

1 Stanley Plum (I love to make jam with these!)
1 Castleton Plum
1 Mount Royal Plum

1 Moonglow Pear
1 Clapps Favorite Pear
2 Red Bartlett Pear

1 Lapins Cherry
1 Stella Cherry
2 Bing Cherry
1 Black Tartarian Cherry

2 Reliance Peach (My favorite)
2 Finger Lakes Super Hardy Peach
1 Elberta Peach
1 Richhaven Peach

Wild Concord Grapes (The best for Grape Jelly!)
Seedless Concord Grapes
New Hampshire Reliance (A hardy canadice type) Grapes

In any case, we didn’t find another fruit tree. My man knows what he wants to see in his fruit trees and apparently he didn’t see anything that made him happy, but we did see two flats of tomato plants for the garden, so we got those and brought them happily home.

The tomato plants

These tomatoes will join my cucumber, eggplant, zucchini, summer squash, butternut squash and corn plants in my garden. Currently they are all sprouting in the green house until we are sure that we’ve had our last frost. Usually that is Memorial Day Weekend, then we will be replanting everything outside except the tomatoes, which I will continue to raise in the green house.

My seedlings

We were out longer than we anticipated and so we stopped at a small restaurant and we got two orders of fried “whole bellied clams”, coleslaw and fries. The lunch was so good and we enjoyed the brief stop. Then we headed back to the house where our puppies, all four of them awaited us.

We walked them in the yard, I watered my vegetable plants and Hubby watered his fruit trees and then he headed off to the store to get the weeks groceries. Although I am doing really well, I was feeling a bit tired, so he volunteered to do this without me. I have no worries at all, as he is one of the few men in this world who can do this job as well as I can.

Yes, I’m a lucky girl!

A Day

There are some days that are more beautiful than others, but today was a particularly lovely one. The skies were pure baby blue without one cloud, and the sun shone warmly on me when I went out to walk the pups or water my plants.

Most of the day found me being quiet with the doggies all around me. Only occasionally did Anneliese bark loudly and then, I believe it was only to wish her own Mama, Greta a Happy Mother’s Day.

Hubby took me to lunch, mowed the lawn and worked at his computer, the last done while listening to a ball game and the final rounds of a golf match.

I switched off the TV in the late afternoon and just enjoyed the quiet around me. So many days life is full of noise. Perhaps it is the TV or radio, at other times a brain that simply will not shut off. Tonight, right now, blessedly I am finding the silence, I so long for, soothing.

The wind has picked up. A sign that a cold front moved through yesterday, and I can just hear the light whine as the wind whips down the lake. The sun is setting and the icy blue sky foretells a cold night ahead.

The doggies are fed and are stretched out on the carpet chewing their bones. Soon they will slip off into a golden slumber where they can dream of chasing rabbits and toy balls.

I will get my warm pajamas on and curl up once again with my puppies to perhaps watch a little TV, a cup of tea in my hand. Before you know it, tomorrow will be here…

…and there is no telling what tomorrow will bring.

Happy Mother’s Day

I got this from my daughter, Mandy! Isn’t it beautiful? The funny thing was, on Saturday night about 9:30 the delivery woman arrived at the house. Very strange, but what the heck, I was still awake! LOL

Hubby took me out for dinner and we went to Canoe where I had Lobster Ravioli. What a great meal! Hubby had Prime Rib and naturally we brought home a “doggy bag” for the four pooches.

Happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers out there!

The Family Dackel

On Saturday I found I was running a temperature. Nothing too high, just enough to make me have chills and retreat under my blanket with my sunglasses on. I found a little nurse who simply would not leave my side, and seemed to enjoy sleeping curled up next to me under the blanket. Yes, Anneliese is really a little snuggler. A great love and a super kisser!

Arnie and Anneliese

Arnie is developing into the neighborhood watchdog. He loves to sit in the front window and watch the people walking by below, the boats on the lake or the cars driving by. He is also fascinated with the recently returned ducks and is always so excited when Fritz walks by the window. Occasionally he gets up into the chair to check me out, but he sees that Anneliese is doing a great job, so off he goes.

Arnie and Anneliese

Greta loves her independence. She will go out with Hubby and Fritz when they are in the yard planting trees or watering the new ones, she also loves to go up the hill and sit under the peach tree and watch the house. She is still the only doggy we have in bed with us, but once the pups are house broken I’m afraid we will be a three dog bed. For now, nighttime is Greta’s time for snuggles and cuddles and attention.

Arnie, Anneliese and Greta

Fritz, follows Hubby all around. Inside or outside, up the hill, down the hill, it doesn’t matter. He is his Daddy’s boy and faithful beyond words. I think in my minds eye, when I think of Hubby I will always think of him with a White German Shepherd by his side. Fritz is Hubby’s 6th White German Shepherd. His third with me. As much as I have an affinity for my wire-haired dachshunds, he has the same with the White Shepherds.

I hope that this fever burns itself out soon, in the meantime, I’ll stay warm, drinks a lot of herbal tea and snuggle with my puppies!