Life isn't long enough to do all you could accomplish. And what a privilege even to be alive. In spite of all the pollutions and horrors, how beautiful this world is. Supposing you only saw the stars once every year. Think what you would think. ~ Tasha Tudor
I simply must share this little gem I discovered on YouTube a year or so ago. It's a video of Tasha Tudor's home, Corgi Cottage.
Tasha was a renowned Children's Author/Illustrator. She was most famous for her charming illustrations, love for the Welsh Corgi, and 1800's lifestyle. Her website can be viewed HERE.
I never signed up for Japanese 101, so I have no idea what the narrator is saying in the video below. Language barrier notwithstanding, the scenery is breathtaking. I can't imagine living in such a quiet and peaceful environment. Just hearing the birds singing... the wind rustling in the trees.. perhaps the occasional cowbell ringing in the hills. (Oh, yes. I am strangely obsessed with cows, or "Gods of the Country" as I like to call them. When I saw that we had cows as neighbors on our land in Owl Creek, I just about passed out. Their presence, along with a little donkey named "Hugs," almost makes up for the highway noise... but that's another post).
Enjoy the video!
PS - If any YouTube videos on my page don't load at first, just refresh the page. I've noticed the videos are always misbehaving, but a quick refresh usually does the trick.
Forget spring, because the beginnings of summer just arrived on our doorstep. Last I saw, at 5:30 in the evening, it was a flippin' 92 degrees!
What the frack?!
And poor Abby. It's already too hot for her to play outside for long during the day, and when it cools down a little at night the mosquitoes are eating humans and dogs alike.
But my original reason for this post wasn't just to complain about the weather. (Because hot as it is, it is going to get worse. I'm just seriously upset that it's come so soon). My original intention was to post a few videos of our bluebirds. They're having a full-on battle with the unruly mockingbirds this week, trying to protect their nest. I'm pretty sure the babies have hatched.
Unfortunately, Izzy started barking thesecond I started filming these next videos of the butterflies. Izzy might only weigh a mere 5 pounds (most of which is fluff), but her lungs have the gusto and range of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. You might want to turn the speakers down.
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Time to go. Gotta watch the latest episode of "Once Upon A Time!"
So this Wednesday little Abigail received her first bath/nail trimming/tooth brushing since she got here (all of which miraculously took less than 15 minutes to do), and every evening she helps with the gardening. I swear I have never in my life seen such PURE JOY on a pup's face than when Abby is pulling up weeds on our back patio. (We should send her over to our neighbor's yard, which is a travesty).
See that little bit of green at the corner of her mouth? She might be a little particular about eating her dog food, but no one can accuse her of not eating her greens.
Which reminds me: Guess how I finally got her to eat her dog food.
Abby always has acted more human than animal, so I decided to treat her as one would a child. A little reverse psychology if you will. What I did was grab a handful of her food, call it a "yummy" and then pretend to eat it. I'd refuse to share it with her for a bit, and then go on and on about how delicious this doggie food of hers is.
Before I knew it, she was eating out of my hand. It doesn't work every time, but usually it works out fine. Yesterday I didn't have to coax her at all.
She definitely has faced a few phobias since she's come to live with us. She's no longer petrified of crossing the floor to go outside and then back in. We're still working on her becoming fine with the other tile areas of the house, but I think she'll do much better once we lie down some more rugs.
The only thing which really bothers me is that she still acts like a cat in that she loves her solitude a little too much. At my brother's house she was fond of sleeping beneath the bed, and over here she's always been fond of sleeping behind the couch.
A day or two after she got here, I moved the upstairs couch over a little closer to one of the windows. Ever since then, she does look out of it a lot so I know she's becoming more sociable. She even barks whenever she sees someone at the mailbox.
But the poor thing--- half the time she wants the dogs to play with her, they don't want to. Well, Maddie plays with her most of the time but Izzy only wants to play at night and when she does it kind of frightens Abby because Izzy barks so loud when she plays. That's just something Abby's gonna have to get used to.
Other than her preference for solitude 50% of the time (because she really is playful the other half), what bothers me is she's still licking her front legs a lot. I think she started doing that when she was left home alone for so long, because my brother was working such long hours. (Which is why he wanted us to have her. He knew it wasn't fair to leave her alone over half of the day, he's been traveling out of state a lot, and since his divorce he's the only parent she's had).
But if there are any dog lovers out there that have any tips on what Mom and I could do to curb this behavior of her licking her paws so much, I'd greatly appreciate it. I've given her rawhide and encourage her to play, but we can't monitor the little lass 24/7.
Oh! Mom reminded me of something I'd forgotten about. Yesterday, I saw Abby trying to clean Wendy Kitty's ears. When I told Mom she always did that to Sadie (my brother's old cat), Mom reminded me that she used to do that with Tiger Lily too.
It feels so strange to think that we had Tiger Lily, and even Maddie, way back when my brother first brought Abby home.
And speaking of Tiger Lily, she's getting another bath tomorrow.
FURKID UPDATES: (Yes, it is boring so you've been forewarned)
While Dad is spending his day at airports, Mom and I took Abby with us to the McDonald's just outside our neighborhood. We went for 1). to feed my Iced Mocha addiction and 2). to get all the girls a cheeseburger.
Well, Abby was freaking out. Never in my life have I seen a dog shaking so much. I've NEVER known her to be afraid of car rides. My guess is she's used to leaving our house through the front door, and the noise of the garage door frightened her.
I'm hoping that's all it was.
Afterwards, I took her outside to play but it's a miserable 89 degrees out there and there isn't a cloud in the sky. I was afraid of her getting too hot. She isn't used to being outside, and she was drinking a lot of water while we were out there. For now, she's entertaining herself by looking out the upper story window. It doesn't show in the video, but she's been barking A LOT today. There's just so many people out and about on the weekends, and she has the perfect view of people visiting their mailbox and of kids riding their bikes.
(Notice the cat tower she's lounging on? I asked for that tower for my birthday last year, for Wendy Kitty. NOT ONE TIME has Wendy ever used it).
I tried getting good video and photos of the bluebirds earlier, but they were too fast for me. They've been especially busy today, fighting off the mockingbirds.
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And as you can see here, Wendy wanted outside to see the birds too but... .
I don't trust her when it comes to protecting our feathery friends. In fact, she wanted out so badly earlier that she just moseyed on outside with the dogs when they went out. She did it quietly, too, hoping to trick us into not noticing I guess.
In other kitty news, Tiger Lily got her bath today. For the first time ever, she didn't hiss at me during it at all. That kind of worries me. Either the warm water felt good on her 19 year old bones and tired muscles, or she didn't feel good.
She did hiss and fuss at me a little while I was drying her off though. Other than her silence during her bath, she's still acting like her normal self.
Well, maybe not. Mom just said she's been sleeping hard for hours.
And oh dear... it's 4:11 pm, and currently it's 91 degrees. I can't hide from the fact that summer is almost here.
And while I'm babbling, allow me to ramble about one more insignificant thing. Last night I dreamed about a dolphin in some ocean... it wasn't healthy... and that Mom and I were at the zoo. We were in the area with little chicks hatching, and I was telling her that I don't like visiting the zoo because I feel sorry for the animals.
Fast forward to today, and what do you think happened? I was changing the channel, and there was a dolphin on tv. Then a few hours later Mom asks if I wanted to go to the zoo tomorrow.
Once again, cue the Twilight Zone music....
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I love how the little girl bows to Cinderella and her prince.
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Who knew a talking trash could be so cute? His name is PUSH, and he resides in Tomorrowland. They have some at Animal Kingdom, too, but I personally haven't seen one there. I'm not a huge fan of AK.
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The Stepsisters in MK are always hilarious. I especially love what Anastasia says at the end of the 2nd video. She's so funny! And in the 3rd video they're upset when they see Cinderella in the parade, which they weren't invited to. Lol!
And that last video, with Pluto chasing the pigeons at Disneyland, let's just say it's in honor of National Puppy Day. (Which, technically, was yesterday).
My jewelry supplies are getting a little out of hand, by way of storage, so all I have on my crafting table right now is chaos. I need a bunch of little shelves, etc.
One space saver I love is using little glass jars grouped together on a 3-tiered cupcake stand. I found one little 3 or 4 tiered 'shelf' that I could use my antique bowls in for beads and stuff, but the darn thing wasn't for sale. It was a display piece.
I'm lovin' Mom's new plant stand that she found in Old Town Spring. It's a 100 year old piece from France!
We moved the grandfather clock to the living room, and placed the plant stand there in the kitchen, where the clock used to be. We're going to replace the little rose bush inside the cage with something else sometime.
The bird cage came from Thad's of course. It's our favorite place in Old Town Spring.
Sorry for the poor photo quality. My head is killing me, the sun was incredibly bright when I took the pictures, and the dogs are driving me batty because they won't stop barking... so I really didn't care what the pictures look like today.
If you want to work with the script texture that I used above THE RIGHT WAY (as opposed to the ugly @ss way I just did), it's called "And then Some." It can be found on Kim Klassen's website.
By the way, I dread that summer is almost here. Currently, it's 84 degrees. I am not looking forward to those high 90's and heat indexes of up to 110.
When it starts cooling off, I need to take Abby out back to play. Her favorite thing to do these days is pulling up weeds in the backyard. It's like catnip to a cat. While Izzy is busy chasing the birds, Abby is pulling up weeds and eating Mom's pansies.
I took this photo during our October 2008 trip. It's sunrise at the boat dock of The Wilderness Lodge.
2. I'm finally becoming wise to what's going to happen in my favorite tv show, "Once Upon A Time." In the Red Riding Hood episode, early on I figured Red was going to be The Wolf. At first, I thought maybe it was Granny but then she was up all night guarding the door to their cabin.
And I KNEW Dr. Whale was just a red herring that the writers were throwing at us!
Okay, so maybe it took me a while to get to that point.
3. As much as I miss Graham on OUAT, I'm really fond of The Stranger/August character. I've loved him from the beginning. I only wish they would give him an entire episode instead of all these little cameos.
I still think he's Henry grown up, but... Henry doesn't have bright blue eyes. And I don't think he's a Brothers Grimm anymore. That would be too easy.
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Next week is the Alice in Wonderland episode. I've never been a huge fan of AIW, although I've always WANTED to be. (Which is strange because the memorabilia I love). I hope I enjoy that episode, because last night's was pretty good. I think it'd be difficult to top, but it should be great considering how popular AIW is these days. I know that a lot of people are excited over the actors they chose.
4. More video of the furbabies - minus Tiger Lily - playing outside. Nothing grandstanding, as the battery kept dying on me.
