Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Tuesday Twitterdeedum and Pitter Patter, et. al.


Twas no walk in the woods this morning with little Foster in hand.  Poor little guy.

Nothing wrong with Foster; it was just WET!  Too wet to even consider going in the woods.  I made that decision while dressed in rain gear.

So, Foster stayed inside while I led the horses to pasture.  This morning's dogless constitutional took me down South Center Valley Road, to the north. 

Some ditches were nearly full of water, and the road had its share of puddles.  Fortunately, however, nobody splashed me while driving by. 

I did enjoy a brief visit with Terry Wood who was on her way to work.

I usually don't care for rain, but this drenching rain has been actually nice for walking.  That's cuz the temperature is so pleasant, and natural fragrances of cottonwood, blooming flowers and just plain cleanliness were wafting through the air.

We're embarking on my most favorite week or so of the year.  Apple blossoms are still in full show, and lilacs are popping out their pinks, lavenders and pastel purples. 

The lovely springtime fragrance can't be far behind.

With a drenching rain, the clean,  green grass of home deepens in height and color intensity, providing a pleasant contrast to pastels and bright, happy colors of pansies. 

Ha! Ha!  Those dandelions don't like the rain, so most of them close their doors to the world, and we don't have to be reminded quite so much how they irritate us within hours of a new mowing.

We were supposed to have the fencing crew come today to dig holes for metal posts surrounding our dog run.  I have a feeling, though, that yesterday's steady downpour put them off schedule.

So, we'll wait.  The weather report for the rest of the week looks a little dryer so I'm sure by week's end, we'll have a dog run, and the pups can get used to their new, larger area of confinement.

I actually liked yesterday's rain because it forced me to do some indoor projects which otherwise would not get completed for weeks or months.

The major accomplishment involved the shop off the north side of the house where Festus lives and where Jonas hangs out during the daylight hours.

Besides removing a good supply of last fall's leaves that had blown under the partially opened door, downed clumps of pink insulation from the incomplete ceiling and a few dead mice captured by our mousers extraordinaire, I tidied up shelves and loaded up bits of garbage that had accumulated for some time.

The place looks halfway respectable now.  We don't go in there often, 'cept to feed and water Festus.  Now, with its new appearance, I may even want to spend some time in the shop.

One of these days we'll get a ceiling completed to cover up all that ugly insulation.  Kinda reminds me of houses in our old neighborhood which took a generation of patchwork additions before their siding was complete.

Some of those domestic projects just go to the back of the line with everything else, it seems.

Anyway, I feel good about the shop, and if it rains steadily today, I'll take advantage of the pleasant temps to start removing all the layers of rubber mats from our box stalls. 

The mats have provided a band-aide approach to floors with rotted-out boards.  And, removing the mats to see how bad the floors really are will be much more pleasant now than on hot days in July.

Once we find out how bad the floor-board news is, we'll go the next step in removing the boards and deciding what strategy to use so we don't ever have the problem again in our lifetimes.

At this point, we're hoping to haul in gravel and skip putting in heavy boards, always destined to rot. 

This week's edition of pitter patter is good, just as long as it doesn't hang around for several days, allowing the lawn to turn into a hay field. 

As I close this post, I'm suddenly aware of a new silence.  No pitter patter.  Just birds singing  happily.  Guess it's time to take little Foster outside for that walk he missed earlier.

Happy Tuesday.

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