Last September (2010)

I have been going through some photos that I thought I would share with you today.  Now let me show you what the little garden that I just got done off the kitchen entrance looked like "before".  This was in it:

Yep, it was a fountain.  Yep, it worked.  But it was badly in need of a good scraping and a couple of coats of paint.  If the water level got low, it would blow off the little tube that carried the water around and you had to move the heavy part on top to get to it, not just move it but kind of hoist it over sideways and hold the darn heavy thing with one hand and a thigh and try to manipulate the little tube thingie back on with one hand, preferably the right hand.  :)  There were some interesting plants there, the lavendar has been divided and put into a pot by my friend Kathy, some of the bulbs were dug up and put under the new hibiscus plant and the crape myrtle sisters.  Most everything else got pulled out.  Multiple times.  I did have some gladiolus that I left, having totally missed that little clump somehow, so they got to stay and bloom this summer. They are white so will make a nice accent there with the pink roses.
I thought "maybe someone will want it" and listed it on Craigslist.  I had several responses but one looked familiar.  It was Ann, a lady down the road who I had bought eggs from in the past, and had bought 6 little half grown chickens from her, too.  She was thrilled with the idea of getting it, so a few days later she came with some help and a pickup and took it away.  I should go over and see what she has done with it but just haven't thought about it much.
I haven't talked too much about the livestock guardian dogs (LCDs) we have acquired to help protect the goats.  This is Jelly Bean, so named because he is very, very sweet:

He was so tiny and I had him spend the night up here the first night.  It was very difficult to leave him down with the goats.  He was just darling but the goats needed someone to grow up with them so they knew that he was part of the herd.  He is ever so nice with them now.  He wanted to be friends at first and they all knocked him around, terribly.  It hurt my heart but he really had to learn to be with them.  When he hit about 3 or 4 months, he tried to "play" with them which of course, being a dog, meant he used his mouth with the little razor sharp teeth.  So I put him over with the does, thinking they would knock some sense into him.  No biting. Nope, he kept it up.  I was upset because it looked like it wasn't going to work out and I'd lost a couple of months of precious socialization with this pup by acclimating him to the goats and environment instead of dragging him around from place to place to learn to be a people dog.  Finally, I decided that a companion was necessary and so we brought Tootsie Roll home, a four year old girl who had just gotten over having pups.  Her previous name was Adrienne.  We liked Tootsie beter.  She took him in hand and played with him, nurtured him and was his best friend as well as surrogate mother.  Now he is a fine LCD and she is, too.  Good job, guys!
Last is a phenomenon that I noticed several times in the back yard but finallly thought about taking one photo of and then it quit happening:

Four of these dog toys are placed in a straight line.  I'd seen other configurations, too.  The only explanation that I could come up with was that aliens would land at night and rearrange the dog toys to send us some message, perhaps of world disaster (thanks, I would really rather not see it coming!) or perhaps a message of peace (better, ok, I will accept that hypothesis).  It was happening so regularly that I was put in mind of crop circles.  Anyhow, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!