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Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Meet my girls, they're lovely...

I've never done this before, because I'm no kind of gardener. I love my three coleus plants so much, I called them "my girls" all summer. Then I couldn't just let them die, so I brought them into the house before the first frost.
And I love them.
I have a grow-light for them, so they're still growing, and they're also doing something that looks like multiplying, or perhaps they're just saving themselves.
If I look carefully, I can see new little leaves growing out of the stems.
In the first photo I put my cell-phone-camera right in with the new leaves and enlarged them so you can see them.

 Little


Big (left) and (below) bigger.

The largest plant has green leaves with pink on the back of them. It doesn't seem to like the indoors as much as the others do.

The other two plants have green leaves with red centres.

And something else I've never done: I tried to post twice for Lady Fi's Our World Tuesday but it didn't seem to work. Or maybe it did. Second-posting isn't very polite.

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Confessions of an old blue-hair

It seems to me I haven't always been old, but I don't remember.
Not true, I remember when I was young and quite cute, at that.
Long ago and far away. But there is more...

Today, my hair could be called grey or white, but it is a mixture of both with some hairs of straw-yellow thrown in for good measure. Yellow doesn't suit me at all.

No, I never was a blonde. My hair was always brown, or dyed red to match my brother Clint's.

Yes, it was always brown except when I had it sprayed white to match my prom dress. Note the white gloves.
It was a different and distant time.

But yes, my hair was always brown except for the many times it was red, and except for the one time in the 80s when I had my hairdresser dye all my white and/or grey hairs purple.

Oh, what fun I had with purple hair. I chose purple partly because I owned a lot of purple clothes, but there are no photos extant of me clad, and also haired, in purple.
Except for this one which, unfortunately, is in black and white. I teased my photographer friend a lot about that faux pas, but I was secretly very upset. I can say that now, because that dear friend is no longer with us.
Thinking of a friend from long ago and far away...yes, it reminds me that all lives, however well they were lived, must come to an end.
Thinking of my friend makes me feel old. But it hasn't always been so.

I am linking this post to Lady Fi's Our World Tuesday http://ourworldtuesdaymeme.blogspot.ca/

Now, my computer and I are no longer friends.

I have a feeling this post might be posted more than once. Something is very wrong, but I don't know what. I can't get a preview, and I have trouble making changes: i.e. fixing any errors. So please bear with me.
Okay, I'm back. This time the problem isn't about my blogs being posted more than once. This time it disappeared altogether. My husband said he saw it, but I didn't. How can that happen?
O well, old age doesn't promise to be easy.

Not abused, just disappointed


"I smell something cooking on the stove. It smells like eggs, but all I got was this plate of bread crumbs. Nobody loves Lindy."


Of course, everybody loves Lindy, but...
I was, for the first time ever, I'm sure, making egg-in-a-hole for myself for breakfast. I never go to such lengths for breakfast, except for guests and, very rarely, for my husband who has his "usual" every morning when I'm still asleep. I've only the vaguest notion of what that "usual" might be, but that's another story.
Lindy did, eventually, get the last bite of egg and bread. Then she got to lick the remaining bits of egg yolk on my plate, realizing once more that we do love her. No matter how many times we say "It's for your own good" she doesn't understand any more than a very young child would.
On the other hand, just yesterday I got her to "sit, down, stay" — she sat, she lay down, and she stayed there for all of three minutes.


Sunday, September 18, 2016

The inevitable end might be near...

...or it might not. (If you've wondered: Lindy is old, but doing fine.)
My husband showed me a video online about the death of the last 9/11 rescue dog, a Golden Retriever. She was 16 years old, and looked just like our Lindy, probably because all elderly Golden Retrievers look alike...the white face, and all the white hairs in an otherwise golden coat.
Of course I cried, as I knew I would—as he knew I would, too, and as he had already done.
There is no preparation a family can make for the end of a Golden era, but this applies to all families who have been loved by a dog of any breed.


Whatever can be said about dogs has already been said, and I can't add any more wisdom on the subject. I can only empathize.
I have had many dogs in my lifetime. I loved them, and they loved me.
Outstanding in the Davies family's history of dogs was Wag, a Scotch collie who herded kittens for lack of anything else to herd. When there were no more kittens, he tried to herd our adult cats, but they, cattily, wanted none of that.
The exception was Cookie, our deaf cat. Wag appointed himself Cookie's keeper, and if she wandered too far away from the house, he'd fetch her. If she was on the ground, he'd herd her home—if she was up a tree, he'd go home to get a family member to help him.
There were very sad things, too—when our Samoyed, Baron, was hit by a car, he picked himself up and waited on the sidewalk for a moment until someone opened the door of my family's printing shop. Baron went in and put his head in my mother's lap, just as the door opened again and a man told Mom "Your dog was run over by a car."
Mom and Dad rushed Baron to the veterinarian, but nothing could be done. "There is too much damage to his internal organs," said the vet. "I'm surprised he lived through that incident." But Baron wanted his family to be with him before he died.
Later, though, there was Chiquita, the world's smartest poodle, or so we thought. She was spoiled, but she was never never rotten. She charmed the neighbours by taking her bowl in her mouth, then using it to knock on their door at mealtime, despite the fact that she was very well fed at home.
Petie and Ralph, very close family friends, would even invite her in to sit at the table to eat steak for breakfast.
Mom and Dad and Rob's next dog, after Chiquita, was Niña, who  came from a litter my neighbour's dog produced. Mom chose her because she was the only blonde in the litter, but little did Mom and Dad know what they were in for, with the dreaded Ninja Puppy.
Niña barked. She barked at everything and everyone, indiscriminately, a happy good-to-see-you bark, a joyous we're-going-somewhere bark, all the way to a destination, and all the way back.
She wasn't a dummy, that dog, however. Far from it. My much-younger brother Rob took her to obedience classes in the high school gym, where she learned every command, performed perfectly, and graduated. However, in her little-dog mind, that was what she did at dog school. She would not obey commands at home. It was like the separation of church and state, and never the twain shall meet.
She was very cute, and very smart, as I've already said, so Mom and Dad didn't change their lifestyle. They continued to drive, from their little place near Vancouver, BC, to their little place south of Mexicali, on the Baja Peninsula's beautiful Sea of Cortez. They would leave British Columbia before winter hit, and drive home six months later.
They enjoyed the drive for years. Until they got Niña. She barked all the way down to San Felipe, and all the way back.
Eventually, they couldn't take it any more, so they gave her to me.
I was living in a small town in the interior of British Columbia, where everybody knew almost everyone else. One day, a friend introduced me to his aunt. "Oh, I know Kay," she said. "Kay has the car that barks."
I had two cats at that time, and the Ninja Puppy loved them. When she'd been out for a while, she came home and greeted them by chewing on their necks, softly, of course, but getting them very wet.
One cat, my wonderful Herman, would allow her to enthuse in this way for several minutes, until he emerged dripping wet.
My other cat, Ava, was a meanie. Not just when she was old: she was mean and nasty her whole life. She would allow the dog exactly three neck-chews. Then she'd extract herself from Niña's mouth with a glare and a hiss. That didn't bother the Ninja puppy, however. She loved all people and pets indiscriminately, whether they loved her back or not.
One of my friends had several boys, and I'd hire them to do outside chores, until suddenly they started to bring their friends over, and not to work.
My place had a long hall from my back door to the kitchen. Ava would lie just inside the kitchen, periodically peering down the hall, waiting for someone to come by.
My rent-a-kids would dare their friends to walk down the hall. Some of them escaped the Wrath of Cat, while others ended up with bleeding ankles. I found it quite funny, although I didn't want to, but teenage boys being beaten up by a cat was more than somewhat amusing...they would jump up and down on the unscratched leg, saying things young boys aren't supposed to say.
I had to put a stop to it, though, before a herd of angry parents came knocking on my door to complain about Ava.
When my other cat, my beloved Herman, died, a steady stream of people came to my door to tell me how much they loved him, and how he would come to visit their babies, or puppies, or kittens, or babies and puppies. He was a cat in a hundred, and deserves to be included in a blog post about dogs.
Linking with Our World Tuesday, where Lady Fi knows all about dogs.


Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Itsy bitsy teeny weeny cucumber'n'big zucchini

No, we didn't grow either of these.
My husband found the malformed "baby" cucumber among a neighbour's culls from his cucumber greenhouse. And he bought the big zucchini at a farm market because I said I'd like to try stuffing and baking one that size.
Never a dull moment here in "The Greenhouse Capital of the Prairie" as our town calls itself.
Photos by
Kay Davies
with thanks to
Richard Schear


Sunday, September 11, 2016

This blog isn't just about Lindy, but...

...we are treasuring every moment we have with our beloved, blind old dog, because we don't know which moment might be the last.
She really doesn't like to have her picture taken. She can hear the click, even though the cell phone doesn't sound like a regular camera, and she usually moves her head in mid-click.
I took these two photos from the other side of the room, then cropped them. She had moved, but not much.
Here she is with the Lindy-coloured blanket, with the step-stool she uses to climb up to sit with us, and with the special Lindy-quilt made by a dear friend who is blind except for one corner of one eye, but has taken up quilting again.
So apt, because Lindy is completely blind in both eyes.
We're posting this early for Lady Fi's upcoming Our World Tuesday, and I will do the linky-thing tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Lindy's mom can't get Blogger's preview button to work, so we're posting this one on faith.



Kay Davies photos

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

We all love Lindy: the ongoing saga

Because we all know our furniture should match our pets...Lindy just about has this colour coordination thing figured out. We have Lindy-coloured floors in three different rooms, and furniture we bought to match the dog-hair.
Meanwhile, Lindy's mom is having trouble with her blog and/or her computer, whichever comes first. It is impossible to get a proper preview today. Neither Lindy nor her mom knows why, and Lindy's daddy is a very busy guy, so we are going to click "Publish" and see what happens.


Monday, September 5, 2016

Welcoming flowers home

I am no gardener. I will water the lawn and whatever else happens to be growing on the lawn—trees, bushes, and sometimes flowers. But every now and then, there will come a year when I want to plant something.
I planted three coleus plants this year, in large plant pots, with some other greenery to accompany them. I watered the lot of them religiously, when I thought of them, but it's a good thing we had an unusual amount of rain this year.
Then, today, I brought the three coleus plants inside. I did.
I transpotted them into larger pots, and put them on our only properly-large window, which, unfortunately, faces north. I understand that light from a north window is preferred by artists, etc., but not preferred by plants. So I got them a grow light.
They really are beautiful, despite the fact that the leaves have been chewed here and there by insects which, I hope, didn't accompany them into the house.
The three plants are right here, behind me, as I sit at my computer, where all I have to do is turn around, and there they are.
So, without further ado or, in my case, without further trivial chatter, I would like to introduce my three indoor coleus plants, with less than original nicknames: Blacky, Big White, and Red, after the colours of their pots.
I hope they survive living with me. In the meantime, I'm sharing them with Lady Fi's popular meme, Our World Tuesday.