One Day at a Time

The babies are getting bigger. I don't know how there's room for the three of them plus momma. Here are some beaks, and just because, a gratuitous butt shot:

(As always, click the pictures to see them "real" sized)

My only regret about being gone next week is the chance that I'll miss them fledging. I just love having the babies around; I've not managed to photograph the mourning dove young-uns, but they're very cute too.

And here is the fourth mystery flower; I originally thought it was part of the pink one, but this is a completely different plant.

The first picture is the flower alone, and the second is of it with the pink mystery flower.

Posted by Danielle Tisinger at 09:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've got some interesting volunteers in the garden this summer, so I'm wondering if there is a new "vandalism" trend where people plant random seeds in someone else's garden. Tracy and I traded some seeds last autumn--I sent her some blue columbine and she sent me some Texas bluebonnet.

Where I'm pretty sure I planted the bluebonnet seeds, I seem to have a whole mess of bachelor buttons. I'm not complaining about the BBs, but I would have liked some bluebonnets also.

But here are three other mystery flowers:

The first one is a really sweet pink flower that looks like it could be a miniature snap-dragon. I'm fairly certain the white one is a common weed variant, but it is pretty. And I've never seen the purple/white variety in my life. I don't have a good picture of its leaves, but they are rather cool looking themselves. This might be a type of balloon flower, but I don't recall planting any balloon flowers out front. (The leaves it's next to are actually from my new forsythia bush. This flower is also on a pretty long stem, but it likes to drape closer to the ground, making a decent shot very difficult.)

Not only do I have bachelor buttons and these three mystery flowers, but my violas have reseeded like crazy and are coming up all over, and I also had four varieties of columbine that I've never even seen in the neighborhood, let alone planted in my garden. I'm really going to have to work to get their seeds this year so I can ensure they get planted; one of the variants was a really cool frilly pink and white columbine. The others were a deep wine-red, a deep purple, and one the palest pink that was almost white. The flowers are all gone now--if I pluck the pods, will I still get seeds, even though it might technically be too early?

Posted by Danielle Tisinger at 10:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've been watching a robin's nest in our red maple out front for several weeks now. I keep hoping we'll have nesting birds in our trees, but I so often don't ever see them. This one is pretty well hidden, with many leaves and branches blocking a good view. Then, a little while ago, I noticed that mom wasn't sitting on the nest anymore. I nearly held my breath until I saw one of the pair come back (I can't identify male v. female robins). But here is the reason she's not sitting anymore:

There are actually three little ones in the nest that I've seen. There are only two little beaks here; they're so cute, just sitting with their beaks looking up over the edge of the nest. I did see all three earlier this evening, while also watching one of the parents dive-bombing a very quickly departing squirrel.

Click the picture to see a larger version. Unfortunately, she's so well hidden, it's very difficult to get a good picture. Between the lower light levels and the branches and leaves hiding the nest, most of my shots are blurry at best. But I hope to get some more as the babies get bigger. I won't be here for much of next week, so I might miss some prime action, but we'll see.

Posted by Danielle Tisinger at 10:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Yarnery, One of my LYSs is sponsoring a "knit a square" blanket project. Click on the link for more details.

Posted by Danielle Tisinger at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Fun little flickr search game, stolen from Beth:

1. Danielle - 2007 Valentine's Day Blizzard, 2. Rosie & Buster Brown, 3. 051708_LHS_Gsoccer_Natrona_01_BJW, 4. Purple Mountain Majesty, 5. Emily Deschanel & David Boreanaz, 6. In the Boat, 7. Thunderstorm in Australian outback, 8. chocolate ice cream 001, 9. Gracie and her Gram, 10. The Exuberance of dogs!, 11. Dunnock sitting prickly12. Not available

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?

Many of these were unsuitable for sharing...why were they even posted in the first place? I really like this picture, though. I think it says a lot about me, and it's not even mine! :-)

2. What is your favorite food?

Do I really have to choose? Any guesses as to what I actually entered as a search?

3. What high school did you go to?

Not many good options here, either. My first search turned up a bunch of karate pictures. I chose this one, though, because I was on the girl's soccer team, though we never beat NCHS while I was there; our team was consistently the worst in the state. But it was fun.

4. What is your favorite color?

Purple is not my favorite color. My favorite colors are not easy to describe, but can be best summed up by "purple mountain majesty." Almost any of the pictures in that particular search would have been suitable for this answer.

5. Who is your celebrity crush?

Loving Bones

6. Favorite drink?

Again, hard to choose. But I do like this picture...it kind of says it all.

7. Dream vacation?

Really, really, really, really want to visit Oz.....

8. Favorite dessert?

This is really my favorite dessert, though I almost went with the actual Baskin Robbins PB & C image that was there. But throw in fresh fruit, and it's a real winner.

Dessert is tricky, though; this is one of my favorites, but if the ice cream is not chocolate, I don't want it at all (ala When Harry Met Sally...)

9. What you want to be when you grow up?

This was the true find of this search quiz. I want to be Erin Vey. :-) Failing that, I entered "doggy daycare;" this picture pretty much says just about everything: doggy daycare, dog photographer, great dane, my kids' grandma nearby.

10. What do you love most in life?

:-)

11. One word to describe you.

What was my search term here? Those who know me....

12. Your flickr name.

Obviously, #12 didn't work so well, and I didn't want to take the time to modify it like Beth did.

Posted by Danielle Tisinger at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I completely forgot to brag about something! The title of this post is the subject line of an email I just received this week saying that Remy's therapy dog application to the Delta Society has been accepted. This means that Remy and I are officially a therapy animal team! We'll get our official badges in about 6 weeks, but we have temporary ID until then.

Posted by Danielle Tisinger at 09:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've mentioned before that Payton never stops wagging his tail. We routinely have a steady thumping, or if he's standing, a metronomic fan. So today's "Marmaduke" makes perfect sense to us...though we usually try telling Payton to just stop wagging.

Posted by Danielle Tisinger at 07:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Unfortunately, I'm not clever enough to have come up with the term "shutterwoofer"--that is solely the genius of Scott Rose, author of the article I link to below; click on the word "featured" for the article.]

Blogger and photographer Erin Vey was featured in the most recent Pampered Puppy newsletter. The writer does a great job of highlighting Erin's personality as a dog lover and owner in addition to her wonderful work behind the camera. I've been following Erin for a few months now (she has a Great Dane, Gracie, so how can I not?), and continue to be envious of her artistic sense and camera skills. But not only does she show us her work, but she also discusses it, including tips and tricks she has picked up along the way.

Posted by Danielle Tisinger at 09:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Please visit Julie Zickefoose's entry from Monday and spread the word. She has a follow-up post on Tuesday to explain more. Julie says what needs to be said far more eloquently than I ever could.

Posted by Danielle Tisinger at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Minnesota Zoo has a great commercial that found its way to Cute Overload this week. We haven't been to either of the local zoos in the 11 (gulp) years we've been here. I have mixed feelings about zoos: love the conservation/education mission, not so fond of the containment/exhibition aspects. But I imagine we'll visit one or both zoos before we leave the state.

Posted by Danielle Tisinger at 09:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today's title is a direct quote from the husband this morning. We were stopped at a traffic light just before entering the interstate. There are two lanes going onto the interstate, a right turn lane onto back streets, and a left turn-lane into a large shopping area (Rainbow, Home Depot, Target, you know the kind....).

We were behind one car in the left interstate-bound lane. Literally, we were the only two unparked vehicles in sight.

Then the car ahead of us turns on his left turn signal. (The left turn lane has an arrow, and is one of those "turn on green arrow only" kind of lights...no adaptive lights here, so you can easily be the only car around but still be sitting at a red light for eternity.) Instead of waiting until the straight-bound lights turned green, he pulled up and over into the intersection, then backed up so he was in the left turn lane.

At which point, the light turned green for us, but this poor bloke would now have to sit through the red turn arrow for the ENTIRE cycle before being able to turn left into the shopping area.

And it was just Monday that I was in the left turn lane at this intersection, when I saw the car behind me (yes, in the left turn lane also) cross the two straight-bound lanes and turn right in the right turn lane.

Um....why?

When driving around here, my humanity is frequently stunned.

Posted by Danielle Tisinger at 08:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Weta site has a pretty nifty Q & A with Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro regarding the upcoming Hobbit production(s). I'm particularly intrigued by GDT's comments about Smaug:

"To me, Smaug is the perfect example of a great creature defined by its look and design, yes, but also, very importantly, by his movement and -One little hint- its environment - Think about it... the way he is scaled, moves and is lit, limited or enhanced by his location, weather conditions, light conditions, time of the year, etc. That's all I can say without spoilers but, if you keep this curious little summary you'll realize several years form now that those things I had in my mind ever since doodling the character as a kid had solidified waaay before starting the shoot of the film."

There's also a brief discussion of voices, and the names don't mean much to me, but for my money, Smaug will always be the voice in the Rankin Bass production (I have the soundtrack on LP because it has never been released on CD, probably for the same reasons it took so long to get this film going).

Let's just see if I remember to come back to this entry once the movie is done!

Posted by Danielle Tisinger at 03:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just had to blog about something I saw on the road on the way to my conference today. We passed a horse trailer with a llama in it; it actually looked kind of happy in there. Then we noticed that the llama trailer was being pulled by an RV. How cool is that? Tooling around the country with your llama? I was driving, and no one had a camera handy, but I really wish we could have gotten a picture.

Posted by Danielle Tisinger at 10:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(Click for a larger view)

Saturday, May 3, was the Animal Humane Society's annual Walk for Animals. We were all geared up to walk in nasty, cold weather. Friday it rained all day, and the forecast for Saturday was more of same. But Saturday dawned clear and cool. Windy, a little chilly, but SUNNY. Yay sun!

I was actually pretty bad about photographing the events. I caught a picture of two Canada geese and a picture of a new sparrow for me to ID, but really didn't get any pictures of the event itself except the three below. That's too bad, because there were actually a lot of things to take pictures of: the pony, the goat, the alligators, the ferrets, the cats, the birds, and the dogs dogs dogs dogs who were participating. (The pony made me realize that I am actually pretty accurate when I correct people who say Payton is a horse...I tell them he's just a pony cause he's only a "Mediocre Dane.")

One of the pictures is of the pot bellied pig we saw, and Remy deciding to take a break in the wading pool. At first she was happy to just drink. But with only a little encouragement, she waded, then lay down. I was actually half expecting her to roll completely over, but she managed to wet her back even without that extreme. Remy's pool antics earned her nearly as much attention as Payton gets on a regular basis. She elicited quite a few chuckles and "oh, I just have to get a picture of this" comments. Payton and I just stood and waited until she decided she was ready to continue.

Posted by Danielle Tisinger at 07:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I just made an impulse buy at the bookstore. It's a book of questions and answers about dogs by one of the UM Vet Med faculty members. I've only browsed through it in piecemeal chunks (I am at work, after all), but even with what I've seen, I've already sent emails to dog-owning friends recommending it.

What I think is particularly great about this book is that the questions are very practical (should I be paying for the high $ foods? what are the top 10 toxins for canines? are houseplants poisonous?) and the answers are straightforward and understandable. She includes some personal little facts, some medical examples, some case studies, some research, all of which are readable (she owns a pit bull and uses him in her answer for the question about leaving a dog outside unattended). In some ways, she might not take quite a strong enough stance (in the example of leaving a dog outside, I probably would have flat out said a dog shouldn't be left outside unattended), but I do think for the average dog family, she does a great job. (Now I just need to look to see if/what she says about backyard breeding.... ;-) ).

Update: I did get to the point about breeding, and thought her answers were very good. The next area I need to explore her answers for are "where do I get my dog." I don't know if she tackles that one.

Update 2: Better and better. She extols the virtues of "hybrid vigor" while suggesting that designer dogs might not necessarily result in that vigor; she recommends shelters, rescues, and finally breeders. The only ting I wish she had discussed more is not buying from pet stores, but who knows...she may have had a whole book in that topic and her editor told her to take it out. I guess I would say that's the biggest flaw I've seen so far, and as far as it goes, she handles the subject well enough for me to still respect everything else she says.

Posted by Danielle Tisinger at 02:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)