A Romantic Interlude

Robin's got a boyfriend! A very nice doggo with an interesting history... more on that later! His name is Ding and he's a lovely Golden Retriever...
Ding's human (a very nice woman!) was so committed to our dogs meeting that she drove Ding out for a visit on a sunny Saturday... all the way from Queens. Robin isn't thrilled with car rides and I suggested that as we have a generous and attractive fenced in garden, it would be the perfect place for a romantic first meeting. I think the dogs agreed!
Robin is sometimes a little shy with new dogs, but she and Ding seemed to hit it off... she only issued a throaty growl (channeling her inner Lauren Bacall) once. I think she missed Ding the next day; sniffing around the yard where they had been together. We are hoping for a more intimate hook- up next spring.


*And before everyone gets all cranky and judgemental, I will state- as I have three million times before: I never (REALLY!!! NEVER!!!!) wanted children, but I've always wanted a litter of puppies. And no, this is not some sort of weird cross species transference. I just love dogs.

*AND I am neither stupid nor naive (despite what some detractors may say!!Haahahahahaha!!) I know that having puppies is a messy, bloody, poopy, exhausting ordeal, but I still want to do this and have a Robin the Good offspring. I have asked Robin what she thinks and she just answers with her typical inscrutable deadpan gaze. What a dog!

*Additionally, it's not as easy as one would think to have puppies. Firstly, there are many prejudices against mixed breeds. Pure bred dog owners ask exorbitant stud fees and are mostly only interested in breeding to another pure bred (despite inherited health risks!). They seem to think their dog is going to be ruined by breeding to a mix: Unclean! Contamination!  Don't get me started...
Also, so many people have castrated their males that there are few available to breed to. (At some point in the future, I will bore you all with my advanced research into the health benefits of NOT castrating your male...  Castration leads to all kinds of awful side effects like senility, cancer, joint issues)  I could go on and on. It has literally taken me three years to find a partner for Robin!! (Someday I will relate all the surfing of "dog porn" that I have under gone. It's an education!)


 

The Biggest Tree We'll Ever Plant

Just be glad that I didn't write the blog I was starting yesterday! A hint: the title was "A Bad Mood". Enough of that! Today was great and my mood matched it because Bob and I bought a tree! That's it, wrapped up looking like some giant dildo and eliciting stares as we drove home.

 I have been researching and shopping for a clump of birches, partly because I have always admired them and partly because we have all this empty space cheerfully provided by that tornado that visited. We needed shade and a feature to partially block our neighbor's house and a focal point. I wanted something jazzy that had several seasons of interest. I really like the very white birches but have been warned that they succumb to all kinds of borers and leaf miners and they're brittle and they break. So I turned up several cultivars of Betula nigra (River birch, more familiarly) with the varieties "Duraheat" (lousy name!) and "Cully's Heritage" being recommended as particularly attractive with extra exfoliating bark- bronzey golden brown that peels to reveal salmon pink and creamy under bark, with foliage that turns vivid yellow in the fall. After many trips and phone calls to nurseries, I found what I was looking for...

It was a lovely day, we took a pleasant drive to one of our favorite nurseries and... they didn't have the size we were looking for, despite it being mentioned on a "specimens list" that had been emailed only the week before. All that was available were gigantic and twice what we were looking at spending. Alas! But another employee at the nursery checked and located one that was about to be "upgraded" and graduated to more expensive status as it had grown so lustily this year. She sold it to us for the lower price (literally like 1/2 the price!) Hooray!!!

They wrapped this cluster up and helped to load it and suddenly it appeared like twice as big as it had. I was shopping for a (hahahaha) five or six foot individual and we got us a ten foot tree at a bargain price and I started thinking, "And now we have to get this sucker home and plant it". I'm certain Bob was having similar thoughts. It just looked bigger and bigger and bigger.
As you can see in the above pictures, it rode home quite happily and we got it off the truck intact- or I should say, BOB got it off the truck with ropes and gently inching it towards the planks he posted at the rear of the truck and slid it down. I dutifully held ropes and pulled on my side but nothing budged; I tried.
But I sent Bob into the house after he wrestled the tree onto the ground. He needed a rest and I could handle the next phase: digging the biggest hole I've ever dug. I have graduated from annuals to perennials to shrubs and bushes and small saplings to trees! (But I assured Bob: this IS the biggest tree we will ever plant.)

And here's my lovely assistant Robin, ideally suited to helping me dig. She did a marvelous job of loosening the soil so that I could shovel it onto the pile.

The pile got even bigger than that! Bob is going to finish the hole tomorrow and then we're going to plant. I'll post additional pictures of that Herculean task. But in the meantime, take a look at the detail of this bark. This particular clump is nice, too, as it has four trunks and will create a really remarkable presence in the vast empty wilderness left by the tornadoes destruction. Why, it will probably look like it was always here. Let's see if our friends notice it the next time they visit!

Robin the Good- Super Model

Ooooh! Our Lil' Robin is all grown up and quite the stunner. I call her "Super Model"* because she has these high cheek bones and very long legs. And she's slim. What a looker! (She is actually still a teenager at eleven months old).
I'm thrilled to have been able to snap these pictures because Robin is either running full tilt around the yard, in hot pursuit of falling leaves or she's conked out in some upside down outlandish, tongue lolling deranged sprawl. The other day, though, her guard was down and she just kept posing.

I did annoy the hell out of her by following her around with my camera at the ready, trying to document her canine magnificence. She didn't hold most poses long enough for me to take a picture but I was wilier than she and finally managed to capture her in that coiled muscle moment, just before she sprang into motion again.
Even if she weren't beautiful she'd still be a great dog... responsive, affectionate and smart, smart, smart. She does have her endearingly persistent interests in socks, eye glasses and ball point pens but in general she's a good canine citizen.
Here's a doctored Robin:

(Nothing like a bit of Photoshop to enhance the most jejune of surroundings!)
I am entertained that while on our morning walk, people we encounter often ask what kind of dog Robin is. They have frequently mistaken her for a Flat Coated Retriever and one person thought she might be a Belgian Shepard (although they have definitely upright pricked ears... but she's black!) I guess that mixed or mutt designations often bring to mind scrappy lab or pit bull mixes so frequently seen nowadays. When people see an attractive dog, they just assume it MUST be some purebred. I tell them that Robin is the best kind of dog- a happy accident between two (not so common) breeds. (Just for the record, Mom was a Long Haired Weimaraner and Dad was a Llewellin Setter, which is the field or working variety of the English Setter (although that apparently has some controversy as to what denotes a "real" Llewellin. Dog breeders are nuts; way crazier than artists!) We are fortunate that both of these breeds tend to be healthy and not over bred and inbred. Don't get me started on the perfidy of the American Kennel Club and their desire to breed to (something they call) "type". Give me a good mix any day!



*In reality, Robin has about a million nicknames: everything from "Klondike Bar" to "Wicket" (because she's so leggy and thin that sometimes  she arches her back and looks like a croquet wicket).

End of Driveway Excitement

We now have this at the end of our driveway. Such progress! For the past six months, we realized the inevitability of construction lapping at the end of our driveway as the town crew moved slowly up Jeremy Swamp Road. They seem to be hopping all over the place: first one end, then a centerish (disconnected piece) and then our end- skipping the middle... Promptly at 6:30 every morning, the booming and beeping and pinging and LOUD GUY TALK would filter up the driveway from the street. We're fortunate that our house is set back from the road! (We hear it anyway.)
This greeted me when I attempted to leave the driveway yesterday morning:

I could barely squeeze past, and this was in addition to both of our next door neighbor's cars (waiting for the school bus) and a large dump truck and the aforementioned bus. Quite the busy intersection! I had remembered to bring my camera along so I snapped these pictures. As I said to the amused town crew guys, "How often do I have this much activity at the end of the driveway?" Everyone seemed busy staring into the big hole...

(That's the police officer bending over. Nice shorts.)
In any event, I don't know that we needed a wider road or so many attractive drains and pipes added to our lives, and as a friend suggested, it will only permit more traffic and people and their cars to attain higher speeds. It's already dangerous walking up our road to the dirt road where I walk most mornings. Here are the drain basins:

This was the right side of the driveway. It was like this for the entire Labor Day weekend. I guess the chains were there to discourage us from stealing the cement forms.
The weird upshot of all this construction was that I chose to take lil' Robin the Good on an alternative walk. I bundled her into the car (good practice for her auto-phobia!) and drove her three minutes up the road to the State Bridle Trail, where we've been walking every day since. And it's beautiful! Wide and quiet and winding through some amazing properties. Robin seems to enjoy this walk more than the dirt road, so it's our new routine.
One last shot. Y'know, this equipment is really big!

Sleep Deprived

I now join the ranks of those people- like CIA black site prisoners and new parents- who lust after a good, long old fashioned eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. I guess we are "new parents" of a sort (although I constantly maintain that I am not a "fur mother" and that our puppy is a chosen friend, not a child. I think the bond between dog and "owner" is a powerful one expressly because we are different species and speak a different language and think in different band widths. On the other hand, the case could be made that children are a very different species...) In any event, our dog is delighted to awaken us a 5:00 am or even 4:45 am. I am nostalgic for the ringing of the alarm clock.
Not that Bob and I were ever in danger of being accused of being slug-a-beds. Our alarm is typically set for six and we often wake up several minutes before it goes off. But lil' Robin the Good's internal timer is hard wired to be alert as soon as the sun starts to offer even the palest glow in the eastern sky. I calculated the other day (no mean feat for me at the best of times, but doing math when exhausted is really hard for me!) that Bob and I are surviving on about 6 hours of sleep a night... not nearly enough! It's ironic that when Jules died, I couldn't sleep and even if I did fall asleep, I'd wake up at 1:00, unable to return to sleep. At least I fall asleep just fine now, but certainly I still need more.
Robin, conversely, has her own rather attractive schedule. Wake Rita and Bob up- HELLOO!! and immediately begin prancing around, chewing socks and shoes and jumping on the bed in an enthusiastic embrace of being alive. She dances outside (with me as her foggy half dead retinue) where she enjoys a lengthy pee and a giant poop. Then she gallops inside to devour a hearty bowl of gourmet dog crunchies, plays hard with her various enormous collection of "toys" (some are primitive and some are partially deconstructed) and then collapses with her head on my stomach to sleep off the mornings excitement. I have just now managed to swallow a half a cup of coffee and she's already back to REM sleep. Bob and I have debated selecting a very pointy stick with which to poke and prod Mistress Mutt as she drifts off to sleep and keeping her awake, much as she does to us. You have to admire the zeal of the young. Every thing is new and thrilling.
Entirely unrelated is the picture of Maggie grazing, wearing her fly mask. I had promised Maggie that she'd appear in my next post and despite being an exhausted person not firing on all cylinders, I remembered to snap her picture. But it was a pleasant day!

Dogs Jumping Over the Moon and Other Subjects

Yes, Robin the Good jumps over the moon in her dreams! Impossible to actually photograph the lil' dickens in action as she moves waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too fast, so I opt for the Photoshop version when she sleeps. A baseball made a fine moon. But I promised Maggie that she will star in her own blog post soon as lil' Robin has been hogging the limelight! (Remember Maggie? The Mexican Pony? See? I have been neglecting her!)
So this blog posting will simply serve to get us all up to speed. Spring is relentlessly a busy time here at the BobnRita Ranch (aka The BauHaus Chicken Coop) as there's art shows and spring planting and  friends visiting and it all seems to happen at once.
Bob's been super busy since the New York Botanical Garden bought a slew of his peony rings. They're carrying them in their gift shop and discerning customers are driving up from New Jersey and elsewhere to purchase them. He even shipped peony rings to Minnesota! Maybe they'll start buying his sculpture. I keep telling Bob: that's how it happens. Get well known for one thing and your art work will follow.

Here's another fun project. If you recall the story about seeded Concord grapes, you will know that I abandoned the search. But my intrepid sister Beatrice went searching far and wide for the elusive Concord with seeds and scored one for Bob's birthday. Kudos for her tenacity!  The little cutting is happily ensconced near a window, warm and moist, and producing diminutive grape clusters that Bob is diligently plucking off. A stick and a leaf and it wants to produce grapes! (The will to live and reproduce... more on that subject later. Dangerous topics ahead!)
Anyway, we persist and spring is springing.

And okay: as a preview to a future dogcentric posting, I present Robin upside down flying through space (again). I kid her that we've had so many boy dogs that come equipped with "balls and bat" (ie: testicles and penis) that when Robin is belly up, it looks like "something is missing". There's like... blank space. She thinks we're weird. (Probably right.)

Welcome to the First Robin of Spring!

There she is... Robin! A glamorous puppy- our puppy! We are expecting her to be delivered by the stork (actually a dog delivery service) early tomorrow morning. I took a vacation day off from work to be here for the delivery. I requested that it be noted as "Maternity Leave" from work! I had tried to get her delivered on Wednesday or Thursday (my typical days off) so that Bob wouldn't have to play Single Parent (with all the accompanying little surprises like accidents and chewed objects) but when it became obvious that Robin was coming on Friday morning, I decided to rearrange my schedule.

I can't wait to meet her. She has gotten raves from the breeder (who actually considered keeping her out of the litter) and she looks perfect. Mother and Father dogs (Chloe, and Gunnar, respectively) are "pure breds" but fortunately, neither is a popular breed (like Poodles or Labs) and therefore not over bred. Chloe is a Blue Long Haired Weimeraner and Gunnar is a Llewellin Setter (the Field (ie, hunting) version of the English Setter). Don't even get me started on all the weird genetic disorders that plague popular dogs! Goldens are now considered (along with Yellow Labs) the dumb blondes of the dog world, not to mention that they now frequently die of cancer and suffer from heart ailments at alarming rates. So, no pure breds (whatever the fuck that is anyway!) for us!

Here she is, vogue-ing again. I can't wait to be photographing her in our backyard... her empire!
I miss Jules so much that it's astonishing. But I am hopeful and certain that having a new she-devil in the house will help to heal the gigantic hole left in our lives.
I'll post updates!