Mistie the Moo

I wish that anyone who reads this blog could reach into the picture and give this dog a friendly pat on the head; she deserves it. In the past year she has weathered adversity that some people might find difficult or impossible from which to recover. But Mistie is a canine, and lacks the capacity for self pity or giving up- one of the many things about dogs that make them superior to our species, in my opinion.

Some time back last summer, her human mom from puppyhood started a decline which ultimately lead to her death in November. Dot, her mom and my mom-in-law, was a dear, lovely woman and Mistie rarely left her side for 8 years. She loved to sit on Dot's lap under the apron Mom usually wore, slept by her bed in a little crate, and was the canine queen of the household. Mom loved her very much.

After Mom had died, the family decided that Mistie should stay in the house where she had always lived as company for Dad. While in some ways that could have been justified, it had to have been a difficult time for the little dog. She had been Mom's dog, not Dad's, and while he was never unkind, there just wasn't the affection that had nourished Mistie for years. To make things worse, Dad was suffering from the beginnings of dementia, and would forget about Mistie, who was discovered by family members at times still in her crate long after she should have been let out for the morning.

After several weeks of this, the decision was finally made that we could bring Mistie to live with us, something we had wanted to do all along. On a frigid, windy January Saturday, Mistie was driven to an agreed upon half way meeting place between Cleveland and Columbus where she was taken from the car and plopped down in the middle of a parking lot. She started running, certainly frightened and unsure what was happening. I ran after her, calling her name and fearful that she would either be hit by a car or run onto an icy pond right by the lot. Fortunately, I was able to catch her, put her in the car along with all her possessions, and head for home.

I'm certain that she recognized us, as we had visited many times in her life, and she was probably happy to once again be receiving attention and love. But what an adjustment it must have been to go from living all her life in a quiet place with no other animals and an elderly couple to being one of 11 animals and people who were busy coming and going to work! As if all of this hadn't been more than enough, two weeks after she moved in with us she spontaneously ruptured one of her spinal disks and was obviously in great pain. We took her to the vet, who recommended medical therapy at first. Soon it became apparent that this was going to prove insufficient as she lost the use of her back legs. She underwent a successful laminectomy followed by a month of total rest and emerged whole and healthy, although it took about 6 months for the big shaved rectangle on her back to totally grow in.

Mistie is now an established part of the family. She has her favorite places to sit (with me) and sleep (with me). She loves to go for walks, loves her morning treats, and races around in circles when we come home from work for the day. She has an endearing no-nonsense manner about her when approaching certain activities. For example, when going for a walk, she heads briskly up the sidewalk, ears back, nose forward. She know her driveway and makes a sharp 90 degree turn in when we get home. Her devotion to me is boundless. I am the recipient of joyful kisses every evening and her brown eyes speak volumes of love.

Sometimes I wonder if she misses Dot, and I know she must at times, as we all very much do. I am grateful, however, that Mistie has accepted me as her new Mom, and I feel closer to Dot knowing that I share the love of her little dog.

"Today"

Today while the blossoms still cling to the vine

I'll taste your strawberries,

I'll drink your sweet wine.

A million tomorrows shall all pass away

Ere I forget all the joy that is mine

today.

~ John Denver

Learning new things

Yesterday I was riding home from work along the Olentangy bike trail, and couldn't help but notice the abundant numbers of Queen Anne's Lace flowers growing everywhere. They are so common that a person might not even see them, or think them mundane. In my new resolve to appreciate the wonders of daily life, I got off my bike and really studied these delicate flowers, which truly resemble the woven fabric for which they are named. I knew that these were introduced to North America from Europe, and are named for the English Monarch who used to sew lace. According to one source, there is a small red center in each flower, the legend being that this represents the blood from the queen's finger when she pricked it with her needle.
What I didn't know is that this flower is in reality a wild carrot, known to be a contraceptive as long ago as the time of Hippocrates.

Friends

These folks are my friends, Kurt and Leah. They live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest amongst the ferns and cedars and not far at all from majestic snow capped mountains. If the earth had more people like these two, well, it would be a different place. A kinder, better place.
So, Kurt and Leah, here's to you and to just a few of the things about you that are so special to me.
Thank you for valuing simplicity; in a fast, complicated world, you remind me to take a deep breath, to look around and see the art in small things. Thank you for your advocacy of peace and for being green; that's not always easy. I'm sure you know, but I look up to you as models of who I want to be. Thank you for the gift of your friendship over the past 10 years. I love you both!!

Bird watching

Sam has discovered the table in front of our bedroom window, put there so the cats can look out at the bird feeder. I put out sunflower seeds, corn chips, suit, and black thistle and have enjoyed watching cardinals, gold finches, titmice, wrens, jays, chickadees, sparrows and doves dining. My enjoyment comes from both watching the different species- all with their own colors, songs and behaviors- and from feeling happy that I've given them something to eat.
Sam and his feline siblings watch in anticipation of a bird dinner. Because I know they can't actually get to the birds, I find their intense hunting postures, tail twitching and teeth chattering somewhat amusing. Nell, whose photo was in an earlier blog, will duck as a bird comes flying in, as if she's afraid the bird is going to come through the window and buzz her. So I conclude that I get double value for the money I spend on bird food: I get to watch the beautiful birds AND my silly cats.

Adventures with Charlie

Charlie (left) and Stuart are brother bunnies who were, along with 16 other rabbits, abandoned by a breeder in a barn 2 winters ago. The barn was also used by a dog rescue group, who noticed that no one was taking care of the rabbits and contacted our local house rabbit society. Our original intention was to be foster parents for Stuart until his permanent home could be found, but we failed at this. Once we got to know Stuart we decided that we didn't like the idea of his little face on the "adoptables" page and decided to keep him. When we took Stuart

back to the rabbit society for his neutering, they said, "You know, Stuart has a brother who doesn't have a home yet". Unfair! Trickery! We left with both rabbits, who were so excited to see each other again and have spent every day since being best friends.

From time to time, Charlie gets a tummy ache and stops eating. This is a potentially fatal problem for rabbits and needs to be corrected right away. Usually it took a couple of doses of crushed Gas X in water syringe fed, time on a heating pad getting his abdomen massaged and he would start eating and return to his usual high spirited self. This past week, we did the usual treatments, and he did start to eat, but not much and not in his usual enthusiastic manner. We went to see our rabbit vet, who checked him out, x-rayed his abdomen, and found that he didn't eat something that blocked his intestines (good) but that his digestive track could use some help (bad). They sent us home with the instructions to give him non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medicine (one tenth of 1 ml!) by mouth and a medicine to improve his gastric motility, given as an injectable every 8 hours.

Now as you can imagine, Charlie is not in favor of this plan. Despite what most folks think, rabbits do not like to be picked up. They are prey animals and generally only get picked up just before they become someone's dinner. And it hasn't taken long for Charlie to be onto things, so he takes the "avoid at all costs" approach to being medicated. Fortunately, his pen is only about 3 ft x 3 ft, so it doesn't take long to get him, as long as I first remove the cardboard bunny condo that he heads straight for, in the door and up to the second floor because he knows I can't get him in there. In spite of his best efforts, I always manage to extract him and dose him up with all his medicines, petting him afterwards, then returning him to his pen, where he immediately begins grooming himself and glowering at me.

I am happy to report that Charlie seems much better, is eating normally and hanging out with Stuart. Hopefully he will, in the end, forgive me for intruding into the bunny bachelor pad.

My best friend

My husband has always been active in distance sports. In high school he was a runner, following in the footsteps- no pun intended- of his older siblings. He continued running until several years ago, when his knees started to complain about all the miles. More recently he has discovered the joy of bicycling, probably spurred on by his admiration for Lance Armstrong's accomplishments, both on and off the bike. He generally takes off early on Saturday mornings and heads out into the country, preferring to ride alone. He says it's the best mental therapy he could hope for, not to mention the physical benefits.
He also rides to work as often as possible, which takes him into downtown. In the spring, before it was light out, he would head out with safety lights attached to his bike and clothes. The last I would see of him was his little red lights disappearing in the dark.
I'm happy that he has found this sport he loves, and proud of how far he can ride at a time. The last 2 Saturdays he put over 200 miles on his bike out on the country roads, alone with his thoughts.

Corn tassels

This past weekend I was out on a trail that runs through Ohio farmland. The old saying that corn should be "knee high by the 4th of July" is indeed old, as this corn towered above my head and clearly has tasseled. It was a sunny day with a nice wind, and the tassels were dancing under a beautiful blue sky. The soybean fields are green and growing as well. The hay is newly cut; in those fields Mother Earth is sporting a tawny buzz haircut.

A buckeye

The state tree of Ohio is the buckeye, and this is the fruit of that tree, the buckeye nut. This spiny covering remains in place until late summer. If you open it early, the forming buckeye is there, but not nearly as impressive as the mature nut, which is a shiny brown with a tan circle about 1 cm in diameter. Given that Columbus is the home of the Ohio State Buckeyes, these nuts are made into every imaginable type of decoration or necklace. It's not uncommon to see a person with a string of 50 buckeyes walking down High Street on a football Saturday, as well as lots of vendors with many more necklaces and trinkets.
We paint buckeyes on our faces, on our walls, and our OSU mascot is Brutus Buckeye. Just writing these words makes me realize how much fun it is to live and work here, and that I'm just starting to get that flicker of anticipation that starts about this time, when in about a month the marching band (TBDBTL) will be practicing "Fight the Team" as I leave work for the day. Football season is not far away! Go Bucks!!

Hims has dirty feets

Little Sam decided to take a rest on the tissue box because the tissues are nice and soft. He still bears the dirt of his street life, bits of road tar that are slowly loosening and coming off.

Looking at his size 12 feet on his size 1 body, it's no wonder he's chowing kitten food as fast as we fill his bowl.

For the birds

"This is for the birds!" That's what I was thinking when I decided to post this picture today to communicate that I have been under the weather all through this sunny summer weekend. I wonder where that saying originated?
These birds were photographed on Sanibel Island when I was visiting there. I was amused by the random way they were milling around on the beach, all dressed up in their fancy-shmancy feathers.
I cope poorly with being ill, even an illness as transient as the one I have now- some virus that will be gone in another 24 hours. I fret that I am unable to accomplish the things I had planned to do, regardless of whether they were work or fun. Instead of just settling back calmly, accepting that this temporary illness will pass and letting my immune system do all the work while I encourage it with juice and chocolate, my inner (Western) voice prattles on about "wasting a day" and "should have done this or that". It is so hard for us to just be. I wonder how difficult it must be for people who, due to real illness, gradually lose the ability to do anything. We, or at least I, define ourselves by what we do and what we produce. Just being doesn't seem like enough. But for me today, it will be; it needs to be. More chocolate, please.

Sam

This sweet little boy was found by my daughter when she was attending Columbus' annual fireworks Tuesday night. He was wandering around a parking lot all by himself, so my daughter called and asked if we wanted a kitten. I knew it was foolish to ask why, and told her to bring him to us after the show, which she did, around midnight.
He was promptly installed in a bathroom away from all our other animals, but with food, water and shelter- more than he'd probably ever had. He got a quick vet checkup on the 4th and was declared free of any potentially fatal diseases, but needed treatment for all the usual fleas, mites and worms so common in neglected animals, as well as some road tar on his ear and feet. He is a sweet, purring, calm kitten who loves being snuggled and for the life of me I cannot understand how this innocent creature and others like him are left to such awful circumstances.

In addition to a new home, he also got a patriotic, grown up name: Samuel Adams. We're sure he'll grow into the name at the same time he grows into those ears.

From my garden

I have become an avid gardener in the past several years. There is really no task that is a burden when I am out on my knees in the dirt. Weeding? No problem! There's something cathartic about pulling out the stuff I don't want. Like other gardeners, I eagerly await warm spring weather so I can be out tidying my beds, planting new flowers and seeds, and waiting with great anticipation for the perennials I planted to come peeping up through the dirt. Right now, my garden is blooming with pink coneflowers, red and pink bee balm, daiseys, cosmos, and impatiens I grew from seed, starting them indoors in late winter with flourescent lighting above and a heating pad below.

It is deeply gratifying to see humming birds, butterflies and honey bees sipping nectar from the flowers I planted. I put in milkweed for the monarch butterflies, as I read last year that their numbers have been decimated by habitat reduction. Milkweed is the only plant monarch caterpillars will eat. And to the honey bees, who struggle with all the pesticides poisoning the flowers they need to make their honey, I say, "Come and drink in my garden. Nothing will hurt you here. You are my honored guests."

I love Ohio

My husband and I have discussed many, many times that when our youngest has finished high school (in 4 years) we would like to move to the Pacific Northwest. It is so fabulously beautiful there, and all around are nature's masterpieces: ocean beaches, snow-capped mountains, towering spruce and cedar. I would be dishonest if I tried to claim that Ohio has nature on that scale. We do have Lake Erie to the north and lovely, rolling hills as you head east, but no mountains. No ocean.

What Ohio has in abundance are fields of corn, soybeans, and wheat. And in my Ohio-born heart, there is such beauty in those crops of emerald green and honey-brown. I love them in the summer when the sun is hot and the insects buzz continuously, and in the autumn, when the soyfields turn brilliant yellow and the corn stalks have become faded and dry. The dirt is beautiful, too. It's a dark, rich brown, and miraculously nurtures little seeds so they can become our daily bread.

Jim and I will no doubt continue to talk about relocating to the mountains and ocean one day. In the meanwhile, the corn and wheat and dirt will nourish my soul.