The Bachelor

 Last week, Rob was out of town and I was the bachelor, home with two kids, spending all my time trying to potty train one of them.  

I kept to most of our routines...but I enjoyed sleeping late.  

Lots of progress was made in teaching me to sense when the puppy needed out.  I suppose that's a form of potty training.  She did learn what "no" means.  And, she spends more time in the crate and less time in my lap during the workday.  

The biggest thing was I teaching her to crate at night, which means getting up to let her out.  That's been a whole 'nother adventure.  I started out setting an alarm, but now I just let her out when I get up.  

We made significant progress.  And, I reminded myself frequently that' she's only 3 months old and sometimes, she loses track of what is "good dog!" and what is "NO".

And, I enjoyed playing in the yard and looking at the pretty flowers.  

This week's new bloom was this daylily.  It's named Charlene's Patio.  It's a hybrid of my Mom's and she gave it to my Aunt Charlene who planted it near her patio.  And, they gave me a fan.

There were also Evolvulus (sp) flowers.  This is a great ground cover for places that get part shade.  It can be a little hard to control and will roll over anything that's smaller, so I have to be diligent with it in shady spots.  

The 4 o'clocks have started to bloom.  These take over if I'm not careful.  I planted seeds about 5 years ago and they just keep coming back, year after year.  

And, the coneflowers are really getting started, including the non-traditional colors.  This red one opened and I saw a yellow one about to open last night and an orange one on the way.  

Plus the yellow and orange daylilies are going strong.  I believe every daylily has a scape this year.  Some of them have never bloomed here before and I'm looking forward to seeing what colors they are.  

And, then there are these.  Do you have a plant that you love and hate?  I love the blue flowers on this plant.  I think it's a dayflower.  But, it's so aggressive!  It reproduces by seed and root and the roots are deep, so I can't just walk by and pull it out from everywhere it's trying to take a start.  I need the weeding tool or I just break it off and it comes right back with two stems instead of one.  I've pulled it out of places 35 feet from this place, which is the only place I let it grow.  

While the puppy slept last week, I tried to rest.  I did a pretty good job of it, too.  I spent a good bit of time reading, including some time just sitting in the yard with a book.  It was nice, but I had to force myself to do it.  I'm glad I did.  

Everybody have a great week!  Do what you enjoy and enjoy what you do.  I sometimes struggle with that.  Not the doing what I enjoy part, but sometimes the enjoying what I'm doing.  I get caught up and frustrated when things don't turn out just right.  

And, it's a good thing puppies are cute or I'd have wrung this one's neck.  I wasn't actually being held captive like my face says.  I was focused on getting a picture before she wheeled around and tried to bite me on the nose again.  She's got a thing for noses and ears and has drawn blood on us both.

Lane

Perseverance

 Sometimes, it's enough to be able to put one foot in front of the other.  Those are the days when perseverance pays off.  

A couple weeks ago, I found the biggest mistake I've made at work in about 15 years.  Last week, I told my boss about it.  I'm sure he's disappointed, but he's been a real trooper about it.  We've elevated it to corporate for advice.  It could be one where the right info was so obvious that it can't be considered an error or it could be a very expensive error to correct.  We won't know for a bit.  Fortunately, I didn't let my feelings about that stop me from doing more big things last week.  There were multiple opportunities to go above and beyond and I took every one.  

I persevered.

The garden is blooming up a storm.  Most of the daylilies that have bloomed so far have been yellow, but they differ in their shape.  This is the fanciest one so far.  I have a lot of very plain yellow daylillies and they look great stuck here and there in the perennial garden, but I have some others spread around that aren't going to bloom, probably because they're not getting enough sun, and a very large clump of plain yellow ones in the middle of my garden.  I plan to take 2/3 of those yellows out and replace them with some of the others. 

Last summer when I was mapping the garden, I kept having to write 'daylily, unknown' because I couldn't remember the color.  This year, I'm adding the colors so I can keep track of them.  

This one is supposed to be green, but some years, it's more yellow than green.  This year, it's definitely showing its green hue.  My Mom wanted to give my Dad a green daylily for Fathers Day one year.  They found this one and she gave me a little piece.  It's also having a good year this year.  

This was the last of the iris and the first of the coneflower together.  The coneflower will bloom most of the year and I have it in two shades of pink plus red, orange and yellow.  Those are about to start as well.  

The garden perseveres.  

Rob's gone to visit his Mom this week.  He tries to get up there once or twice a year.  She's in Nebraska and he has a new truck, so he drove this time.  14 hours.  While he's gone, I'm doing some very intensive puppy training.  Dotty is just not getting it and Rob is so soft hearted that we weren't making much progress, except in putting miles on the steam cleaner.  This week, there's a lot more confinement and control of how much space she can move around in so I can keep an eye on her.  Here she is sleeping while I cooked yesterday.  She's never been confined to the kitchen before and she did great!

Last night, she was confined to her crate instead of having the run of the bedroom.  She did great with that, too.  I woke her up at 1am and took her out and she went.  When I put her back in the crate, she cried a little so I took her back out because we want her to wake us if she needs out.  She didn't do anything that time, but when I crated her again, she went right to sleep.  This morning, we went out multiple times on leash and she wouldn't go.  I'd fed her so I knew she needed to.  She doesn't understand that the word 'no' means you're doing something we don't want you to do, so she'd go right in front of us with us yelling no right next to her.  And, she'd look at us and jump around to play.  We've been doing this a while now, so the only thing changing is the confinement.  The idea is to tell her no inside and take her outside, and if she goes, give her treats and praise.  She has a better understanding now, but I've got to get her to understand what no means first.  Thankfully she does better with 'leave it' which is what she hears when she takes something of mine and goes tearing across the house in a game of keep away...which she will play with my car warranty, but not with a ball.

We will persevere.  

Yesterday, I made onion jam.  I had never heard of it before and those four cups of onions I chopped cooked down to about 3/4 cup of jam.  But I put it on a burger last night and it was so worth every tear I shed while I was cutting those onions up.  My pint jar was a little overambitious.  A half pint would have been plenty big enough.

And now, it's time to take her out again.  Because that is my main job this week.  It's a good thing she's cute and sweet and smells good.  

Everybody have a great week!  Find time to do something you enjoy.  I will be spending as much of it in the yard as I can.  

Lane

I wasn't going to post this from Trump's Time interview.  But, damn, dude.  You are delusional.  The bias against white people is all bias people like you created.  Someone else having the same rights doesn't take anything away from the MAGA morons, no matter what they think.