B-b-b-b-bad to the bone

Last weekend I made a pretty rockin' pot braise/roast.  As you can see, it had a sizeable bone in it, which I decided to give to Rosemary. 

She was very happy and went into her crate with it.

We didn't see much of her for the next 2 days.  She brought it out with her at dinner time, then retreated back into her crate.  We could hear her gnawing on it from the other end of the house.  That was one happy pooch.

Rosemary must share her domain with an ancient evil lurking, albeit behind a babygate, in the background. 

Unfortunately, Rosemary got too possessive of her bone and started to run off the cats, growling and barking.  This is very out of character for her and it royally pissed off G-man.

Apparently bones are like crack for Rosemary.  We're sending her to treatment and, sadly, had to take away her bone.

It was good while it lasted.

Corgis shed. A lot.

When we got Rosemary her breeder said, "you do know that every corgi's first job is to shed, right?"  I muttered something to indicate that, yeah yeah, I knew, I had cats, and shedding was not unknown in my house.

But I only knew in a strictly academic sense.  Holy moly that dog sheds non-stop!  It's rather impressive.  What's weird, though, is that she only seems to shed white fur.  She's russet, black, and white.  Where is the rest of the fur going? 

Do I want to even know??

We've been grooming Rosemary frequently using a furminator and yet the furballs are everywhere: under the furniture, skittering across the hardwood floors, gathered on the stairs of the back porch, in the car, on the cats.

This is our female cat, Mira.  Even she is subject to Rosemary's shedding.  Last weekend I found Mira with a small hairball on her eyebrow.

She was not amused.

By the way, did I tell you that Rosemary is famous?  She appeared on the local news station for a dog shampoo sponge review back in March.  It's rather strange to watch her, knowing that's the same dog that has worked her way into our hearts but that we weren't even thinking about getting a dog at that time.

Isn't life funny?

Sunday morning in the yard

Quiet mornings in the garden make me happy.  I'm always up around 7 on weekends and like to sit in the backyard before the neighborhood wakes up.  The finches and dragonflies flit about in search of food and the hens coo from their run.  It's so peaceful and calming.

All I need is a pot of tea, my newspaper, a freshly baked scone from the freezer, and a fresh fruit salad with homemade yogurt.

Here's some of that infused vanilla honey I made a while back.  It was so good in the black tea! 

That's my great-grandma's Hall streamline teapot from the late 1940s.  The sugar and creamer that match the teapot are Starbucks, circa 2005; green bowl, Paris, 2001.  While I visited my great-grandma several times in the nursing home as a child I never knew her.  I was just 8 when she died.  My grandma says that I'm a lot like her mother, who shared my love for urban chickens, gardening, and entertaining.  Apparently she also loved dishes.

Oh.  I think Rudy wants something...

Now he's happy.