Erm, have we skipped a few months?

Saturday dawned sunny, warm, and glorious, and feeling like May.  Alas, my husband, who is my usual woods walking companion, had to work.  However, my dear friend M also felt the itch to wander outdoors in all the sunshine with cameras.  He'd never been to Clark Reservation before, so I decided to take him there.

Clark Reservation was the perfect place to go.  I was afraid that some other parks (like Green Lakes) would be far, far too popular in that amazing weather, but Clark Reservation never seems overcrowded.  We had most of the trails to ourselves.

It was a glorious day for both the walk and the photography.  Poor M arrived there, took out his camera, and discovered he didn't have his SD card for it.  Oops.  Bless him, he still had infinite patience with my photography efforts, stopping and waiting for me without complaint.

I loved some of the shots that look like abstract art.

We found some very surprising early early flowers.  Bloodroot Hepatica (thanks Woodswalker!) (which according to this blog I believe the earliest I've ever seen is April 3):

some Trout Lilies just getting started but not in bloom,

and Myrtle,

which was in blossom on a prior visit to Clark Reservation on May 4, 2010.  I hope these poor brave flowers aren't shocked by a snowfall this year, but according to the forecasts I think they will shortly be joined by a lot of other early spring flowers, all at once.

Even the turtles had decided to emerge from their mud to sun themselves.

M gets the credit for spotting this shot of moss:

And M also gets the credit for being brave enough to wade into the stream to get this shot:

Here he is, just about to wade in:

All in all, it was a magnificent way to spend a Saturday afternoon.  The sunshine was positively good for my soul, and the company excellent.  I confess I am concerned about the implications of this weather relative to climate change.  But there's another part of me that is just basking in the glory of 70+ degree days and worrying about sunburn... in March.  I remember the blizzard of '93 happened in March.  What a contrast!

Enjoy the rest of my shots from the day.

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A lovely May day.

Wait, it's not May?  Only March?  This weather is beyond delicious!  I left work a little early this afternoon because the bright sunshine and 60+ degree weather was too enticing for me to focus.  My office was a ghost town with everyone having disappeared to watch the SU basketball game anyway, so I quietly faded toward the elevators and drifted to my car.

It was so lovely and warm that I decided to conduct my first proper spring inventory of the yard, to see what is coming up, what needs repair, and start planning which plants need what tending.  Here are some of my finds, both living and just picturesque.

The dogs thought this whole outside on the line with Mom thing was fantastic.  They warmed their bones in the sunshine and on the warm concrete.

I spent some time trying to photograph them, and noted that Phoebe has a lot of different looks.  Most of the time I think she looks like a complete mutt, with a bit of the Shar Pei evident.  Shar Pei wrinkles:

She's fairly delicately built, being about 50 pounds of sinew on a lean frame. Sometimes she reminds me of a bat, and I often think she looks like Zuul.  I tend to think of her as having a narrow head.  But in certain lights she looks very much like a stocky "Pit Bull" (one of the several varieties of them, anyway), which she isn't - not even a little bit.  But I suppose the Rottweiler and Bulldog are what are showing when she looks like this.

For all my efforts at photographing dogs, this was how I inevitably wound up.

But what better way to spend the early evening than with dogs and camera?  I didn't really mind the trip hazards.  Incidentally, the cats were also enjoying the weather.

Believe it or not, that's Tucker's happy expression, crotchety old man that he is.

Finally, I know it's officially spring because the boxelder bugs are out, partying and living it up on our front porch.

Frankly, I like boxelder bugs.  They seem like friendly critters to me and we share our house with them year round, inside and out. Friends tend to think we're nuts that we just let them wander about the house.  We tend to get strange looks and "Um, aren't you going to kill that bug?" But I haven't the heart.  There's no reason they can't share my house.  After all, it's already crowded with two humans and seven pets.  What are a few little bugs going to hurt?

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SqueekasqueekasqueekasquEEEkasqueeeeeka!

With a hyperactive one-year old dog, it's always a debate as to whether any particular toy is a good idea.  Why?  Because, of course, the only toys Phoebe likes are seriously annoying.  This snake has been a favorite for a few months now, and even without any human interaction she will keep up the frantic squeaking for hours... and hours... and hours...

Welcome to my world.  

But while she's squeaking, she's not harassing me, chasing the cats, or eating my shoes.  Earplugs, anyone?

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Sickly Expensive January

It's been a fabulous last two weeks of January in my household.  And expensive.

The month's vet bills started with Rocky and Wednesday.

Wednesday we suspect is our carpet pee-er.  We brought her in to see if she might have a urinary tract infection.  But of course, the day we brought her in she had not a drop of urine in her bladder, so we have to bring her back again.  That was a wasted visit.

As for Rocky, he's had some fits of coughing and shortness of breath in the past few months, so we hauled his furry fat hind quarters into the vet.  X-rays followed, as did blood tests, and he got diagnosed with feline asthma.  Did you know cats could have asthma?  Neither did I.

The vet prescribed some steroids.  Ever given pills to a cat before?  Always a good time.

Then Simon got sick.  Really, really sick.  The poor little guy came down with severe diarrhea, which turned into bloody diarrhea, which turned into pure blood.  Within a few hours he went from his usual boisterous obnoxious self, to a shaky, lethargic, pathetic figure.  A few hours after my husband came home from the vet with Rocky and Wednesday, he wound up whisking Simon off to the emergency vet clinic.  Why do these things always happen after normal vet hours?

In the course of two days, Simon had x-rays, and blood work, and visits to the emergency vet (which charges more than $100 just for walking in the door) and our regular vet.  We spent a lot of anxious hours worrying about him, trying to make him more comfortable, cleaning up the mess, not sleeping, and trying to tempt Simon to eat a few bites of a bland diet.

We never did figure out for sure what Simon had but our vet thinks it was a virus, and because he's a puppy mill dog with rotten genes it just hit him far harder than it should have.  I think her conclusion is a valid one, because just as Simon turned the corner and started picking up his head and sniffing at his food bowl again, Phoebe came down with a mild case of whatever Simon had.  She never slowed down for a second though... she never does.  She continued to ricochet off the walls and stairs and furniture, and just had the runs for a day.

Thinking we'd finally gotten past the worst of it, I then came down with a horrid wretched cold that laid me up for a couple of days.  I've seldom had a worse one.

Then just as I started to improve, Rocky came down with an upper respiratory infection.  He suddenly got sneezier and snottier than I was.  I guess some upper respiratory ailments in cats are actually viruses that can stay in their systems for life.  I kind of wonder if the steroids suppressed his immune system like they do in humans.  But the advice we got was to "isolate him from the rest of the cats."  Ok, not a problem, we figured we could put him back in his attic.  After all, he was once the Attic Ghoul, and loved it up there.

Not so much now.

After a night of incessant yowling, and a busy day of trying to destroy my woodwork, paint and carpeting, I give up.  The rest of the healthy beasts are going to have to take their chances with Sneezy.  He's gotten a fair bit better already.  I'm going to hope he's no longer contagious.

The month's vet bills have surpassed the $1,000 mark, Wednesday still has to go back for urinalysis, and several pets are still due for vaccines.  And that's not taking into account the cost of having to recarpet the attic stairs.

*sigh*

It's a darn good thing they're cute.  DARN good, I tell you.

Speaking of cute, this is Pippin's way of letting us know he wants to come in.  He sits on the railing outside and peers in at us.  It makes me jump - I never expect to see a feline head up that high.  Here's hoping his extreme cuteness helps make up for some of the other less joyful aspects of pet ownership.

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