Merry Grumpy Cat

It's become a tradition for Doug & I to terrorize our cats questing for fun Christmas cards.  

We both wish you the merriest of holidays and a new year filled with good health and great adventures!

The cats wish other, less cheerful things.  

For your viewing pleasure, past terrorizing...

fences, fishes, and bowls...

It's been a busy spring. After many many days last month of many many hours in the garden, things are really looking wonderful! Nearly all of the things on the "to do" list from my last post are finished. Shocking!

Last month, I found a fabulous handyman to take down the too-big cedar in the front yard and to finish fencing in the rest of the yard. Yay!

The landscaping around the pond is really starting to come together, and the fishes are growing like mad! Kayaked a bit, danced a bunch, spent two days reveling in the National Road Garage Sale with Valerie and Darren (yay! lots of fun stuff!). I also took a pottery class, and am finally getting work done on the kick wheel that Doug borrowed for me. Just got my first set of bowls back from their final firing. Shiny, pretty bowls!



The rest of the summer is starting to look even busier. Lots of visits with families and friends, and hopefully lots of kayaking, camping, and dancing. My yard is going to see a lot of activity next month as well! I've been asked to be on two garden tours, the Cool Ponds Water Feature Tour on July 10-11 and the INPAWS Native Plant Garden Tour on July 18. The Native Plant Tour is overlapping with my big yard party, which has a pirate theme this year. Some of the tour people may be shocked and entertained to see pirates playing croquet in the garden. :)

Crazy Pets

Early last spring, I was thrilled and surprised to find out that one of my $.30 goldfish had survived the winter in my little backyard pond. He was enormous, at least compared to his starting size! I bought a few more friends for him over the summer and fully planned on bringing them inside for the winter. With the craziness of our fall traveling last year, I never did get them indoors.

So, for the past few months, I've been anxiously waiting for signs of gold through the murk and leaves floating in the pond. I had pretty much given up on any signs of life until this Sunday, when Doug spotted the big guy! Thrilled, I tossed in some fish food and we found that four fish (out of five, I think) survived the winter. Yay! After I worked in the garden last night, I tried to take some pictures, but they are very twitchy little guys. These ones are pretty blurry, but the video clip below is better.

In the house, Agatha has become completely obsessed with getting the fishies in the new indoor fish tank. For years, I've been trying to get some cute pictures of her perched on top of my favorite gargolye (technically a grotesque, I know, but then most folks wouldn't know what I was talking about). Who knew that all I needed to do was add some fish into the household to get that picture!?!

Since this post seems to be all about pet pictures, here's one last of Agatha investigating my finished knitting project. The Amazing finally finished 14-foot DOCTOR WHO SCARF! After more than two years on this project, I finally gave it to my sister Deirdre, who has been longing for one of these since she was a teenager.