The grass is always greener

We make a trip each summer to a beautiful alpine lake in North Central Washington. It is a steep climb from the valley floor on a rock strewn, narrow road. Its not unusual for me to get out of our SUV and push large rocks out of our path. Hey, I'm not the driver. Nor, more importantly, am I afraid of heights. 

The eastern side of the lake and adjoining land are owned by the state. The southern portion is owned by the federal government. The rest is a cattle ranch.  As we drop down into the lake basin there are cattle wandering through the trees munching on dry grass. They're often standing IN the road which makes for slow going since we don't happen to have a grill guard affixed to our front bumper. As we near the lake there are several cattle guards to keep the quadrupeds from invading the rather primitive camp sites.

I woke early on our last day to mooing. No surprise except they sounded like they were under my pillow. So I poked my head out of our tent and guess what? They WERE milling about right outside our tent. Some wandered down to the lake to enjoy nice fresh, tall, green grass.



 Phil, I thought you said all the campers were gone!

As you can imagine I quickly rousted my husband and granddaughter. As we exited the tent the cows looked startled. I could just imagine them saying, "Phil, I thought you said all the campers were gone." As we stretched and marveled at the sight of these giants, they slowly ambled their way back to cow town. And how did they get back across the cattle guard you ask? They jumped. No, really....we watched as one-by-one they jumped across the cattle guard.






 

A lesson for us paper crafter

I am an unabashed paper addict. Don’t get me wrong, I use my stash to make cards, scrapbook pages, collages, mini books and anything that calls my name. One of the supplies in many paper crafters arsenals is glue dots. They are small round disks of adhesive.
 I came downstairs from my studio today to discover our dog Tucker (who just made the move from puppyhood to adult dog status) chewing on something. I ran my hand around his mouth and removed a wad of cardboard. He must have trolled through my paper recycling bin; the paper crafter's equivalent to dumpster diving.  Afterward Tucker laid down and, after washing his slobber off my hands, I returned to my craft room.

 A short time later I came down for a glass of iced tea. Tucker sprinted towards me (he doesn't seem to know how to walk). I noticed that when his left hind foot lifted off the floor there was a peculiar sound. It sounded like there was a sticky substance on the hardwood floor. I walked the same route and all was quiet. On closer inspection I found a layer of glue dots affixed to the bottom of his left hind foot. Really Tucker? Glue dots?

We may not see eye to eye on this one!

Gardening is a funny thing. It can be quite subjective but at times there needs to be a clear objective. Take pruning for example. We have a huge hydrangea. I prune it back a bit each year but this spring it had gotten WAY too big. We're talking Guinness Book of World Records big. So I asked my husband to help me cut it back. Big mistake!

Apparently we had two entirely different visions of what we wanted the end result to be. I was thinking a nice medium sized shrub. He was thinking....actually I have no idea what he was thinking. Let's suffice it to say it was not a shared vision.

Let me say right here that I adore my husband but when I saw my poor hydrangea I was less than pleased. Fast forward a couple of months. The hydrangea is in full bloom and doesn't look so mangled, but it doesn't look any smaller either. Weird.