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| Mr. Gorgeous' summer haircut. |
I recently wrapped up another gig spent looking after Mr. Gorgeous, my handsome collie friend. It's taken me some time to get around to writing about it because I badly injured my foot on the very first day I was with him and the stress and the fatigue and the pain associated with the injury and having to get around on crutches has overwhelmed my ability to string words together. I'd also initially hoped to be able to write an update on the foot, but a final diagnosis has been long in coming and now I have something else interesting to write about, so I wanted to at least post about events in chronological order.
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| Mr. Gorgeous in his lifejacket. |
The day I started this most recent gig was warm and sunny and that is why I decided to go swimming in the lake with Mr. Gorgeous. That's how I ended up injuring my foot, but it was quite pleasant to be frolicking in the waves, though Mr. Gorgeous was rather too daunted by their wind-whipped height to go beyond where his feet could touch. I was even so bold as to jump off his dock and had the very satisfying pleasure of seeing a bald eagle fly low overhead while I paddled around and Mr. Gorgeous watched me from the shallows. The injury didn't make itself known until later that evening, so after I'd had my fill of the water, we sunned ourselves on the dock for a bit and then hiked back up the hill. I can't speak for Mr. Gorgeous, but I had a very nice time, at least until I stopped being able to bear weight on my foot!
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| Basking. |
One of the major perks of looking after Mr. Gorgeous is that he lives in a very beautiful area. There are lots of opportunities to take photographs on his property and then the beautifully landscaped yards we pass on our walks provide many more. It's quite common for me to return from even a short dog-sitting gig with more than 800 photos. It was extremely disappointing that the only photographs I was able to capture were those I snapped earlier in the afternoon on my first day when I'd walked up to the garden. In the end, I sent my DSLR home early because it was too heavy for me to easily wield while on crutches and I couldn't leave the house to take photographs anyway.
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While trailing after me, Mr. Gorgeous discovered a bone he'd stashed
and gleefully trotted off to hide it in another part of the yard. |
Because I was essentially confined to the house (my mother and a kindly neighbor stepped in to help walk Mr. Gorgeous who, fortunately, is getting old and lazy and not needing nearly as much exercise as he used to), I spent a lot of time lying on the couch with my foot up reading my way through Mr. Gorgeous' extensive selection of magazines, including
Vainty Fair, The Atlantic, and
Wired, as well as less serious magazines like
Sunset, Seattle Met, and
Better Homes and Gardens. I also watched so many nature shows on TV that I got tired of seeing animals killing other animals. In a fit of desperation, I even watched a romantic comedy one afternoon while I was feeling particularly low. (I resent how romantic comedies so blatantly manipulate you to root for a match that in reality would be a terrible idea.) The weather was warm and sunny every day, so I spent a lot of time watch boat traffic--I always liked seeing the line of little white sailboats straggling along like ducklings when a sailing class convened on the far side of the lake--and there were beautiful sunsets every evening. I had several visitors, including my own dog, who had a great time running around free in Mr. Gorgeous' enormous yard. And so the time passed.
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| A particularly lovely golden sunset. |
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| Dramatic clouds added to this sunset's beauty. |
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| My point-and-shoot was unable to fully capture the dazzling gold of the setting sun as it shone out beneath clouds that looked as though they were painted by an Impressionist. |
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| I was very sorry I didn't have my 100mm lens when this beauty of a ship appeared on the lake! |
So while this stay with Mr. Gorgeous was not much of a success in terms of photography or activity, the collie and I managed to have a nice time anyway. He spent most of his time snoozing in his dog bed, waking up for an occasional game of fetch-the-squirrel. We had a particularly good time one evening when he pulled me around the kitchen in the desk chair as I hung onto his squirrel! His long and narrow collie jaw is not designed for gripping, so it made him feel very powerful to be able to tug me about, though it was really the wheels on the chair that made the feat possible! I also couldn't get down and give him some serious scratching and massaging like I usually do, but I think he enjoyed having me around anyway.
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| A very fetching photo! |
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| Mr. Gorgeous enjoys getting his ears rubbed. |
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| He's ten now, so he spends a lot of his time in this fashion! |
This particular dog-sitting gig will go down in history as the time I ________ my foot (I am hoping very much that the blank will be filled in by the end of this week!), but that's a story that deserves a post all of its own. Stay tuned!
While my backyard is a great place to photograph birds, it is a terrible place to grow vegetables. Once upon a time, about 25 years ago, there was enough sunlight for a garden, but the trees got bigger and bigger and the patches of sun got smaller and smaller. For a while, my family had a CSA farm share, which led to a lot of bok choy and kohlrabi stir fries. (Yuck!) But for more than a half dozen years now, my family has had a plot in one community garden or another down in the valley near my house that has great soil and abundant sunshine. We typically grow four varieties of tomatoes (Sungold cherry tomatoes are a favorite), two or three kinds of beans, multiple varieties of lettuce, Swiss chard, kale, zucchini, some type of cucumber, fennel, radishes, beets, green onions, and garlic, as well as occasional crops of acorn squash (a revelation) and other winter squashes, potatoes (they've never been a great success), bell peppers (ditto), and eggplant (a lot of work because they need to be well-protected from cold). We've had an unusually warm and sunny summer, so our tomato plants have been prolific: we've harvested 18 pounds of various tomatoes over the last two weeks! My other homegrown favorite, aside from the Sungold cherry tomatoes, are the green beans. I'm an expert bean picker (though bean plants will make your arms itch!) and a pretty darn good bean eater, too. Truth be told, though, my involvement in making things grow is minimal. When I head out to the community garden, it's always with my camera, where I stalk the plots looking for beautiful produce and interesting insects while others do the actual gardening. Here are some of my favorite photos:
