Indiscriminate Eating

The male members of my household should really display better judgement about what is and is not food, in my opinion.

Howard:

has been known to eat noodles with ketchup and cottage cheese. Julius:

will eat any random trash he finds, and is particularly fond of licking the bags that toilet paper comes in. The worst offender of all is Oliver:

Having nearly starved to death at one point in life, Oliver is willing to try to eat basically anything. Pens, electronics, thermometers, whatever. Yesterday he knocked over a sack of garden fertilizer while I was at work. When he woke up this morning acting very lethargic, I was very concerned that he had eaten some of the fertilizer. We called the vet, who suggested feeding him lots of liquids, but who didn’t seem very concerned. He was definitely under the weather most of the day, but he is back to his usual exuberant self now, and I am very relieved.

 

My First Flower Bed

I’m not very good at making things look pretty, but this weekend I tried.  We used to have a disgusting rotting woodpile next to our backporch.  It had rusty nails and trash in it, and the cats and dogs had to walk over it to get to the yard, so something had to be done.  I hauled the wood off and attempted to make a flower bed out of the remaining space:

So far, it only looks marginally better than the wood/trash pile, but I’m going to work on it.  The dog has already smooshed two of the flowers, so it might be a lost cause.  This can be my test flower bed, so one day when I have a house of my own, I can make one that does not look quite so pathetic.  One problem is that I can’t move the decaying railroad ties behind it, because then the gravel that is supporting the porch would flow out.  This doesn’t seem like the best porch design, but the people who lived in the house before us did all sorts of wierd crap like that.

 

A Better Saturday

Today was a lot better than last Saturday. Look at the awesome garden Howard built for me:

The fence is 8 feet high. Last year, the 6 foot fence was breached by deer, so we are hoping this will keep them out this year. The door was also not very secure last year, so this is a new door. Howard and I built it together and it’s awesome. Last week I planted broccoli, parsley and lettuce. Today, I added tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, rosemary, thyme, basil, arugula, cress, soup beans and green beans.

Then we were stereotypical DINKs and bought a backpack for our dog. When I go for a run with Oliver, I am constantly annoyed that nearly all women’s workout pants come without pockets. Going for a run with Oliver requires dog treats and plastic bags at a minimum, and it is also useful to have water, keys and tissue. Yesterday after I came back from a two mile run to the dog park with Oliver and complained that he was *still* full of energy, Howard had the brilliant idea that we should have Oliver carry this stuff for us, solving both the problem of me not having any pockets and the problem of Oliver having too much energy. So we bought a doggie backpack at Petsmart today, and then took him for another run to the dog park. There was hardly anything in the backpack — just some treats and plastic bags, but it seemed to make a difference. He is plumb tuckered out, and so am I. I don’t have a picture of him looking ridiculous in his backpack yet, but here is some taken while he was “helping” with the garden: