Beltane Early Growth Moon
A few current photos. Two for Mark, who wanted to see the fire pit.
Note: these last two show off the seamstress skills of Minnesota Grandma.
Category Archives: Dogs
Mars. We Are There.
Beltane Early Growth Moon
Got outside yesterday during the sunny hours and put a pollen patty on for the bees, laid 
down some weed preventer and left Kona outside. She stuck around the house, though, wondering when she could get back in, but not, I imagine, very unhappy with being left on her own.
Kate and I watched a Disney special on the Opportunity and Spirit rovers sent to Mars in 2004. This film was made in 2006, so I went to the NASA websites to check up on them. Spirit stopped phoning home in 2010 and NASA stopped revival efforts in 2011. Even so, that means Spirit went exploring for 6 years, 5 years and 9 months past its mission plan. Even more remarkable, Opportunity continues to motor along,
In fact, just yesterday it relayed data:
Mars Rover Opportunity Examines Clay Clues in Rock
Rock Target ‘Esperance’ Altered by Wet History (False Color)
The pale rock in the upper center of this image, about the size of a human forearm, includes a target called “Esperance,” which was inspected by NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.
PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s senior Mars rover, Opportunity, is driving to a new study area after a dramatic finish to 20 months on “Cape York” with examination of a rock intensely altered by water.
The fractured rock, called “Esperance,” provides evidence about a wet ancient environment possibly favorable for life. The mission’s principal investigator, Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., said, “Esperance was so important, we committed several weeks to getting this one measurement of it, even though we knew the clock was ticking.”
Opportunity on May 16th also broke the existing NASA record for distance traveled on 
either the moon or Mars by going over 22.2 statute miles, longer than Apollo 17’s Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt drove their Lunar Roving Vehicle.
(curiosity rover parachute flapping view from Mars Reconnaissance)
Curiosity, the most recent Mars rover, landed in 2012, and on May 9th proceeded to a second round of drilling at a site where “(In February) Curiosity took the first rock sample ever collected on Mars…called “John Klein.” The rover found evidence of an ancient environment favorable for microbial life.”
Also in orbit and currently at work is the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2005, arriving Mars, 2006.
Kona. Happy.
Spring Planting Moon
Kona. Wagging her tail. Wagging her tail. She hasn’t done that for months. Months. Maybe a couple of years. With her tumor removed she’s bouncy and playful. She even got up in my lap to sit for a bit, again something she hasn’t done in some time.
It’s this against the money for the Chicago trip. I chose this and I’m glad. To see her returned to a happy place, even for a few months. Worth it.
The tumor was cancerous and it was an incomplete excision which means the tumor will grow back and the cancer is not gone, but it’s a slow grower and not focused on any organs, so she could well die of something else.
We have, over the last few years, chosen not to treat dogs with cancer, cancer that has metastasized. Too expensive for too little result, especially in the giant breeds. But Kona could live, at 12, to 15, so there was a future for her. That of course is for tomorrow.
For today? That tail. And her smile.
Up a Tree
Spring Planting Moon
A neighbor stopped by this morning to report that our dogs, Vega and Rigel, had treed a raccoon. Uh oh. They’re half coyote hound, which is basically a coon hound used to hunt coyotes. A doggie genome activated by its primary motivation. Watch out.
So, Kate and I wandered out, me still my house slippers, into the yard, past the orchard, around the truck gate to the corner of our land where the electrical junction box sits. Kate got there first and found, not a raccoon, but a rotund gray tabby up a skinny ash maybe 15 feet, clinging to two forked branches–the first on the trunk–wide-eyed. The pose and the expression were close enough that I expected it to wink in and out of existence.
Talk about two happy dogs. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Barking up a tree at last. Yes, up a tree at last. We’ve got one. Something. Up the tree. Come see. Come see.
Now I don’t have a lot of sympathy for cats that enter our yard. We’ve always had dogs, usually several, and you have to cross either a six-foot or a four-foot chain link fence to enter. So, you come inside, you deal with the dogs. Stay outside. No problem.
This cat, obviously a house cat, will live. If it has the sense to get down from the tree and leave. Some don’t. I can’t say I feel good about that but I don’t feel exactly bad either. Paying attention to your own survival is rule number one in the animal world, and if it isn’t always number one, it’s second to whatever trumps it at the moment.
Which, of course, is not to say that animals always know the threats to their own survival. Our dogs, for example, escaped from their safe hectare, would wander blindly onto a highway, or, as has happened, will slip down deep ditches filled with water and be unable to get out.
I hope that Chesire cat, having slipped through its own looking glass, has found its way home by now.
Grounded. At last.
Spring Planting Moon
Yes! Planted under the planting moon even if I couldn’t get the bloodroot up for the 
bloodroot moon.
We have Wally and Big Daddy onions in, 100 sets each. Three rows of beets: Bull’s Blood, Early Blood and Golden. Pickling cucumbers and Dwarf Gray Sugar Snap Peas. Of course there was bed prep, too.
With Kate and I wandering around holding this limb and that a bit tenderly I kept getting the image of a dinner bell, fried chicken and mashed potatoes, perhaps someone playing a little Stephen Foster on the grand piano.
Of all the gardening chores, planting is the most magical to me. That tiny seed. A beet, a cucumber, a pea. Those small plants, a fat onion, or a thick leek. Couldn’t plant the leeks today because the ground is still frozen at about 3 inches down. How about that? April 27th.
Had to cancel the Chicago trip due to Kona’s vet bills. Keeping dogs is a choice and keeping 4 is the same choice 4 times over in terms of food and care. Choices I have made and make cheerfully.
Jazz Noir
Spring Planting Moon
“Creativity is the social act of the solitary person.” William Butler Yeats
Reading the book about introverts, Quiet, will help you see why. Even if you’re not an introvert, reading this book is a good introduction to the world of those of us who prefer alone time, find crowds and parties taxing, would like time to mull over decisions.
Part of what was so stressful for me with the Kona situation and the back pain was that I had to go to the vet with her three days in a row, meaning I increased my regular interaction with outsiders by multiples. That tires me out. Even on a good day.
Right now Kate’s upstairs doing the cross-word and watching the dogs, the back pain is much better this morning, probably the result of the prednisone and I’m down here in the study getting ready to get back to work.
We have a jazz weekend planned with Craig Taborn at the Walker tonight and Jazz Noir at the Artist’s Quarter on Sunday night. Taborn is a Golden Valley kid who has made a big name for himself as a jazz pianist and an ensemble player flavored by Miles Davis in his Bitches Brew phase. Jazz Noir is a radio play being broadcast live at the 8 pm hour over KBEM.
“For those who long for “the grand old days” of radio, Jazz88 has answered the call. Jazz Noir is a new original radio series complete with live radio actors and jazz ensemble in front of a studio audience, just like in the days of radio’s infancy.
(Avon–Latisha White)
Jazz88’s first episode is an original drama, Charles & Avon, that will be performed, recorded and broadcast in front of a live audience from the Artists’ Quarter in downtown Saint Paul on Sunday, April 28, with shows at 5 and 8 p.m. The 8 p.m. performance will be broadcast live on 88.5 FM.”
In Other Medical News
Spring Planting Moon
Knobby is now knobless. She ate well last night and this morning. went outside on the leash, front and back, has a spark in her eye. All good to see, especially the day after a significant procedure.
In other medical news I feel small signs of improvement in the back. Not enough to hop back on the treadmill, but some. My in house doc prescribed prednisone for four days, a course I started yesterday. And, of course, the tincture of time.
I feel less woozy today, less out of it. That feels really good. Along with the sun, Kona’s improvement and my back’s, that’s enough to push the needle back into the good headed toward joyful segment of the dial.
A fun trip into the ophthalmologist, then a quiet afternoon and evening. Sounds perfect to me.
She’s Homeward Bound
Spring Planting Moon
Kate’s in Lincoln, Nebraska. She’ll see the international quilt museum tomorrow, then head east into Iowa. That’ll put her home on Thursday. I’ll be really glad to have her back.
Our plan about vehicles works well. We have one at home, the Rav4 and when we need a car for a long trip, we rent one. Usually now from Enterprise. That way we put the mileage on the rentals and the Rav4 stays home.
Feels like I’ve floated through the last three days, seeing the vet with Kona three different times, John Desteian, picking up and hiving the bees, taking meds that make me feel weird. I’ve set aside my exercising–too much pain–and my writing and my Latin–too hard to concentrate.
That’s life at times, one foot in front of the other, getting through the day and on to the next one. I don’t feel bad about it. At all. Just what’s required right now.
Tomorrow I see the eye doc. Get my glaucoma surveilled and check those flashes of light I’ve begun to have in the upper left quadrant of my left eye.
Kona. No longer lopsided.
Spring Planting Moon
The tumor removal went well; it came off easily. Kona was sitting up after the procedure, 
probably wondering if she’d have to go back to the vet tomorrow. In 20 minutes I’ll find out when she can come home. It will be today.
(Kona, Vega and Gertie wanting to be on the other side of the fence.)
I took a long nap aided by Mr. Tramadol and Ms. Oxycodone. Though both of them have worn off by now my lower back and right hip feel better, not well, but better, which is a victory.
Enough that I went out and gingerly moved the remaining frames of honey from the hive boxes where I’ll put the package later this afternoon. Just lifting two hive boxes with four frames of honey each did challenge the back though I tried to make my form a perfect 10. Finding these ordinary, common chores painful does not make me happy.
Getting the bees hived is important and the weather is nice, sunny and no precip. Have to wait until later this evening so the temps will be cooler and night will be coming, both induce the bees to remain at home for the first day.
Woozy
Spring (so they say) Planting Moon
Kona’s at the vets getting her tumor removed. Gertie’s down here in the study, lying down close to the desk. Rigel has begun to worry about her mama, looking through the gate in the morning toward the bedroom. Where could she be?
Kona will come home today, probably late in the afternoon. She’s been to the vet three days in a row and is not a particularly happy dog at this time.
The meds I’ve been taking for this damned back make me a bit woozy, between that and the pain, my capacity to get things done has diminished quite a bit. I’ll be glad when the back decides to calm down and I can resume exercising. It’s also effecting my sleep. Considerably off.
We did not get 8 inches of snow here. More like 2 or 3. Now the forecast has 76 for Sunday. 76. Maybe some 80’s next week. No spring this year. Winter into summer.