• Tag Archives Rigel

  • The Girls After Their Operations

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                         Waning Green Corn Moon

    We move into the new moon tomorrow, the moon that will see us well into September, the harvest moon.

    Rigel and Vega do not feel good.  They have lain around ever since returning from the vet and their surgery.  When I came downstairs, they lay together, Vega’s head on Rigel’s chest.  Littermates hang together throughout life; Hilo and Kona still  sleep together and cuddle, 8 years after leaving mom behind.

    I guessed Vega’s weight to be  90 lbs and she weighed out at 86.5.  I guessed Rigel at 73 and she came back 74.5.

    Political agony has not ended with the demise of the Bush administration.  Now we begin to see why the left has not trusted the Democratic party for years.  Even with solid majorities in both houses division between fiscally liberal and fiscally conservative Democrats make passage of health care reform of any meaningful kind unlikely.


    📂This entry was posted in Dogs 📎and tagged

  • Free kittens. Spaded.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                    Waning Green Corn Moon

    Rigel and Vega have returned home, a bit foggy and uncertain.  Spayed now, they have to be on home rest for the next 10 days.  Somehow I don’t think we’ll make that.

    Kate and I saw a cute poster on the bulletin board posted in the airlock going out of the Festival Grocery.  Done in crayon it said, “Free kittens.  Spaded.”

    These lectures on the cycles of American political thought I’m listening to right now have prompted a considerable amount of noodling, most of  it focused right now on the central paradox of our democracy.  A solution borne of the Enlightenment, our government and in particular our Constitution and Bill of Rights makes a lot effort to protect the individual and that crucial virtue which ensures individualism, liberty.

    The paradox at the core of our nation is this:  government exists to co-ordinate and organize a community, yet its chief underlying value is individualism.  Thus, the purpose of government, focused on community, stands over against the individual it exists to preserve.  This paradox, unresolvable, lies at the fulcrum of so many of our political disagreements.  I’m not any further along with this right now, but its on my mind.


    📂This entry was posted in Dogs Politics 📎and tagged

  • My Dog Ate My Remote

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                 Waning Green Corn Moon

    OK.  In previous episodes of the Vega/Rigel saga our heroines have:  escaped multiple times, eaten the recently installed netaphim, chewed up various hoses and their inside beds and, most famously, eaten my wedding ring.  All that, but now they’ve done something serious:  revealed the insides of the dvd player remote.  Yike.  Can you imagine manually inputting every command to your dvd player?  I thought not.  Sigh.

    Kate’s back and she’s glad to be back.  It allowed a day to rest and today we’ve begun work on the meal for the Woollies.  I dug potatoes and pulled beets and carrots (three colors–white, purple and orange)  while Kate brined the two free-range chickens I bought yesterday at the grocery store.

    While filling the dogs pool (yes, they have one in addition to the water container.), I squatted down to hold the hose, the shortened bit Vega has left me.  Crack, snapple and pop.  Not rice krispies.  Nope.  It was my lower back.  Owee.

    Kate is a great resource on how to handle back pain so I have been her apprentice since then.  She also gave me some pain meds that helped, too.  I wanted to go out to the Marsh in Minnetonka to see the opening of Moon’s art show, but I can’t make it.  Moon is Scott Simpson’s 92 year old Cantonese mother-in-law.

    I do have to go to the grocery store for the stuff we decided we need for the meal.


    📂This entry was posted in Dogs Health Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged

  • Eureka!

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                 Waning Green Corn Moon

    Got some sleep.  Feel better this morning.  A busy day ahead.  Groceries, recycling, straw, more weeding.

    Kate comes back from Denver today.  I  had a bit of a snit yesterday when she wanted to stay an extra day.  My Woolly meeting is on Monday and she’s a big part of the get ready for it plan.  Also, her birthday is Tuesday–65!–and I have an evening ready for us.  I wanted her back her with me, but felt conflicted because she wanted to stay with Jon.  He had a bad ride home from the hospital.  A moot point as it turns out, since it would have cost around $500 to change the ticket with $150 airline fee, $30 Orbitz and $320 in additional ticket costs.  Not proud of myself over this, but I’m glad she’ll be home today.

    Vega or Rigel, remember them?, ate my pocket moleskine diary and a current novel I’m reading, Consider Philebas.  By eat I mean shred and coat with drool.  The diary’s pages are recoverable and Consider Philebas, though badly mauled and wet, contains the pages I’ve not yet read, which is good enough for me.  Just one more of the V&R stories.

    Over the last few days I have dutifully filled the large rubber water container we have outside.  And refilled it.  Those big dogs, I thought, drink a lot of water.  Then, shortly after I filled it yesterday morning, I put the hose away, turned around to see Vega curled up in the water container.  She was happy.  Archimedes could have had his eureka moment watching her.  90 pounds of puppy displaces a lot of water.

    The Denver Olsons have had a rough summer.  Hirschel their 6 year old German Shorthair developed cancer and died.  hirschJon’s surgery has created the kind of upset recovery from any surgery always does.  Next up is Gabe’s surgery to install a port for his prophylactic factor.  That comes on the 27th.  Not to mention that they started back teaching two weeks ago.   A lot for a young family to absorb.  Why I was conflicted.  (pic:  Hirschel)


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Dogs Family Health 📎and tagged

  • Toothless

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                         Waning Summer Moon

    Rigel knocked a permanent tooth out and chipped her jaw.  How did she accomplish this?  We don’t know.  Perhaps in vigorous play, the two 60+ pound puppies running full tilt and colliding?  Maybe she ran with a large bone in her mouth, tripped and the bone acted as a lever?  Whatever it was she requires an x-ray to check the damage to the jaw and extraction of the damaged tooth.  These two have been a handful.

    Got a bid for sealcoating our driveway.  Yikes!  Will have to call others.

    Put in some monarda and some Sweet Caroline, a sweet potato look-a-like.  Nap.  Lunch, then hit the road for Decorah.


    📂This entry was posted in General 📎and tagged

  • My life, now

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                  Waning Summer Moon

    Vega the wonder dog has:  shredded the netaphim irrigation,  chewed up a length of high quality hose, swallowed my wedding ring, peed on the bench cushion Kate made and, most recently, peed on our oriental carpet.  As a result we have:  put up a split rail fence, done loads of laundry and taken the oriental in to the rug laundry.

    On the upside, she’s irrepressible, enthusiastic and downright funny.  Her sister Rigel, a sweet girl and a lover, seems bland in comparison, but they have the same parents.

    This weekend I’m off to Decorah, Iowa for a conference at the Seed Saver’s Exchange farm.  There will be lots of information on organic farming/gardening, wagon rides, two speeches on heirloom vegetables, a presentation on Heritage Poultry and a barn dance.  There will be workshops on saving seeds, garlic, potatoes, hand-pollination and bud grafting.

    This turn toward permaculture, horticulture, gardening was a gradual process.  It sort of snuck up on me as I dabbled in perennials on Edgcumbe in St. Paul, grew some vegetables, then did a bit more after we moved to Andover.  Later, I took a horticultural degree by mail from London University in Guelph, Ontario.  At some further point I began to read about permaculture, picked up Bill Mollison’s book and began to make contacts locally.

    The real spur to push further on all this was a conference Kate and I attended in Iowa City three years ago now.  Run by Physician’s for Social Responsibility it convinced me that I needed to turn my activist attention toward environmental matters.

    It took a while to get going but I got myself on the Sierra Club’s political committee last year in the summer, then followed up with work on the Club’s legislative committee this last session writing a blog.  Last September we hired ecological gardens to do a permaculture design for the whole property and made a push to get the orchard planted that fall so it would have the benefit of a full growing season this year.

    This gives me work outside, in the political arena and, as a Docent, in aesthetic and intellectual realms.  A really good deal for me.  As always, thanks, Kate.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Garden permaculture Politics 📎and tagged

  • Eyes (and nose) on the Prize

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                      Waning Summer Moon

    I’ve now pressed into mush several deposits from both Rigel and Vega, hoping to retrieve my wedding ring.  No joy so far.  Kate says I should put on gloves, pick it up and feel carefully with my hands.  Hmmm.   I mean, the wedding ring is worth it, but the search methodology?  Yuck.

    Right now Topline fence guys are about half-way through installation of a fence around our orchard.  Vega the wonder dog has proved an expensive $200.  She also chewed up my best hose.  I had it attached to the sill cock to run the sprayer when I worked on the air conditioner.  I forgot to remove it after I finished.  Vega did not.  This morning one of Kate’s tennis shoes lost a heel. Even so, Vega has an irrepressible personality, a joyful exuberance that makes the worst she’s done forgivable.   A great trait.

    I have to get a picture of this animal in action. The one’s I have so far are not so hot.


    📂This entry was posted in Family 📎and tagged

  • Vega. Again. Bees and Permaculture.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                           Waning Summer Moon

    Vega the wonder dog continues to amaze us.  While I worked on the air conditioning earlier today, she picked up the small box I had to reserve the screws removed from the cowling.  I heard the screws clinking as she walked away.  When I got to the box, she had set it down and not a single screw had gone missing.  She continued to help me during the whole process.

    Also earlier Kona, a whippet who opens doors, opened the back door and let everybody inside.  When Kate came out of her shower, Vega had sprawled out on our bed.

    After I put the whippets to bed, Vega and Rigel come out in to the living room for a bit of human time.  Vega promptly hops up on the couch, rolls over on her back and relaxes her legs over the edge.  Then she goes to sleep.

    The hive stands pretty tall now with its two honey supers and the queen excluder.  hivebody500

    I’ve been very lucky to have Mark Nordeen as a mentor in the bee-keeping.  He’s gotten me through the rough spots for beginners:  equipment which he let me use, hiving the package of bees, how to examine frames and what to look for, when to put on the honey supers and when to use a queen excluder.   All of this stuff would be easy to stumble over in even the first few years and Mark has walked me through it.

    The bees have added another element to the permaculture work Kate and I have begun.  The bees live and work in our garden just as we do.  They have a stake in a healthy garden just as we do.  Working with bees feels very collaborative; we are two species working and living together, sharing our needs and our specialized skills.

    We have two apples coming along in our orchard as well as blueberries and currants.  I also found a huckleberry today, a plant I have never grown before.  The garden has begun its arc toward full productivity.

    Now we have an orchard filled with fruit trees and plant guilds to support the trees, bushes that bear berries, even a hazelnut.  The orchard complements our expanded vegetable garden.  The playhouse Jon put together for us will go with the finished firepit (someday) as a family outdoor recreation area.  This is all part of the permaculture idea, having various zones of the landscape for specific purposes and each zone located optimally for its needs.


    📂This entry was posted in Bees permaculture 📎and tagged

  • New Puppies Make Selves at Home

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                          Waxing Summer Moon

    So I spent a couple of hours this morning lining the base of the chain link fence with used wooden fence railing, then wiring those rails to the bottom of the chain link.  This is in an attempt to prove that I am human, Vega dog.  Me smarter.

    Tonight Vega looked around the living room, hopped in the Stickley arm chair, made herself small and occupied the same space usually taken by a whippet about a third of her size.  Quite a performance.  No wonder she can slither under the fence.  Later, Vega hopped up on the couch and plopped herself down, just like the whippets.  I used to have a firm no dogs on the furniture policy, but it went by the wayside long ago.  They like a good chair as much as I do and the couch, well, hey, that’s for all of us, right?

    Research today on the pre-Raphaelite show.  The more I learn the more I respect the work and thought of these guys as it pertained to the purpose of art and the craft of art-making.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Family 📎and tagged