Oh, the irony!

I am so in love with my puppy. She is just the cutest, smartest, wiliest puppy ever and she may have ruined us for all future puppies.

Lady Bird is a digger. She loves to dig. When we met her I asked her foster mom if I should worry about her digging. Her foster mom told me that it was a bad habit she got from watching the other dogs and that alone she was fine, that she didn't dig. She answered as if I was worried about my grass. I'm not. I was just worried that the dog was an escape artist. She was attacked when she got out through a hole one of the dogs had dug.

Well, she digs. She digs all over the backyard. When she finds something she likes in the house she takes it out back and buries it, just like dogs on TV. In the disaster area that is the backyard, she is always digging up new treasures. So far, her favorite treasure is a shovel she dug up.

I came outside to find her digging with her front paws while holding the shovel in her mouth. It was so freakin' cute. It's like she wants to be a person but hasn't quite figured it out. Then, she buried the shovel, and oh I loved that!

Here is a picture of her running away so I don't get her shovel.

My life has changed so much

The house I moved into has a huge, huge Oak tree in the backyard. It is really wonderful, but because the former tenets were deadbeats there is about three years worth of leaves piled up all over the yard. And the major hurricane Ike hit in one of those years. So that is a serious amount of leaves, and sticks, and garbage. It reminds me of the joke: you know that you are a redneck if you have ever moved the lawn and found a car. There is random debris hidden amount the leaves, things like Styrofoam packing material, cardboard, soccer balls, basketballs, metal hangers, and my personal favorite, old garbage bags partially full of leaves. It is as if someone, a long, long time ago started to clean up but either gave up or forgot and ended up contributing to the mess.

Look at the photo of this tree. It is a very impressive tree. What is that metal thing blocking the view? That is a broken space heater left by the deadbeats.


I've been spending a lot of time getting big bags (like fifty pound bags) of coffee grounds from Sbucks and layering them with the leaves in a big pile in the corner of the yard as an attempt at composting. The guys at Starbucks know me and always want to tell me about what I should plant and when I should bring them some on the tomatoes that they think I should be growing. I dig through the piles of leaves and sort out the sticks and the garbage. My puppy, Lady Bird, hangs out and just digs, and my parents' dog, Luigi, just hangs out.

I was out today shopping and registering for Texas shaped cookie cutters when I smelled my hands: dirt and dog. It made me really happy. It is nice to be back to my hippie roots. Even with the unworldly heat, it is nice to be back in Houston where I have the luxuries of time and space to do things like composting and puppy training.
Q: How do you hide something from a hippie? A: Put it under the soap.