Ussies In The Grass

We had a fairly quiet week for a change!

We had some nice weather, warm and sunny, and we had rain, too. So much that the grass is growing way too fast! Petcretary says she can sit down and see it growing, BOL! She mowed it twice in the past 10 days.

And yes the grass is nice and soft too! Good for laying in, or rollin on...

Petcretary keeps on with weed removal, specifically the non native invasive ones, and the vines that want to climb up the trees. (Virginia creeper, invasive non-native bittersweet, bindweed, and even poison ivy, garlic mustard, pokeweed, bittercress, cleavers, and all the weeds that make 'stickons' that cling to the dog's furs...) She also removes a lot of tree seedlings, such as cherry (Not the yummy sweet ones, these make tiny rather bitter ones...), and cottonwood, which when mature make a huge mess very late spring, and they are easily blown over or lose limbs. So she lets the oak and sugar maples stay. Walnuts, well we already have plenty of those, so those come out too.  You are welcome to come by and dig any out that you want to grow for yourselves, BOL! Dandelions are allowed to stay, as are many others...

She found these gems back there in a meadow like area of our woodsy back third of the yard.

Purple violets

White violets

Solomon's Seal; soon tere will be little white flowers hanging from it, then in the late summer, there will be dark blue berries hanging there.

Jack in the pulpit; in the fall the 'pulpit' will be a large spike with red berries.

She wishes there were trilliums back there...but none ever have been seen...There used to be a little stand of large grape hyacinths, but when all the trees came down, in the storms of May 2025, we think they were destroyed. Maybe they might come back...We also have lots and lots of Canada Mayflower., the are just beginning to show up, eventually the ones that bloom will have a stalk of white flowers followed by red berries later in the early fall.

OK, here are our Ussies:

Dalton was being silly, trying to get Benji to romp

Hi, Petcretary...nothing going on here...BOL!

We forgot about this day...so here is an older image of the three of us...

We are hopping along with many other friends at The Cat On The Head who are the weekly hosts of this fun and popular blog hop.

Car Time Selfies

 Well, this week went by far too quickly! We did manage to get petcretary to let us visit *some* of you, hopefully we'll get to the ones of you we missed in the coming days, but who knows.

On Thursday when petcretary was at her work, (She is working all the Thursdays this month...), after 9 pm, in the dark, suddenly there were all kinds of flashing lights in our parking lot, on the driveway, and at the store across the street. Police cars, ambulance, fire engines, and one car on fire, straddled half on and half off the lawn by the driveway. It had jumped the curb, and rammed into an large evergreen, pulled it out of the ground and stopped just beyond the curb, before the left overs began to ignite from all the spilled fuel. The driver got out, and ran into the store across the street, (which is a very busy road, even at night), and tried to hide in a bathroom...yes he was intoxicated...and witnessed by one of our employees, who was just coming back from her break. Of course everyone who was working was worried about their vehicles in the parking lot, and petcretary's car was not that far from the wreckage and fire...thankfully the fire dept had it out before any more damage could be done. You could smell the fuel inside our building, and 2 hours later when *she* left, the stench was still there even though everything except the poor tree was cleaned up.

Some of the residents still up saw it all too...such things are very exciting in our normally rather boring place, LOL!

On Tuesday night, here was more violent weather nearby as a tornado (F1) thundered along about a mile or so north of where we live. When it started in the next county over, it did quite a bit of damage to trees, cars and structures, but no injuries or worse, thankfully. It had been unseasonably warm that day, so along with humidity that creates the unstable conditions for such things. We had more heavy thunderstorms the next 4 days as well. Sheesh! *She* did manage to get the yard mowed Friday afternoon, and after she got inside, yup, there were more thunderstorms! Some areas are having terrible flooding, but we are up on a hill, so that doesn't affect us, though if the downspouts are not replaced after moving them for mowing, we do get water in our cellar, which is a so called Michigan cellar, made with rocks cemented together. The grass (and weeds) are growing so fast, that one could sit down and see it growing, LOL!

For reasons we cannot figure out, our weeping cherry tree is NOT flowering this spring, though it is making leaves. Perhaps the late frosts we had after a warm up destroyed all the buds. Our redbud trees are slow too, but we can see the beginnings of their nice magenta flowers.

We have a few pretty tulips, and one regular daffodil. (Thanks to all who gave advice about last week's strange looking daffs., it is an ancient variety...called “Van Sion" or perhaps "Derwydd" . )

We went on a errand in the car, so here are our selfies from that:

Hurry up and get in the driver's seat so we can get going already!

If I look a wee bit bedraggled, it was raining...

The rain has to be very hard to make me look wet...not like Benji, BOL!

We love the Sunday Selfies, and we are thankful that the Kitties Blue at The Cat On My Head are the wonderful hosts each week!

Begging Selfies

 Nothing too exciting here this past week, other than petcretary was doing a lot of not doggy things...She's not let us visit too many of our friends either...she says the days would need to be 48 hours long to visit everyone! So we didn't forget you, we are just way behind keeping up. 

One of the things she did was to put up a 'mobile' mailbox until we can get the permanent one installed. It was called 'mailbox to go', BOL! Yup, it looks 'jenky', but the mail peeps are using it. Sheesh, we have not had a mailbox for home delivery for almost a year...ever since the original one was bashed down.

Pawppy is/was pulling his hair out, figuratively speaking, doing the taxes, he said the tax program he has used for many years used to fairly easy, but the interface has been changed and he had to spend a ton of time to figure it all out. But he thinks he'll beat the deadline...phew!

Petcretary got new glasses, and she is glad, because the old ones were causing pressure sores on her nose or behind her ears, no matter what adjustments were made, and the new ones are a lot lighter too. They don't slide down nearly as much. And NO more pressure issues!

And she continues to yank out all kinds of weeds! She says every time she leaves an area for a day or two, there are a million more to deal with...at least she says it feels like that! If she would use weed killer the job would be a once and done, but she refuses to use chemicals, because of us, and for the sake of the other wildlife back there; not to mention that she would possibly be harming some of the native plants.

We have had lovely weather, a bit cool, but it is warming up. Soon we may see the blossoms on our cherry tree and the redbuds.

We have a very strange variety of daffodil blooming...they never fully open, they seem to be a double bloom and they are not the bright yellow of 'normal' ones, they have a greenish tinge to them.

We never get to see a 'cup and saucer' on these daffs.

Anyways, we were feeling a wee bit left out the other day, so we went to 'her' lap and were begging for pets and attention...like we never get any, BOL!!

Petcretary, I am so starved for attention...

Oh, dear, now you can all see the evidence of my digging hobby...

We are hopping in the Sunday Selfies Blog hop! Our hosts are the Kitties Blue at The Cat On My Head. Thanks ya'll!

Happy Easter, 2026!

 Yes, it is Easter Sunday, a day of great rejoicing! 

Also a day of fun times...

So we went to see the Easter Bunny, though what a big rabbit delivering baskets full of eggs has to do with Easter, who knows, BOL!

Even petcretary sat on his lap, teehee!!

We put on our Easter bonnets...um hats!

And of course we had to pretend we were bunnies too...at least we didn't have to put the bunny costumes back on as in the pictures with the BIG bunny!

We hope everyone has a Happy Easter!

We are hopping, just like the Easter Bunny, to the Sunday Selfie Blog hop at The Cat On My Head who are the hosts of this weekly fun hop. Thanks Kitties Blue!

In The Car Palm Sunday Selfies

 Well, the yoyo weather continues around here. We have had nice warm days in the mid to upper sixties, we've had plenty of rain, and we've had cold days too. Friday night we had snow! But most of it was gone by midday on Saturday...

Petcretary continues her battle with the weeds...she's focusing on one kind and when that gets under control she'll do battle with another kind. Over the years she has gotten good control of all the invasive garlic mustard that was taking over the yard at one time. It is edible, but who needs an acre of that! Besides it takes away light, moisture and crowds out other native plants. she knows what the seedlings look like, it's best to get them out of there while they are very small.

Petcretary's friend continues to have bad reactions to the chemo, and has been in the hospital twice. sometimes the chemo seems to be worse than the problem it's used for, sigh... She sure hopes that soon this ordeal will be over so that her friend can recover and be the grandma and great grandma she wants to be.

Petcretary broke a tooth...but thankfully it didn't need a crown, and it seems to be fine now after the dentist fixed it all up. She spent 2 hours there, wow!

Us pups were showing tooth issues too, esp Dalton, so for the last several weeks we have been using some specialized sprinkles over our food, (Kelp and brown seaweed), and getting a gel put on/rubbed into our teeth. By now it is looking a lot better, we are trying to avoid a dental from the vet...esp for Dalton as he ages. 

Yesterday, we got into the car, after getting fancied up a bit, to see what kind of Easter activities were at the local pet shops. We met the Easter Bunny! (Pictures saved for Easter...) When we got back in the car, petcretary took some more pictures...so they will be our Palm Sunday Selfies! Sorry we don't have any images with palm branches...well unless she uses some AI...nah...

Apparently one of the pet shops is having an Easter egg hunt for pets next Saturday! We hope we can go to that!

We have joined up with all the other Sunday Selfies at The Cat On My Head. Thanks for hosting, Kitties Blue!

Abandonment Means Flashbacks

 That's right folks, Petcretary abandoned us on Friday, and didn't get back until late on Saturday. Phooey.

She said she met up with dozens of other ladies, old and young, to hear a speaker, at a women's conference sponsored by the Church Federation she belongs to. She also met some ladies there, that she knew, so for her it was a good day and a half, refreshing and revitalizing, too. It's always good to meet up with like minded people...Since she's not  on a schedule for her work anymore, it  is a lot easier than trying to get vacation time off on a weekend. Now she just signs up and goes! (It's an annual event for the last 29 years!)

We were glad to see her on her routine, and since she came outside with us, we forgave her for the abandonment...

Anyways...we pups and also our pawrents are happy now that it is officially spring, Hooray! And the past several days have been very springlike, at least here they were, nio coat needed...and the early spring bulbs are showing good spurts of growth. Also the weeds are burgeoning...sigh...

So we will show you two older selfies from last early fall, not sure if they are repeats or not, but who cares, BOL!!

Caught with my ears up...I was not looking at petcretary...

I can't wait until our grass is nicely green and soft again, like here in this pic from Sept 2025! (And whoa, I am smiling, so often I have a serious look about me...I am anything but!)

We're joining up with the Sunday Selfies Blog Hop, hosted as always by the Kitties Blue at The Cat On My Head. And we thank all of you for hosting each and every week!

Happy St Patrick's Day!

I did some AI editing of an earlier ussie...this first one is OK, except for a few details...the next two I didn't like as much, but they'll have to do since no new St Patrick's photo shoot happened this year, BOL!

We hope everyone enjoys this fun day! Just don't turn green!!

Happy Tuesday!