Wouldn't you love to name this little sweetie?!?

L. drew this picture of pup, before she got to see her, based on a verbal description of her. She decided that pup would be called Pepper. I don't exactly know why, though. For now, she's pup-pup. She's absolutely in love with Luciana. The rest of us barely rate a glance, because she's much to busy gazing at and following L. The kids have been having a blast with her!

Tonight, before dinner, we went to the library. I still have plenty from our last trip, but L is out of books again. L & H checked out a HUGE stack of books again, and she will probably be finished with them all in about a week!

I was horrified to see a big pro-circus display in the library, complete with big stuffed tigers and such to attract the attention of children. I was so pissed, I texted Allegrea right away to get her pissed off with me--it's much more fun to be angry with a friend than alone. We will have to come up with an action plan to address that for sure. We're both too tired to come up with anything worthwhile tonight, though.

H is spending the night, because it's the first weeknight of the summer that L hasn't had to get up early for either summer school or college for kids. Somehow the children felt that this was a significant night that should be celebrated with a sleepover.

The kids played outside from dinner until bedtime. It's a beautiful night! They spend so much time in that little 'tree fort'. They have very strange things up there 'decorating it' and they do strange things up there. Lately they've been really into bringing 'supplies' up and down with the bucket and a rope. It's pretty cute! The pup, who cannot bear to be separate from L, spent the whole time sitting up in the tree house in a lawn chair. She was as happy as she could be up there!

L is really excited about that little birdhouse (top right of picture). M put it up for her a couple of weeks ago, and there is already a nest and a family in there. We haven't yet determined what type of bird it is, but we'll keep watching.

Two on Tuesday

We got a very unexpected foster pup last night. We were not prepared, and the timing couldn't be worse, but she's here. She's absolutely wonderful! I will have pictures soon, and she will be ready to go to a loving forever home next week. I have to say that I usually do not particularly like small dogs. They seem to frequently be ill-mannered, obnoxious, and bark-y. They're very cute, and I love them, but I don't tend to enjoy spending time with them. This little girl, though tiny, has the calm, sweet disposition of a big dog, and she hardly barks at all! Just be prepared for the pics later this week, because her cuteness will knock your socks off!

Okay, so I was thinking that while I typed the last paragraph a "Two" would come to me, because it is Tuesday, and I haven't yet had time to come up with an idea. After staring blankly at the wall for three minutes or so, I'm going to have to give up and go with pictures--my lazy way out. :)

My two favorite shots from our Rotary Gardens visit Sunday:

1. Gallardia 'Sundance BiColor'

2. One of many clusters of blooms covering a catalpa tree. I think they look very orchid-ish. I know...it's not a word, but there isn't a real word that gets the point across so easily.

She's 19!!

We've had an action-packed, busy weekend, and I didn't get any time at all to work in the garden! Saturday was the home garden tour, and as always, I have to work with M. throughout the day. We spent most of the datenight being pissed at each other about a situation earlier in the day. I'm right. He's wrong. Though, I'm sure you already figured that out. It was not one of our better date nights.

Today we had L's Bharatanatyam class, and got home just in time for the visit from M's parents and brother, to join us for Dej's birthday celebration. We spent some time walking through Rotary Gardens this afternoon and then hung out at our house until it was time to go out for dinner.

Dej picked El Jardin for her birthday dinner, so we all (M's parents, my parents, M's brother and his partner, Hunter, and our family) went. We sang happy birthday to her but didn't say anything to the servers about it. The cute young male servers, who had been checking Dej out through most of the meal, then got together and sang to her again and brought her out a free birthday dessert. It was so cute, and she was so embarassed!

Since my weekend was so non-productive, I still have lots to get done. Plus, Dej & Joe are coming back here in a little bit to visit with us some more, so I need to wrap up this short, boring blog entry.

Daylilies and a deluge

I got about 45 minutes of weeding time in before the rain started. It went from 0 to 100 in about 15 seconds. There were a couple of cold drops of rain. I grabbed my tools and bucket and just that quickly it was a deluge. I was absolutely drenched with cold rain. I really hoped to get at least another hour of weeding in, but I'm not totally heartbroken over the reprieve. The mosquitoes were eating me alive out there!

The kids immediately grabbed their umbrellas and started playing. They're still outside playing in the puddles, though I think it's done raining. They're so cute and full of joy! Usually. I need to wrap this up and go bring the kids in, and get my girl cleaned up and in bed.

Tomorrow is her last day of her week at 'college for kids'. It's only for one week, but it's a wonderful program. Dej attended when she was younger, too. L chose the classes, "Architecture" and "Breaking Things". Tomorrow I get to go in to see what they've been doing all week, because it's parents' day. I took her in this morning and walked her into the building and to the top of the stairs, where she told me that I didn't need to go any further with her. Apparently she's too grown up to have her mom walk her to the classroom door and give her a kiss. I guess I'm grateful that she let me walk her all the way to the top of the stairs and give her a kiss. Soon enough, that won't be allowed either. :(

Here are some of the daylilies that are blooming in our garden right now.

Inhale. Exhale.

Luciana has been drawing a series of pics of Indian dancers over the past few weeks. She has quite a collection of them now.

This is what the kids (L & H) did tonight. They played and giggled for the longest. They were trying to call various cats to see who could lure the most cats to come through 'their' door. The little tent had three doors. I'm not sure how they defined 'doors', but they agreed that there were three. Somehow the game and giggling evaporated and it turned into an argument over who 'owned' which door. It ended with my child being utterly beastly. She proclaimed that since she built the tent, she owned all three doors. Voices got louder. He stormed out. She had to participate in a parental discussion about kindness, friends, and selfishness. I hate when my child acts turdly to others.


Rain has kept me from weeding for the last two nights, and I'm getting really frustrated! There are still bits of the garden I can enjoy that are relatively weed free. These flowers are different species of Echinacea.

Two on Tuesday

I think the weather (dark, cool, and rainy) is bumming me out today. I've had a pretty decent week, except for the whole getting up early for work crap. I'm feeling abandoned and unneeded by my daughters tonight. I'm glad they both have friends and fun that they can enjoy without me, but do they have to enjoy life without me so very often?! At least my non-human babies want to spend all their time with me!

Two cool things we did this week:

1. We finally got to watch 'Knowing'. We wanted to see it when it was at the theater but just never came up with the time. It came in Saturday's mail, so we watched it on Sunday. It was good, and I am NOT a Nicholas Cage fan. We both enjoyed it quite a bit.

2. Luciana started Bharatanatyam class on Sunday. I even typed Bharatanatyam without looking up the spelling, and it has taken a lot of work to remember the correct spelling! That's the Sanskrit word for a style of Indian classical dance. I'm not thrilled about the fact that we have to drive almost an hour (one way) to get there, but I'm glad we are able to give L that experience. It's so good for her in many ways, and I'm learning a lot too. Everything about it is different from what she's used to. She's taken ballet in the past. We found many bad or mediocre ballet teachers, but only one good one, and she moved away after college! We finally just gave up on dance, until now. She will not only learn an intriguing style of dance, but also much about a different culture, Hinduism, and Sanskrit. Her teacher is kind but demanding, which is so good for L. She needs someone who isn't afraid to hold her accountable. While there are other white American students at the school, there are no others in her class. I think it's very good and enlightening for her to have the experience of being the only one of her kind, in a place where everyone looks different, dresses different, speaks different, and follows different cultural norms from what she's used to. She is loving it so far, and is very excited about the gorgeous clothing she gets to wear for both practices and performances. And now she's ready to work on her Sanskrit memorization, so I'm needed (Yay!!). The pic is of her teacher Meenakshi (from her website)--how gorgeous is she and her outfit?!

Colorado Springs - Days 1 and 2

We spent two days and two nights in CO Springs, before we started on the two-day journey back home.

We spent both days with M's aunt Mary, uncle Mark, and cousins Paul and Laura. Mary insisted on making lunch and dinner both days. We had excellent meals. I hate having people go through the ordeal of cooking vegan meals for us, though. It's such an effort for a non-veg to learn about the foods and ingredients that are often unfamiliar and all of the various 'rules' just seems like a lot to have someone deal with. We had a wonderful visit and enjoyed our time and activities with them.

The first day we went to Garden of the Gods--another place I've been to before but didn't appreciate nearly enough then. Luciana spotted a fawn. Then we drove and walked through the private grounds of some religious group. There's a castle, a coffee shop, gorgeous houses--it's a huge and palatial estate! It was beautiful. I was having some altitude sickness periodically. I was surprised by that!

Mary's back yard is a haven for the mule deer, who like to hang out under her deck when it's hot. That puts them right in front of the windows, so we got to watch them close up for quite a long time. They were beautiful!

On the second day there, we went to Pike's Peak. We took a cog railway up to the top of the mountain. It was a little over 14,000' high. It was really difficult to breathe! When I came as a child, we drove up. I'm SO glad we didn't drive up this time. The train was perfect. Definitely the way to go! We spotted lots of cute little golden whistling marmots and some bighorn sheep.

L was still looking for bears and mountain lions, but never did spot any.

L kept looking at her junior ranger book and would say she was looking for bi-horn sheep. We would tell her no, 'bighorn', but she would again say, 'bi-horn'. She explained that she was reading the first syllable as, 'bigh' and the second as 'horn'. She thought that 'bigh' was pronounced like 'high' and 'sigh'. Since bi- means two and that since the sheep did have two horns, it should be pronounced 'bi-horn'. She reluctantly changed her pronounciation to 'big-horn'.

We took some pics, walked around, had a snack, and used the bathroom up at the top. The toilet paper holders had these strange stickers on them.

At dinner time, M stayed with his family, while L and I went to meet my friend Carla and her family for dinner at P.F. Chang's. It was so fun having dinner with her and her family. I wish we had more time together! We chatted over a long, leisurely dinner and then back at the lobby of our hotel. It was late and we all had to get up early. We definitely need more time to hang out!

Denver

When I was a teen, I loved Denver. I thought I would end up living there. I can't imagine why now. It was pretty yukky! We only spent one full day and a night there, which was enough. Our day:

The Butterfly Pavillion in the morning

Lunch at Watercourse Foods (I will miss this awesome veg restaurant and their kick-ass cupcakes!!)

Denver Botanical Gardens (It was hotter than hell at this point!)

Dinner with friends and their adorable and entertaining three-year old daughter