Enchiladas!

The Good Times of Summer

My friend and coworker when we visited another friend at her lakeside campsite last August. Another summer is just around the corner with the promise of evening sunsets, leaves rustling in gentle breezes, colorful wildflowers and fun times!

Creative Maxie Photo

My older daughter got artistic when creating a memorable photo of Maxie the Schnauzer.

Spring ain't all good!

We recently took a memorial Day weekend trip to the Northeast Kingdom in Vermont. When we arrived in the late afternoon we were shocked to see so many roads closed. What was going on?? After several detours along potholed dirt roads and through darkening forests we finally arrived at the general store we always visit when in St. Johnsbury (which is usually just minutes from the motel) and we were told of a horrific thunderstorm that had passed through the area the night before. We were told that 5 inches of rain fell in just 2 hours. Creeks had flooded causing roads everywhere to collapse and many of the dirt roads had washed out. The next day we visited a local campground run by people we had met on one of our earliest visits several years past and were saddened to see the destruction caused to their property which sits next to the Moose River.

So truth of the matter is...Spring can actually suck sometimes!

Cabin Fever

I love winter. I love a peaceful white landscape or the feel of cold, sharp air under a clear starry sky. I love walking streets that are empty and all mine because people don't want to come out into the cold. I love the look of pines covered in snow and the sun low in the sky. No matter what time of day it is, it looks like the soft light of early morning or late afternoon. No blazing, blinding high noon in wintertime. I admit though, I do have my limits. I love the wildflowers that grow with abandon along roads and in fallow fields in the summer. I love the colors: shades of purple, lavender, yellow, pink and even white. I love the sweet scents as they rock beneath the hot sun, and the sound of muted buzzing from insects that flit from petal to petal. I love the sound of silence as I stand alone at the edge of overgrown fields that sway beneath the drifting fair weather clouds. Heavy sigh... but for now I have my pictures, and memories.

The Shopping Cart Constellation

I have to get up early for work, and in the Fall and Winter months it's usually still dark. I like getting up in the dark because while I walk the dog around I get a few minutes of stargazing before it begins to get too light. One sight had me taking out my binoculars and I was pleasantly surprised by what I viewed. At first I saw what appeared to be a very small, tight constellation. It looked like a miniature Big Dipper, but it really reminded me of a shopping cart. So I called it "The Shopping Cart" constellation until I was able to find out its true name. I saw these stars every morning and so I decided it was time to take a better look and brought out the binoculars. Through the eyepieces the stars went from faint to brilliant! Bright, white and luminescent. But even more than that the whole field of vision was filled with stars. A whole cluster! I was soon to find out from my guidebook that it is the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters. I put the binoculars down and there were no stars visible around the now faint "Shopping Cart" constellation. I again looked through the binoculars and saw the circle filled with stars set off by the brilliance of the Pleiades. Work was a let-down after that beautiful discovery.

Maxie 1998-2010

I open the back door and Maxie runs out and down the steps. I see him pause to sniff the air and stare towards the back of the apartment complex beyond the yard. Nobody is there, but if anyone shows up he’ll be ready to bark and bark until well after they’ve gone out of sight. He’ll be ready to let everyone know this is his domain. His empire.

He then trots across the yard to the back fence where he’ll slowly make his way sniffing, very thoroughly, every inch along the bottom of the chain link. Several of the apartment people own dogs and walk them along the grass near the fence so I know Maxie has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to checking who’s been there recently.

Maxie works his way along the fence until he disappears from view into the next yard. Nobody there ever seems to care if he trespasses since they never use the yard themselves anyway. Although I can no longer see him, I can picture him stopping every so often to check if anyone has appeared outside the apartments, and I can imagine his nose twitching while he checks the air for interesting scents. Nobody is there yet, so with his nose back to the bottom of the fence he presses on.

I know he will be pushing through the weeds, that have grown taller than him, until he reaches the far corner of the fence and he can briefly survey those back yards while thoroughly exploring around the jungle of tangled grass and saplings. His little black, furry body partially concealed by the neglected growth, his little bobbed tail sticking up like a flagpole.

Once finished he’ll turn back and emerge from the tiny jungle, the fence now forgotten, and trot down through the neighbor’s yard and straight to the back door. I’ll see him suddenly reappear from around the shed that separates our two properties. If I’m not there at that moment I know he’ll stand there and wait, staring at the open door until I return, and once back inside the people from the apartments will be able to come and go in peace.

He has done this several times a day for the past several years and so I can see it clearly in my mind, but only in my mind, because once the horrible kidney disease took hold, those days became fewer and far between. He stopped barking. He stopped going to the fence. He stopped being able to go on walks. One by one we saw him lose the things that made life enjoyable for him.

Yesterday he gave up on eating and drinking. He couldn’t stand anymore and he couldn’t rest comfortably. He twitched and gasped and there was no life left in his eyes, and so I had to make the decision I’ve been dreading, and give him his peace. We stayed with him until the last breath and the vet carried him away, still in his bed.

Goodbye my friend. You were deeply loved and you will be greatly missed. Goodbye.