Susan of All Trades, Mistress of None

Sparkles of a different nature

Susan — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:16:51 +0000

I made up some different collars. They are 1.5″ wide rather than the usual 1″ which makes them a little more expensive, but I think they turned out nicely.

You can never have enough

Susan — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:03:48 +0000

I got a wonderful care package in the mail today! Its from my sister and it contains…seeds! I’m not exactly sure where they are going to go just yet, I need to take up some turf and that is a LOT of work, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out.

Baby Sage

Susan — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:33:24 +0000

Apparently I’m into macro photography right now. Some of the might have to do with the fact that all my plants in the garden are itty bitty baby plants right now though. Today I took some shots of my sage seedlings. I love the texture of sage, its wrinkly, fuzzy leaves just beg to be touched… and then your hands smell delicious!

Optimism

Susan — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:29:31 +0000

I started moving some of my seedlings out into their containers. I moved some cucumbers and a few of my tomatoes. Here is a picture of a Super Sweet 100 in a pot which is at this point giant, but hopefully will be appropriate someday soon. I’m not holding my breath because of last years blight. To try to avoid it this year I mulched heavily, plan to water deeper, but less often, and bought some organic fugal spray. All it needs now is a cage, the husband suggested I title the picture ‘Optimism’ and I’m trying to keep mine. Just say no to blight!

I also got this picture of some of my Fernleaf Dill seedlings. I love how delicate and sort of frilly they are.

Peas please

Susan — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:33:08 +0000

Its vegetable growing season here in South Florida and I recently started a few things in seed trays, some direct sown into my raised bed, and then put in some peas. I love growing peas you can eat right off the vine. Once they start producing I tend to eat them for breakfast during my morning garden errands. Last year I’m not sure anyone else got to eat any. One thing I love about peas is the little twisty bit they put out to anchor themselves to anything nearby.

This is one of my pea seedlings which are just starting to send out their tendrils to grow up the string trellis.

No loops

Susan — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:10:11 +0000

We used to have the perfect area rug for our living room, the color was perfect, the size was perfect, everything was great…except that it the fibers were looped on the top. Bleys does this thing where he rubs his head on carpet, in what looks like an attempt to itch his face. The downside of this behavior is that if the carpet has loops they get caught in his collar and then he pulls them out. This is what happened to our perfect area rug. Oh well.

So we’ve been tile only in the living room for quite some time. Then yesterday we got a new one which isn’t exactly the right shape, but is a great design, a great color, and best of all all the fibers are cut, not looped. Here’s hoping it lasts!

Here are Bleys and Wixer enjoying the new area rug in a totally natural, not staged at all, fashion.

Second thoughts

Susan — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:46:17 +0000

Wixer has large teeth, he also uses them quite hard, flyball, frisbee, dock diving, it all takes it toll. So at the age of two his canine aren’t looking so hot.

If he was eight and they looked like this I wouldn’t be concerned, but he’s only two. So I went to see a canine dentist and decided to get his canines capped. Its like a crown for people, but made of either stainless steel or titanium due to the uses the dogs put their teeth to. I have the appointment set up for next month, but now I’m having major wishy washy moments. I really don’t know what is best for him and his long term health and happiness. I have friends who say their dogs had similar wear at a young age and it hasn’t affected them as they get older (other than their teeth are much shorter than they would otherwise be). I’m not super thrilled with the idea of a dog with silver teeth either. But I really don’t want to run into root canals later because he’s worn them down into the pulp. If that happens he gets a crown anyway in addition to the root canal.

I’m very unsure what to do.

An attempt

Susan — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:44:19 +0000

I’ve been having a hard time keeping track of things lately and its getting a bit out of hand. So I found a whiteboard calendar and accessories and after about three attempts finally got in on the wall.

Dave and I have started filling in the next month or so. Here’s hoping that this well help get things in line. The next thing I need to do is find some magnetic sheet metal to make my bulletin board in crafty town.

Wixer’s new trick

Susan — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:03:24 +0000

That latest thing I’ve been teaching Wixer is the cue ‘dead dog.’ The neat thing about this is that I can put whatever I want in front of it, as if I’m actually asking him a question, and as long as I put ‘dead dog’ at the end he will do this behavior.

Once again, Wixer is too smart for his own good because he started doing this behavior as soon as I said ‘would you…’ So I had to start cueing him with, would you sit, Would you down, would you roll over etc. so that we doesn’t know what’s coming after.

Spider

Susan — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 23:57:34 +0000

I’ve been doing a little trick training with Wixer. He could learn much faster if I just spent more time at it, but ah well. One of the tricks I taught him as the cue ‘be a spider’ and looks like this:

One of the struggles I’m running into is due to the way I train Wixer, by shaping. He tends to offer a lot of different behaviors in hopes of hitting the right one. I need to figure out a way to encourage him to really listen to the cues I’m giving him.