Around Here

Around here....

We had a great Memorial Day weekend, complete with the first grilled hamburgers of the season.  Oh, they were yummy.  And the first fresh corn, though it didn't come from around here.  We have to wait until July for our wonderful Munson Farm corn, grown right here in Boulder.   

We didn't put up a flag for the holiday, but others in our neighborhood did.  This house is up the street on the way to Chautauqua park and I always like to look at it when we walk by it.

Here's another flag, this one in the Boulder Bolder race held the morning of Memorial Day.  This run/walk is a big community event which attracts about 50,000 participants each year.  I'll probably never be a participant, but I do love watching and cheering from the sideline.  It's great fun to see all the costumes that people wear in the race and listen to bands and other entertainment provided along the route.

This year Paul's band played for the race, so it was especially fun to watch the goings-on where they were stationed. 

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We enjoyed having That Handsome Dog Gus visit over the long weekend.  He had an especially good time going up to Nederland to see Paul's band play at The Train Car cafe.  

Did I tell you we've decided to get our own dog?  With Spikey and Fetcher gone we've been pet-less for the first time in probably 35 years and we don't like it.  After much thought and research we put down a deposit on an Australian Labradoodle and we'll probably welcome one into the family sometime in September.   

To give you an idea of what this dog is like, here's a photo from our breeder showing the parents of one of the two litters due in July.  Believe it or not, even with all that hair, they don't shed and are one of "hypoallergenic" breeds, which is what I need with my dog/cat allergy.  I love their look and especially how fluid they are when they move.  

   

Here are pictures of the parents of the other litter due in July.  You can see how Sundance has a more fleecy coat, which I like a lot.  

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In between the rainy and cold weather we had the last week we did some gardening.   To make more room for the dog in the backyard we're removing one of the three raised beds back there and that means moving all the good plants out and relocating them to other places in the yard.  Plus we've been upgrading the plantings around the front of the house.  Good thing Ben is a great digger and we make a pretty effective planting team!  

We bought this huge, mature Pinus Mogu Slowmound and placed it perfectly at the corner of the  house to tie the front and side beds together visually.  

You can just see it in the back of this image, but I had to include it here because of the person walking on the sidewalk.   I love how people are always walking on our corner, or skateboarding, or biking, or running, or walking their dogs.  It's never a dull moment out there!  Anyway, we're quite pleased with this new bush.    

We also got some lovely Spirea bushes for the front, including this big one which we planted yesterday.

See how nice it looks, even though we haven't mulched it yet.  The smaller one on the left was planted a couple of weeks ago and is settling in well.

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We've got hummingbirds!   Each summer the hummingbirds arrive back in town and we see them at feeders in various places in our neighborhood.  We've put up our own feeders on the patio but haven't enjoyed the experience.  It's hard to fill the feeder with sugar water out there and the birds are very aggressive, fighting with each other and making a lot of noise.  We'd about given up on the whole thing when we visited our friend and saw how she hung her feeder way up high on the wall next to her balcony.  That gave the birds room to fly in and out without bothering her and any errant sugar water ended up on the foliage below and not on a deck or balcony.

Turns out we have the perfect place ourselves, so we hung the feeder off of our bedroom balcony.

Within an hour we had regular customers.  We can see them from the bedroom or when we sit out on the balcony itself.  If they get too noisy we can close the door.  And we can clean and fill the feeder using the bathroom sink just feet away.  Quite a fun solution!

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I've been sewing.  I have three big projects underway.  For one I had to buy some new thread; pretty, aren't they?

I had to use some brown thread in another project and was worried that I might not have enough.  Look how I just barely finished before I ran out! 

One of the projects now requires me to pick a background fabric on which to place three little stamped and painted blocks.   I've narrowed it down to three choices, shown here.  Which do you think I should use?  One consideration is that I plan to quilt the background using the curved lines and the circles and squares in the blocks.  In other words, I need a background that will allow those quilted lines to show up on the finished piece.  Makes the decision harder, I think.    

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We received the keys to our Paris apartment!  Our trip to Switzerland and Paris is still four weeks away, but getting the keys certainly made it all seem real.   

 Well, I've been up for 3 1/2 hours, so I'd best get showered and ready for the rest of the day.  I'll be off to Pilates, lunch with Dawn, a drive out to Westminster to do some errands after lunch, and then a walk or hike with Ben.  It's a beautiful day and decent weather is promised for the weekend, which is a nice change.