Around Here

 Around here Turbo is growing!

And he is settling into the household and learning all sorts of useful things, like how to hang out in his crate without fussing.

This weekend That Handsome Dog Gus is visiting for a few nights, so it's high excitement indeed for Turbo.  Gus is pretty mellow about Turbo's constant interest, but we do step in a lot to give Gus some space.  

All the excitement wears the little tyke out and much napping is required.  

Turbo is now going on short walks.  One of his favorites things to do on a walk is to sit down and watch all the neighborhood goings-on.  The other day he sat and watched this workman up the street as he moved pipes around the construction site.  

Around here we are under attack by the squirrels who are busy gleaning every acorn they can find from our big pin oak trees in the front and back yards.  What a mess they are making!  They seem to have two strategies for getting all the nuts down.  They chomp on the tips of the branches way up high so they fall to the ground and the squirrels come around later and extract the nuts, or they simply shake the branches and the nuts fall down.  We can hardly sit outside without dodging the rain of acorns, and I'll be glad when all this harvesting is over. 

 Around here we've had two flat tires in the past two weeks!  Good thing Ben is an ace tire changer and gets the job done so quickly there's no need to wait for AAA.  Do you think troubles come in waves of three?  We'll see if we get another flat sometime soon.

Around here we're seeing the approach of autumn.  The last of the cherry tomatoes are on our neighbor's vines...

 ....and I'm watching to see when the hummingbirds and turkey vultures take flight for the winter.  They usually arrive in May and fly out the first week of October, which is already next week.  Can you believe the summer is really over?

Around here we are making plans for a couple of house projects.  On Monday we're hooking up to a new Internet provider after which we'll cut the cord to our cable company.  We're in the final negotiations for new windows, which I'm really looking forward to since several of our current ones don't open easily any more.  But right now we have a crew working in the backyard to remove one of the three raised garden beds and replace the old wooden railroad ties on the remaining two with some attractive stone walls.  I'll be sure to show you how it all turns out!