Off The Beaten Path

Oh my. Looking at this picture, it’s hard to believe that Starburst celebrated her 3 week birthday yesterday and the little pipsqueak behind her celebrated her 4 week birthday. Pipsqueak looks like she should be half of Stars age. Yikes. BTW, we haven’t heard from Abby Prom yet as to what the little one’s name is going to be so right now she’s known as Squirt, Pipsqueak, or anything else we think is cute. We’re hoping that she’ll start growing soon and to help her along we’re supplementing the Zena nutrition plan (mother’s milk, or in this case grandmothers) with soaked 10 Squared Racing dog food. The only problem is Star likes the smell of the food and as you can tell, she doesn’t need any supplementing yet! She is only three weeks old…

Ok, we have to quit moving the Mini Excavator (Devil) around the dog yard. Wherever she goes, she teaches the dog or dogs near her how to dig realllllllllllllly deep holes. I just happened to have my phone on me from taking a couple pictures of our new puppy to upload to Facebook and saw this site:

It appears Rose has graduated from the Devil’s “Excavating 101″ course as the hole is deep enough where all we see is nothing but…well, BUTT! We’ll know she’s moved on to Excavating 201 when all we see is nothing but dirt flying (right Devil?).

Oh my. We knew our little Star was big for her age, being an only puppy and all, but last night Mark brought home one of her cousins who is a week older and OH MY…she’s a GIANT compared to the other little girl who is a week OLDER than Star!

The little one on the right is actually Zena’s granddaughter. Her mother, Daisy is our Rose and Lily’s sister. Daisy was accidentally bred by Star’s father, so they are cousins/half-sisters. (Kinda sounds kinda Hillbilly-ish, huh?). Anyway, Mark didn’t want Star to be our only puppy and Daisy was having a hard time keeping up with her 10 puppies (yep, the accidental breeding produced 10 puppies, our planned breeding, one), so when Mark brought our new little girl home when he picked up dog food yesterday at 10 Squared Racing. When we put the new little one next to Star, it made her look like a GIANT Star. I think she can use the competition for food. A little diet might be good for her.

It’s less than a week away when the dragons will be coming to Grand Marais. Dragons as is Dragon Boats that is. Next weekend is the annual North Shore Dragon Boat Festival and for the third year in a row, Mark and I will be paddling with Team Gunflint. The past two years we have taken second in our division…just a few more days and we’re going to paddle are a#*es off and go for first! PADDLES UP!

It started with broccoli last night and tonight it looks like it’s going to be cauliflower. It seems like it has taken forever for our garden to take of as friends have been eating vegys out of their gardens for a couple of weeks. I have to keep reminding myself that I played it safe when the temperatures in May were  garden-friendly, and waited until the end of the month to plant mine “just in case”.

I just took a quick look back on the blog archives to see what the garden was doing last year. On July 29th, almost anothe week away,  this iis what the garden looked like:

Except for the peas, this years garden is MUCH further along:

I’ve also been whining that the cucumber plants weren’t blooming but when I went out to take this picture, there were yellow blossoms everywhere. While my nutrition plan doesn’t allow for much sodium, I am looking forward to a homemade pickle once a week or so as a treat. I can’t wait to harvest more!