Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Spring is in the air, people! Can’t you feel it?

The muddy puddles.

The squishy, squeeky grass.

The *sob* hour of lost sleep for which we are still grieving.

Yep *deep refreshing breath* spring is on it’s way for sure.

And with it, apparently an urge to nurture… something.

Sure, kids will be somewhere our future (I know that’s what most of you were going to ask about). But in the meantime, we have this big ol’ house all to ourselves and no one to share it with.

A dog you ask?

Hmmm… well, while my whole life I have never had any real desire for a dog, I think I might be changing my tune. Maybe.

It all started when Tyler’s cousins got two adorable Australian Shepherd puppies, like the ones here:

(photo credit: battlecreekpuppies.com)

Are they cute or what? Since before then even, I have been blog-stalking Kate’s blog at Chroniclesofacountrygirl.blogspot.com, mostly *blush* because I’m in love with her Border Collie, George (She also does amazing photography and lives in an awesome old house that’s several hundred years old).

Having never actually met George, though, I hadn’t experienced the warm fuzzy feeling of playing with a puppy until I met our cousins’ Australian Shepherds.

*sigh* I melt…

And then… one morning I was outside taking pictures of the sunrise through the trees and I was barked at by our neighbor’s dog (who looks like he could be a Border Collie!). Since then, he has been quite shy and quiet, but he’s always watching us, curious about what we’re doing living so close to his property.

Here, puppy, puppy… come play with me!

Don’t tell our neighbors this (although I’m not sure they exist anyway – all I’ve seen is the dog), but today I went outside to “take pictures” again *wink*wink* of some of the glorious green plant-age that is sprouting up, in hopes that my neighbor-dog would wander on over to say “hi.”

But to no avail. I really just want to make friends him, but I think I must have scared him off.

What is it, puppy? Is it my freakish height?

My Toyota’s monster-truck exhaust sounds?

My Taylor Swift karaoke?

Sorry, I forgot you could probably still hear that.

*sigh*

Anyhow, we may not be friends yet, but just wait until the weather warms up and I pull out the frisbee. Just so long as he doesn’t leave me any *ahem* reasons to not want him wandering over to our property.

In the meantime, I’m left to nurture the indoor plant-age we have acquired:

Some basil I bought at Meijer…

And a potted carnation-relative plant that I received for signing up for the Garden Club at Home Depot when we went to the Home and Garden Show last weekend.

So far, both are looking a little rough. I’m beginning to get a little nervous about tending a garden of my own. My father in law is an expert gardener — I can’t let him down! It’s looking like the previous owner’s idea of landscaping was bushes – lots and lots of bushes. That seems like an easy approach to me. But, if I can get a little help, I’ll at least try to use this urge to nurture to muster up a green thumb.

Or maybe a green pinky.

Or pinky fingernail.

Eww, green fingernails? Gross.

Anyways…

If you know my neighbors, will you please tell them I would like to be introduced to their dog so that we can play and I can decide if I want a dog of my own.

And if you see Tyler, please don’t tell him ANYTHING about this post. *whispering* He’s not a pet-person. So until I’ve at least made friends with our neighbor-dog and intoduced the two of them, we’ll just keep my scheming between us, ok?

Thank God I’m a Country Girl

Things I had forgotten about living in the country:

- Dirt roads have natural speed bumps – many, many speed bumps.

- Cows are fascinated by any foot-traffic that passes their pasture.

- The smell that wafts from the houses with wood-burning heaters, remniscient of camp.

- The complete darkness at night in which I can no longer make out the form of my hand cream on my night stand so when I wake up in the middle of the night because my skin feels dry (Is this normal? Tyler says I’m a lotion-addict). 

- The complete quiet at night in which all I can hear is the tic…tic…tic… of the clock out in the living room, marking the time it takes me to fall asleep without a TV on (Ok, this, might be an addiction. In college I got hooked on falling asleep to a movie on my laptop, because it got my mind off of things. Now we don’t have a TV in the bedroom and I’m doing my best to fall asleep like normal people do. *Sigh* The first week was rough. This week has been a little better).

- Food that really is natural is a lot easier to come by. We live within a few miles of turkey and chicken farms, a fruit stand, a farmer’s market, and a store that sells natural farm-fresh milk.

- I don’t hate all birds. Just stupid turkeys that wandered around our little apartment complex driveways and the sparrows that pooed on my car and the seagulls that scavenge the parking lots and beaches. The cardinals and chickadees and woodpeckers and bluejays are actually quite nice. And I even saw a robin today! Which means spring is right around the corner!

- Hard water smells funny. Our fridge filters the water that we drink, but the rest of the water has that funny penny-smell.

- No matter how remote, somehow Jehovah’s Witnesses can still find you.

I’m sure I’m forgetting something, but it’s the middle of winter and we’ve only been out here for a couple weeks.  I love being back out in the country, though. It’s so refreshing.

Well, I had better go milk them cows.

Wait, we live in the country, not on a farm.

Shoo, I was not looking forward to having to touch those things.

Tally-ho!