Friday Flowers

Mom believes these are Dahlias. She has planted a hodgepodge of perennials in her jungle garden. However, she does remember buying pink Dahlias and planting them. She can't figure out what else she would have bought that these might have grown from over the last many years.

These bloomed in June, which surprised Mom because they are usually blooming in late July or August. The weather seems to have some of our flowers off cycle. She's not complaining too much because she was getting fresh Asparagus from the garden in late June when it usually is gone at the beginning of the month.

Visiting Friends

Over the holiday weekend, we went to visit a friend in the neighborhood. She has a more wooded yard with great shade spots. She and Bailey ran around for a while, but I went and found a nice shady spot to observe everything.

We have funky trees that don't provide many sticks. However, our friend has great trees. Not only is it more shady, but I found a stick.

This was all part of Dog Dad's plot to take the advice Mom read from some of her fellow bloggers to tire us out before the fireworks went off. Bailey ran off some energy, but I was just too fascinated with this amazing shade.

Hosted by Ruckus the Eskie and Loved is Being Owned By a Husky

Hosted by Heart Like a Dog and 2 Brown Dawgs

Wordless Wednesday: Watching the World Cup

Blog Paws is hosting the Hop here

Tales from the Veggie World

Welcome back to our garden update. You may notice that this week I'm staying further back from that plant Mom calls zucchini. She says plants don't eat meat, but let me tell you stuff goes into that garden that never sees the light until that plant dies. I'm taking no chances. Where the bright yellow flowers first appeared, we are now starting to see greenish round creatures. Mom calls them veggies, but I'm telling you these could be some kind of monster creatures growing out there.

Notice the difference here. This zucchini is grown in captivity. It knows it is caged and will not escape. The plant is smaller and not looking like its ready to attack. It too is producing those odd green things, but I know I can still take it out if I have too. Well actually, we aren't admitting to it, but there was some zucchini tipping that happened last week and Dog Dad wasn't too happy about it. We tried to convince him that the zucchini had just grown so top heavy it tipped over. Since nothing broke off and it resumed its monster expected growth, he seems to have let it go. However, the zucchini are under warning. If threatened we will strike. Like the monster zucchinis, these smaller cousins are producing green round things Dog Dad are convinced are edible veggies.

The tomatoes are behaving in their cages. We’ve had no threats from them. They are already have green tomatoes from the yellow buds Mom saw last week. The parents are looking forward to fresh tomatoes from the vine. The asparagus is starting to wind down, but Mom thinks there may be another meal left in the plants. They had fresh asparagus, spinach, and lettuce despite the bad weather over the holiday. Dog Dad picked it before the rains hit. We had a rabbit visit over the weekend, but we made quick work of chasing it out of the yard.

Monday Mischief

Hope all of you had a wonderful Independence Day. The only day that the weather was really bad over the long weekend was sadly the day itself, July 4th. The other days were beautiful. Mom missed her parade. They refused to postpone and Mom refused to get soaked in the rain. We won because we had Mom, Dad, and one of our favorite human cousins for the whole day to ourselves. Don't tell Mom, but we were performing a rain dance. However, we were duly punished when the rain came with thunder. We may have to rethink the whole rain dance as a means of preventing the parents from leaving home thing. Those thunder boomers are no fun.

Mom's birthday is this week and we are working hard trying to decide what we should do for her birthday. While Katy and I love bones, treats, and squeaky toys, Mom really isn't into that stuff.

Dog Dad suggested we let Mom sleep in. You see we have this habit of performing health checks on our humans. It is important that if they are in bed after expected times that we check to make sure they are alive and well. We regularly perform this morning duty at no additional charge for our pet parents. In fact we do it for guests, too. Katy found her human cousin asleep over the holiday and decided to do a health check and poked her awake. Once awake, Bailey decided she was available for distributing attention. Dog Dad couldn't possibly mean suspending doing this to Mom for a morning could he? After all, providing safety health checks is a valuable service. By poking humans in bed, we assure they are in fact alive and responding. Stopping this for a day hardly seems like a safe birthday present. However, Dog Dad insists this would be something Mom would truly love.

It can't have annoyed our human cousin too much because Dog Dad says she's coming back to stay with us when the parents have to travel to something called a wedding.

We have a more pressing problem. We really have to find a better gift for Mom.

Welcome to Monday Mischief – The pet blog hop that wraps up the weekend! This Blog Hop is brought to you by Alfie’s Blog, Snoopy’s Dog Blog, and My Brown Newfies.

Happy Independence Day

Mom is preposting this for us since the holiday is always a busy one. We hope all of you have a fun, safe, and happy day.

As we were writing this, the weather is not looking good for July 4th. Mom is still holding out hope because she loves her day at the parade, but Dog Dad is already making other plans. If the weather cooperates than Mom, Dog Dad, and one of our favorite relatives will be sitting not too far from this historical house in the shade to watch the parade. While we will miss them, we are not doing any rain dances as that will ruin the rest of the day for us, too.

In honor of Friday Flowers, Mom decided to share pictures of what her Mom always called 4th of July lilies, which are actually Day Lilies. The bright orange lilies appear all over the place right around the 4th here. Many people line their property with them and because they spread, it makes a beautiful edge for a few weeks.

Katy's Birthday Treats

It can take the Mama time to take pictures and get them all posted, but she promised she'd get my birthday stuff posted before the July 4th holiday.

It was a great birthday. Dog Dad stopped at the bakery for fresh birthday cookies. We love the yogurt covered dog cookies. Of course, they made us suffer until they finished singing.

As the best party game ever Dog Dad got both of us treat balls. We'd never tried anything that rolled and distributed treats before. I figured out the trick really quickly. I batted it with my paw and magically treats appeared as the ball rolled. Bailey took a bit longer as he was sure he could lick his way into the treats.

Dog Dad even found me a new colored toy in my favorite series. These are the only toys I don't let Bailey steal. For some reason he thinks every toy in this house is his. Well that's fine except for these. Oh, I catch him trying now and again, but even Mom says I should be allowed to have some toys that are mine.

After all look at this guy, not only can you chew and squeak, but you also get a built in pillow. This really is an ideal toy.

Dog Dad also found some new toys that make animal noises. This time he found birds, a cardinal and a blue jay. Mom says the sounds are quite "remarkable" and they seem to be endless very entertaining. We like bringing the birds into the house and you can frequently hear the birds chirping away.

The best thing of all was I got an extra long walk with Dog Dad and Bailey. While we were out, I got to meet up with some friends in the neighborhood. It truly was a wonderful birthday.

Hosted by Ruckus the Eskie and Loved is Being Owned By a Husky

Hosted by Heart Like a Dog and 2 Brown Dawgs