Free food in Fort Langley

This afternoon we headed to Fort Langley.  Early last week I had a phone call from Global TV to tell me that I had won a month's free dog food.  I had emailed my name in to a contest connected to the Adopt a Pet segment at the end of Tuesday's noon newscast, and I was the lucky winner.  It was a raw mix, frozen in blocks, so fit in alright with what I have been feeding lately.  It certainly won't be something that I would feed on a regular basis though, as I figured using that product would cost me $300 a month to feed the three dogs. 

So we headed down to Waldo and Tubbs in Fort Langley to pick up the prize. 

 We took the dogs with us and took a walk at Brae Island Regional park.  It is located on McMillan Island, hmm, so why is it called Brae Island Park?  The park is on the island that you drove across to the now non-extinct Fort Langley ferry. 

There were some sandy beaches along the side of Bedford Channel and you looked across at the Bedford Landing housing development.  We weren't sure how dog friendly those beaches were, so headed down the gravel trail.

The trees were friendly though! 

Not sure if this Barred owl was friendly or not, but gave us a start as he lifted off in front of us and flew overhead.  

 We got to the end of the trail, which was called Tavistock Point. 

We're free!

Calli was really happy when she finally found a rock to go along with the sand

We amused ourselves watching Jake and Luna try to get a stick.  There seemed to be a drop off  just in front of where Jake was standing, and neither dog seemed to have the nerve to step off the edge and swim the last couple of feet to get the stick.  They both took turns trying.

Luna stretched out as far as she could, and with the help of the wind she finally got it

But then Luna likes living on the edge

Who, me?

50 pink Flamingos......

..........may be decorating the front lawn of my younger (and only) sister's house today.  

She was born in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England fifty years ago.  She travelled across the Atlantic on a ship when she was 3, and then on a train across Canada to Kamloops.  From there we travelled to Williams Lake.  Didn't last long there though.  Too much of a culture shock for my mother, and we ended up in White Rock a few months later.

Of course, as two sisters, we had our share of spats, good times, and everything inbetween.

Here we are still looking like a couple of little english girls

Posing on the beach at White Rock

And practicing her mothering skills with a friend's baby

She was quite the athlete

And excelled at tennis 

We shared our love of animals

And she went from bronc riding at the Cloverdale Rodeo

to getting her own horse

She was a winner in the costume class

and excelled in both English

and Western riding

She dabbled in modelling

As well as in dog training

But no matter how old we got................ I was always taller.

Although these days.............. what matters is who is thinner.

When I had been doing this blog for a while, I asked my sister if she ever looked at it.  She said 'no', not after the first time.  She said she found blogs kind of cheesy, and sort of like bragging.  Then she said that she didn't want to see pictures of my dogs sitting and staying as they were told, and then she said that maybe she was just jealous.  I said well not to bother reading it, just look at the pictures, which she admitted to doing once.

Sooo, I'm not quite sure how she will take this, but I want you to know Cathy, that it was done in fun and with love and to wish you a very happy 50th birthday.

Love and hugs, Karen

Tasty Tuesday

Here's the first produce of the year, well the first edible thing that was seeded this year, which we had in our salad for supper tonight.  We also had some kale leaves and flowers in that same salad, but since technically that is from something that overwintered from last year, I'm not going to count it.

And on the subject of food for supper.......

the dogs got their first meal of raw fish tonight.  (Yes, it was frozen before being fed to them).  I was interested to see what they thought of it.

Since I don't want it to cost me an arm and a leg, I haven't been giving them a whole lot of variety with this raw feeding. Mostly chicken and turkey, as those are what I can get the cheapest, and then beef.  Pork seems to give Luna and Jake terrible gas, so I have to severely limit the quantities of that.  Running agility with Jake Monday of last week was a very malodorous affair, (shudder)

Not sure that I would want to eat something that has eyes though

Jake dived right into his

Luna laid down in anticipation

Checked it out

Gave it a smell

Gave it a lick

Thought about swallowing it whole

!Please don't!

Then seemed to get it figured out.

In fact I like how long they chewed on those fish heads

It seemed to take them longer than I thought it would, and even longer than the chicken legs

Calli liked hers too

But Calli decided a meal wasn't complete without dessert.  There was a bag on the floor in the utility room from the market on Saturday, with assorted things in it.  We had forgotten the two muffins that Larry had bought, and they were still in that bag.  That bag has been there for three days.  Calli in particular has had access to that bag the whole time she has been inside, since it was first left there.  Why all of a sudden, minutes after she had finished her fish and egg meal, did she suddenly decide to get into that bag, I'll never know.  I had been outside watching Luna finish her meal, came back in, and saw this on the dog mat.  Took me a few moments to figure out what it was, or had been.  There had been two muffins in that package, and at least one was gone.  The other one or what was left of it, was a mangled mess. Calli was spitting out bits of plastic wrap when I caught her.

Well, if the fish doesn't agree with her, the muffin, which was bran, will just help move things right along:(

The List - Sunday

Usually in the morning I will go out to the garden and wander around.  At the time I am making mental notes of things that NEED to be done, but somehow they just don't seem to be GETTING done.  After having a discussion with another vendor at the market on Saturday about exactly the same thing, I decided to take paper and pen with me this morning and make a list.  For some reason when things are written down, there seems to be more of an urge to get them done, I guess being able to cross them off the list just makes it that much more interesting.

So here is the list I wrote this morning.  I knew there was no way I was going to get everything done, but they are just things that need doing.  I tried to break some jobs down into smaller parts so that I could finish them in one go and be able to cross them off.

The first thing I did was the top two items on the list.  This is where the broadbeans are planted, along with some Norland potatoes and a little bit of garlic.

Then I headed into the garden and then I weeded the perennial bed on the south side of the greenhouse, and was going to head out of the garden to get some compost to put on that bed.  This is what I saw.

Not very often you catch Luna doing this when you are outside.

In fact there were two resting border collies. 

 And if anyone ever wonders why Calli is usually absent in these sort of pictures.....

Well to start with, she is a it's all about me kind of dog.  If there is nothing happening that might have something in it for her, she will probably be hanging around the basement door, waiting to slip back in if it is left ajar for a few seconds.

And there you will find her like this ...........................................................or this

We got rid of that soft sided bed, since it was really a bit small for Calli, and since she has no awareness of her back end and where it is located, she ended up in the goofiest positions.

You'll notice a lot of runners in the pictures.  No we don't kick them off there when we come in, Calli picks them up and carries them there.  She likes to pile them up and use them as pillows.

These days she would look more like this

With the two dogs laid at the garden gate,  I knew if I walked through it, they would move.

Then I remembered that the basil was probably cooking under it's plastic tunnel, and would need watering.   By the time I turned the tap on, which is on the side of the greenhouse, Luna had moved and was down staring at the leaking hose, and then at the sprayer when I turned it on.  She loves water coming out of the hose

The basil got watered, it is well germinated, and I'm really happy how it's coming along

The compost got put on a couple of beds and then I moved onto another job. 

All the dahlia tubers were dragged out of what used to be the wine cellar (from the days when Larry used to make wine at one of those U-Brew places).

They were split up with the help of my handy dandy $2 hacksaw that I bought at a garage sale a few weeks ago. 

I orignally bought it to help my cut up the turkeys for the dogs, but like many tools, it has multiple uses.

So much dirt later, and the discovery of a mouse nest in the bottom of the dahlia heap (gross!, and thankfully it was abandoned), the job was done.  Of course that creates another job.  There is now a big mess to clean up, and I have to figure out where to put the dahlias until I get them sold/given away/planted.

I did decide that it is probably much better to get them divided up before they are actually sprouting, as more than one sprout was knocked off in my butchering.  If there are any dahlia experts out there, when do you do it, and what do you use to do it with?  I did find the hacksaw rather crude, but some parts were too big for a utility knife.

Six down, 18 to go, and that's just the first page:(