Hummertime

The last few rainy days have kept Hummer away. As we were eating dinner tonight, two hummers visited the feeder right outside the kitchen. By the time we grabbed the camera, they were gone. After a few minutes, they came back and we were able to snap a couple pictures.

A dog's life

Oh to be a dog. This is Danny boy in that magical time between his morning walk and his breakfast when I'm in the shower.

Images of spring

What spring looks like at our house:

The Gate - Part II

The gate has now been painted and you can see that the grass is slowly growing.

Maddy and Paddy (the ducks) have been back to visit. In fact, when they are hungry they become quite bold and will march up to the driveway in search of a snack. With the fox running around, I get a little nervous. I'm not sure if a fox would eat a duck, but I don't want to find out.

When Danny sees the ducks, he still races to the edge of the pond, but always stops before making the final leap. In fact, he is much more fascinated by the woodchuck and will just sit and stare at the opening to the burrow.

Danny and the woodchuck

We gave Danny a bath today and were in the front yard waiting for him to dry off. We headed towards the pond and expected that Danny would follow. After a few minutes we realized that Danny was not with us. We turned around and there he was - slowly, patiently stalking the woodchuck.

The woodchuck was at the edge of our property, eating grass and Danny would take a step stop, stare, take another step. The woodchuck did not move at all - either he didn't notice Danny or didn't care.

Danny crept up on the woodchuck and when he was about 5 ft away, he broke into a run. Unfortunately for Danny, the woodchuck's burrow was about 2 feet away. When the woodchuck disappeared, Danny was so confused - he stuck his nose down the hole, and had to be dragged away.

Seeing Danny stalk the woodchuck made me realize that he is a hunter at heart.

The Gate

As part of the new landscaping, there is supposed to be a gate at the top of the stone stairs.We have been waiting for the gate to be installed and today it finally arrived!

We are trying to decide if we should stain it white or some other color. It gives an interesting focal point to the yard.

There is one stump left to be removed and then the project is complete.

The grass is slowly coming in - a few sunny days and some light rain would really help.

Hummer's Back

For the first time this season I spotted a hummingbird flying around the fuchsia. Last year it took me several months of coaxing with feeders and flowers (aka woodchuck snacks) before the hummingbirds appeared.

I immediately boiled some sugar water and put it out in the feeders. I hope that we will soon see hummer all the time.

Does it get any better than this?

A nice spring day playing toss with your buddy.

Free to good home, part II

The annual spring cleaning frenzy has taken hold in the Garage. Quite a few stray gloves were tossed along with the year's casualties in the Bird Feeder department.

In the year we've owned this house, I've picked up stray kid stuff all around the yard. The first month was the most fruitful with 3 or four baseballs, two basketballs and 4 golf balls (3 wiffle, 1 regular). We had some stuff that the previous owners left behind, so we sent the stray balls along with it. Since then, whenever I found a ball I threw it into a box in the garage. That box got cleaned out tonight and it's contents may surprise you:

• 9 golf balls (6 regular, 2 wiffle, 1 playskool)
• 2 playskool golf clubs (1 driver, 1 iron)
• 4 baseballs
• 1 tennis ball
• 3 basketballs (2 regular, 1 nerf)
• 1 home base
• 2 matchbox cars
  

I think we've found most of the stray items, but the first mowing of the year might turn up something new.

To the point of the post.

Since I scored the monster toolbox from Sears, I don't need my spare box. This is a Stack-On three drawer toolbox that measures 20" wide and 8" deep. The top opens and I don't have a key for the lock. It is free to the first person who emails me at marist89(at)excite.com [replace the (at) with @]. I don't mind holding on to it until I see you next. If I get no takers, it goes to the Holy Family Regional Christmas Tag Sale in November.

A new visitor

This morning while playing ball with Danny in the front yard, we saw a fox for the first time. Danny showed no interest at all - the fox crossed the front yard and headed down the road.

Tonight while cooking dinner I looked out the window and the fox was back. This time strolling thru the back yard and into the woods. I always thought foxes were red, but this one is brownish.

According to Google, foxes like to nest in enlarged groundhog/woodchuck holes. I wonder if that means we have a new tenant under the shed.

They did this to me

Nobody around here knows how I gained 16 pounds. It's a big mystery to me as well.

Daddy and I were on the deck this weekend and we played a game of catch. With popcorn. Look how high I can jump when food is involved.

74 pounds of love

Danny went for his 6 month wellness checkup at South Wilton Vet. The first thing the technician asked is that Danny sit on the scale. His weight read a WHOPPING 74.1 lbs! Dr. Fahy was not pleased - Danny put on 16 lbs in 6 months!

People have said that Danny had gotten big and I thought it was due to his thicker coat, but it is not just his coat that is heavier. It looks like we will all be getting out to play more and cutting down on the treats.

We also found out at 3:00 am that Danny is afraid of thunder. Just as the alarm was going off, he finally settled down again. Needless to say a lot of caffeine was needed to get thru the day.

The Courageous

Cancer. That's a word you never want to hear. Lauren Terrazzano, a reporter for Long Island's Newsday heard those words three years ago. So what does she do? She does what comes natural. She writes about it. Checkout the life stories and how she's coping with the inevitable.

Maine Memories

To my Maine Mom Linda,
Hi! It's me, Danny. It has been 6 months since I moved to my new home and things are GREAT! Well, to be honest, I still struggle with "No couch" and have gotten in trouble several times for eating out of the candy dish. However, Mom and Dad love me a lot and spoil me.

I have put on weight and my coat is now long and thick. When I go out people always say how beautiful I am. My "nanny" Diane walks me every day and says that I am one of her favorite pups.

I have a big yard to play in with lots of interesting creatures and smells. As you said, I am a chewer - this means there is always rawhide and lots of toys around the house.

Many thanks and doggie kisses to you and all the Sunshine Golden Retriever Rescue volunteers who helped save me. I often think of you and will never forget your kindness. Do you ever think of me ?

Signs of spring

Mother Nature teased us in March with a string of 50 and 60 degree days. Then she blew winter back in and it hasn't been spring since. The Daffodils have had enough, they're coming up!

Comeeko

Discovered a site called Comeeko that lets you add captions to your photos.

Instinct

Maddy & Paddy are regular visitors to our pond. Somebody has been feeding them corn every now and then and it seems to keep them interested.

When Danny was out today, he spied the pair on the pond. Look at the intent in his eyes, the determination. This boy has some strong bird instincts. Danny ran down to the pond where Maddy & Paddy were. He stopped at the water's edge when Maddy perched up and flapped her wings for a few seconds making a rather loud and threating noise. Danny thought twice about going in, but kept staring until I called him away.

Plantings

As we were leaving this morning, the landscaper arrived with our trees- we now have redbud trees and red twig dogwoods. There are still ferns to be planted. I don't know if the trees will bloom this year, but I am hoping they will add some color to the yard.

Welcome to the new Wilton Diaries!

We've had a shakeup in our web development group at the home offices of Wilton Diaries. Seems our old format wasn't keeping up with the changing times and we had a ton of users (ie. me) clamoring for the new features of Blogger to be exploited.

The first big change is that the body of the post will now scale to your window size. If you have one of those new-fangled 20" wide screen monitors, you will be able to get more Wilton Diaries on your screen at a time.

The next big change is the list of labels on the right. You can click on a label to see all the posts related to that particular label. For example, if you are interested in all the "Danny" posts, click on "Danny".

The last change is the "Blog Archive" section can be collapsed and expanded by year. This way, you can forget all about 2006 posts if you want and just look at posts in 2007.

The world famous "Blogroll" remains, as does our email subscription. It surprises me more people don't take advantage of the email subscription considering our sporadic publishing schedule. Oh well, our Web Developers sometimes just like to put features in to justify their existence.

We apologize for some of the poorly placed pictures in old posts, but that's the way technology goes sometimes.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Waiting for rain

Our new yard has been seeded and strawed! We are now waiting for some rain, so the grass will begin to grow. The lawn is too large to water, without draining the well.

We decided to pile the additional 4 TONS of stone, rather than continuing the wall. There was not enough stone to build a wall across the entire back, and we thought that piling would seem more of a natural way to end it. Some trees need to be planted along the outer edge of the wall and then it will be finished.

When we bought this house we knew it could be beautiful and finally we are seeing what we hoped it would become.