Puppy Pictures

Since I'm bored and haven't posted much lately I decided to post puppy pictures of Jackal for some of my readers who haven't been following since he was a pup. These are from March and April 2008.

Jackal (right) and his sister.

He had tick bites he wouldn't stop chewing so we made him an e-collar out of a shooting target lol.

He has a leaf in his mouth!

His first toy was an adorable squirrel.

Cheap toys are the best lol.

He was soooooo cute!!!!!!!!!

Gardening

Our fall garden that we planted last year (see post here and here) has done fantastic and is STILL producing!! I'm not a fan of vegetables, but I LOVED the greens we grew (kale, mustard greens, turnip greens, etc.) in our fall garden. The flavor is amazing. If you've ever tasted the difference between store bought eggs and farm fresh eggs, the difference is just as amazing with garden grown greens. They are so fresh and delicious. Since the garden produced more than we can eat (including what we gave to the friends who helped us plant it) we are blanching it and freezing it so we can have greens all summer (I don't like greens grown in the summer because the bugs chew on it and that grosses me out lol - I know I'm supposed to be a farm girl, but I'm weird like that!). :D

Our fall garden sort of got away from us after the recent warm temperatures and rain, so we had to do some weeding (from the edges, the black cloth kept weeds from growing next to the plants) and thinning out. Sadly the broccoli went to seed before it produced much, but that was a bit of an experiment so no big loss.

Still waiting on our cabbages to produce. They take a while.

We're now working on setting up our summer garden. We're following the Square Foot Gardening book (link to Amazon here) since we don't have much space. Here is what we have so far.

The squares are made from putting nails in the frame every foot and then tying cotton string on them. Now we can plant according to the layout we drew out on graph paper. :)

Down the center is our soaker hose. Totally the best way to water in the summer because it doesn't burn the plants or run off. :) I'll update with more pictures when we get set up for beans and potatoes. And of course once we plant. I'm excited about the garden this year! The success of the fall garden has given me hope that this one will turn out too. I can't wait!

A day at the lake!

Here are the rest of the pictures from our trip to the lake on Sunday. This is one of my favorite places to go to fish, watch/photograph the sunset, walk, bike, play with the dogs, etc. :) Awesome place. Here are the pictures.

My hubby fishing.

Geese flying over the lake.

The sun reflecting off of the water.

Beautiful sunset.

Any idea what kind of duck this is? Below is a closer shot.

I have never seen one of these before!! So cool looking!

Here is a closer head shot. What a cool duck!!

Okay, every single time we go to the lake I am completely obsessed with trying to get pictures of the sea gulls as they fly over. It's a lot more difficult than it sounds. You have to find them in the viewfinder or on the LCD screen, zoom in, keep them in view, then figure out how fast they are going and how long the delay on the camera is and set the camera that far ahead of them, push the shutter and hope they don't change directions before flying into your shot. I tried following them, but they are too far away and they turn into an indistinguishable blur. Yeah, not easy lol. Here are my results.

The last one's color was all messed up so I put it in black and white. A little blurry, but still cool. :)

I'm pretty happy with them! We always have so much fun at the lake. :D

A day at the lake with Jackal!

I LOVE this picture!!!

I'm not trying to sound egotistical, but I took some really awesome pictures of Jackal at the lake on Sunday! :D We had been working hard all weekend and I suggested a break at the lake for some fishing, so we took Jackal and went with a friend. While the guys fished Jackal and I went for a walk. I'm so proud of him because he walks nicely and ignores the people, bikes, kids, scooters, cars, etc. The only thing he whines about is other dogs, but he's not out of control or anything. Whining is just annoying.

To be perfectly honest the reason I don't take Jackal to new places that often is because when he's excited, nervous, bored, etc. he WHINES! So annoying! And true to form he did it that day too, but another thing that made me so proud is that after a while he relaxed and stopped whining. I just have to be patient and wait him out lol. Eventually he'll stop whining altogether (I hope!). So anyway here are the pictures!

Watching a couple of Labs barking behind a fence across the street... and yep, he was whining the whole time, but he stayed so I ignored it.

I LOVE his ears in this shot and thought the perspective was interesting. :)

Stopped on the cool pavilion and I took off his leash and collar since he was confined and couldn't run off after a squirrel lol. We stayed here until he stopped whining.

And was rewarded with this awesome shot!! I love his expression.

Went back to the boys and waded in the lake to cool off a little.

While he was watching some kids get on a boat at a nearby dock I got this great shot of his eye. :D

I like how the sun sort of back lit him in this one. Nice effect I think. :)

I ADORE his expression in this picture!!! He is so cute!

The quality of this shot sucks, but I had to add it. He bowed and I thought "That would have been a cute shot" so I asked him to bow and he did it again lol! I love training my dog and then using what he learns for photo ops!

I was sitting in my camp chair talking to the guys and he eventually settled down and stopped whining. He even got to the point where I could get up and walk off and he was quiet. Yay!

He eventually went to sleep (forgot to add that picture). I was so happy he could learn to relax so well away from home. Such a good boy!

The color was messed up on this one so I changed it to black and white and it turned out awesome!! I still can't believe my boy is four years old already!

And I got a closeup of Mr. Sleepy Eyes.

I'll post the other non dog related pictures tomorrow. So what do you think?