When it rains all morning,
there's only one thing the dog wants to do.
Rainy Tuesday
the dog
Wet Dog
Our pup is not a fan of baths.
Monday
Changes Waiting
Though it's hard to comprehend how we've reached this moment so quickly, the Girl is just shy of six feet tall and wrapping up her junior year of high school, and the Boy has crossed the five-foot barrier and will soon be twelve. The changes coming are enormous: L will be making final decisions about college over the summer, and the Boy will soon have a full-blown, empty-leg, teenage boy appetite.
We got a hint of that this evening.
After eating a full meal, he came back downstairs hunting for food no more than five minutes later.
"I'm still hungry," he declared. So he got a piece of yesterday's leftover pizza out and warmed it up.
Clover smelled it, sensed a treat, and followed him into Papa's room (it will always be "Papa's room"), and sat down like the best behaved pup in the world.
Autumn Walk
When I took the dog out for a walk tonight, I forgot for the who-knows-how-many-th time about the Halloween house up the street from us. The kitsch-fill yard that amounts to little more than hundreds (no exaggeration) of plastic Halloween characters all lined up shoulder to shoulder. There's no thought to it, no attempt to create any kind of little scenes throughout the yard -- just a bunch of plastic all lined up.
And it scares poor Clover to death every time we walk by there and one of the animated ones starts moving and talking.
Black Balsam Knob
We took a quick drive (well, not quick for the Boy -- it was two hours) over to the Blue Ridge Parkway for an afternoon hike today. The Girl stayed home because she had volleyball practice -- open gym for the club team she's signed with this year. And she doesn't really like hiking. And she's almost 16 and is starting to have her own life -- though it pains me to admit it. How did she get so big so fast?
Be all that as it may, we headed a little further south on the Parkway than we usually go and ended up hiking along ridges with gorgeous views.
K took some pictures with her phone.
We both took some pictures with the Nikon.
And we arrived home exhausted and hungry.
"We really should do this more often," K said.
Evening Walk
We've overseeded our front yard and seeded our backyard. Not "overseeded" because after we started having our yard sprayed for weeks regularly, everything in the backyard died. Because it was all weeds.
This means, though, that our dear Clover is an inside dog for the next month or so as everything takes root and grows. So we take her on a lot more walks, which means we get to see lovely fall scenes like this.
Sunset While Walking the Dog
First, this, of course -- two weeks to go. We're all getting excited.
Then this -- a simple image from this evening's walk with the dog.
Evening on the Deck
Washing Clover
