After a winter that seemed like it would never end, it did. But we skipped spring here and went straight to summer. A couple of weeks ago our highs were in the 30s and we woke up to new snow three days in that week. Now we’re in the 70s and 80s. The trees all look like very early spring, just beginning to bud out, but the temperatures say “summer.” But the dogs aren’t complaining. That’s blind Allie last week finally getting to lay out on (greenish) grass in warm sunshine again.
Here’s blind Louie, who was snoozing nearby:
One reason the grass looks so sparse is because we haven’t had any precipitation in two weeks — it’s unusually dry. We got a little moisture starting last night so things will begin greening up.
While the warm temperatures mean lazy days outdoors for the dogs, for their people the change means a big ramp-up in farm chores … like cleaning out the barn and corrals and spreading manure. Alayne took this photo a few days ago of me spreading manure on one of our hayfields:
See what I mean about the trees? It was 80° that day.
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If you had made comments on the blog in recent months and hadn’t seen them posted, well, I have to apologize. I discovered last week that WordPress was just randomly grabbing perfectly legitimate comments from longtime blog readers and dumping them into a spam folder. I wasn’t getting any notifications about the comments and they weren’t coming in to my email inbox as blog comments regularly do, so I never saw them and thus didn’t realize they were there. Once I discovered this, I went back through the past couple of months and moved them out of spam and “approved” them for posting. I’m sorry about that.
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Shelter Challenge Is Back
After several months of retooling, the Shelter Challenge is back with a new contest. This is a “beta” round and runs only until May 17th. You can vote here: ShelterChallenge.com. For people who rely on these blog posts for the link … please just bookmark the site the next time you logon. We’re only blogging once a week right now and you can vote every day, so the best way to keep that link handy is to save it to your favorites.
“Beta” means the new system is still being refined and tested. I was able to vote today without a problem. However, please note: I cannot fix anything with the Shelter Challenge. I have no “inside information” or special access to the people who run it. They don’t respond to our emails either. If you encounter an issue or some frustration, I cannot help resolve it. Hopefully this new system will be better than the one they had last year that proved so frustrating to so many of us.
Glad to see the doggies finally enjoying the sun! You should have lots of photos now to post. The weather WAS odd this year. I see what you mean with the trees. I’m not a gardener, but had my spring flowers blooming the same time as my summer plants were coming up. Never saw that before! I’m glad you realized about the posts. I had made several comments – or I thought I did – and didn’t see them and assumed that I hadn’t clicked or did something else wrong so never brought it up. Love seeing the napping dogs in the sun!
“Relaxing” Dog Farm in full swing!
Same scenario in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Well, without the dogs or the beautiful hills or the farm equipment.
The dogs are very intent upon getting close to nature!
Grass is the same back home. Not much rain either.
Ah, the good life! Im sure the bouquet of manure just adds to the dogs’ bliss. I don’t envy you all those farm chores, but at least you get to be outside enjoying nature.
Long awaiting Spring/Summer, warm grass, warm fur….warming my heart.
What happened to the horses when you moved from Montana to Vermont?
Susan, we brought them with us, though we only have a few left at this point.