Eleven Little Ducks

Hello everybody. This is The Daily Bone and I'm your diligent doggie reporter
Chester L. W. Spaniel. 

Yesterday my ghostwriter went to visit our Oma at the nursing home. (She's doing fine.) Loyal readers will remember that there is a family of ducks living in the enclosed courtyard: one Mama duck and eleven ducklings. Well, now the ducklings are as big as their Mama! All they need are their flight feathers to grow in, and they'll be flying out of there. When ghostwriter and Oma went out to see them, they were happily playing in two little pools with Mama watching them closely. 

Everyone into one pool now! Hurry up!

She decided that all eleven ducklings should be playing together in one pool. Here they are! Eleven— count 'em—eleven ducklings all crowded into the one muddy pool! 

OK children, play nice. 

Now then! Everybody out! Hurry up! Out of the pool!

We shall now stretch our wings and preen our feathers. 

Listen up, children! You are all to sit quietly while I go out for lunch. Bye!

With that, Mama duck flew away. The youngsters did as they were told: they snuggled together and sat quietly. A few even took a nap! 

After about half an hour, Mama duck returned. 

Hey, I'm back!

Now I want you all to go down the walk and visit those people over there!

Ghostwriter and Oma thought that human children would never be that well-behaved!

Five Little Ducks

Running Behind

Greetings loyal readers! This is The Daily Bone and I'm your faithful doggie reporter
Chester L. W. Spaniel. 

My ghostwriter has been working hard all week. Saturday she slept until 10am to catch up on her sleep. Her back hurts and her knees hurt. I don't know if I should be worried or not. 

We missed posting on the first day of summer, and Flower Friday. But here are a few pictures.

Another amazing sunset.

The moon behind the lilac bush.

A tiny, little moth the size of a fingertip.

I spent much of the last few days watching the news with Dad. 

(The humans are crazy … )

Somebody has been eating the hosta leaves.  We haven't caught the culprit yet. Slugs usually eat holes in the middle of the leaf. We think it's the work of some kind of caterpillar.

The daisies are blooming.

Here's the first tiger lily.

The garden Buddha is surrounded by greenery.

I found a ball of bunny fur in my back yard. No sign of the bunny, though. I wonder if our local Cooper's hawk caught it! I haven't seen Mr. C. B. (Cool Beans) Cooper in a while, but I'm sure he's around somewhere. I sure wish he'd catch some squirrels! 

Oh, and as you can see, I got a new chewy bone! Yum!

Meanwhile, at the nursing home, ghostwriter has been watching for chipmunks. She says they scamper all around the little garden and snarf up birdie seeds. Here's one:

A couple days ago, ghostwriter spotted two little twin baby deer eating grass by the back door.

I've sniffed a stinky chipmunk making tracks through my yard lately. Last night I found a mousie. I didn't catch it, though. But I've never seen any deer!

Ryan and Lily came to visit today.

I ran around in the back yard with Ryan, and we found some bugs, and filled the birdie feeders, and checked out the wood pile, and the flowers, and ran and barked and ran some more.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz …

Sky's On Fire

This is a TDB Special Report and I'm your doggie reporter Chester L. W. Spaniel. 

Last night we saw a spectacular sunset!  It started out as just some clouds moving in.

But look what happened next:

Wow!

Of course my ghostwriter has a scientific explanation for why the clouds looked like they were on fire. The fine feathery appearance of the cloud bases is actually something called virga. That is, rain that's falling from the clouds, but evaporating before it hits the ground. In this case, it's being lit up by the red rays of the setting sun.

It seems there's a scientific explanation for everything. Harumph!

Does anybody see a pair of eyes in this picture of the clouds?

Head in the Clouds

Greetings loyal readers. This is The Daily Bone and I'm your earnest doggie reporter 

Chester L. W. Spaniel. 

She did it again! My ghostwriter worked until 3am last night and didn't get home until almost 4am. I'm worried she going to get brain damage from all that lack of sleep! But now she has two days off and nothing else planned, so that's good. In the meantime, I'm going to write The Daily Bone myself.

First of all, it's very steamy, windy, hot outside, kind of like standing in front of a hair dryer! Blah! Many of our beautiful flowers have finished blooming, but some nice new ones are starting to open. 

Some pink roses and milkweed flowers.

Here's an update on the ducklings in the courtyard at Oma's nursing home.

They're getting bigger, and mama duck has been flying up to the roof to watch them. I bet she hopes that they'll soon grow their flight feathers and be able to fly away with her.

And now for the creepy crawly portion of my report. 

No, they're not spiders! 

These are box elder bugs. We saw the mature ones busily working on creating even more babies! 

With a little research, we found out that they're completely harmless and are probably feeding on the big piles of silver maple seeds.

They may be harmless, but doggies and kitties beware: they can get really stinky if you mess with them!

Here's a quick check on what my kitty cat cousins have been doing. 

Xerxes is waiting for attention.

Tibie has a new house mate named Echo.

Hello Echo!

Maddie got groomed. She was not happy.

And now it's time for the science geek portion of my post. These are some interesting clouds we saw a couple days ago. We're pretty sure these are called cirrocumulus strataformis undulatus.

I found a big article about clouds and put a link to it at the end of this post. 

And since ghostwriter always has her head in the clouds, especially when she's sleep deprived, I thought this was an appropriate video:

I Woke Up as a Shlummutz

Here's that link to the clouds article:

cloudatlas