Rainbow Bridge Remembrance Day (and other stuff)

Greetings friends and fans. This is The Daily Bone and I'm your doggie reporter 

Chester L. W. Spaniel.

Today I'd like to pay tribute to our angels. My ghostwriter wishes she had taken more pictures of them years ago. But here's one of our favorites that has all three of our angel doggies:

On the left is our Patron Saint Charisma, whom I never had the honor of meeting. She was adopted when she was about a year old. (Her previous family didn't want her anymore because she got car sick.) She helped raise the four siblings and always knew when somebody needed extra doggie hugs and kisses. Ghostwriter says that she could call any one of the siblings, and Charisma would come running.

On the right is Miss Ginger. She was the queen of the house and a real spitfire. She would lead the way on walks and loved to chase bunnies. She had a beautiful singing voice and provided the music at every meal. Miss Ginger lost her sight at age 7 because of juvenile cataracts and then glaucoma, but that never slowed her down a bit. She always knew where she was going by following her nose.

In the center, long time readers will remember my esteemed colleague Joseph (Joey dog) Spaniel who crossed the Bridge in July of 2016. We still miss him like crazy! He was an avid food watcher, and my partner in the Double Doggie Homeland Security System. He particularly loved to eat pears from the tree in the back yard. He was my best bud!

We never forget our angels!

In other news, it was extremely hot and windy outside today!
Kind of like standing in front of a hair dryer. Whew!

Lots of big branches from the big silver maple tree got blown to the ground. We added them to the pile of lilac branches and sticks. 

Now I have so many sticks that I'm thinking about giving them away free!

My next report is about the Miscellaneous Mousie Mob.

Mousies! Grrrrrr!

Yes, this is the time of year when they begin invading our garage in search of food and shelter. We have a big plastic container that we keep birdie seeds in. Somebody chewed a hole in the top of it!

Here's a close-up of the hole. Can you see the tiny bite marks? 

I have suspected for the last week or so that the Miscellaneous Mouse Mob has been hiding somewhere in the garage. I've been sniffing around under Dad's stuff and knocking over fishing poles and tools and boxes in an effort to find them.

Last night ghostwriter set up two mousie snap traps. This morning, both traps were snapped, but no mousie was caught in them. She's going to set them up one more night and then switch to sticky traps. Maybe Dad should find something else to store the birdie seeds in too. 

Sooner or later, I'll get those mousies.

Meanwhile, my kitty cat cousin Hannibal actually caught a mousie at his house. His human took it from him and put it in a jar before letting it go outside.

I heard he's is quite smug about this.

But I'm pretty sure I can handle the Mousie Mob in my garage.

Oh, and my ghostwriter is finally over that awful cold she had, and is going back to work tomorrow. She even took me for a short walk this evening. Thank you for all the get well wishes! And now, I do believe it's bed time.

Good night!

Happy Doggie Day

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

My ghostwriter came down with a horrible, terrible, nasty, rotten cold yesterday. She had to do something she would never ever want to actually do: call in sick on the weekend. She feels bad that because she's sick, somebody else was probably called in to cover for her and got their weekend ruined. She spent most of yesterday moping around, coughing, and sniffling. This morning she was a little better, but still super tired with ribs aching from coughing. She says, though, if she had gone into work and passed this virus on to her little old people at the nursing home, it would probably kill them, or at least land them in the hospital. I think she did the right thing. I hope she doesn't get in trouble for it.

So I went out in the back yard with Dad and helped him cut down some branches from the lilac bush. 

Look look look lookie look! (Do you see me behind the sticks?) Wow! Here are some prime sticks for any doggie to chew, play with, or fetch (if you cut them shorter.) They all have rough, peeling bark, and lots of interesting insect holes in them, along with scraggly half dead branches growing out of the ends. Despite of the insect damage, the wood is very strong and heavy, and should provide years of enjoyment. When you're done playing with them, you can toss them into the fireplace. I usually charge the low, low price of two yum yum doggie treats each. But in honor of National Doggie Day, for one day only, they're buy one, get one free! But you have to hurry. Dad will be putting them through the screaming dragon, noisy, screeching, scary machine stick shredding monster thing soon and turning them all into mulch. 

That's it for today. We hope you all have a great time on National Doggie Day! My ghostwriter will be going to bed early tonight and hopefully will feel a lot better tomorrow.

Summer Time Report

Greetings friends and fans! This is The Daily Bone and I'm your diligent, wide awake, observant, and scientific doggie reporter Chester L. W. Spaniel.

As my good friend Cobi said in her comment on my last post, it's been 11 (now 12) days since I wrote anything. (Sorry, my ghostwriter has been extremely busy lately.) So today I have a comprehensive report on everything happening in my yard.

This is a great time of year in Western New York! Summer is in full bloom and noisy bugs are making a racket. There's a cricket symphony every night. The katydids are starting to make noise too. In the daytime, cicadas are singing in the tree tops. The other day, ghostwriter was doing a little gardening when one flew out of the tree, swooped down, binged her on the head, and then landed on a flower. She caught it and brought it inside for a photo session. 

Wow! That's a big bug, but it's completely harmless.

Now here's an evil looking bug that we should be sure to stay away from. This horsefly was on the outside of the window, thank goodness!

Here's a nice moth sitting on a leaf:

My ghostwriter found these two beautiful bumblebees on the pear tree after a heavy rain.

She says there aren't enough bumblebees around this summer. I wonder where they went?

The gigantic hydrangea bush is still blooming. Now the flowers are starting to turn pink.

With all the rain we've been having, mushrooms are popping up everywhere.

The garden Buddha has been getting showered with flowers.

Baby sparrows have been visiting our window birdie feeder. This one said his name is Mortimer Seedcruncher IV. Maybe he'll grow up and take over Sparrows Inc. like his namesake. But he has an army of cousins to compete with for that title!

You'd better be careful, birdies. We saw Cool Beans Cooper the hawk zoom by this morning!

Birdies are always up to some kind of drama!

We've had some very changeable weather lately with thunderstorms, and flood warnings. But most of the time, the sky is filled with big puffy clouds that sometimes look kind of like our angel doggies and kitties checking in on us. Do you see any of your angels in these pictures?

Sometimes it's hazy too. This is actually a picture of the sun going down.

Of course we have a scientific explanation regarding the haziness in our sky lately.

ghostly_white_sky_in_upstate_ny_comes_from_california_wildfires

The days have been getting shorter, and the nights are getting cooler. Now here's the moon!
(Hello Princess!)

My crazy ghostwriter let someone talk her into working from 11pm until 3am tonight. I could never do that. Nope! No way! I need my 16 or 17 hours of sleep. Good night!

16 or 17 Hours of Sleep

Flower Friday and Mathematics

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

Today is Flower Friday. So I have some pictures of the amazing hydrangea bush in the front yard. This huge plant was once a little stick that one of the siblings bought at a flea market around 20 years ago. 

Since then, it's grown into a massive bush that produces hundreds of white flowers that all kinds of insects just love. Everything from flies, and bees, to wasps, and butterflies buzz around it all day long. I imagine moths visit it at night too. 

As the summer progresses, the flowers on this bush slowly turn color from white to pink and then purple. We'll show you more photos later in the season. 

Now for something totally perplexing: my ghostwriter stumbled across a video that's based on mathematics, fractals to be precise, and a special equation that results in amazingly beautiful patterns when the solution is put on a graph and then loaded into a computer. But after watching it a few times, we thought it kind of looked like endless flowers. 

(I think the best thing about it is that it's set to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Hi Princess.)  

For the best effect, watch this video in a dark room, and set it on full screen. 

Mandelbrot Zoom

If you want a scientific explanation, please check out this video: 

Explanation