The Title Well is Temporarily Dry

This is the face of a dog who didn't know when to quit.   It was a good 95 degrees out a couple of days ago and Cocoa here spotted something in the field while I went to pick peaches.   She chased the thing and barked at it and just generally had a fit until she finally collapsed from heat stroke.   Not heat exhaustion, full blown heat stroke.

Now, by the grace of God, I got a hunch to stop picking and head towards the barn to check on her.   I found her, collapsed, panting like mad, about 10 feet from her water bowl and the shade of the open barn where she usually hangs out when we go to the field.   I hurried and hosed her off, brought the water too her, helped her lift her head enough to drink it and then managed to get her up and into the car so I could take her back to the house and get her into the air conditioning.   Unfortunately, her back legs weren't working properly so it was a struggle for me (weighing in at 130-ish pounds) to get her (weighing in at 75-ish pounds) to the car.  

We then called in the vet who told me that I was lucky to have found her when I did because had it been a couple of minutes longer she would've probably died.   He then gave her fluids and basically said that it would be a waiting game from there.   Fortunately, she came out of it and to look at her now you wouldn't be able to tell that she had been so sick just a couple of nights ago.

That particular picture was taken just after she threw up all over my brand new rug, hence the fact that she is laying on the non-slip mat instead of the rug itself.   And for all the animal lovers out there, do not worry, that little box by her neck is not a shock collar.  It's a spray collar that shoots a mist of water or citronella (depending on what you fill it with) everytime she barks, although it was empty on the day of the incident.

I did get a fairly nice (albeit small) bushel of peaches out of that trip.   Tasty too.  

Getting Ready for School

We've hit that time of year again, where it's time to start getting the kids back into school mode.   I don't introduce the workbooks usually until closer to the start of the traditional school year but I do start getting the kids used to the structure and routine that we have about now.   One of the ways I go about doing that is to start to give them short bursts of structured, focused play time.  
Yesterday Oldest spent her time building with some k'nex (and secretly learning how to follow directions from a pictures).   By the time her focused playtime was finished she had already built two butterflies, two fish and a dinosaur and still didn't want to stop.   So she spent about an hour AFTER her focused playtime building a hanglider.

Her dollhouse "father" is taking a harrowing ride.

And in orchard news:

One of our young peach trees "exploded" this year growing up and out and getting a tree full of fruit.  Unfortunately, it had more fruit than it's young little branches could handle and it started to bend almost all the way to the ground.

It's kind of hard to see in the pictures.

I ended up having to throw off about 40-45 peaches to ease the weight on that limb.   I wasn't really happy about that fact but "ya' gotta do what ya' gotta do, ya' know?"    In about an hour I'll be heading out to the bigger, established trees and picking peaches and plums for much of this afternoon.   Should be fun...maybe.  

April showers...

Bring peach blossoms!

I had been outside with the kids all day today playing with squirt guns, chalking up our driveway, watching them ride bikes and scooters and playing with the three puppies we still have here at home.

I had walked by the peach trees several times and even took a little time to study the buds on each one.   That was around noon.  None of them were open but some looked about ready to pop.

It wasn't until it was just getting dusk, with a nice storm rolling in, that I happened to go out to get the dogs inside and noticed this one little peach blossom.  The first of the season.

I loved it so much that I had to get TWO pictures of it.

Our Attempt at Kanzashi Flowers

I got the idea to make kanzashi (that's Japanese for hairpin) using napkins from the filth wizardry blog. I folded two kanzashi flowers, one for each kid, because I knew that their attention wouldn't span across any more than that. Then I put several drops of food coloring into different plastic cups that I'd filled about 1/4 of the way up with water.

Then I sent the troops outside to go nuts. They decided that the kanzashi flowers looked more like lilypads than actual flowers. So they painted them in blues and greens in the spirit of frogs and water.

Meanwhile....the baby attacked a cartoon icon that dared to crash it's plane onto his crib comforter. (I took the toy away and replaced it with a more age appropriate teether after taking this picture).

The resulting kanzashi "lilypads" turned out pretty nice. Traditionally they would have a bead or a button in the center and be fashioned in some way to be put in a woman's hair....BUT, my kids decided to abandon the idea of a beaded center. They (my son especially) would have no part in using them for their hair. Instead they decide to decorate their playhouse with them.

All in all, it was a good, inexpensive, easy way to entertain the kids for about an hour.