Spring

A little madness in the spring is wholesome even for the king. ~Emily Dickinson

Rabbits and frogs a-leaping - the daffodils are waking up and the johnny jump-ups are jumping up. Must be time to spring forth!

Not a minute too soon for Mrs. Rabbit, either. Looks like the kids are ready for spring break too.

My other blog is a typepad - click here.

Almost Spring

Inspired by Lily the Bear's den cam. To read more, here's my post on Tinkerings.

Dreaming of Spring

This blog has been napping without pictures for a long time... Hibernating...

While I've been dreaming winter dreams... of spring. After so long without any pictures over here, I decided to try planting something here again just to see if it would grow...

My other blog is a typepad. You can find more of my tinkerings over there.

~Sweet dreams~

Moving!!!

If you just found my old blog, thru my new one - feel free to look back thru my archives for a few laughs! and if you found this ol' blog first, when you're done laughing at my misadventures in blogland here, come see what I've been up to lately in the new place (click on the url below here)
Hi, everybody! I've moved to http://tinkerart.typepad.com/tinker_art/

Hope I see you over there!

Time Is On Her Side

Happy 175th Birthday, Harriet! In case you're wondering who Harriet IS, and how on earth she could possibly be 175 years old, check out the news story at http://news.com/s/nm/20051115/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_australia_tortoise_1

She doesn't look a day over 110!

How amazing would it be to live 175 years? (supposing you could at least keep up some sort of decent appearance and good health!) Imagine what life was like 175 years ago...actually living in a Jane Austen novel setting (although empire-waist dresses aren't my favorite style for myself!) and then moving on up through all the other changes in our history...

Whenever I start thinking about things like this, it just makes me incredibly grateful for everyday things like - electricity; phones; cars; jeans & sneakers; heck, running water and toilet paper! Is that why everyone looked so serious in those early daguerrotypes? I know if I lacked even 2 of those items in my life, I certainly wouldn't have been smiling ear to ear! Actually the lack of even one of these makes me not too happy....

Do you know how behind I'm always running even WITH a car & all these other amenities - if I had to get somewhere by horse & buggy I'd end up like 2 days late! Without phones to keep giving updates as to my ETA, they'd probably just give up and have a memorial service for me figuring I'd been attacked along the way...

At least back then, I'd probably be much more adept at home crafts like knitting & crocheting - without all the distractions of the phone, the Internets, the TV, radio and no fast & easy way to get to the general store, what else would I do every night?

As it is now, I'm going to have to live at least another 120-something years of practice to be any good at knitting & crocheting!

Cheers

It's that time of year when the pyracantha bushes on our hill are loaded with their red berries. Actually our particular bushes are much closer to being pyracantha trees. My mother-in-law planted them nearly 40 years ago and I'm sure the birds are glad she did. I probably wouldn't have planted them - or at least, not nearly so many of them, because they're so spikey, and the berries aren't edible for people. But the birdies? They love 'em - apparently, according to my hubby, the amateur naturalist, because they become intoxicated by them! Which explains all the wobbly robins. Whew! it's not the avian flu! The rockin' robins have just been partying like little rockstars! Par-Tay!

Yes, that's right - we're contributing to the delinquency of birds, here, at Tinker's Place. It's open bar on our hillside! Part of me finds this hysterically funny; yet, the responsible Mom side of me thinks - "Who's checking ID's out there? Are there little underage birds out there? Are they flying under the influence?" According to my birdwatching husband though, they're just having a bit of harmless fun.

Now I have one more incentive to set up my backyard cafe area soon, so at least they'll have somewhere to sober up, before flying south!

Update: Checked out pyracantha on the Internet - apparently pyracantha berries (at least according to one article) are edible - you can make a jelly out of them....somehow I don't totally trust that, though. Don't they always tell you to avoid the red berries if you're trying to survive in the woods? In another article from National Geographic, a writer talked about watching scores of robins and other birds excitedly stripping all the berries off a pyracantha shrub in short time. He didn't say anything about them becoming drunk...but maybe he was trying to shield their reputations! It's funny, all these years I've watched them going after these berries, but I always thought it was just sort of like me going after chocolate-covered strawberries at a buffet....mmm...chocolate. Anyway, if anyone else knows what the story is with pyracantha, I'd be interested in hearing about it!

Bunny Update

After much Internet research last night, a tummy massage and offering of freshly picked treats (a sprig of parsley, sage, and a grape leaf), Mr. Peaches is back on his feed/feet! Yeah!

We lost a dearly loved lop-ear bunny, Brownie, to a one-day bout of anorexia of unknown causes (most likely a hairball or blockage) a few years ago, so I was relieved to the utmost, to see Peaches bouncing off the walls, of the bathroom again, in his "I'm so happy to see you" morning dance. I had felt so bad when Brownie died, and found out afterward that not eating/eliminating for as short a time as 12 hours could be life-threatening to bunnies. Our previous rabbit, Falina, had lived to be a healthy old lady bunny, on virtually the same diet, never missing a meal; so I had no clue.

My apologies to any non-rabbit fans out there for what must seem a boring post - but I felt I needed to offer this cautionary tale to any current or prospective bunny people out there, in gratitude for Peaches' good health & in memory of our sweet Brownie boy. If you're thinking of getting a bunny as a pet though - please think about it THOROUGHLY - they're NOT the easiest pet, they can chew furniture, electrical cords, etc. I'm sure this is why our bunnies got dumped on us. No, domestic bunnies don't just survive in the wild, the way your average cottontail does - they don't have the social connections to join a burrow for one thing - rabbits have their own social order. Please don't get your child a live Easter bunny or any other pet, then drop him in the wild! I have no more room at the inn to take any more bunnies or any other critters in - so please don't ask me to take them in, either! Ok, I'll step down from the soapbox now, before I fall off or they bring out the hook to pull me off.

Yes, I realize how nutty our life must sound to others; keep in mind, apart from the aquarium residents, we didn't buy or seek out any of our menagerie - they just show up, & the ones that stay, do so because no one answers our "found pet" or subsequent "free to good home" ads.

The bun's one up on the cats & dogs, by helping pay for his keep - he acts as a built-in source of compost/fertilizer for the garden. He's also been helpful by posing as a bunny model for my artwork. Beatrix Potter had an actual Peter Rabbit that she kept inside and walked on a leash - so we do have a literary/artistic precedent for our eccentric lifestyle!

I promise a more entertaining post is coming soon. Till then, G'night everyone; it's time for me to put on my bunny slippers and go to bed.