Month: February 2016

  • More Doggie News

    Sally, my regular riding companion, was feeling drained from a long and difficult hike she had done yesterday; so we went for a short, easy bike ride.

    When I got home, I still had plenty of energy to work in the garden. I trimmed back the bougainvillea vines that had frozen a couple of months ago, and weeded, fertilized and watered the fruit trees that are in bloom. We planted an apple tree last summer and the poor little thing is so confused by the warm weather that it never dropped its leaves. I had never heard of evergreen fruit trees but both the apple and one of the nectarine trees never lost their leaves.

    Then it was time to take the girls out for their daily walk.

    Today I taught them to run along with the bike on a leash and off leash. They took to it like ducks to water. They were better on the leash because they kept stopping in front of me when they were loose.

    We went down the abandoned, overgrown portion of Opal that’s almost invisible because of all the bushes growing up through the pavement. At the end of the pavement, I stashed the bike in the bushes and we walked in the wash bottom down below the bank that used to be the old dump back in the “olden days”. I discovered that Universal Rundle, the old toilet factory (long closed and probably moved to China) must have dumped their defectives there. The bank was maybe twenty feet high and several hundred feet long made up of layer upon layer of broken toilets. I also spied a couple of rusty cots that may have come from the old Cone Camp barracks. Back when the road was still intact, it was a mere half a mile or so away. Today one would have to drive about 15 miles to cross the wash on one of the bridges. It's kind of fun to piece together the local history.

    We won’t be able to walk down in the wash with careless abandon much longer as the days and nights are getting warm enough for the snakes to be active. I had both dogs vaccinated for snake bite but the vaccine only lessens the effect of a bite so snakes are still to be avoided. That coupled with the fact that I haven’t been vaccinated.

    My sister took this picture of us yesterday.

    Me & my girls