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On yoga night, this little orphan was left on our doorstep.
Frog Dog Pose
Here he joined us for yoga, demonstrating what one of the evening’s yogis dubbed as “frog dog.” He is also quite accomplished at savasana. Though you can’t see it in the picture, he is solid black except for the tiniest splotch of white at the very tip of his tail. Last night he demonstrated another one of his amazing talents: yodeling.
Periodically through the night, we awoke to hear him serenading us with,
“Yep! Yep! Yep! Noooooooooooooooooooo! Nooooooooooooo! Nooooooooooo!”
Is there a kind soul out there willing to give a loving home to this sweet puppy? (Please? I’ve tried pawning him off on everybody and still no takers yet.)
I’ve raised two puppies in the last year. With Project Moo-Moo underway, I am all out of puppy time. This guy is really, really cute though! And he won’t cry sweetly serenade you in the evening if you share your bed with him.
~~@~~
In other news, a new family has moved in to the Angry Russian’s birdhouses. The Angry Russian transformed into the Very Delighted Russian when I showed him.
Robin eggs in Angry Russian’s Birdhouse
…and speaking of eggs, Kiki has dethroned P. Recious Rainbow and installed herself on The Nest as Kiki Queen Mother. Either she is delusional or it is very close to hatching time, because she’s not budging. Not even for food. Yesterday, after a tremendous amount of coaxing, begging, and singing on my part, she finally stood up enough for me to look at her eggs and see that no eggs had hatched just yet.
This was the song that finally got her up:
Kiki, Kiki you’re so pretty,
Let me see your eggs.
Kiki, Kiki you’re so pretty,
Stand up on your legs.
And! Here’s the melody for the first two lines…just in case you are ever faced with this situation and are in emergency need of a song:
~~@~~
And last, but not least, I’m still going flower crazy.
bedraggled, but still beautiful
How I would love to tell you that life has been all roses and frolicking this week.
That is but a fraction of the story.
In the last couple days alone the farm has seen accidents, injuries, delusion, anger, bloodshed, exile, and multiple deaths of various creatures. If it sounds like Lord of the Flies, it has been to some extent. In fact I believe one creature’s tailless corpse may still be wedged between two bricks in the sunroom now that I think about it. Yip, Moon Pie, and Nickel are savages in their play.
Still, we haven chosen to celebrate in spite of these things.
The voices of three generations rose up to sing gospel hymns and children’s songs.
We honored mothers.
We created new things from old things.
We fixed broken things.
We marveled.
We broke things that really needed fixing.
We recoiled in horror.
We stared too long at train-wrecks.
We cried.
We simultaneously understood and didn’t understand.
We accepted that this is all part of the giant whirlygig.
…and then we went back to the roses and frolicking.
Help us to be ever faithful gardeners of the spirit, who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth, and without light, nothing flowers.
–Mary Sarton
A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust.
–Gertrude Jeckyll
If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.
–Buddha
Earth laughs in flowers.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
Flowers don’t worry about how they’re going to bloom. They just open up and turn toward the light and that makes them beautiful.
–Jim Carrey
When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.
–Chinese Proverb
But he who dares not grasp the thorn
Should never crave the rose.
–Anne Bronte
a sweet gift from a little friend
In case you don’t know yet, that’s my doggy, Moon Pie.
Let’s geek out for a bit, shall we? I filmed the above video today. Moo Moo is three months into her training. She is doing better with action words than nominals. Her repertoire of action words includes: Sit, Down, Off, Come here, Get, Outside, Touch, Drop it, No, and Listen. She’s currently working on Stay. Her nominals include: Ball, Panda, Yip, Nickel, Kitty, and Squirrel.
Due of my own training, my approach with Moo Moo relies heavily on behaviorial theory with a linguistic spin. 
The only other book I’ve found about dogs recently that I liked was a work of fiction — Nora Robert’s The Search. The blogger behind roughwighting.net recommended it. I haven’t read Nora Roberts in years, so I was due for one. The woman has written about a bajillion books and her writing style has definitely evolved since the last one I read. Romance isn’t my usual reading fare, nor is it my go-to genre for dog information, but I felt strangely compelled. This was no ordinary romance novel. There were serial killers, murders, a bit of mystery, and lots of dog training tid-bits. The romance seemed ancillary, though there were steamy parts. Table sex was involved. It was a good read on all counts.
Back to Moo Moo. More videos of Moo-Moo’s genius may be found in the following posts. I highly recommend viewing them at work due to their Power of Kawaii (Nittono, Fukushima, Yano, & Moriya, 2012), which improves your productivity. More information on that following the reference. 
This Week on the Farm:Dreams, Rescues, Attacks
This Week on the Farm: Project Moon Pie
Just Another Day at the Office
Reference
Keep close to Nature’s heart…
Wash your spirit clean.
–John Muir
clover
Nickel Adorned with Hearts
Tree root heart
Moon Pie Heart
Heart Strings, tugged once daily
dishing out the dirt
El-D took issue with last week’s post in which I highlighted the rationale behind “His & Hers” seedlings.
It seems I got something wrong.
It happens.
Apparently, this happens a lot.
I confess, not too long ago I wrote about his awesome Amish Friendship Rolls. Afterwards, Dear Readers, I was informed that I had deceived you. Please realize this wasn’t an intentional deceit. He made Amish Friendship Bread the week before the roll incident. I saw warm steam rising from fresh baked goods and I went crazy. In my feeding frenzy I shouted the good news of great joy from my bloggy version of the highest mountain.
Except I shouted it all wrong.
They were yeast rolls people. YEAST ROLLS!
I’m sorry if the error offends your sensibilities.
And here I stand wrong again.
El-D does not, in fact, require “an intricate mix of dirt samples taken from various points in the yard.”
He informed me that the dirt he used in this year’s seedlings came from the yard of our OLD HOUSE, as in the house we moved out of when we moved to the farm last June.
During the chaos of moving somehow this detail managed to escape my radar.
That means that all last summer as I was writing about stuff like the practice of letting go, I had no idea the dirt from my former life had followed me to this one.
When I heard this I had a momentary existential crisis: Is my whole life a lie?
Then after meditating on it awhile I recalled the words of a great yogi:
I have affixed to me the dust and dirt of countless ages…who am I to disturb history?
–PigPen
…and now I’m happily back to everything being right-wrong.
Here’s what was on last week’s menu. You can following the links (in bold) for recipes.
quinoa and avocado salad
Wednesday
Breakfast: Vanilla yogurt on toffee granola topped with fresh raspberries, and tea. As far as nutrition, we’ve got calcium, fiber, iron and B-12. The raspberries add a little extra fiber, vitamin C and a whole lot of yum.
Lunch: Arugula salad (picked fresh!) with oil and vinegar dressing, flatbread, and an orange.
Dinner: Ok, I admit this is an odd combination — corn chips and guacamole and a side of grilled asparagus.
Thursday
Breakfast: Vanilla yogurt on toffee granola topped with fresh raspberries, and tea.
Lunch: Annie’s Shells & Cheese with fresh steamed broccoli.
Snack: Rice pudding
Dinner: a 3-ounce fillet of salmon, sauteed squash, and 1/2 an avocado. Yes, I ate fish. This was the main source of my B-12 this week.
Friday
Breakfast: Vanilla yogurt on toffee granola topped with fresh raspberries, and tea.
Lunch: Vanilla yogurt on toffee granola topped with fresh raspberries. Again! It’s that good.
Dinner: Eggplant parmesean and a salad.
Dessert: Eggless chocolate cake.
Saturday
Breakfast: Leftover chocolate cake and tea.
Lunch: Homemade yeast roll drenched in butter and honey. I know — sugar, sugar, sugar!
Dinner: Blackbean tortillas, salsa, cheese dip and salad.
Dessert: Eggless apple cake.
Sunday
Breakfast: Leftover apple cake.
Lunch: El-D’s amazing vegetable soup with yeast rolls.
Dinner: Sharky’s for El-D’s birthday. I had fried oysters, a bit of fried fish, and edamame and corn succotash.
Monday
Breakfast: Vanilla yogurt on toffee granola topped with fresh raspberries.
Lunch: Quinoa and avocado salad.
Dinner: El-D’s amazing vegetable soup.
Tuesday
Breakfast: Yeast roll with butter and honey.
Lunch: Bombay House vegetarian lunch buffet. I treated myself to my comfort food.
Dinner: Mushroom stroganoff and roasted cauliflower.
Wednesday
Breakfast: Peanutbutter on crackers.
Lunch: Popcorn sprinkled with nutritional yeast.
Dinner: Not sure yet.
in bloom
I started a garden journal this week to help me learn the names of everything blooming in the yard so I can get a sense of when, where, and what action is happening.
tulip, daffodils, & weeping forsythia
I don’t know what the thing with the pink blooms is yet. Help please?
violets
crab apple blossoms
I had no idea the crab apple trees offered a double feature — white flowers in April, little red apples in August.
Wild Life
I have finally managed to capture photo evidence of my “pterodactyl.” Granted, the heron is not particularly lizard-like, but he’s huge and prehistoric-looking, which has earned him the name “Pterry.” Pterry often visits the yard outside my office window in the morning. The feathered fiend tends to emerge in slow motion into my peripheral vision while I am busily typing at something. As soon as I make a move for the camera he stretches his gigantic wings and flaps about 10 times before managing to lift his forever long legs off the ground. The sight is so mesmerizing I usually forget I’m holding a camera as I watch him. When I finally remember to snap pictures, they turn out about as fuzzy as a dream in fading memory.
The other day I spotted Pterry wandering near the koi pond. Nickel and I both went stalking after him. I’m not sure what Nickel was thinking - the bird is nearly as tall as I am. So far this is the best picture I’ve snapped of Pterry. I am hoping he stays away from the koi.
Pterry the Pterodactyl
A couple days ago I also captured a picture of my first noncaptive raccoon. He was wandering around the neighbor’s front yard. In this picture he was looking for the source of the all the kissing and whistling sounds.
Projects
We have a new fence! The Angry Russian made it curvy and El-D hand-cut every one of the 134 pickets.
To celebrate its completion, Lady Bug (Nilla Bean’s sister) came over last week for a play date with Moon Pie. They romped around all day and wore each other out.
Lady Bug and Moon Pie
Last weekend we planted wave one of the seedlings – his and hers:
His Method: Dixie Cups on a Teacart
Why his and hers?
Because things must be done a certain way.
He prefers little cups he can write on with a sharpie.
She wanted to reuse the 2-liter bottles before sending them to be recycled.
He requires an intricate mix of dirt samples taken from various points in the yard.
She’s good with store bought potting soil mixed with a bit of compost.
He wanted squash, okra, and tomatos.
She is more interested in growing radishes, herbs, and flowers.
He likes to plant any old seed packet from years gone by.
She likes heirlooms and fancy things.
Only one week later, things are already sprouting: squash, marigolds, petunias, radishes, and beans.
Her Method: Cut 2-liter bottles with printed labels
xx
dandelion lawn
white fluff drifts across blossoms
the wind makes a wish
–Lunar Euphoria
