Miss Libby's Roommate

This is Happy the Catahoula cross. The other half of the cross is Redbone/Black & Tan Coonhound, but he came out looking totally Catahoula. He's a big no nonsense hound, and he also has the Catahoula trait of having a very small circle of "approved" people. Catahoulas are the state dog of Louisana and are used for boar and bear hunting. He and Miss Lilah were both acquired from Beagles and Buddies, a dog rescue in South El Monte. Happy has no ears, at least on the inside. Ear infections were beyond treatable when we adopted him, so many, many, dollars later with a specialist in Los Angeles, he has no ear openings, and most of the interior hearing hardware is gone as well. Oddly enough, the "downside" of this surgery appears to be that he can now hear the UPS truck from SIX blocks away instead of the two blocks before surgery. Which means he starts barking sooner... go figure! His other mission in life is to tree feral cats on our fence.

Passed Dogs...

Turbo & Cameo - Black Lab/German Shorthair Pointer cross brother and sister - found them running loose as skeletons out on the Mojave desert... Turbo retrieved, Cameo pointed... both HATED water! Their markings were absolutely identical, but hers were speckled.

The "dainty" Miss Lilah, 100 lb Bluetick Coonhound - or Giant Blue Gascony Hound as we preferred to call her - she was most definitely from the old original French bloodlines.

Rendezvous

I'll try to keep the details short because I have quite a few pictures. We are members of the Breckenridge Buckskinners, and we host a reenactment of the fur trade, or mountain man rendezvous, in April of each year. Here is our camp on one of the seemingly rare days when it's not raining, snowing, or so windy that it blows tents over! This encampment is ten days of hard work with no electricity, no batteries, no matches, no "petroleum based fuels", just the tools any normal person in 1837 would have had... while living off the land as a trapper. We do, however, manage to live quite comfortably - note the WOOD BURNING STOVE peeking out from the right hand corner of the tent - yeah, I can get it up to ninety degrees in there during a snow storm - no problem! Also means I don't have to cook outside!
Here's Duke conducting some gunsmithing business with one of our Scottish shooters...

And here's son-in-law Bob keeping the cooking fire going... on one of those "cold" days...brrrr! But he's from Michigan - he was in heaven!

Shopping!

Rendezvous generally has a "traders' row" where all the vendors sell their wares...

Rendezvous kids lined up for daily awards in shooting, archery, tomahawk throwing...

We also like to do a summer rendezvous - one where we are NOT part of the working crew! This one was near Johnsondale, CA, but sadly, the landowner made other plans for this gorgeous piece of property along the Kern River... This was our camp in 2001 with daughter and son-in-law, and the picture below that is our VIEW from that camp...

Needless to say, I didn't get much accomplished that year - no beading, no shooting, no hikes, no archery, no leatherwork, no fishing, just sat there enjoying the view for ten days... oh yeah, and making sure everyone had breakfast and dinner!

More Shopping!

In 2002 the big McNally fire swept through there literally a couple hours after we broke camp and headed home. Over 150,000 acres were burned. You can see the bare areas in the background, but the fire went through "our meadow" so quickly that although most trees were lost (note all the stumps), some merely had scorched trunks. We returned in following years, but 2005 was our last year, and instead of hundreds of people, there were only fifteen camps. I have to say, I enjoyed that one more than any other rendezvous I had ever been to. We had an entire meadow to ourselves, and it was just incredible. And no matter what, there is always a potluck!

Hmmm... guess I didn't keep that very short, did I!

Special Turtle

Here's our rescued six-inch Western Pond Turtle. A coworker found him (her?) in the middle of a busy road and, not realizing he was a water turtle, scooped him up, took him home, and plopped him into a tankful of soil and offered him veggies which he could not eat without being under water. Most everyone at works knows I love turtles, so guess what! I brought him home and then spent a small fortune on a 100-gallon stock tank, filter, pump, lights, heater, water chemicals, plants, "companion" fish (he can't catch one to save his life), all necessary components to keep a water turtle happy, but it SO doesn't match our colonial bedroom decor!! The first filter setup I tried was guaranteed to process ONE THOUSAND GALLONS OF WATER AN HOUR and therefore our bedroom sounded like the pump room for the Hoover Dam or Shamu's pool. We had to yell to communicate. That filter, with a somewhat smaller pump, promptly wound up outside at Mr. Spoiled Rotten Pet's summer digs, the 150 gallon stock tank. Gotta love those "free" pets. He is quite cute though - must have been someone's pet - he has the traditional but disgusting hole drilled in the edge of his shell for a "leash", has a white scar on his head from some injury, and does have some eyesight problems which necessitates me hand feeding him the freshly homemade 7-ingredient turtle food cubes every other day or so.

Odd Song...

Anyone wondering what the story is behind that Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep song? That song was played CONTINUOUSLY by a radio station where I was living in Piedmont, KS in 1971. I never, ever, heard it again once I left there. However, that darn song has, over the years, popped into my head and stayed there with far more tenacity than "small world", so I decided to hunt it down and add it. Also found the video on You Tube. Wow. I've only run across two other people who remember this song. Enjoy!

Collections

These are my Indiana Glass Hen on Nest dishes. They are about six inches long. The first one, amber, caught my eye a zillion years ago while antiquing in New Jersey with my dear friend Bonnie. Needless to say, I was hooked. I have other brands, but these remain my favorite. I have yet to see a true cobalt blue or black one by Indiana Glass. To display them, hubby built me a backlit "chicken coop" thing in the kitchen out of a wooden packing crate for a refueling probe for an F-100 jet... okay, nevermind, I'll get a picture of it on here soon!

Then, I ran across these little Boyd Salt Chicks and there are over 200 different colors... must pick wisely!!

Miss Libby

Miss Libby is our newest addition - we have fallen in love with hounds as a group, and have placed Bassets on the top of our list!

Our 1966 Aristocrat Lo-Liner

Here's our adorable little trailer named "Chasing Rainbows". She is the flagship of our fleet of three! More on this whole story later... Sisters on the Fly... that should tell you plenty for now!!

My Blog Project

Well, I've been threatening to do a blog, and have finally gotten around to it. Also have one started for hubby... more on that later. Hard to believe that I have VOLUNTARILY added something else to do via computer - like I'm not on one enough already between home and work?! I have so enjoyed everyone else's blogs, and perhaps with this blog I can keep friends and family a little more up to date than I have been able to in the past... let's see... I'm pretty sure I can see my unmailed Christmas letter from two... or is it three... years ago right over there on that table... yeah, this has got to be better!