big birthday wayback machine

Today is Hank and Maggie’s 14th birthday! Instead of paying attention in a post-lunch work meeting, I did a little browsing through some old pictures to remind myself how tiny they used to be. And as soon as this meeting is done, I’ll go back out to give them some chin and ear scritchies and a few birthday treats :-).

Spring 2000: Maggie and Hank on the day they picked us out, taking a quick nap after romping in the grass with their brothers and sisters.

Maggie: “I’m ready for my close up”

Summer 2000: Hank and Maggie and their favorite toys (as long as they lasted!)

Summer 2000: Hank in mid-romp

14 years later, May 8 2014: Birthday evening naps, because being 14 is hard!

neighbor of the week: a rushing rose

Out on a walk I just saw the first rose of the year blooming in the neighborhood — but at least it waited until May! :-) I’m guessing it was triggered by the couple of hot days we just had, earlier than usual for the season, or maybe it was just in a hurry to be first. Probably by this time next week there’ll be roses everywhere.

for joni mitchell

There’s an abandoned parking lot along the river path not too far from our house. It’s been unused for as long as we’ve lived in the neighborhood, as far as I can tell.

Over the last few years, I’ve noticed that saplings have started forcing their way through the seams in the pavement. Give it 50 years and maybe it’ll be a forest again. For now anyway, it’s a mossy wonderland. So at least sometimes, paving paradise doesn’t have to last, and you don’t even have to go to the “tree museum” to see ’em; good news for Joni Mitchell :-).

neighbor of the week: ready for mardi gras

You may remember this little guy (here too), who lives along the river walk to downtown. Today he’s wearing his best Mardi Gras finery.

snow!

We’ve had our biggest snow in years this week, since 2008 actually. It was 3 days of new snow every day, which I gamely swept off the side walk and porch each morning. (Not shoveled, since it snows so rarely we don’t even have a snowshovel :-)

Here’s the garden in winter — say, wasn’t that a classic 1968 movie starring Kale Hepburn and Parsely O’Toole? (sorry, couldn’t help myself!)

I didn’t get any pictures during that 2008 storm, but  I did back in 2007 when the puppies were younger and had more energy to go romping in the snow.