Soapstone Cat

I made this cat in high school art class in the early 1070's. It's out of soapstone and then rubbed with furniture wax.

Mom had it in her house after I got married and moved, but told me to take it a couple of years ago.

View

View from my end of the leash

I used to be able to post to the blog from my blackberry. Hmm, doesn't work any more.

Between Showers

It has been raining off and on all day. Had a bit of a break and the dogs needed to go, so I brought along the little purse camera.

Lots of things in bloom. Crocuses and pear tree has been and gone.

The dogwoods are all blossoming now. Like dabs of bright white paint on a background of growing green.


Bright pink azaleas showing flashes of color.


Don't know what these are, but they are carpeted in patches here and there.


Yeah, and these groupings of yellow too.

Rain and Oak Trees

It's raining ... again. The rain over the past week seems to have washed all of the yellow pollen away, but the last two days has brought something new. The oak tree seeds.



Yup, 'tis the season. Right now they are wet so they don't sweep up. But they also don't get tracked in to the house the way they do when they are dry. Then they get crushed and bring in dust. Or cling to socks and shoelaces and get tracked in whole.

When they are dry, we will have tumbleweeds of oak tree seed pods .. or whatever they are.

Just one of the things to deal with there are over 30 trees on the property :-) At least they give nice, cool shade in the summer.

Tulips

One of the advantages of having the house listed for sale, is that I get to have cut flowers in the house. I love tulips :-)

Great class

Blaze and I had a great class last week and I hope we can have another one tomorrow.

We ran two sequences and the first one just felt SO GOOD. A glimmer of what it will be like when we are more in synch! It didn't start out so hot ... jump, teeter WEEEEEE. Oops, that would be a fly off and certainly not part of our criteria :-)

Start again and we got through the whole thing, including the table, nice turns and the weaves. YEAH!!

Second sequence .... well, good thing we had the run before :-) Could not get the weaves. I could see his face ... it was almost like ... crap, can't slow down, okay, I'll just run by. Hmmm.

I have been working on Blaze's stay at the start the last few weeks. Have been doing Rachel Sanders "Bridging the Gap" without any obstacles and just doing it a few minutes here, a few minutes there. I am seeing an improvement in class. He had his toes splayed out and gripping the sprint turf :-)

Spring!

Wow, a month since I posted last. It's just been crazy. Yeah, normal :-)

The picture is from the many forsythia that have been in bloom for the last couple of weeks. I do like this time of year with all the flowering trees and bushes. So pretty, but too bad it doesn't last.

Just had a very nice jumping session outside. Blaze is really reading my deceleration now, so much so, that if I don't say "jump", he shears off the jump. Which is way better than just taking each jump in full extension!!

He is also reading the rear crosses more than half the time now which is wonderful.

Of course, once we get to class tomorrow night, most of that will fade away, but hopefully some of it will stick.

Have been using one of the Bad Cuz balls outside. It doesn't get soggy, it can be washed off when it gets dirty and I can hold on to it by the feet, so my hands stay relatively clean. Plus, it bounces in all sorts of weird ways which keeps Blaze on his toes :-)