Daisies, mud, and days of note

Early February is a big week for marking several commings and one going in Dover's circle of friends.


Two birthdays on the 5th, including my daughter-in-law, who is responsible for the beautiful daisies along a small patch of shoreline; she and daisies occupy the same section of my mind and affection. Spring will tell if the daisies survived the salt and erosion that came along with Irene. Anther birthday on the 6th. The week almost ends with a birthday on the 11th - the lap on which Dover slept as he made the journey from his birthplace in New Hampshire to our home to the southwest.

Dover comes home!

But getting down to dogs: Mungo, the dog who ate things and who was the scourge of little children with their low lying food, died unexpectedly and precipitously February 9th, 2008, at age 5, of hemangiosarcoma of the spleen. 


Dover was serendipitously born the day after, February 10th; he celebrated his 4th birthday by having a glorious roll in our backyard mud, and Dottie, his partner in mud, known as the Mud Queen, was adopted on February 12. Since she was born on Christmas Day, her adoption day is a particuary significant milestone. 


February 5 - the 12th -  a week to notice!

Dottie does mud.

Little trains

The last Saturday in January I abandoned the doggie and went with a friend down to the Amherst Railway Society Railway Train Show - four huge buildings at the Eastern States Exposition filled with all sizes of trains - tooting, whistling, clacking along on tracks or silently waiting on table tops for a passers by to decide they couldn't do without them. Train cars, engines, scenery - ready made or in kits - and all manner of accessories - bridges, stone walls (painted or ready to paint), trees, tree kits, people, cargo, dogs, and tracks of all sizes. There were simple to complicated layouts; the layout for the Amherst Belt Lines ran an engine with a camera connected to a TV so you could careen down the tracks and enjoy the sights as if you were the engineer. The artistry, imagination, skill, and technical ingenuity that was on display was wonderful.

One layout had circus cars and dragons riding the engines. When I saw the dragons perched on the cars, I thought - this layout has nothing on our living room trains - where lizards ride the locomotives, 

dragons wait for for the local express to come in,

giant burmese pythons lurk atop bridges,

Russian nesting dolls are in charge of the stations,

and Dover, the local godzilla dog, spreads terror among the train masters 

as he hunts for hidden tennis balls along the track side wastelands.