The Rusty Nail

It’s about a 15 hour drive, without Ben, in each direction.  We have to board him for a few nights.  As much as we love him, there aren’t a whole bunch of  motels or B&Bs in Minnesota that welcome dogs, crate or not.  On the other hand, he spent his first seven months in a kennel before we adopted him as a “rescue” dog.  Hopefully, he won’t think we’re abandoning him.

If we’re lucky, we can do this drive in a single day, each way.  The last time we tried it, it was fine on the way out, but we got detoured all the way down to I-74 on the way back.  I have no issues with Bettendorf, but I would have preferred to avoid Quad Cities at evening rush hour.  Let’s hope that doesn’t happen again.

Our cats will be fine, given clean litter boxes, and plenty of kibble and water.  With the dog gone, they’ll have free reign over the house.  The tabby bosses around the Siamese, but he gets his passive-aggressive revenge.  Our cats hate each other, but they have carved out their territories.

I must remember to bring skeeter repellent, and use it.  Our East Coast mosquitos leave bites that itch for a couple of days.  The state bird of Minnesota leaves welts that last for two weeks.  It’s not fun trying your best to not scratch your bum in public.

This week, I successfully liberated a couple of tree seedlings, and potted them in 3 gallon pots.  I’m pretty sure that one is some sort of spruce, possibly Alberta, but we won’t know for sure until it gets to be about a foot tall.  The other one is the one I’m insanely proud of — it’s a yellow poplar.  Some people call those tulip trees, or tulip poplars.  It’s a foot tall, and didn’t skip a beat when I troweled it out of the middle of a clump of irises.

I have no idea where the seed that grew into it came from, because unless there are a few lurking in the woods behind our house, none of our neighbors has one.  Yellow poplars are fantastic trees.  Sure, they can eventually grow really tall, but they grow straight as an arrow, and if you ever have to fell one, it makes great firewood and birdhouses.  I’m not set up to make furniture out of it.  Our sassafras trees make for really lousy firewood, unless you think flying sparks are the bees’ knees.  The sassafras trees are good for making filé, though.

What will not transplant well are hollies.  They keep popping up in odd places, but nobody around here grows them.  They take a nosedive after being transplanted.

Hate:

• Worchestershire sauce
• peach ice cream (although I love fresh peaches)
• Brussels sprouts (I ate enough of those to last a lifetime, before I was four)

No, this is not a political announcement.  We ran errands this morning, which included a stop at our local nursery.  I bought a ‘President Grevy’ hybrid Syringa (lilac).  It’s a white one; the buds are light pink, but they open white.  I think it’s mistagged, since pictures of this hybrid show it to be blueish-purple.  The one we bought really is white.  We have a run-of-the-mill Syringa vulgaris, that is . . . well . . . lilac purple, which we grew from seed about 10 years ago.  The purple one has moved with us across several states, but I really wanted a white one for the corner where we took out the birch tree.  Southerners can laugh all they want about our winter snow, but at least we don’t have to grow allegedly heat-tolerant “Miss Kim” lilacs — or none.  Any old Syringa will do, hybrid or species.

We also got our dog booked for boarding at our vet’s place for a few days.  He’s licensed and up to date on all his shots, and since he’s a “client” of theirs, they don’t require kennel cough immunization prior to boarding.  They’ve got all his records.  We could take him with us to the Cape, but not to Minnesota.