What's Happening In Wisconsin

We brought Jack home with us from Nebraska.  He is a lot of dog with a lot of energy to burn.  Wow! have we ever been having a doggy time of it around here. He is as good as gold MOST of the time...like for traveling. He was perfect all the way home. Even when we let the tail gate down too fast and caught the very end of his lovely fan of a tail in it he only yowled and howled for as long as it took three of us to frantically get it lifted again.  Poor dog!  He forgave us immediately however with his kisses and hugs even more profuse than ever.  EWW!

 We live in a village where "Indian" dogs abound on the loose, so we are obliged to keep pretty good tabs on Jack.  The first couple days we kept him tied or in the porch constantly.  Which led to Frances and Elv deciding that he needed a bath. Again the gold showed. He simply sat in the bathtub and let them give him a good going over.  Ummm, have you ever had a wet dog unleash a good shake in front of your living room hearth?  Oh well, he came out of that looking soft and beautiful. I think he still smells rather doggy!
    As of yesterday, we have been allowing him to run free outdoors as long as the guys are home.  And he absolutely loves it.   

 He gambols back and forth between them and their projects endlessly.  Moreover he stays entirely off the roads on either side of our property even though Elv for lack of a better place to work is parked right on the road with his Tool Truck. 
    And yes he brings back good memories of Shep, the dog we had when we were married. He woke us from our sleep in time to get out when our house was burning.  Jack has the same repertoire of barks for what is going on and one of these days we're going to know them all just by listening.

 The county road mower went by yesterday morning with his blade high in the air clipping off tree branches.  Does that strike you as dangerous? I couldn't believe what he was doing when it went whirring by our living room windows.  But I found these maple tree branches on the road afterward.

 I saw someone was getting apple tree twigs to sprout blossoms in a vase like this and had been thinking how fun that would be.  And I wondered if any tree would make me a bouquet of leaves if not blossoms.

 So I brought these in.  Maybe I can have a bit of spring indoors anyway, if we can't have it outdoors.