SUCCULENTS!

That is just a fun word to say, succulents... From a picture in a magazine this was created. I wanted an old bird bath for it but couldn't find one. Bird baths like this are very hard to find. I looked on Craig's list, Ebay, want ads, garden shops, NOTHING! Then I was getting some other gardening things at Home Depot and noticed this old one shoved under a shelf outside. When I asked the sales person there about it, she said it was used for displayed "years ago" and no one has thrown it out yet. I asked what they wanted for it. She said if I bought my other supplies for it she would throw it in for $5, DONE! I have since seen a few for about $120. Then I chose the succulents, some special succulent, cactus soil and designed it to look like the one we had seen in the magazine. I get so many comments on it sitting on my front porch and now it is flowering (I will take a pic and post again). Since then my sister in law and my son have both built their own succulent garden. My son built one for a newly married couple as a wedding gift. Like nothing else they got. Easy to take care of. Fun to look at. Different than everything else out there. One of the succulents is called Living Rocks from Africa. It looks like a muppet would have it in her garden. Try to build a succulent garden, even if in a small pot for a window sill. But no one has a bird bath as cool as this one! YEAH!

Favorite animal?

I am not sure why, but in the last month I have had four different kiddoes email me asking me what my favorite animal is. I love animals and of course favor my "pets", but of all the animals, the dolphin is my favorite for many reasons.

One of my favorite things to do is to scuba dive. I have seen many many underwater creatures; beautiful, strange and scary. The scariest was a four hundred pound potato grouper on a wreck off the Caymen Islands. The most graceful underwater and at the surface was the dolphin. When I was a kid I never missed Flipper, an old television show and always wanted to live on a boat and be a marine biologist, just not good enough at math and science. But the main reason was that I wanted to swim and befriend the dolphin!

I had one young lady write me back to tell me that your favorite animal says a lot about what kind of a person you are. A dolphin is the embodiment of freedom in the water. An intelligent creature whose understanding sometimes rivals the human species. A family was lost at sea after their yacht capsized near the coast of New Zealand. When the choppers finally found them (a spec in the sea) they were surrounded by numerous dolphins. The chopper pilot reported that below them were great white sharks and that the dolphins were diving and bumping them away from the human family. WOW! Flipper would be proud!

It's hard not to love a sea creature that cares the way I would hope my own species would. What is your favorite animal?

Running with Tootsie, means off and on the beaten path! Tootsie wants everyone to know that an Italian Greyhound is NOT the same as a whippet!!!

Have you ever seen the perfect photo op, but didn't have your camera?

I was on the tour of Waterford Crystal in Ireland and was ready to snap some shots of the amazing work they do there, when this man caught my eye. What a short story began to percolate as I focused in on him, his story, his day, his life. An Irishman.

BACK YARD TRAP TALLY

To date, this summer, I have trapped and relocated 3 squirrels, 1 raccoon and 1 big black bird. The bird I just let go in my backyard naturally, but the others are now living in little resorts! So, what will be next? I noticed about 20 peach pits at the base of the peach tree, so I know something is working overtime at night! SHEESH!!!!!!!