The loyal watchdog, defending her master's garage.

This is Isabella, commonly known as Izzy. She belongs to our daughter and son-in-law who live next door to us. Izzy is loyal most of the time. Occasionally she takes off and runs for parts unknown. She has even been known to go roll in the horse poop at a nearby stable. Of course then when she comes home she gets a thorough bath.
Most of the dogs I have had or known well have been girls. Let's see, there was Katy and Carolyn, Susie, now Izzy and Judy, and my very favorite......Mindy. Someday if my printer ever decides to speak to my computer again I will try to show you a picture of Mindy. She was a schnauzer-poodle mix. Katy was a Terrier-basset hound mix. People used to look at her and say "What is it?"  Carolyn was  german shepherd. Izzy is a boxer with some greyhound in her. I don't remember what Susie was....we didn't have her for long. When I was young we only had one dog for about 3 months. He was a boy dog, and we named him Duffy.

Katy had puppies. We don't know a thing about the daddy, but her 8 puppies were too big for her, and she had to have a C-section. Now this was a dog that my husband never liked. If the phone rang she would try to lead you to it, walking slowly right in front of you. She had one puppy at home, and then nothing else for a long time. When I took her to the vet he said she would have to have a C-section because the next 2 puppies were stuck. I borrowed the vet's phone to ask my husband about it. (This was way before cell phones.)  He grudgingly said OK, so the vet delivered 7 more puppies. We named the boys, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. The girls were Daisy, Rose, Lilly, Pansy and Fern. We had a full house for awhile, and a lean pocket-book after paying for the surgery. We hadn't exactly budgeted for an event like that.
My mom lived in Florida then, and we were still in Calif. She decided 8 children were enough for any girl, and sent us a check to cover the cost of another operation for Katy. So no more puppies after that.

If we're friends on FB you may have already seen these pictures.  This is why I haven't posted for awhile.

I think the grapes must be trying to make up for the lack of apples this year.

Washing, and waiting for the bugs to crawl off.........little stink bugs, spiders, etc.

Stemmed and ready to cook, but no room yet in the big pot.

Aren't they pretty? I canned 8 pints of straight juice last night. There's still a pitcher of juice in the frig that I want to turn into jelly sometime today. Also about a pint in the freezer. Plus there are still more grapes on the vine. One of my grand-daughters came yesterday and I watched her 2 little girls while she picked a bucketful. It didn't take her long, which was good because it was So Hot out yesterday afternoon. Thankful that today is much cooler. Well, I'd better get dressed and get started. Two little grand-daughters will be over this afternoon, so I'll be busy then. I'd like to make oatmeal-raisin cookies for them first (and for me). Grin.

My mother is a good artist.  We have lots of her paintings in the family.  I'm not much of an artist.  However, apparently my grandchildren are artistic.  The picture below was drawn by the 6- almost 7 year old.

The next one was done by the barely 5 year old.

God is the Best Artist of all.

I am losing track of how many great-grandbabies we have. This is the youngest one for now. Another one is due in December. After that....? It makes life interesting.  This little girl lives in TX.  We haven't seen her in person yet.

In other news, our youngest son came home for the weekend.

It was good to see him.  We had a good visit.  He's going through a difficult time right now. Prayers would be appreciated. Here's another picture of him with his nephew who is a few years older than he is.

The nephew, our grandson, is the one who wrote the sci-fi book.  I read the book twice and really enjoyed it.  Now I need to go finish cleaning up the kitchen while I'm still awake enough to do it. It's almost 10 pm. See you all tomorrow.