Brandy | My Blog

Brandywine

Posted on July 10, 2015 by jsudar

Our routine in the morning is one of tea and breakfast. Once Mom and Dan are awake enough, they “go feed the dog.” This is a time to let Mom smoke, feed Brandy and just sort of start the day. Mom and Brandy love one another. Brandy gets spoiled rotten, getting upwards of 5 treats.

This morning, Brandy wasn’t out waiting for breakfast and treats from Grandma. Dan checked on her and found that she had died. She was still warm. No issues, just went to sleep and never woke up. We spent the morning burying her and cleaning up the yard. And crying.

Brandy was part coyote, part German Shepard. Daniel brought her to us in October or December of 2007. I’d had a headache that day and was sleeping when he brought her in and dropped her on the bed. I tried to argue that we didn’t need a dog and that Stefan wouldn’t let us have one at the house. Daniel wouldn’t take no for an answer and called Stefan. Of course he agreed that we should have a dog.

We didn’t know she was a wild mix until we took her to the vet for shots. The vet put “mutt” on her records. She was also an escape artist. if she didn’t go over the fence, she went under it. We put her on a cable to keep her in the yard. Brandy figured out that if she ran in a circle and then straight out, she could torque and snap the cable. We went through a 50, 100 and 150 pound rated cable before we realized that we needed a linked chain. Even then she got away at times.

I also had the dog catcher meet me in Safeway and ask me not to go home alone as there was a coyote running around. He’d tried to shoot it, but missed. I told him that it was probably my dog. He shook his head and said that he knew coyotes, and that this was one. When I finished my shopping, I headed home. There was Brandy on the steps, no collar. When I explained that it was my dog, he shook his head and muttered that he almost shot my dog. From then on, Brandy wore a bright body harness.

She was a beaver dog, chewing up bones in record time. She loved treats from Grandma. Brandy was a bed hog and knew she was people. We were her pack. She was our furbaby. She will be missed.

Brandy. September, 2007 – July, 2015.

More Dirt Work

Posted on May 25, 2015 by jsudar

Yes, we’ve been playing in the dirt again. We cleaned up the main garden and started planting. Squash: zucchini, delicata, yellow crookneck, butternut and pumpkin. Two kinds of green beans and then spinach, lettuce, carrots and radishes. Oh, and one tomato plant.

In the side gardens, we added new tomato plants, two bell peppers, cilantro and chives. The two tomato plants that got snowed and hailed on are still hanging on. We will see how they do. I’ve begun to thin out the lettuce in the wheel barrow and will probably transplant some of the seedlings into the bed in front of the pepper plants.

We moved Brandy’s dog house. She was unhappy with being so far away from her people, so we brought it closer. We bought a grill as well, and we had the most lovely steaks tonight.

Last but not least, the rose bush is doing well, as are the herbs.

Now I can take a small break from gardening and work on websites, and sewing. I have a skirt to make for a friend and clothes to work on for Battlemoor. 🙂

Dirt!

Posted on May 17, 2015 by

I am so exhausted. We’ve been trying to figure out how to dig enough garden for what we want to plant, and the thought of all the shovel work had daunted us. Then in conversation with Brian Rosino, he offered the use of a rototiller. Wheeee!

We picked it up this morning and started on the right half of the back yard. My mom’s yard is huge. After the first go round, we picked up weeds, raked and then took a break. After lunch we trimmed a tree and I took out three sucker trees in the yard. Those got chopped up and or saved out for trellis bits. Dan mowed the front yard while I did a lot of this. Then he mowed the back. While he did a second round of tilling, I raked up and moved the weeds to the area that will be our compost bins site.

Brandy of course thought we were nuts and took a nap in protest of all our work. We think we have about 500 sq ft of garden. 🙂 If the rains will cooperate, we will be planting squash, (3 kinds), pumpkins, radishes and whatever is left of the seeds from the side garden planting.

Around 4pm, we returned the rototiller. We finished up the last of the work in the back yard and then collapsed. Tomorrow is going to be a very stiff day. Even now my hands are aching from all of the weed pulling. Ugh!

Weather…

Posted on May 11, 2015 by

We have had crazy weather. Sun, sleet, rain, hail, and now snow. We woke up to 2 inches of it. Luckily it wasn’t cold enough to damage the herbs and other plants.

It was a weird start to a very busy week. Lots of meetings. We also have to pick up Morgan on Friday. I think we will collapse on Saturday.

Gardening!

Posted on May 8, 2015 by

We have slowly been making over bits of the yard into garden. Some of the work has been transplanting stuff from the other house. Other bits are new. I used the rocks we had gathered a few months ago to make boundaries for various beds. We have seen growth in the rhubarb, roses and irises. Most of the herbs and potted plants survived as well. I have had to replant parsley, lavender and basil. We bought tomatoes and a beautiful yellow daisy for mom. As we’ve cleaned up the yard, we found tulips hiding in the deep grass and under grapevines. We still have more lawn to mow and then plant the squash and green beans in the areas Brandy can’t reach.

A Pause, A Breathe, and Waiting

Posted on April 15, 2015 by

We finished moving into my mom’s house. 90% of our stuff is in storage. The rest is in nooks and crannies in my mom’s house. Brandy is learning to live in the back yard, and we are getting use to living with mom. It’s a good thing that my mom is a good friend as well as my parent. As time passes, we will adjust. We are doing our best to leave a lot of the hurt behind us and work on the positive things.

One of the last things I did was dig up my garden. We brought it over to my mom’s and spent a day digging and transplanting. I shared the rest of the irises I didn’t plant with three friends.

This last week we have caught up on sleep, email, meetings and life in general. I cleaned house and did laundry. It hasn’t been easy, but we are taking those deep breaths. We are pausing and trying to smell the breeze that carries the hint of spring.

Today we went shopping in Pueblo for the first time in weeks. After we did our shopping, we ate lunch at Romero’s. Then we went to visit Dad. Over the last week or so, he declined rapidly. They moved him into hospice on Tuesday night. In some ways, it was a relief not to visit him at the mental unit. The hospice is very nice. It had a good feel to it and the staff was pleasant. A friend of our had been in hospice and that place had not been nice. It looked alright, but had an ick to it. This place did not. (phew!)

We went in to see Dad and then let Mom have time alone with him. We chatted with the nurse, and she talked about how he was doing. She said he was restless, which to them means that it won’t be long. This matches with what my mom felt. We were originally going to visit on Friday, but she had this feeling that it had to be today. I’m glad we went up. He didn’t wake when we were there, or when we talked to him. Mom has his wedding ring now. We said our goodbyes and headed home. We may go up on Friday.

Mom has made all the arrangements with the local funeral home where our cousin works. In her own way, she’s getting her ‘ducks in a row’. Dan and I are doing our best to keep things running smoothly. And it is the little things that help so much. A dear friend sent us a lovely package full of treats. 🙂 It even had twiglets in it! Others have sent good wishes, hugs and energies for an easy transition for Dad.

Where to start?

Posted on April 6, 2015 by

When last I was here, my aunt had just passed and my mom had returned home. Then all hell broke loose.

On Monday, Bryan came by to let me know that he’d bought the house from Stefan. He wanted to let us know that he planned to move in and that we’d have to stuff everything in storage and/or the Wendy House and live there. We tried to explain that this just wasn’t viable. We wasted our breath. Shock. Horror. Disbelief. A week later, we were told we had to totally leave the property. Leave the Wendy House…

While we were reeling from this, my Dad had a major ‘sundowners’ moment. Yelling, screaming, threatening people, etc. We called the police and the EMT’s. When all the dust settled, Dad was in hospital in Pueblo. In the mental unit. Meanwhile, we moved in with my mom, as she was very upset and didn’t want to be alone.

We have been up to see Dad. He’s been diagnosed with moderate to severe dementia and psychosis. From what the doctor and nurses said, he’s been bipolar all of his life, but could deal with it. The dementia robbed him of the control to cope. When my sister and I talked, we could see it looking back. My dad has always ‘escaped to the mountains’, and we figured he just didn’t like living in the city. Now we see it was his way of coping. Now we are working on Medicaid paperwork and other bits. It has been a crazy time.

And… in the mean time, we’ve been packing. It’s very hard to leave our home of 10 years. Hard to leave behind all the work we did on the Wendy House. We are doing our best to keep positive. It’s just tough. Brandy isn’t doing too badly. She has a new yard to explore and we hope to build her a dog house soon.

A snowy morning

Posted on February 23, 2015 by

The sun is out at last. School is canceled. Yet we need to dig out and visit a computer client and check on my parents. What a storm. I love all the snow and took pics as Brandy barked at the birds and I shoveled a path to the main house. With all this snow, 12-13 inches, we might get an inch of moisture.

Waiting is…

Posted on February 20, 2015 by

We are under a Winter Storm Warning. One that had people scrambling for groceries, firewood, batteries, etc. It even canceled our SCA event, Corazon. I took my mom to the grocery for a few things and then for a bit of a drive. It was crazy. Oh, and 62F was our high temp today.

When I got home, I made bread, a plum cake and then a casserole. While it was baking, I helped Dan with the firewood. We heat with it, and we’ve been whittling down a ‘hedge’ of pine. Today, we cleared the last of it. What wasn’t chopped, split, or stacked went into the compost bin. It was so strange to see the yard clear. By the time we came in, it was 38. We now have a bunch of firewood. 🙂

Since I posted last, we’ve had a bit of snow. Nothing like my friend Kirsty, who has 7 feet in her front yard. She lives in Massachusetts.

I’ll post pictures if we really get the snow they say we will.

Bits and Bobs

Posted on September 14, 2014 by

At least that’s what it feels like we’ve accomplished since we came home from Battlemoor. Lots of little jobs. Clean this area, cook dinners, work on the gardens or the Wendy House. One big improvement was storage. We ‘floored’ the loft over the kitchen and rearranged the storage. No more tubbies on the ground. Plus, we added coat hooks, hooks for the iron, etc. It makes life just a little more livable. I even had a Western Scrub Jay come check out RedTom’s food dish.

Some of the time has been spent with Morgan. Her 18th birthday was on the 10th. Wow has time passed. I made green chile and a carob mayonnaise cake. The recipe uses may instead of oil and eggs. Our friend Mark and his daughter Catherine came over for dinner and cake. It was a good evening. Thursday night we went to their house. Friday was chaos. It was Cold! I think we got to 41F! Fire in the wood stove and heavier clothes than I’ve worn in months. Brrrr!

Inside there was packing, laundry and trash. Morgan was getting ready to move out. Dan took her to do laundry and a few errands. Morgan left for Fowler, a room mate and a job on Friday night.

Yesterday, Dan worked on organizing his office (an ongoing project) and concealing the network wiring. We no longer look like we live in an IT closet!

While he did that, I cleaned Morgan’s room, moved sewing storage tubbies in and made the last loaf of Artisan’s bread. This is the first time I’ve tried it. Very nice. I’ll be playing with the recipe over the next few months.

Then it was time to tackle the Wendy House. Threw all the scatter rugs outside, and emptied the bathroom and Brandy’s area. Swept, mopped, dusted, etc. I wiped down everything in the bathroom as I replaced and reorganized it. I hosed down the rugs and Brandy’s bedding. Most of them were too doggied to throw in a washer. While I was doing that, I got bit by red ants. Ugh… It burns! It swells! It makes me feel horrid! I slathered on Benadryl and kept going. Vacuumed the bedroom and swept the main living area. It was so nice for it to be clean.

Plus, while we were waiting for things to dry, I had a thought. Brandy would be warmer if her bed wasn’t on the floor. While trying to engineer this in my head, I was cruising Off Grid Quest, a website I visit. I came across one of the pallet stories and *POOF*! An idea was born. Dan went down to our local feed store which gives away pallets, and grabbed a load. A bit of circular saw work and Brandy had a bed platform. She was a bit uncertain at first, but it looks pretty good. We might fancy it up a bit, but for now, it works. We also have pallets for future projects and/or firewood.

Today is going to be low-key. I still feel like dreck from the ant bites and all the dust I ejected from the Wendy House. Dan mowed my parents yard and is finishing up the last of the office work. I’m going to make another batch of artisan’s bread and dinner with all of the veggies from the garden.

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