dog friendly

i regret getting red gravel pebbles - hard to clean and now we have to partition that area off ,too(by the fence it is)
theyre good for security as they crunch underfoot but ive never been able to keep the dogs off it because like most dogs they like to run the perimeter of the property and check things out
ive never worried about where the dogs toilet because there is a lawn area they use but one or two ofthem like to sneak off to the gravel area and its a pain picking up their waste with pebbles attached
i reckon we should have just concreted - easier to clean

- dogz forum: Designing The Dog Friendly Garden
 

slideshow

I ♥ letslookupandsmile's photostream:

Arriving for the 21st dinner dance...


And a couple of weeks ago, again in the midst of heatwave, I was catching up with the photostream, when I saw this:
Party Animals

and this comment that directed me to
the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players
 

groove

In the days of the heatwave that preceded the calamity of bushfires, I remember listening to music in the low-fi cellar, having just read about just hear it at J Walk

Via the comments @ J walk, Grooveshark
Play any song in the world for free

so I've been catching up with some absent friends (CDs being elsewhere)
 

unlike

Clicking the Like link next to something that you enjoy on Facebook is an easy way to let someone know that you like it, without leaving a comment...

Will I be able to unlike (and remove me liking something) after I click on the Like link?

bernie

FX posted about Blossom Dearie.
I played the excellent 9 min clip, and then went looking for some old faves.

I eventually found My Attorney Bernie

see also 'S Wonderful ('S João)
 

disaster

From the safety of the suburbs, I listened to the radio on Saturday as it changed from an extreme-weather story to a firestorm story as the whole state seemed to ignite with over 400 'fire events'. All you do is keep listening to reports from the fire front, a continual stream of emergency messages and tragic stories.

Kinglake local shares story on Victoria fires
Age Photo gallery
the township has "virtually ceased to exist"

Boston Globe: The Big Picture via peacay
 

footer

At 12:12 PM   boynton updated her footer

miss tree

look and learn

When I was a Brownie, when I was a Sprite, * I managed to pass my Tree Badge, which required reciting the roll call of exotics and being able to identify a tree from its leaf in front of a judge, who was the rostered neighbourhood expert in the field. In this case the judge was my father.
I passed by memory skills, with no help from the family green thumb, which I did not inherit.
While I may still know my elms ok, I think I have rested on my Brownie laurels.
Recently I was trying to describe a tree I'd seen to a professional expert in the field and fumbled clumsily for words, non-latin words to boot. In fact it was akin to struggling for language in a foreign land, busted for not doing your homework, for not being sufficiently tree-lingual.
Then days later I was still trying to put a name to the tree with a search directory, one of those uses of technology they once lauded in ads for printers. I was eliminating varieties of banksia and grevillea when I stared out of the window. My eyes rested on a tree and I said "That's it!" - life imitating TV, the tropes of sitcoma.
Anyway, the embarrassing confession is that this tree, for so long anonymous and invisible to me, is a very common species. Naming it has summoned it into existence in sudden profusion. It is everywhere in the urban environment.
It's as if I had said to this expert: have you ever heard of a rose?
Still, a fortnight ago, when it was unknown and exotic, I saw the tree in question forming an avenue of striking colour in a dry landscape. It was a temporarily remarkable first contact.