Steve's Trees

When Steve brought home the apple tree he had been talking about wanting, I was less than impressed. It was a stick in a pot. Literally, there were no leaves, no sign of life. I was skeptical. But since he brought it home, it has been growing leaves at a brisk pace. It's a "columnar" apple tree and will grow, as you might expect from the name, in a column shape, growing leaves and apples directly from the main trunk.


Steve's mom was also kind enough to give us a Japanese Maple that she didn't know what to do with. We wandered over to "Pottery Planet" to check out the selection and found that it indeed lived up to it's name. There was room after room, stacked to the ceiling with all manner of pottery. We found a pot that we felt accented the colors in the tree. In the picture, Steve is watering it with gray water from our washer, just after transplanting it (and, by the way, it did not remain in the center of the lawn, although we did debate the artistic merits of leaving it there).

Buster Around the House

For any and all fans of rabbit pictures, some from Buster's latest free play in the living room:

The slinky is truly a timeless (and awesome) toy.

Can I come up on the couch, please?

I'm going to find a way to climb out of this place.

UC Plant Sale

I saw an ad in our local newspaper for the UC Arboretum's annual plant sale. Knowing that Steve would be interested, I suggested that we walk up there and check it out.

Last Saturday was a beautiful day in Santa Cruz. It was a sunny 80 degrees with a pleasant light breeze. We arrived at the plant sale early in the afternoon. Rows of potted plants were arranged in a clearing in a grove of eucalyptus trees on a hill overlooking the Monterey Bay (naturally, I forgot the camera at home). We wandered the isles and eventually selected four plants (since that's all we could carry). Realizing that carrying them home would be somewhat difficult, we and our plants rode the bus back down the hill.

Two of our new plants on either side of the red flowers (you can also see my succulents in the pink pot on the step:

A little flowering plant I fell in love with:

A flowering ground cover that Steve and I both liked:

Rabbit Table

I have been grappling with how to handle storage of rabbit supplies (and the rabbits themselves) in a somewhat organized and attractive manner. The main problem was their large carriers (you can see one of the blue ones on the left of the picture below). We have four total and I have been trying to balance having them close at hand for vet trips and in case of emergencies with having them out of sight.


Steve came up with the idea of building a "table" to put Johnny and Lola (who were living in the messy pen on the right side of the above picture) on. The table would be tall enough to slide carriers and other supplies underneath, but at only 15 1/4" off the ground, would not be so high as to be scary for the bunnies.

With a piece of plywood, a 2x4 and some scrap wood as "bumpers" to prevent the pen from slipping off the table, Steve (with a little help from me) built the table.


It's hard to get a decent angle inside our place to showcase it, but the new table has room for carriers and supplies underneath and actually gives us more room to move as it prevents Johnny and Lola from pushing their pen into the walkway.


Fortunately, Johnny and Lola like it too.

Tax Season is Over!

Violet is as relieved as I am.

Progression of Bulb Bed

November:

March:

Now:

The Demetri of Many Colors Part II

Poor Demetri was multicolored last week.


Now, he has a tan wrap, which isn't really his color. It just looks like an ace bandage. How boring.

Hay Addicts

Johnny and Lola enjoying an afternoon snack.

The Demetri of Many Colors

Seeing him appear on my father-in-law’s blog reminded me that I haven’t made any comment on Demetri’s current condition.

Demetri will be turning nine this year. Depending on who you ask, sterilized rabbits living indoors as pets can live anywhere from eight to twelve years. My personal experience leads me to believe ten is a more reasonable estimate of lifespan, but since I’ve only had three bunnies pass away in my care (one died young from disease, and the other two were around eight when they went) I suppose I’ll collect better data as the years pass.

But at any rate, Demetri has had a “terminal” diagnosis since he was four or five (I honestly don’t remember at this point). His problems have all stemmed from dental infections brought on by poor breeding (much like many breeds of purebred dogs, rabbits bred for their flat faces and lop ears have a lot of issues). In a somewhat fascinating (and disgusting) turn of events, the infection migrated to his chest cavity and formed an abscess from the inside out. It grew from undetectable to pretty awful in less than a week. He had just been at the vet for his monthly tooth trim (required since his teeth no longer grind themselves down after some had to be removed due to infection) and there was no sign.

An operation was successful in cleaning him up fairly well, but he has to go in for bandage changes three times a week (which my wonderful husband has been taking him in for, since I’m in the midst of tax season and can’t get away).

He has been purple…

… blue…

… red (I don’t have a picture of that one, but he looked like an extremely tiny and fuzzy Santa) and pink (pictured on my father-in-law’s blog http://too-old-to-know-better.blogspot.com/).

It’s hard to justify to people who haven’t had rabbits why we’d go to so much trouble for the little guy. But all I can say by way of explanation is that he brought us a lot of joy in his more active youth and we’re certainly going to take care of him in the best way we can now that he’s a little old man.

Demetri in 2004:

There were parents here!

My mom was good enough to send up some pictures. Here are my parents working with Steve in the flower bed.


They also sent some of our ping-pong table, but I'm planning to cover that in a future post, so you'll just have to wait (I know it will be with baited breath).