In our garden this week

Shy hedgehogs . . .. Volunteer poppies . . . Mole invasions . . . Except for a very brief thundershower last night, it’s been very hot and dry in The Hague for a couple of weeks. We haven’t had moles in our garden the previous two summers, and I suspect they came this time [...]

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It’s hard to be mad at someone who’s just so darned happy

Rusty can’t help himself. When he’s off the leash, he has to go in the water. The canals between the fields where sheep and cattle graze can get pretty nasty. Thank goodness for the “dog beach,” where the water is clean. But lately he’s had some skin problems, and we’re trying to keep him on [...]

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Natural Wonders

Two seconds after I got this shot, he was pronking up the path, trying to entice a greyhound and a Leonberger to play with him. They looked at him warily and plodded on after their human. Undeterred, Rusty continued to have a good time all by himself. I had taken the camera on our walk [...]

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Everything stinks

It seems like it’s been cold and wet forever. You know that funky smell that wet towels get when they’ve been lying around too long? My parka and gloves have smelled like that for a week, at least. And I do hang them to dry when I come in; I think they just absorbed it from [...]

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Winter

Much time has passed. Not much of note has happened. We had another hedgehog sighting, Rusty started to look like a sheep and then went to the groomer, and the weather forecast for The Hague has been like this: For weeks. Weeks. Oh, occasionally a little sunlight breaks through for half an hour, and sometimes [...]

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Another successful day

On our midday walk today we saw some greylag geese and some interesting fungi and Rusty went swimming and then we came home and put our feet up. Ahhh, this is the good life!

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Flindertown

Our everyday route takes us past some small allotments that are, I think, like the community gardens in US cities. Most of them are hidden behind hedges or walls, but one gardener has made a flindertuin (butterfly garden) for all to enjoy.  Flinder is pronounced like “blender” and tuin like “town.”

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Young coots

You don’t hear much about young coots, but they’re not born old, you know. These guys are a lot younger than the other waterfowl born this spring. It’s hard to be sure, because we have a lot of coots and I can’t tell them apart, but on the basis of my observations I think this [...]

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There’s a hedgehog in our garden!

I took Rusty out for a pee before bedtime and he found something in the garden he wouldn’t quite touch but couldn’t stay away from. I grabbed a flashlight and in its faint light I saw a spiky globe about 9 inches in diameter. I stared at it until it moved just a bit and [...]

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Dutch uncles

We live across the street from an off-leash park, until recently one of very few in The Hague. When Rusty was little (which seems a LONG time ago), I always kept him on the leash, both for his own protection and because he “wouldn’t listen to me,” as the Dutch say. Everyone we encountered said, [...]

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