Song for Friday...for the new one...

This past week there was a new baby born in White Rock, B.C

He is my friends brand new nephew.

I'll send this out as a lullaby to the wee lad.

I'll bet his mom and dad feel like they can't take their eyes off of him!

Welcome to the world!

Happy Days...

Today is International Women's Day.

To all the women in the world who have fought, struggled, survived,

laughed, loved, given birth, nurtured, given hope...

I recognize you all today.

(just a few of the wonderful, lovely women in my life)

Guess what we were doing?

Yesterday there was a definite feel of spring in the air.

After cleaning up in the garden, I met my friend for a walk on the beach...

This is Taylor beach in Metchosin. 

It's west of Victoria and east of where I live...

That's Victoria from where we stood.

It was a good day to collect little bits of beach glass and look at all the pretty bits of seaweed that had washed up with the spring tides...

Everything seemed to be full of fun...Clams sticking their tongues out at me...

Even the shackiest of shacks had their doors flung open to the new air...

There were heart hoof prints in the sand...

This region is home to some beautiful farms and fields.

On the road down to the beach we visited with some curious Norwegian Fjord horses...

They still have their fuzzy winter coats on.

I love how their manes grow, thick and standing straight up like that...

Imagine living in this big farmhouse on a wild and windy night by the sea!

A lot of sheep are raised in the open fields around Metchosin and right now is lambing season...

Lot's of baby noises going on all around us...

Some of these are maybe a day or two new to this world...

Look! There's some cute little black ones...

I wonder what kind of trouble they'll get up to?

This mama kept her eye on us the whole time...you can see her in just about every photo I took...

There she is again!
The eyes and ears of the flock...

So, at one point, Norene says to me
"Why do they have numbers painted on them?"
I came up with a few ideas...
keeping the right lamb with the right mom, identifying certain farms,etc
and then it came to me as I was looking at the pictures...
So, can you guess what we were doing?!

Why, counting sheep, of course!
That's what the numbers are for!

Update on Puppy Love...

Some of you may have read about my daughter, Aja, fostering a rescued Jack Russell from a puppy mill.

(you can read about it here http://farmlass.blogspot.com/2011/01/all-you-need-is-love.html )

Since then, she and her boyfriend Paul have decided to give her a permanent home.

So here's an update on how they're all doing with the new life...

 

Emma is doing really really well.  She basically house trained herself by watching other dogs, so we didn't even really have to do that.  She is super super cuddly  and LOOOOVES going for hikes at High Park and in other off leash areas and she does extremely well off-leash. 

 

We took her hiking last Sunday with Paul's sisters dogs Scout (border collie) and Frasier, another Jack Russell. She gets along really well with Frasier but she is still quite iffy about big dogs.

  Taking her to High Park every weekend helps because most of the dogs in the off leash area really don't care and just give a quick sniff and move on, so she's learning that they won't bother her.

 Amazing that only a little over a month ago we couldn't even get her to sit anywhere near us since now she's such a cuddle monkey with Paul and myself.  

 We've got her doing sit, down, come and stay so now we'll start working on more some difficult stuff.  I'm sure she'll be easy to train since she's quite clever.

 I still think it'll be a long while until she is more like a normal dog.  

She's still quite fearful of any other people that aren't me and Paul, but she is getting better every day and starting to sniff people in the elevator so that's a good sign.