Why is breakfast served so early? And what’s up with milk that I need a nap afterward?

There’s the milk bowl over there, and then the milk in the carpet about a foot over.

Sometimes milk jumps out of the bowl onto the rug. I need to drink every drop because my medicine is in there.

Excuse me while I set the stage.

I’ve been investigating various techniques for getting more milk. Sometimes I pretend I am still waiting.

I don’t see a milk bowl, do you?

That never worked, so I tried half-covering the bowl for a while. Apparently, that is still too subtle a hint.

What I’m trying to say here is that it seemed like half a bowl of milk this morning.

There’s a little blanket for my tush that is by the heat vent. It soaks up the last of the milk in the bowl if I get it in just right. Then I suck the milk out of the blanket. That blanket mysteriously vanished.

I pulled that blanket into my bowl every day for a week before it disappeared.

If I up-end the milk bowl, I can get the last of it onto the floor and lick it up. It’s hard to do without also flipping my grain bowl upside down. This is a pathetically small area for a big boy like me. I should have the entire kitchen. And the living room, too, for that matter.

Oopsie daisie.

One of my other projects is Indoor Grazing. I’ve gotten the Farm Manager to bring in a bucket of grass almost every day. Everything tastes better when it’s served in a bucket. She does a nice job of combining grass, bamboo, and a smattering of dandelions into a dandy salad.

We have nice big grass here. Too big for the bucket.

Lately she’s been training the visitors to bring bamboo. Isn’t it funny how much better everything tastes indoors?

It’s a totally different kind of bamboo, not like the front yard bamboo at all.

We also have some new outdoor treats. These roses have outgrown their cage and now they floof out over the fence at perfect nibbling height. The roses are conveniently located next to my hot tub, like a concession at a baseball game.

I eat the roses, the foliage, and the stems. What’s a thorn? I never noticed any thorns.

It’s June-uary in Seattle, so the weather is fickle and I still like a steamy hot tub. This one has orange peel aromatherapy. You should be so lucky.

The orange peels are the little orange ones. The pink and black ball is a toy.

This is a bigger tub on the other side of the yard. There isn’t a hot water spigot here but if we have morning sun, it heats up quickly. This one has lemons. We haven’t seen my goldfish in a while, not since that pesky Great Blue Heron came through.

Please take a moment of silence for my two deceased goldfish. They were my friends and ate a lot of mosquito larvae.

There’s also a small pool in the front yard, now. It reappeared suddenly, about when that tush blanket disappeared. Was it reincarnated as a pool?

You can’t have too many wading pools.

The best pool is not a pool at all. It’s my front yard bog. It’s gooey and stinky and the mud is phenomenal. The concession there has some of the best grass in the yard.

Dobby’s Bog

The consistent quality of the mud allows me to explore a wide variety of decorative techniques.

I call this The Shaggy Dog.

Sometimes I like a simple overall color change.

This is Strategic Spot.

This stripe effect was very difficult to achieve, even with the high quality mud.

Here we have Reverse Skunk.

Without an audience, what does any of it mean? Why does the Farm Manager run away when I show off my latest creations?

The Farm Manager scoots to the far side of the chair. Those pants weren’t clean, anyway.

Sadly, it all comes off in the hot tub. Or on the Farm Manager’s jacket or jeans. Or the kitchen, if I go in there to shake.