Country Dog

We've just returned from the lake..... took the cats and our dog and off we went last week. Our dog Gracie loves the lake house and the property up there so much that she wouldn't get into the car to come home this afternoon. She just plopped herself right down in the driveway and wouldn't move when we told her to get into the car. My husband even sat behind the wheel and called her to get into the back seat and she didn't move a paw to jump in. Finally got her in there, by practically pushing her through the car door.

The cats are getting used to the city-house, country-house routine now as well...... just a few little meows when we get them into the car, but they soon settle down in their carriers and just go to sleep till the ride is over. They seem to be more secure up there now... a few catnip toys this trip helped, plus they're watching all the birds and ducks now when they're out on the porch. Only Mickey Kitty is afraid to be on the porch when all the egrets are settled into the trees and are screeching... that happens just before dinner time every night, and Mickey won't go on the porch then they all fly away for the night.

The weather was warm and summery for most of our days there. A couple of rainstorms on two of the days, but those were early on in the mornings and cleared up before noon-time. We drove to one of the little towns up there...... Coldspring, population 646. Cute little town, with a couple of "vintage" downtown streets filled with cafes and antique shops. We had lunch in one of the cafes, country-down-home cooking (lots of meats with gravy) but they had a nice salad bar with good choices there, plus homemade cornbread.

I'd like to drive back into Coldspring on a Saturday when the little shops are open... they all looked interesting, and I know there will be good things in them for the cottage. We did stop at a few antique shops along the way there (ones that we hadn't seen before). There was one little store called "J's Resale," owned by a quiet man who lives in a small house next to his shop. We just walked into the shop when we drove up, and within minutes, that man was walking in the door telling us to make ourselves at home and look around. He left us in the store while he went outside to rearrange some furniture on the grass outside.

I bought a brown-painted rattan chair in there, which is now on the screen-porch of the cottage. Nice vintage chair, complete with cushion, for just twenty dollars. The man also sold us a little birdhouse in the shape of a Japanese pagoda, similar to ones we had seen in Hawaii. Poor little pagoda was wobbly in some places, but it was beautifully made and looked very old. Just two dollars for it... I put it on the sideboard in the living room of the cottage... it wouldn't last much longer out in the sun and the rain, so it's going to stay inside the house.

We got some chores done on this trip.... we weeded the flowerbeds (and have some fire-ant bites to prove it). My husband put down bags and bags of fire-ant killer, so hopefully, we won't have fire-ant mounds this summer. We also found a handyman up there to fix some old boards underneath the overhang of the roof around the porch. And we talked to the man who does our lawn up there... he will take care of trimming the trees and getting some topsoil delivered to fill in the spots around the bulkhead that got washed away in the big storm we had this past winter. We thought of doing that ourselves.... having the soil delivered, buying a wheelbarrow and a couple of shovels. Then our lawn man told us how much dirt we needed, and the number of wheelbarrow-trips seemed overwhelming, so we're just paying him to do it for us. He doesn't use a wheelbarrow... he has some attachment that hooks up to his tractor-mower. State of the country art.

My husband also bought some wood lattice to close in the area underneath the back porch and the side porch.... no sense in keeping that space open to whatever wildlife wants to get under there and make themselves at home. He took care of that chore this morning... while he was cutting the lattice, a pair of white ducks were walking around the backyard and watching him as he worked. I guess Gracie is getting used to the ducks up there because she didn't bark at them to chase them away this time.

The cardinals are back in the ficus tree on the porch... they didn't build a new nest this time-- the female has settled into one of her old ones. She sits on the eggs in the nest and just chirps away and seems very content. Mickey Kitty discovered her in the nest and he sits on the kitchen windowsill and watches her. The bird doesn't seem to mind... she chirps every few seconds whether Mickey is watching her or not.

Our neighbor G asked us this time if we owned a gun. "A what?" She looked at me and arranged the fingers of her right hand into a gun-shape and repeated: "A gun, girl, a GUN!" I told her that we didn't own a gun, nor did we plan to get one, then I asked her why she wanted one. She told me that she had seen a snake in her yard the day before. "And you know how snakes are, girl.... if there's one, there's more, and I need to find someone to shoot the dang things." Oh goodie.

That was all I had to hear... I spent all the rest of the days there looking up into the trees and watching every inch of the ground I was walking on. I knew there were snakes up there in those woods... we even found the skin of a snake near our pier before the holidays, and it was at least three feet long, which means the snake who left it there is even bigger than that by now. When you've got a country house, you have to expect the wildlife. While we were driving out of the property one day, we saw two deer grazing in a yard not far away from ours. Nice quiet deer.... much nicer to see than snakes.

My husband spent three evenings fishing with G next door.... they caught a basket-full of fish (perch, or croppie as it's called). G is teaching my husband everything he needs to know about the fish up in that lake... their habits and their swimming paths.... and she got him to fishing with a cane-pole now, rather than a rod and reel. He was skeptical at first, but got to believing her when the fish started to fill up that basket. They cleaned the fish they caught and we had it for dinner one night... delicious fish, I must say. We had enough to put some in the freezer, which I did. G fixed up the fillets in a freezer-bag for me... she filled it three-quarters of the way with water... she said that if you freeze the fish in cold water, it won't be dried out when you defrost it. She's the fisher-woman up there, so whatever she says goes. I asked her if that would work with the fish I buy from Kroger and she laughed at me and said she had never bought fish in a store in her life so she didn't know.

Country dogs, country fisher-woman, country sunsets.... everything is different once you drive away from the city limits. Best part of the trip... I won a few Scrabble games.