Buster’s Blog

There are daffodils blooming in our side yard.  I doubt that MomK is impressed, I mean with orchards growing wild and all, but  here it is a big deal.

Last night it got down to 17 degrees which is very cold for Chattanooga.  I have a remote thermometer in our greenhouse and it showed 31 degrees despite having an electric heater in there. At about 11 PM I took a portable oil stove down and put it in the greenhouse and turned it down as low as it would go so it would last all night and the temperature started up, but the stove went out and when I got during the night I checked and the remote thermometer showed 28 degrees, so dressed in my pajamas and a coat I went down and relit the stove and turned it up higher.  It worked all night, but the begonias look the worse for the experience.  It is forecast to be as cold again tonight.
On top of that Marilyn’s car froze up on her way to the dentist and I had to go get her, but my car wouldn’t even start.  It turned over but wasn’t the least bit interested in starting.  I had to rent a car to go get her.  The problem with her car (we think) is that it used to have water leak and I just kept adding water instead of a water/antifreeze mixture and it just got too diluted for weather this cold.  The leak was fixed earlier and now the system has been drained and new antifreeze added.
I hope tomorrow is more normal.

We went to George and Julie’s for New Years Eve and put Buster in the kennel.  The kennel required that you have your dog on a leash when you bring it in so I came out the back door with the leash in my hand and Buster tore out to the car and stood by the back door waiting for me to open it.  When I did he jumped right in like he knew just where we were going.

When I picked him up he did seem happy to see me, but not that anxious to leave the kennel.

I took Buster to the kennel yesterday for a bath in preparation for Mary and Rob’s arrival today.  It is so good to be able to pet him at any time and not just when I headed to the sink to wash my hands anyway.
I took his electronic fence collar off and he took off and wouldn’t come back for me to put on his leash.  He only ran as far as the car and turned and looked back at me.  It took me a minute to realize that he wasn’t running away from me, but was running to the car to take a ride.  The back door wasn’t open but the driver’s door was so he just hopped in the front.  It took a bit of persuasion to get him to sit in the back.
At the kennel he was much more interested in sniffing everything in site than going in.  The poor dog needs a social life.

For the first time I can remember, there is no water in our creek.  Even the deep hole that I can’t wade across with my hip waders on is dry.  At the upper end of the creek there are still two pools with water in them but below that is nothing.  The sky looks like this may be the day we get some rain.

They packed the stone (or pug mix as they called) it on Monday and Tuesday and yesterday they paved all of the parking pads and the driveway all the way to the new road.  It took them forever to get the irregularly shaped parking pads paved.  It didn’t go very fast where they were putting new asphalt over the old driveway either, but when they hit the new part of the driveway where they had done the prep work it just flew.
They put down some tar of something before paving over the old part to sort of glue the new to the old and Buster ran right through it before I knew that it was even down.  They told me to keep him inside or on a leash to keep him from burning his feet, but this was before they started so I just let him run.  The net of this is that he has a couple of tar spots on his shoulder where he must have scratched or something and there is some tar on the kitchen floor.  They told me that baby oil will soften it up so it can be cleaned up.  I haven’t tried that yet.  I’m just going to let him shed the tar off of his shoulder.  At the rate he has been shedding, it shouldn’t be but a day or two.

As I was working this morning, I started hearing these faint beeps and upon investigating found that the Invisible Fence box was the source.  What happened was that the road grader had cut the wire out at the Y (where the stone sign is).  I told the operator about the water line which goes across the gravel driveway not too far from there and he said that nobody had told him anything about that.  Fortunately, the water line is 18” to two feet deep so there isn’t much danger of him hitting that.
Meanwhile, Buster is residing in the laundry room (and as much of the kitchen as he can get away with) until they finish grading.

The earth moving contractor is apparantly finished because the paving contractor is putting down gravel and grading and packing it.  They were here Wed or Thursday powerwashing our current driveway where they are going to refinish.  There was a slight rain on Thursday afternoon which stopped them.  They said that they would finish with the gravel on Monday and start the paving of our driveway on Tue and then on Wed and Thur they would pave the new road.

Sorry this post has nothing about Rob’s dog, Buster.

Here are some pictures of the new driveway taken back when they first started.

This is taken from where the new corner of the driveway will be toward the old corner.  You can just make out the old corner if you know where it is already.  It is the light spot about halfway to the end.  At the end is the new road they are putting in from Kirkman road.

 

This next picture is from the same point but toward the little triangle. That is the current driveway just beyond the trees.

 

These next pictures are taken from the old corner of the driveway showing how the new driveway goes relative to the old. The first is looking toward Bonny Oaks Drive.

 

This one is looking away from Bonny Oaks Drive. The new corner is at the end of the clearing.  All of this looks much different now. These pictures were taken on 7/30/07.

This picture was taken 7/28/07  Sorry about the late post.