Bondi! Bondi! Bondi!

“I took Mick for a walk to check out the blackberries,” my beautiful friend Jody said of her German Shorthaired Pointer. “They were just coming on. I found very few. The deer and bear have hit them hard. It was a nice morning for a walk and I saw lots of fairy’s wash, as your mother would say.”

It made me smile, that someone who’d never known my mother has a small memory of her.

I was still thinking about that when I took Bondi out for a walk and took a photo of fairy’s wash to show you when someone just had to stick her nose in it! Fairy wash is the spider’s web spread over the grass as a fairy might spread her sheets.

I stirred up a Crane Fly and he landed on a leaf not far from me, then held still for his close-up.

These guys are big scary mosquito-looking things but they won’t hurt you. They have no mouth parts. Their only function at this stage in their life is to breed and die — and they’re an important link in the food chain.

Look how beautiful and intricate the little flowers of the Meadowsweet are!

I found this little guy down by the pond only because a fly buzzed past me and landed on him. It looks like he’s got an injury. What do you think caused this? A lawnmower? A bird? Another, bigger, turtle?

I put him down at the pond’s edge, which is the way he was heading.

Bondi is the Queen of Rabbit Skittles. She can sniff those babies out!

“What are Rabbit Skittles?” you ask.

Rabbit Skittles are those little round black candies left behind from the south end of a north-bound rabbit. Sounds better than rabbit poo, don’cha think?

Bondi raced ahead and spotted a little branch with dried leaves laying in the yard. She snatched ‘em up and ran. I laughed at her antics. In her defense, I do take almost everything away from her that she finds.

Like this...

Another day at the pond, Bondi is nosing around while I’m taking pictures. All of a sudden, she took off at a hundred miles an hour! I knew she had something, but what? I didn’t know.

“Come here!” I tell her.

Does she listen?

NO!

I tried a different command. “BONDI STOP!”

Did she listen?

NO!

She gets far enough ahead of me that she plops her arse down and looks at me.

Instead of a mean voice, I tried a sing-songy one. “Whad’cha find?”

She took off again. I took off at a trot, tucked my camera under my arm, and heard the shutter release.

“What did you get a picture of?” you ask.

I’d been gaining on Bondi and the next time she flopped down, I caught her.

“What is that!” From her mouth I pulled an old stinky snail shell. I’ve got some big ole honkin snails in my pond, that’s for sure! I snapped a picture;

Bondi grabbed the shell and ran. I’m not so sure it would hurt to chew on a snail shell but why take a chance. I took it away from her.

“Did you throw it away?” you wanna know.

No. I actually put it under some stuff in my cement leaf butterfly-waterer, which, by the way, I’ve never seen any butterflies drink from. A few bees, a cat or two, and occasionally, a thirsty little pup.

But speaking of my cement leaf and little pup…

I put things in my leaf so the butterflies have a place to land. One of those things is a small broken clay flower pot. Don’cha know I found that clay pot on the patio rug.

Bondi, I thought, has to be. I put it back in the watering hole. Bondi saw me do it too. Guess who went looking for it?

She doesn’t see it, gets up on the leaf, and walks the whole way around. She slipped off and when she got back up, she spotted it.

Then it was grab and run.

Up on the patio, she drops it and settles in to chew on it. I took it away from her and this time, I didn’t put it back. I’ll wait a few days, sneak it back in and see how long it takes her to find it.

My handsome husband worked on landscaping around the barn. We all went out to look at it, little Bondi trailing after Mike. He did a good job and he did it all by himself. That in and of itself is a wonder. Mike seldom does anything by himself, he doesn’t like to be alone.

“Wanna walk around the pond?” I don’t remember now who suggested it but we did walk around the pond.

My first indication that Bondi picked something up, was again, when she took off running. I snapped a picture.

“What’s she got?” I asked. “A hunk of grass or poop?”

“I don’t know,” Mike answered.

“BONDI!” I yelled. “STOP!”

Did she stop?

NO!

I took off after her.

“You’re never gonna catch her,” Mike said.

Bondi did her thing where she waits for me to catch up, then takes off again.

After a couple of rounds of this, I caught her and took it away. I didn’t smell it but since I touched it, I’m gonna say it was a hunk of mud and grass. I pitched it towards the pond and didn’t let her chase after it.

Another day, walking up behind the barn, Bondi on a leash, she grabs something and takes off. I reeled her in and pulled a slimy hunk of something and grass from her mouth. Is it just mud, I wondered, or is it poop? I did smell it this time and it smelled like sewer! Ewww! I pitched it and wiped my hands on the grass. Bondi wasn’t happy with me.

Soil doesn't need to be saturated with sewage to smell like it. Mucky, anaerobic soil reminds people of sewage. This condition can be naturally occurring or caused by a sewer leak.

There is no sewer there on the hill so this is one of those naturally occurring kinds and I knew, even before I Googled it, that it does occur naturally.

Swallowtail on Bergamot.

Two Humbees! That's what my mother called these Hummingbird Moths.

This is Virginia Knotweed or Jumpseed.

The leaves are at the bottom and the small white four-petal flowers dot a spike that can be up to twelve inches long. Jumpseed gets its name from its ability to eject seeds up to thirteen feet when disturbed.

Tiger and Bondi rest in the coolness of the shade while they wait for me to take pictures.

There’s lots of Goldenrod blooming! Seas of it! But the bees love it.

Have you ever smelled Goldenrod? It has a very pleasant scent, however, I would not recommend smelling it with the same hand you used to pull a slimy hunk of sewer mud from your dog’s mouth.

And speaking of dog’s mouth…

Bondi, Bondi, Bondi! We were visiting with the Kipps and Bondi stuck her whole head in Tux’s mouth!

Poor Tux!

I saw her do the same thing during playtime with the cat, too, only Tiger’s mouth is smaller so she only got her snout in.

I only let Smudge out these days if he’s on a leash and Mr. Mister is nowhere in sight because Mr. beats up on Smudge. Most days he's happy to lay on the patio but no so happy when Bondi plays tug-o-war with his leash.

One day I got busy and forgot to secure the end of Smudge’s leash. The door was open and I heard my glass shelf rattle as a cat jumped on it. The shelves are stair-stepped and the cats take advantage of that to get to the roof, or to lay on the upper shelves. My first thought was, Mr. Mister. He’ll often use the shelves to get up and down from the roof or just to lay on a shelf and that’s what it sounds like when he jumps down. Had he been on the roof? Did I look to see if he was on the shelf? I couldn’t remember so I went to look. There, on the top shelf, was Smudge.

He could hang himself, came unbidden to my mind along with an old story. My aunt and uncle had a female dog in heat. They didn’t want pups so they put her on the second floor of the chicken coop. The windows had no glass or wire so they had her tied to a post. The poor thing was so desperate to be bred that she jumped out of the window — and hung herself.

I got a ladder and got Smudge down. I won’t ever forget to tie the end of his leash off again.

Someone in this house had a birthday. Me. It was me that had a birthday. Mike took this old woman out for a birthday breakfast.

Our friend and neighbor, Miss Rosie, gave me the coolest gift! It’s a 3-D cutout of a camera. It’s perfect and I love it! I thanked Miss Rosie for it in person and I’ll thank her again on here. Thank you, Miss Rosie.

She also gave me a little plaque that says I love my Chiweenie. It’s currently on my desk till I figure out where I want to hang it.

I’m not the only one who got a gift that day. Smudge and Bondi had such a great time playing in the bag and with the tissue paper that I didn’t have the heart to take it away from them. Smudge climbed inside, Bondi pulled the red tissue paper out, and Smudge grabbed it and pulled it back in the bag. It wasn’t long until that tug-o-war ended with a ripped brown paper bag and shreds of tissue paper all over the floor. I didn’t care that I had a mess to clean up. The joy it gave me watching their play was more than worth it.