Alligator Doubt

I had a somber task this week -- figuring out what to do with Olga's leftover food, treats and other dog items. She left us with six cans of food, two big unopened boxes of Dentastix, a box of brand-new rolls of poop bags (probably about a thousand of them!), and some towels and dog blankets. Oh, and her tennis balls.

I would never throw any of it out, but I also didn't want to save it all for if and when we get another dog. Who knows when that will be? Even canned food has a shelf life, and tennis balls deteriorate. I e-mailed the organization where we adopted Olga back in January 2013, thinking they might want the stuff, but I never heard back from them. So I looked around online and found that the Battersea Dogs & Cats Home accepts donated pet items. I made sure everything was clean and on their list of requirements, packed it in two big tote bags, and took it to Battersea yesterday morning.

I did not give away her collar and leash, her Kongs, her food bowls or her dog bed. Stuff like that will last until we get another dog. And remember that silly alligator dog toy we bought her in Florida a couple of years ago? She would never play with it -- I think it was too unlike her balls and Kongs and she never understood that it was a toy. We just kept it on our bed as a decorative item. Well, I put it in the donation bag, and then took it out again, and then put it in again. (Repeat cycle about three more times.) Finally I kept it.

I actually feel OK about the donations. I'm glad that other dogs will benefit, and Battersea is a wonderful organization. I am happy to support them. But of course it was still not a fun task.

I've also been trying to clean out some other stuff around here. I have two bags ready to go which I will take to Oxfam later today.

Oh, and remember how I said Dave would be back today? Well, never mind. It's actually tomorrow that he gets home! I guess I got the date that he leaves the USA (today) confused with his arrival date in the UK (tomorrow). So I'm on my own for one more day of meals. I think I'll manage.

These photos show a few flowers blooming at the moment. We only got one globe thistle (top) this year, for some reason. The cardoon (middle) has also not had an especially robust year, though it does have several flower heads, which as you can see the bees and hoverflies love. And that hydrangea (bottom) is the one I rescued on my walk home from work in the spring. It has leafed out quite happily and has loose white flower heads.

I'm finally making headway in my latest Ian Rankin paperback, "Even Dogs in the Wild," which I've been carrying around since before Blackpool. I like his books but it took me a while to break into this one, with all the distractions of travel and life in general. I'm about halfway into it, following retired detective John Rebus on his adventures in the Edinburgh criminal underworld, and will probably zoom through the rest.

Last night I watched an excellent documentary on Netflix, "Aftershock," about the 2015 Nepal earthquake and its effects not only on the Nepalese but on climbers on Mount Everest and a team of backpackers in a remote valley. Some harrowing stories, made worse by a cultural misstep by one of the backpackers. When I first started it I was ambivalent, because I'm not into mountaineering at all, but I ultimately found it riveting.