Since Steve is still fighting off what has become his worst head cold in years, and thus hasn't been surfing, we've taken to morning walks on the beach with Caly. Not only does it give us a little exercise, but absolutly whoops the puppy and she ends up sleeping for the next four to five hours, which allows us to actually get some stuff done around the house or get some work done. A win for all concerned. Of course, Caly still gets plenty of attention from us, but at least now *we* get to decide when, which is a nice luxury.

When we hit the shore yesterday, Caly was so excited she could hardly walk. Even the most frozen stoic has to feel just a little warmth at the sight of a cute little puppy whose backside is wiggling twice the width of her entire body with every step. Makes walking her on a leash next to impossible, but it sure is cute. What started out as excitement turned into disappointment for us as we realized that the tide was so high that there wasn't any beach to walk on!

We followed a little path through the trees to get to a wider section of beach, figuring that while it was likely to more crowded in front of the big hotel, at least there would be beach upon which to walk and play. The reason the beach is wider there is because there is an estuary that meets up with the sea and has dumped a bunch of sand. What we hadn't anticipated was the idea that the estuary itself, while very full, was slow-moving enough that Caly could actually play in the water without us worried about big waves crashing on her. She LOVED it. After watching her yip and snap at the wavelets (still chest-high to her) we finally went in ourselves and persuaded her to swim about five feet out to us. After two or three times she sat on the beach and howled at us... but eventually relented and jumped into the water again.

While we were excited to take her back to the beach this morning, we opted instead to run out to our lot and put some plants in the ground. We started them months ago on the patio and they were starting to outgrow their pots. So we loaded up the 40, dug some banana sprouts out of a neighboring vacant lot, and headed over to play gardeners. We were a little shocked to discover just how much the weeds have grown in the last month. WOW. Next time we'll remember the machete! After clearing out some space with much shovel-whacking and little grace, we planted everything that we had. Sure looked like a lot more on our patio than it does in the ground! Caly was, of course, very helpful. In the "You didn't really want that planted there did you? How about I dig it up and you try again?" sense of the word helpful. But after putting some broken cinderblock chunks around the basil garden, she seemed to understand that maybe we actually *did* want those to stay planted there. Not a pretty solution, but living downhere, sometimes, you just have to be glad to have a solution at all.

Labels: beach, dog, garden, tamarindo