Bruno had his first puppy play date since we’ve had him on Sunday. My new friend Sonja is a grad student in the same program as me and we share an office. She and her fiance Greg have a one and a half year-old black lab, Casey, and we talk about our dogs constantly. They’ve had Casey since he was a little bitty puppy, so she’s been a great resource for me to talk about stuff that’s going on with Bruno and get advice and ideas. So on Sunday Nate and I took Bruno over to their house to meet Casey. They were instant best friends! Casey is actually about 80 pounds, about 15 more than Bruno, but they were a perfect match. We were there 2 or 3 hours and they never stopped! They tore around the house after each other, wrestling, playing keep-away, tug-of-war. It was the cutest thing in the world. Bruno gets to be around lots of other dogs at doggy school and occasionally meet other dogs on his walks, but he hasn’t been able to just play, play, play. And Casey knows lots of other dogs, but none that are of comparable size so he always has to play a little less hard. So this was a wonderful thing for both of them. And it turns out that Sonja and Greg are fellow good beer enthusiasts, so Nate and I may have made new best friends as well!

Nate and I recently embarked on our first landscaping endeavor at Duo Team Headquarters: planting bulbs! As a small tidbit of background, when we bought the house I was all psyched up to convert our entire yard into native Minnesota prairie grasses and flowers. And then pretty much as soon as we moved in and I surveyed the garden and the plants that we inherited from Amy (previous owner), I realized I didn’t know the first thing about outdoor plants (or indoor for that matter really). So I have revised my plans. I still hope to eventually line our front walkway and possibly fill that part between the sidewalk and the street with prairie goodness, but I now know I have to take baby steps to get there. Hence, baby step #1: Bulbs!

Since I was going to be in the neighborhood of El Depot de Casa, it was my task to buy the bulbs. I was excited about this, but as I walked out to the gardening section, I suddenly realized I had no idea what I was doing. My footsteps slowed. The Home Depot garden lady approached. "What can I help you with?" she asked. "I want bulbs!" I practically screamed at her. She stared at me for a moment, and then I told her I had no idea what I was doing. She smiled patiently and directed me to the bins and bins of bulbs, which happened to be right in front of me. I said "Oh, that’s what bulbs look like". She showed me the idiot-proof instructions on the bags, and I then spent an eternity agonizing over the different possibilities: crocuses, irises, hyacinths, tulips… I finally settled on what I thought could be a winning combination: $24 worth of purpley bluey crocuses (croci?), red, orange and yellow tulips, some solid color and some stripey, yellow narcissus, and all different kinds of white and yellow daffodils. I have since learned that narcissus is apparently a daffodil. No wonder they looked so similar. Whatever.

Since it now gets dark at like freakin 5pm up here in the north der hey, Nate and I decided to wake up early and plant them. We used the awesome claw garden tool that Ma and Pa Phillips recently gave to us (THANK YOU!) to loosen the dirt, and went to town! Nate put the crocuses/croci in the window box. There was previously an herb garden there, but we think we may just put all edibles in the garden in back. It was nice to have those smells wafting in the window though, but there’s still enough room that we could plant a few somethings in there with the flowers if we want.

We had read that we were supposed to cut back all perennials, so we did, somewhat nervously. On my Bruno walks I’ve been checking out other people’s plants, and I’ve seen a few things cut back, but not many. Lots of people plant with prairie grasses and flowers here, and none of that is cut back, which makes sense to me, but I wasn’t thinking of that when I cut our purple cone flowers. Probably should have left them. Well hopefully they’ll all be ok.

Nate also did the long section underneath the window box, as you can see in the photo above. There were some things planted around a tree by the street, so I put some in there. After my first three bulbs I realized I hadn’t been paying attention at all to what direction I was placing them in, so I had to go back and dig them up and replace them. duhhh. Got too excited and forgot to read the idiot-proof instructions. There are these pieces of wood that are all broken and crappy around the tree now, but I want to replace them with stones. Then I planted a bunch of bulbs in this corner section on the other side of the front door. I was putting daffodils and tulips in, and I was trying to alternate, but could not for the life of me keep track of what I had just put in, so it’s probably going to be just a big ol mess of flowers.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bruno, tied to the big tree in front, was wreaking havoc on Marcus the Carcass, a cheap yet awesome $13 light-up Halloween decoration I bought. Since Nate had spent quite some time making Marcus look oh so spooky, Bruno was subsequently put in his kennel and howled the rest of the time.

Nate put the last remaining bulbs in the back yard, and so far Bruno has not dug them up. Weee. So come spring we should have a wonderful surprise! It will be like getting a present, because we will have long forgotten the work we did, and we will be just coming out of seasonal depression and sooooo excited about seeing colors in our yard!

Well I’m glad to see that Nate at least had a good day. Sunsets, Boston, Ducks and all. I on the other hand have had somewhat of a challenging day. It consisted of the following. Driving Nate to the airport at 4:30am (he was planning on taking the light rail and I insisted on driving him. Not sure why). Intending to get a couple more hours of sleep when I got back home, but not having that happen because a certain dog was just plain ready for the day. Taking dog for walk #1 and ending up pulling something out of his mouth that I thought was a wood chip, but realizing once it was in my hand and I got a whiff of it that it was in fact poop. Gagging for the rest of the day every time I thought of it, which I did often. Having dog drop his 80 pound bone on my pinky toe. Spending a lengthy time trying to encourage dog to pee so I could leave for work as he just sat and stared at me. Getting to work 10 minutes late. Being on my feet for 8 hours. Spending a good portion of my 1/2 hour lunch break (not nearly long enough to actually eat a meal in my opinion) trying to solve a friend’s crisis. Coming home and taking dog for walk #2 in the cold rain. Singing Guns n Roses "Cold November Rain" in my head the entire time. Coming home and finding an enormous centipede on the wall in the basement waving its front legs at me. Killing said centipede and having half of its body drop into a pile of stuff below, I’m sure to be found at a later terrifying date.

But the good news is that things improved. Katie and Gretchen had their housewarming karaoke party, and it was soooooo fun. I have now been up this morning for hours. I have fed, trained, walked and played with Bruno, and am now sitting waiting impatiently for Nate to wake up so we can go to the Chatterbox and have brunch and bloody marys! I think someone is about to get steamrolled…