More Mango baby photos

the initial picture of mango were just from noa and my iPhone.  i did actually have my camera while there, and while i processed these photos after i got back, i haven’t felt like blogging since then.  But these must be seen!

Warning!  there are a lot of SQUEEE puppy photos coming.  if you’re not interested, you best skip this post.

First off, here are two more photos of noa and i holding her

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now most of these other photos are just of puppies playing

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This little cutie is called japa temporarily, as she is going to a family in japan.  by far, she was the most photogenic of the bunch i think.

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3 or 4 adults would run around as we are playing with the puppies.  the rest would be in the house or the backyard.

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i promise they were tired at some point…

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but then more playtime!

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one of the adults

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noa getting her hugs in

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puppies waiting to be let out again

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very dangerous activity going into the puppy cage

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getting some treats

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and a final frolic moment

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less than a month before we can finally bring her home!

i skipped many photos, follow any of them into flickr to see the rest…

Introducing Mango

Let me tell you a story.

Noa and i have always wanted a dog.  Both of us grew up with dogs.  after university, we talked about it, but we were always living in other peoples apartments, and so we decided eventually to get ferrets, ginger and yogurt!  several years passed, we owned our own apartment, and still, I was travelling a lot for work, we were flying internationally, and we did not want to subject a dog to living in an apartment.  I know its both fine and possible, it just was not right for us at the moment.

One day in Vancouver we were at the kitsilano farmers market.  we were each getting separate things, and we each saw this dog that we fell in love with.  separately, we both asked the owners what it was, and when they told us a duck toller, we said a what?  when we met up we each excitedly told each other about the cute dog we saw, and that it was a duck toller.  of course once you know about something, you see them everywhere, and we totally fell in love with tollers.  Then my good friend danny had a tenant move into his basement, and she had a duck toller and we got to play with her some, and this just re-enforced our love of the dogs.

But then we ended up moving to Israel.   While getting settled there, again, the timing was not right, but after moving to the smaller village where we are now we decided that its finally time.  We looked around, and lo and behold there are no tollers at all. We talked about adopting, which we also wanted to do, but we still really wanted to get a duck toller.

so last may, when we were in italy last time, i had somehow stumbled upon an italian breeder of duck tollers.  we tried to meet up with them that time, but they were away at a dog show.  so when we were looking for a puppy again this december, i thought i would check their website, and as it turns out, they had just had a litter december 15th.  we emailed them, and they indeed had one puppy left, a girl out of a litter of 7.

Noa and i debated back and forth for a week about what to do, and eventually we decided we would take her.

Now, all of this was the background story… We decided two weeks ago we could not wait anymore, and to take a weekend in italy to go meet our puppy.  we cannot import her until she is 4 months old into israel, and she just turned 3 months old.  either way, we had decided to come visit, so last thursday we flew to milan, and drove down to modena which is the closest largest city.  on saturday we drove to “Casa di Toller”, and got to meet our puppy for the first time.

We decided to name her Mango, and here she is!

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these are just iPhone pictures we took.  i brought my camera, and have a whole bunch of puppy photos to process and upload.  and once i do be ready to be inundated with puppy photos.

The litter she was born too had three boys and four girls.  the three boys all went to italian owners, so they have all left already.  the four girls are being sent to us, france, vancouver(a breeder there) and japan!  what a international bunch of puppies!

so while there, we got to interact will all 4 of the girl puppies, and over twenty other duck tollers they have!  it was such a fun day.  we ended up spending much of saturday with them, and then we went back on sunday for an hour to say goodbye.

I think both of us have never had a more fun vacation than this.

tomorrow we drive to milan for the day, and then we fly home.

more to come soon….

Gardening 2014

It was january, and for some reason winter skipped over israel this year.  i was out in the orchard, making sure everything was ready for spring, and i thought to myself, i want a vegetable garden.  sure, i was playing with plants in pots, doing some hydroponic basil and lettuce tests, but what i really wanted was a  good ol honest veggie patch in the ground.  so, i surveyed the land, and decided that there was a part of the garden that was underused.  and i made the executive decision to start a garden there.

I got some old lumber from someone, and i went to work.  the biggest issue is a lot of the ground here is backfilled dirt, as everything has been built up on a hillside.  so my first order of business was to dig up the clay/hard packed soil, built up a raised bed, and fill the whole thing in with bags and bags of garden soil that can retain water.

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Here you can see my poor iPhone photos as i was starting to dig up the ground after creating the raised beds.  i had to really dig the soil.

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in the picture above i had everything filled in and a square foot system in place, along with the irrigation.  but as you can see everything around it is still pretty crude.

i quickly fix that though

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here is the garden at sunset.  I have now built a bench, and poured a rock path around the whole thing.

and another top view

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at this point i have established the olive nursery on the top left, and on the right side you can see a patch that becomes my green bean patch.  I’ve also put some flowers along the path for bees, and bottom right just out of frame is the strawberry patch.  on the far left i have a bay tree, and some mint growing along with ginger when it comes up.

as for the orchard i keep talking about, here are two pictures that show off all the trees.

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in the one below, you can see the two grapefruit trees.  these are the real workhorses of the orchard.  i have been drinking fresh grapefruit juice almost every day since december.  and i can’t keep up, i keep having to compost fruit that falls.

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the rest of the orchard needs some care, which i have been giving it.  so I’m hopeful this year it will produce better.  technically theres apples, another lemon (theres two lemon trees that are very active behind the yard), apricots, pomegranates, figs, mandarin oranges and olives.  ohh, and a baby mango tree.  the big tree on the far left is also a pecan tree that we totally missed the harvest on this year.

okay, now some artsy photos of the garden…

roses in bloom.  now is the season before it gets too hot

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my favourite tree, the grapefruit

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almonds in bloom after a much needed rain storm

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my prized passion fruit plant.  there used to be two, but one got rotted.  so this is all one plant after i trimmed it back after the last fruiting season.

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fig shoots and first fig forming

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Pea flowers

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Chard

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okay, now for the latest photo of the veggie patch…..

Grand reveal….

 

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and I’ve added a photo with a description of what everything is.  this is really a test bed to see what works mostly direct sowing in the ground from beginning of january….

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types of lettuce available

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I also added a little grass along the side of the yard for me to enjoy.  this section gets hardly no sun, and if any only late afternoon, so no point in growing veggies there.  at the base you can see the strawberry plants.  i suppose at some point i could try planting corn there…  hmmmmm…

on the right side of the path you can see two buckets, which are the beginning of two hydroponic tomatoes.  I’ve buried the reservoir to keep the water cool and prevent algae growth.

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and ill leave with a few more shots of the veggies

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best radishes I’ve ever had.

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Thats pretty much it.  i check in on everything every day, and i enjoy spending time down there.  i try to have a morning tea on my bench if i can.  I’m adding a water feature currently, and I’ve had to separate the irrigation to a separate timer as i need to water every day when its hot and windy.  and I’m always thinking of what else i can do, but I’ve mostly filled in my useable space for the moment.

hope you have enjoyed the grand tour of my garden….