ADVENTURES WHILE WALKING, by Nicky

It's time once more to tell you about everything that's happening in the neighborhood!  A lot of days it's too hot for me and Mom to want to go out walking, so we don't go.  But sometimes we have a few cool days, and then we get out and check to see what all the new developments are.

In our last exciting installment of "Adventures," we learned from the graffiti on the back of a stop sign that "Miranda hearts Jonathon."  But guess what!  This passionate situation has changed, and now we learn that it is "Not anymore."

And besides that, we discovered that "Aubrey is a female dog," which was exciting news to me, since I really like female dogs, so now I'm hoping I can meet this Aubrey.  But the other piece of news is that "No one will ever like Johnny boi... anymore."  We don't know what "boi" is.  Maybe it's the first part of Johnny's last name.  Or maybe it's not.  And is this Johnny the same person as the Jonathon that Miranda doesn't heart anymore?  It was too much drama for Mom and me, so we just had to move on and look at other things.

On Sunday night we had a big storm, with lots of wind, and several tree branches got broken.  Some of these branches were just little ones, which is what we had in our yard, but other branches were pretty big, like this one.

Because it's summertime, lots of people have lots of flowers growing in their yards, and everything looks very pretty.  The people at this house are always in the process of trying to get their trim painted, so they leave the scaffolding up all year long.  But they have tons of interesting flowers and stuff in their yard, so we like to walk by and look at it.

The hostas are blooming right now, and so are the hydrangeas.

Some people use their wheelbarrows as flower pots.  I don't know what they do if they actually need to use the wheelbarrow to haul something with.

At this house, there are two griffins standing guard.  A griffin has the body of a lion, and the head and wings of an eagle.  Griffins are supposed to be good at guarding treasure and other things of value, so I guess that's why you would want them watching over your house.

You can almost always find somebody in the neighborhood who is getting a new roof.  How many people does it take to do a roofing job?  Judging from this house, it takes about 3 to do the actual work, and 4 or 5 to watch and supervise.

This is one of Mom's favorite places to eat.  It's called Governor Stumpy's, which kind of makes you think of some old Civil War veteran stumping around on a wooden leg.  But there is really nobody of that description at Governor Stumpy's.  They just have yummy food, which I can smell when we walk by there.  I wish they allowed dogs inside, but they don't.

Mom has wondered for years how any bird can take a bath in this birdbath while it has the giant squirrel sitting in the middle of it.  But maybe it's not about the birds.  Maybe it's just about having a pedestal for the squirrel statue.

When I saw this blue thing, I thought for sure that it was some kind of alien spaceship with little green men in it.  And Mom admitted that when she first saw it, she wasn't sure what it was either.  But she was fairly certain it was not an alien spaceship.  Now she thinks that it's a wading pool with a cover on it to keep dirt and stuff out of the water.  And when she told me that, I could sort of see that she might be right.

A couple of weeks ago, we suddenly noticed that some people near us have a mimosa tree, and now it is blooming and it looks very pretty.  This reminded Mom that her dad used to try to grow a mimosa in the front yard when she was a kid.  It would grow okay for a few years, and then there would be a really cold winter, and it would die back and have to start over again.  This is probably because mimosas are only hardy to Zone 6, but we live in a little patch of Zone 5 that is surrounded by Zone 6 on all sides.  So sometimes mimosas grow here, and sometimes they don't.

We saw this juniper tree with berries on it.  I guess you can use the berries in food, but I don't think I'd want to eat them, personally.  I'd rather have a mouse or a bird.

I have no idea why Mom took a picture of this ugly fire hydrant that obviously needs to be painted.  But Mom said she thought the texture of the peeling paint was interesting.  Personally, the only thing I think that texture is good for is to catch dog pee and make it available for sniffing for a while longer.

And finally, when we got back to our block, we were surprised to see a news channel vehicle parked at a house on the other side of the street from ours.  At first we thought maybe there was some Breaking News there, but nothing seemed to be happening.  So we decided maybe the reporter or whoever it is lives at that house and is all ready to run out and cover any news story that suddenly breaks.

Well, that's it for all the most exciting neighborhood news.  In a few weeks, I'll probably report back to you with more fascinating stuff.