ADVENTURES WHILE WALKING, by Mel the Dog

Mom doesn't take us walking very often anymore, which she thinks makes her a bad mom.  But I don't feel it is my place to criticize, so I just humbly enjoy going for a walk whenever I get the chance.  Of course, a big reason we didn't go walking during the summer was that it was too hot, and the sidewalk would have burned our tender little foot pads.  But now that it is cooler, Mom is really trying to get out more to walk with us.

Yesterday turned out to be a special and different day because Barry was at Dr. Patricia's office having his teeth cleaned and getting a little lump cut off his tummy.  So Mom took me and Nicky out to walk together.  We had never gone for a walk together because usually Mom takes Nicky by himself, and then she takes me and Barry out.  But Nicky and I walked very nicely together, except for getting Mom tangled up in the leashes several times.  And now I am going to show you some pictures Mom took of interesting things we saw.

First of all, we noticed that a bunch of leaves were starting to turn pretty colors and fall off the trees.  This block has mostly ash trees, which are the first trees around here to turn in the fall.  This is nice because all the leaves fall off the ash trees early, and you can just rake them up and be done with the whole job instead of having to wait until December for them to finish falling, like we always do with our oak tree and sweetgums. Except that now there is this horrible bug in town called the emerald ash borer, and we are afraid it will kill all the ash trees, including the one in our back yard.

Another thing that's going on at this time of year is the political campaign.  Frankly, I am very tired of hearing about it, and so is Mom.  But here's a house where some Republicans live, and they have signs for every Republican who is running for office in this area, plus for Mitt Romney, too.

During the drought this summer, lots of people's bushes and small trees died.  The evergreens were the most likely to die, but other kinds of plants died, too.  I hope that if people take out their dead shrubs, they will replace them with new ones because we dogs always need appropriate stuff to pee on.

Unfortunately, the drought isn't really over yet, even though we have had some rain.  So it is still important to water anything that you want to keep alive.

Here's a nice sunflower plant, just hanging out over the sidewalk.

The sunflower is the State Flower of Kansas, but this one happens to be in Missouri.

Another thing you might sometimes find by the sidewalk is a toilet.  I'm not sure, but I think this might be the official State Bathroom Fixture.

Sometimes you can see the fossilized tracks of a prehistoric kitty cat.

Here's where a broken water main got dug up and fixed several weeks ago.  The workers still haven't poured the concrete to finish filling up the hole, and Mom is getting really tired of going around the orange cones every time she drives on this street, which is pretty often.

Here is the place where Mom gets her car repaired if it is broken.  The man who owns this garage is named Mark Trokey, and he is very nice, plus he has a really good sense of humor.

Ever since we have lived in this neighborhood, the people in this house have been trying to fix it up.  There is always some scaffolding in the front or on the side.  They have been working on painting the trim black for about three years now, and they made a little more progress during this past summer.  Maybe someday they will actually finish.  And by then it will be time to start over again.

Here's a house with a happier story.  It has sat around empty for many years, but suddenly this summer, people began to work on it.  They took lots of stuff out of the inside and put it in a dumpster.  They enclosed the porch and made a room out of it.  They filled up the cracks between the bricks and painted the whole house.  They put all new windows in.  They planted some tiny shrubs and some grass seed, which is starting to come up and make a nice lawn.  We think they probably fixed up the inside of the house, too.  We don't know if the people who are rehabbing the house are going to live there or if they are going to sell it.  I guess we will have to wait and see what happens.

So that's mostly all we saw yesterday that was new and exciting.  After Nicky and I finished walking, Piper got to go for a walk, too, but she always has to go by herself now because she doesn't like to walk very far.  Mostly, she just goes out and sniffs up and down our block a little, and Mom follows her around.  Which is why Piper doesn't have very many adventures anymore while she is walking, and I got to write this blog entry!