Apricots and a BIG Zuke

I watched Alice wash and chop apricots from neighbor's trees on Sunday. Some baked to eat now, lots more frozen with lime juice for later. Plenty for Thanksgiving chutney, she says.
Roger's first zuke is a big one. It's as wide as my noggin! I hope the people don't try to make me eat it.

Needles the Wonder Dog

Alice was away for a bit earlier this month. She has been slowly telling me what she did. I think the first most important thing she did was to think of me when she saw Burden's Urban Light at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Scores of real and old lightposts. What fun for us dogs! How truly beautiful for the people to look at all times of the day and night! Easy to see from a very busy street. Not hidden like that expensive 2% "public (ha!) art" in our town at the pumping station...
Alice then spent some time in a sunken garden with a lawn and hollyhocks. Tucked behind some flowers was this little cross.


It has a picture for Needles the Wonder Dog, a doberman who used to spend lots of time in that garden. Here is another picture of Needles.
I think Needles spent a lot of time at the old El Garces Hotel in Needles, California. One day I expect I will go to Needles and to that sunken garden, too, to sniff the hollyhocks and commune in a sunspot with all the happy dogs who have sniffed there.

More for May 27

After baseball viewing, Alice took me to see the latest "public art" project in our town. Here I am in front of it - the first photo Alice FINALLY has been able to download direct from her phone to computer once she bought a new cable, downloaded a driver, read the FAQs.....
Guess what the "art" it is!
Hints: You have to drive along a frontage road of a big highway, pull in an unmarked driveway, park and walk behind a building to see it. "Storm Water Pump" page 3. Rumor is the artist got thousands of dollars (10K+?) and this is her second or third city commission.
Alice told me yesterday she herself would like to buy several spray paint cans and go paint similar squiggles on the side of the building facing the big highway so that at least some people could see a "work of art". She offers here and now to do it for the cost of the paint cans if her city would deign to have art visible to the highway drivers instead of for just those who love scavenger hunts and similar Milard Filmore Trivia Hunts.
I, however, would prefer any paint used to be the scratch and sniff variety. Smelling like all my favorite neighbor dogs.... and a nice patch of real grass with wonderful smells to lawn dive into.....hmmmm.... THAT would really be Great Art, no?!