Lilly Is Such a Shit

Lilly, our rescued pit bull, with issues, has mostly good days, some bad days and some "dog are you fucking crazy?" days. She has issues with night time. Whoever abused her did something that makes her one bizarre mutt at night. Recently, we'd been able to leave the back door open, she'd go out in the yard and do her business and chill on the deck, or she'd come back inside. Well, sometimes she needs to be leashed, because she'll run around like an idiot and make a ton of noise.

Since she's been sane lately, we've been leaving the back door open, so we can circulate some cool air into our hot house. Well, apparently, she decided she wanted to play with the vines.

We have a trellis along part of the fence, and we put it up because she was getting up on the built-in benches and looking over the fence for cats. It has these pretty vines on it and she's torn them down a couple times running by them, but they've started to flourish. The vines haven't been growing as thick over the last year as the nursery led us to believe they would, so Patsy planted another one in the center, so it wouldn't look so empty.

Lilly tore the new plant out by its roots, shook it like a toy, spread soil all over the deck and very likely completely killed the plant. Patsy replanted it, but it looks sick.


                                             This is Sarah, not the offending mutt. Sarah is completely sane.


                                                           Poor plant.

Damn crazy dog.

                                                 Hey Crazy Pants!

First Picnic and a Pie

My parents and I took Zoe for her first picnic at Laurelhurst Park. It was nice and cool in the park and we found a shady spot to put down our blanket and let Zoe play. We just had some snacks, Izzis and blackberry pie (that I had made using berries my dad and I picked from the brambles near my parents' apartment), but I figure it still counts as a picnic, because there was food and a blanket and sitting on the ground in the park.

We watched two men set up a balance rope thing across the whole bowl, that's the dog park during the winter, and then one of them carefully walked all the way across it. It was interesting and I definitely would not have the balance for it.

Mostly we just played with Zoe and ate meat and cheese and crackers. It was my kind of picnic.

                                                                                              Belly laughs.


                                                                                                  Mmmm, toes.

Zoe sat up for the longest she has ever done, too. Usually, she balances, teeters and then fall over within a few seconds, but this time, she was sitting there for a few minutes. I love the little accomplishments.




                                        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The pie I made was really simple. Just a quick crust in the food processor and then three ingredients in the filling.

Blackberry Pie
The Crust:
2 1/2 cups      Flour
2 1/2 T           Sugar
1 t                  Salt
2 Sticks          Butter, cut into 16 little cubes and frozen
3/4 cup           Ice water (don't actually use the ice in this measurement, just the really cold water)

Combine the flour, sugar and salt in the food processor and pulse to combine. Add the frozen butter and process until the butter is in pea sized pieces in the flour. Add the cold water and process until the dough looks like large curds. Turn out the dough and form it into a disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for at least an hour.

Filling:
4 Cups           Blackberries
1/2 cup           Flour
1/2 cup           Sugar

Combine flour and sugar in a bowl and mix it together with a fork. Toss this with the blackberries and let sit.

Cut your chilled dough in half and roll out two circles or dough large enough for your pie pan. Place on circle into the pan and smooth it out, leave the overlap. Add the filling and then cover with the second round of dough. Trim the edges, if needed, to that there's about an inch of overlap. Tuck the edges up underneath, but on top of the lip of the pie pan. Crimp. Brush the whole top of the pit with egg wash, sprinkle with sugar and add some vents in the middle of the top crust. Place in the fridge and let chill, while preheating the oven to 425 degrees. Once preheated, bake for 25 minutes and then turn temperature down to 350. Bake another 25-30 minutes until pie is golden brown. If the edges start to get too dark, place foil around the border to keep it from burning.