T Stands for a Tough Week

Hi everyone. Happy first T day in June. I hope your month has started off well for you.

     Not to complain but just to mention, last week I had a tough week. Monday/Memorial Day I was up early to go work at the lake. I took a shower and then put on a load of towels to wash. After about an hour I went upstairs to brush my teeth and the water in the faucet was no more than a trickle. Luckily it was a holiday and my husband was home from work for the day. I hollered down to him with the situation. We both thought our well pump had gone, but he figured he'd check downstairs in the basement. Good thing he did because at a spot where a filter was tied into our water treatment system  there was a good sized leak. 

Perhaps leaking is too mild a word.

I snapped a quick photo (ignore our basement mess please!) while I was moving things out into the garage before I headed out to work. The poor hubby spent his day off vaccing up the water and fixing the leak. Sadly, that fix didn't quite work, so he took Tuesday off and replumb the system.

Luckily now the basement is dry, and there are no leaks. It's a good thing he is a handy guy. ❤  Tuesday was also a tough day for us in another way.

     A few months ago Maddie developed diabetes. Her glucose levels have been strange. The insulin has gotten her drinking and needing to go out for the bathroom under control, but it hasn't brought her blood sugar levels down.  Sadly, it is very easy for dogs to go blind with diabetes and high blood sugar, and Maddie is now blind. Poor Maddie. I can't imagine what it is like to have her whole world become a giant blur. We're afraid this might be the beginning of the end, because if we can't control her blood sugar, other things can start to go wrong.  😢

      Needless to say I've been in a pretty low mood this past week. I've been researching and trying to take on this blood glucose challenge. I don't think our vet has been the most helpful, but she has tried. One of the techs told me they don't deal with a lot of diabetic dogs. The specialist appointment I made isn't until early July (unless they get a cancellation-I can hope).  Maddie is smart though, and we're already in the process of training her with a new commands to walk around and do steps. She's doing well with that, but it is hard to watch her walk into things as she figures out how to move around. I hope we can all make this adjustment and have her in our lives for longer than we've been feeling lately.

      I don't want this post to be a total downer, because there were some things that made me happy. Here they are:

My irises are blooming, including some new white and dark purple bulbs I planted last fall.

My daughter came home Saturday to spend the night, and Sunday morning we went for a really nice long walk on a local rail trail.

She also found these cool scratch off maps in the Target dollar section. We had fun scratching off the states we had visited. Here's my map. (I've been to airports in a few of my no-scratched states, but we're only scratching  states if we'd visited with more that just an airport layover.)

My azalea is still blooming, and it, as well as some other flowers, are  attracting many various swallowtail  butterflies. At one time I counted 6 butterflies on this azalea at one time.

This black swallowtail seemed to like my ground phlox better.

 Mama and Papa bluebird have babies in the blue bird house. The other day I was working in the veggie garden, which is near their house, and they were both waiting and watching for me to leave so they could bring their babies some food. I'm looking forward to  seeing when the fledglings leave the nest.

I have also gotten my veggie garden set up too. Other than some tomatoes and green peppers in a different raised bed, I'm going very low key in my veggie garden this year.

  And lastly I need a drink for T day over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog this week. Since my yard and gardens are making me happy right now, I'm going to share this photo for this week's drink.

My honeybees love to get a drink of water at my birdbath. The reason you see some terracotta pieces in the birdbath (on the top of the photo) is so that the bees have extra places to land.

That's all for me this week. I hope you have a happy T day and week ahead.