Ball mouth

Today, in the Park, Emma found a tennis ball. It wasn’t the newest looking tennis ball. In fact, it had teeth marks in it and was a colour that Dulux would undoubtedly describe as Dog Slobber Green. I have no idea where she found it but she proudly brought it over to me, dropping it at my feet then staring at it, hoping I’d throw it for her.

For reasons that are obvious, I didn’t fancy picking it up, so I kicked it around the Park as we walked. At one stage Day-z joined in though she has her own rules. She generally lets Emma do the running and retrieving then grabs it out of her mouth when she returns. Sometimes Day-z will chase it but this wears her out quite quickly.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before but Emma has a very long tongue. It’s a wonder she can fit it in her mouth. When she runs, it almost drags on the ground behind her. Naturally, when she has a tennis ball in her mouth, this presents problems for the tongue. Emma solved this problem today.

As I said, the tennis ball had teeth marks in it. The holes were just the right size for Emma’s canine. In fact, the fit was so good that it would just hang there on one side of her mouth while her tongue could happily loll out of the other side. It looked rather odd (sadly I didn’t have the camera) but incredibly inventive of her.

Back at the house, it was another day spent in the garden, weeding, weeding and attempting to clean my office. Oh, and I Skyped with Mum and fixed her laptop.

Speaking of the garden (as I seem to do with increasing regularity these days) I’m quite pleased with the lupins. We’ve never had a lot of luck with them before but this year, while the slugs and snails have claimed one of them, the other two are flourishing. Here’s the one we came home to:

Something else we came home to was a rather ingenious construction in the wildflower patch. Mirinda spotted it and pointed it out. It seems that a spider has figured out that in order to maximise its food supply, the lashing together of the tops of a number of wildflowers creates a pretty clever trap. We’ve yet to spot the actual spider but I bet it has a full belly…given the number of insects attracted to the wildflowers.

Spiderweb Supermarket

And, here’s a bit of cheeky from Emma. She was asleep on the path outside my office but lifted her head when I moved in my chair. Her eyes remained closed and she quickly flopped back down. Hardly worth the effort. Clearly the ball chasing wore her out nicely.

Huh?