Anyone know what kind of snake this is? I tried Google, but didn’t see it. This was in the front yard.

I read chapter 3 “Attack By Stratagem” of Sun Tzu’s Art of War. Here is the end of that chapter:

17. Thus we may know that there are five essentials for victory:
(1) He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.
(2) He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces.
(3) He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks.
(4) He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared.
(5) He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign.

18. Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Check out this huge stag beetle I saw while watering the trees and bushes yesterday. It’s almost 2 inches long.

According to what I found online, these are beneficial beetles that help decompose dead trees on the forest floor.

I think the reason we have them is because we use untreated mulch. That does cause us to have more grubs and other pests than a yard would have, but they are kept in check by birds and another amazing insect we have but I’ve yet to photograph: Velvet Ants - huge territorial fuzzy black and red ants which are actually wingless wasps. I’ve seen about five so far - all in the mulch beds beside large rocks.

According to Wikipedia, velvet ants lay an egg in the nest cell of the cicada killers we also have in the yard. When the cicada killer larva pupates, the parasitoid larva consumes the pupa. As you might have guessed, we have cicada killers because we’ve got cicada grubs … all partying in the mulch beds together. Fun times.

I’ve never been stung by the velvet ants, but they reportedly have a very painful sting. They’re also fast, and I’ve only seen them rarely when I water near their homes in the mulch beds.

That look just about sums it up.

Vince brought the carriers in last night and set them on the living room floor, opened them, and Trudy decided she wasn’t going anywhere. I don’t blame.

Mimi seemed to be snapping out of her stupor following their surgeries, but her body remembered the anaesthesia just as quickly and took her over like a zombie spell. She stumbled to her day bed and collapsed.

Vince is off today. I’m off tomorrow and Monday, and we’ll have the weekend to watch them as they slowly come to. The Vet said everything looked fine. They even removed a couple of stuborn baby teeth and clipped their nails.

I wished the girls at the front desk good luck on the way out to join the morning commuters. I could hear Mimi and Trudy still barking at the Vet. They were fine on the ride in with exception to a sisterly whimper that seemed to be a constant acknowledgement that they were in whatever was about to happen together no matter what.

Poor things.

Vince is picking them up this evening. We have the rest of the week and next Monday off to tend to them as they heal up. I made sure to check the box on the form that asks whether you want them to charge you for some doggy pain pills. I couldn’t bear listening to Vince scold me. I hope they give them cones for their heads. That ought to be real cute.

Everytime I look at this picture of Vince holding Mimi, I get a nice chuckle. Earlier that day I bought that little outfit for Mimi at Lucky Pup in Nashville. The owner of the store, Kristin, told me she put this picture up on their wall. After putting the dress on her, it took some time for her to get used to it, but in no time she was running around and making her sister Trudy very jealous. There were little wimpers, then barks. Mimi was tattling on her sister for biting her dress.

Weird thing. Our neighbor behind us just got their own chihuahua, a cute little thing they named Polka. Vince told me last night that another neighbor, who lives next to his sister down the street, got two chihuahuas, too!

All the play date opportunities!

I am worn the hell out. Vince and I have been in the yard since 8:30 this morning and just called it a day even though we aren’t nearly done. We mowed, and the yard looks amazing. We also planted three Yoshino Cherry trees and one of the Maples. We still have to cut down two cedar trees, plant the other maple, much and tie them off to the stakes we hammed into the ground.

When mowing, we saw a bunny had made a home in part of the tall grass, but something found them because there was a dead baby bunny rabbit no bigger than the palm of your hand lying nearby. There was fur everywhere. We burried it under one of the Yoshinos and pledged to name that tree whatever the Japanese translation is for “sleeping bunny.”

Mimi and Trudy watch me tweet on the Twittertubes.