Today's Flowers

End of August and still some color around the yard. We're into rainy weather again but I'm not complaining after the warm sunny summer. Hooper's blood work still shows some elevated kidney levels so now we monitor her for a while to try to determine what's going on. Tag goes in for dental cleaning next week and I'm hoping he doesn't require a lot of work. His blood work was good so there is nothing there to add to the dog worries.

I've been on a western reading binge. Here's the list so far. Started out consuming every Zane Grey novel I've found free online, something like two dozen. Also Owen Wister's The Virginian (loved this one) and Lin McLean; Glendon Swarthout's The Shootist (great); Jack Schaefer's Monte Walsh (loved it); Man-size and Bucky O'Connor by William McLeod Raine (I'm not crazy about Raine's writing); Rowdy of the Cross L by B.M. Bower (just OK); Alan LeMay's the Searchers (good); A.B. Guthrie's The Big Sky and The Way West (both wonderful) and soon to read Fair Land, Fair Land to close the circle on some of the characters; Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian (I think I hated this one), All The Pretty Horses (loved it), just started reading The Crossing, will finish the trilogy with Cities of The Plain, and at some point tackle The Road which is not a western. Then I have Pete Dexter's Deadwood, Elmore Leonard's Hombre, Larry McMurty's Lonesome Dove series, E.L. Doctorow's Welcome to Hard Times and a few dozen more titles to go through before I exhaust my westerns list. Thank god for library loans and free eBooks or I'd have to spend a small fortune to read them.

Some pretties....