For those of you that don't know him already, this is Henry.
Henry is a wire-haired dachshund that belongs to my parents. He joined the family shortly after Minnie did. Henry is vacationing at our house for a few days while his mom and dad (who are also my mom and dad - does that make us siblings?) are off gallivanting in California.
Even though he's sometimes too barky and gets carried off by owls, Henry is a sweet, sweet dog that loves to cuddle. He does have one slight flaw, though. Henry suffers from a symptom that causes him to have a bad hair day everyday.
The symptom is called I Don't Like To Have My Hair Brushed and can become a real problem if not treated properly. I try my best to treat his symptom while he's at our house but it doesn't always seem to work. I'm worried that it's contagious because lately Lolli has shown signs of the I Don't Like To Have My Hair Brushed symptom, too.
So anyway, Henry's at our house for a few days and today I got brave and decided to take both dogs - on leashes - on a long walk. And to make things even more difficult, I decided to take my camera with me too. It was an adventure, to say the least.
This past weekend when we walked with the kids to the park, I noticed tons of tulips popping up around the neighborhood. Because I love tulips so much, I decided while walking the dogs I would take a picture of any tulips I saw.
These first pictures are of a flowerbed that I love. It just happens to be at the end of our street so I get to admire it all the time. I'm envious of their bright, colorful flowers! In one corner they've got red and pink tulips...
...and on the other side they have peach, pink, and white.
Since these were on our street they were the first ones I photographed. I took several shots trying to get the lighting right and then, after getting completely tangled up with the dogs and a nearby mailbox, I decided from then on that I'd only allow one shot per set of tulips. No tweaking my camera settings. I was not afraid to be the weird girl randomly taking pictures of the neighbors' flowers, but I was not about to be the weird girl randomly taking pictures of the neighbors' flowers and then falling on her butt after her dogs wrapped her up.
Next on the walk were some deep purple tulips. I've never been a girl to claim purple as her favorite color - I've always leaned more towards pinks - but I really loved the purple tulips.
Some wide open pink ones:
A lone pale purple one:
More deep purples! These were pretty popular.
Oooh, yellow. Pretty.
I like this flower bed because of all the different colors.
By this time we were getting pretty close to my turn-around point in the walk, and I was getting ready to call it quits on the picture taking. But then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw this house. Talk about tulip jackpot!
Unfortunately there was a mom and baby playing at the house next door, so I didn't want to get too close. I decided to take the dogs around one more block and then circle back to see if we could get in for some good shots.
Speaking of the dogs, the walk was really easy to manage when they walked like this:
Doesn't that look cute? Like two best friends, walking side by side. The problem is that only lasted for seconds at a time. Then something like this would happen.
Lolli would start strangling Henry with her leash and then she'd just sit down. Sigh...
The walk around the extra block worked because when we made it back to the jackpot, the coast was clear. Just look at all the tulips (with buttercups, too!).
I broke my rule and took more than one picture at this house.
This was one of my favorite pictures from the day. Now I don't know if I like the deep purple or the lighter shade better!
It's a good thing I already had my hands full with the dogs and camera, or I would have been tempted to go back and get some scissors to cut myself a bouquet. Would that be considered stealing? Probably so. I think we will definitely be planting some tulips of our own this fall.