And Now Let's Hear from the Gals . . .

The Day Lady Arrived—My Mom and her new puppy, Lady, circa 1930. I know my mother never used a ScooPup Pocket back then, but if they were around I'm sure she would have loved it, lol.  Approximately 14 x 22 inches on clapboard siding; paint, paper, silver foil and polyurethane.

Doggone It, It's Over
I stole that headline from my longtime pal, Bette, owner/writer of Walking the Dog blog and inventor of the innovative ScooPup Pocket. Bette, an animal lover and rights activist, came up with an answer to the question every dog owner faces on a daily basis: "On a walk, what do I do with the poop, lol?" Almost four years ago she designed, patented and had manufactured, the ScooPup Pocket, and sadly, instead of creating the 15 million jobs this country needs right now, dog owners of this country apparently preferred the errant plastic grocery bag, their used lunch baggie, or, well, I don't want to know that "or" is. Bette's calling it quits on her cool product. I'm so proud to know someone that had a vision, sat down and thought of all the pros- and cons- of developing a niche product no one else had before, and followed through with it, finding a manufacturer, coming up with the marketing plans, and hiring lawyers. When I heard about the lawyers I knew she was serious!

So, dear readers, I'm announcing that for the month of March, at least, Bette is selling her cool, and colorful, ScooPup Pocket, and then taking Riley, her awesome dog, out on a really long walk, lol. If I had a dog, I'd order one in every color, just because I think they're awesome.  Watch the 1-minute promotional video Bette made and see if you don't agree. Hey dog owners out there! You need this!

• Bette's heartfelt blogpost about this venture, at Walking the Dog. Click here.
• TinyGrowl's website for the ScooPup Pocket is here.

Planting the Seeds of the Future

Soon, the Hummingbird Gate to our vegetable garden will be swinging open as a new growing season begins. We won't have to wait until May to start our veggies this year!

On a lighter note, beginning a new chapter, my friend Nancy Wolff, writer of Prudent Living On the Homefront, which I profiled recently, has filmed her first segment for the website. I predict, once again, I will be someone's "little people" in their past! This is a segment aboug starting your Spring vegetable seeds indoors. As in "right now!"

• I've listed Nancy's Prudent Living website in my blogroll, but you can just click here, too.

Lastly, a Tiny Bit of Blog Business
I recently changed the "commenting" procedure at this blog—I stopped using the "Captcha" system which helps cut down on spam comments. Blogger had changed their format so that the captchas were longer and more difficult to read. I rarely had to delete spam comments, so I thought I'd give it a try and see how it worked—if it was easier to comment, and I didn't encounter any spam, it would be a win-win situation. Since then, I've had to delete anywhere from 10-25 spam comments every day, though. The weird thing is I get the notifications in my email they are posted, but when I come to the blog to delete them, they're not here. They're making me nervous that they're embedding themselves in some way, and they do seem to be getting more numerous. They're not just fake Gucci bags anymore either, so in order to protect the integrity of this blog, and to make sure none of my readers are confronted with anything "nasty" I'm going to go back to the captcha system. Thank you for coming here, I value your readership and comments!