Dead and ugly things

I had a brilliant thought yesterday, as I realized how many things are "coming back to life" around here just now: I need to take pictures of the dead and ugly things.

I was looking at my pepper plants at the time. I have about eight green pepper plants in the garden. Back in January they were doing well and bearing lots of peppers, but then the plants were all destroyed by bugs. Boo and I tried to fend off the bugs, but eventually every single plant lost every single leaf. Those leafless sticks would have made a very sad picture to post on the blog, and I never did take any photos of the devastated plants.

I haven't been out to the garden much recently, as it is mostly empty right now because of dry season, but Boo has been checking on it regularly. Yesterday I tramped out there, and was surprised to find that all of the pepper plants have leafed out again, and a few have blossoms on them! Now I really wish I had a picture of the plants from when (I thought) they were dead, so I could show you the before-and-after. Instead, I only have the "after" to show:

Rachel planted the flowering bush (below) in our front yard. Between the cows and the ants it gets completed defoliated several times every year, to where it is nothing more than a chewed-on stick, but there it is, coming back again. Eventually it should be a lovely - and extremely resiliant and forgiving - part of our landscaping!

Gordo was from our first litter of unfortunate lab-rottweiler mix puppies. He's as sweet and gentle (and lazy) as they come, but he's ugly as a junkyard dog. In spite of his easy-going personality he looks mean, as if he'd tear you apart, plus he's huge. Unfortunately, he also is battling a terrible skin condition. It got so bad at one point that his entire face and chest were covered with huge scabs - he looked like a monster! Eventually Gordo was so miserable he crawled under Allen's bed to die. He literally wasn't coming out for any reason. Rachel did some online research, and found a homemade remedy to try on his skin, and since then he's been making slow progress, with occasional steps backward, toward becoming a normal looking dog again (as far as having fur - I imagine he'll still be ugly).

In this case I think it is understandable that I didn't take a photo of Gordo with his raw, bleeding, swollen, scabby skin. Here's a photo of the much-improved (but not completely healed) Gordo, taken today:

Remember our very skinny cow, who came home to us from living at a neighbor's place for a year? We did take pictures of her when she arrived, so you can get an idea of how much better she's looking now, in these before-and-after shots:

So, I've hopefully learned my lesson, and I'll try to make sure that, in the future, we get pictures of the dead, dying, and ugly things going on around our place . . . because, you just never know what the future holds!