Problem Plants and Peaceful Puppies Entertain this Easter Sunday

How could anything this charming be a declared weed in South Africa?
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Asclepias physocarpa, or milkweed, originally introduced into South Africa from Australia, as so many of our invasive aliens were.

Each tiny flower is constructed so perfectly!

The fruit is toxic if eaten by animals, but this is rarely a problem as they are unpalatable.

Hard to believe that something so pretty is regarded as so undesirable!

Do not be fooled by the next picture...they are only this peaceful when they are sound asleep, which is a lot less than 50% of the time.  Mostly it's like having two mini-tornadoes tearing through the house. We have them strictly confined to the tiled section of the house during the day, which is where our office-cum-study is, so they are with us all the time and have easy outdoor access into the garden. This helps avoid indoor 'accidents' although today, they both felt it preferable to piddle on the tiles than to brave the wet outside. It's a fulltime job being puppy minder, but I reassure myself this phase will pass soon enough. For now, I accept that my life is no longer my own...I know it's important to give up personal time to invest in the future of these puppies, so they grow into well-balanced adult dogs and, in the case of these two, especially, since they are rescue pups, the amount of input required is even more important...as we have quite a lot of 'catching up' to do in terms of their development.

Milo and Coco have become the best of friends in the week they've been with us.

Needless to say, we have had a busy, but quiet weekend at home taking care of the two puppies.

It invariably rains over Easter which is traditionally the start of our winter rainfall season. We generally have a few days of cold, when our warm tops are hurriedly dug out and pulled on, but then in May the weather often does an about turn and we have some glorious warm, summery days with cool mornings and evenings until the colder weather really arrives in June.  Until then, we frequently enjoy perfect Camelot weather!

After two beautiful days on Friday and Saturday, we awoke to overcast, blustery weather this morning. The wind has died down completely now and it's been raining gently for much of the afternoon.

Coco and Milo haven't experienced rain before and they aren't sure they like it. Getting them to piddle outdoors is demanding quite some persuasion and entails our having to go out there with them and get wet, too!  Brrr!

"How can you possibly expect me to get my feet wet?"

We're all naturally still feeling exceedingly sad about Romeo, especially Linda! She has really been struggling to come to terms with his tragic death and misses him dreadfully. I'm hoping her fundraising effort is going to be a huge success, but it has gone very quiet with everyone away for Easter. I will repost Romeo's Wish after the weekend, but really felt I wanted to upload something a little different for in the meantime.

My husband picked the milkweed flowers and fruit when he took Bonny, Toby and Heathcliff for their walk through the vineyard this morning. We are no longer going to take them to the field where we always used to walk them, as the memories are too painful there.