A Tea Room, a Botanical Garden and an Emergency

Doesn't it seem the last month or two has gone by in an instant? When what you really want to do is savor every moment?

That's the way it's been for me! Let me share with you the great and the not so good.

In mid April we headed to New Mexico to spend a week with our daughter and celebrate her birthday.

This is the view that greeted me every morning — the bosque along the Rio Grande with the Sandia Mountains in the background. A bosque is a type of forest habitat found along stream and river banks in an open country such as deserts or grasslands. It derives its name from the Spanish word for 'woodlands'. 

My daughter treated me to a full afternoon tea at the St. James Tearoom in Albuquerque. We were seated in our own, private parlor with a selection of teas. We dined on a prelude of coconut ice,

 

followed by savories with roast beef, mini potatoes, egg salad and Welsh rarebit with cheddar. Buns and scones were slathered with chocolate and orange zest curd or clotted cream. We finished with three types of sweets.

 

  

  

  

  

Each month the Tea Room features a different theme and menu!  Ours was "Charlie & the Chocolate Tearoom", inspired by descriptions in Charlie & the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl.

The next day we headed to Old Town and enjoyed the celebration for Albuquerque's 317th birthday!

 

Not to be outdone, we celebrated Miss J's birthday as well. She was thrilled with the cake we had ordered!

  

  

  

  

Next we headed to Santa Fe, one of our favorite places to visit. This time we spent the afternoon at the Santa Fe Botanical Garden which showcases both native New Mexico flora and plants from other arid regions. Miss J picked up some ideas to use for landscaping her yard.

  

  

An unusual art installation in the garden.

We enjoyed a walk along the Rio Grande.

Then we headed home after a week that felt too short and collected our Labrador retrievers from the boarding kennel. The next day it was apparent that something was very wrong with our two-year-old Lab. Our sweet happy-go-lucky Finnegan wouldn't eat and was vomiting over and over. Of course it was a weekend and our usual vet wasn't available, so we took him to the emergency vet practice that she recommended.

After an exam, blood work, x-rays and an endoscopy, Finn underwent emergency abdominal surgery to remove part of a rope toy the size of my husband's hand from his stomach. Here he is in recovery, before he managed to remove the gastric tube from his nose. (He also removed gastric tube number 2!)

  

After two nights we were able to bring him home. Our normally energetic pup was listless and still in pain from the surgery. But he was glad to be home.

Two weeks later I'm happy to report that Finn is nearly back to normal, playing with his toys and tussling with his big brother. And expecting that he'll continue to get the special diet that he quickly became accustomed to, LOL!

  

  

Since labs will mouth and eat just about anything, we are vigilant and do not give our furry ones rope toys of any kind. We can only surmise he found it at the kennel in their play yard or on walks in their woods. We are just relieved that his outcome was good.

 

When we re-landscaped the back yard I researched lots of potential plants to find ones that were not toxic to dogs in case Finn decided to munch on a salad. More info can be found in  Puppy Challenges in the Garden.

We had quite an eventful three and a half weeks!