A Grocery Cart, Two Dogs, and a Bonsai...

It's been a busy couple of days working and running around in 90 degree heat--and seriously, will it never end??--plus there was a bit of excitement with the dogs and a grocery cart, and a surprising discovery at a home improvement center.
 
Yesterday... 
 
It was time to transplant my two palm trees, both bursting out of their pots.  This is a real chore because they weigh a ton and I have to haul them down two flights of stairs, repot them, then haul them back up two flights of stairs.  But, it needed to be done and I've procrastinated long enough.
 
So, after walking the dogs in the morning, I went to Home Depot to buy bigger containers, and because it was already too hot to leave the dogs in the car, I took one of their beds from the car, stuffed it into a grocery cart, and plopped in both dogs.  Max think the cart is a giant moving cage and wants out badly.  Ozzy loves going into the store, but doesn't want to share the bed or the cart space with Max.  

If they could talk, it would have been:
 
"I don't want to be in this cage.  Letmeoutletmeoutletmeout.  Help, I'm in a cage.  Now I'm hyperventilating, I can't breathe, I'm drooling.  Letmeoutletmeout.  I'M GOING TO DI-II--EE!"  Poor Max...
 
In the meantime, because Max is tense and standing in the bed, ready to jump at the first opportunity, Ozzy is cranky because he likes to lay down and watch everything that goes by while he's being pushed in his own carriage like the prince he knows himself to be.
 
"He's touching me!  Eewww, now he's drooling on me!  Make him stop touching me!  HE'S TOUCHING ME!"  He stands, growling and snarking...which just makes Max more worried and upset.  Jeez, why do I bother?  Sigh...
 
Finally, after resettling Ozzy, trying to calm Max, I get the pots, then wander into the houseplant area, which is a separate greenhouse-type building, and discover that, amazingly, they have a great selection of bonsai plants.

[Digression:  I love bonsai.  I had a most beautiful one in Edinburgh (Bob, photo on the left) that I had to leave behind with my neighbor, who has cared for him since I left Scotland two years ago.  I got another one from a local garden center here in southern Oregon, but it died within a month.  Living in the wilderness doesn't allow for much in the way of exotic purchases, so I was not only startled, but excited, to find a whole shelf of bonsai plants yesterday at Home Depot, of all places.]


I'm in the main aisle, with rows of plants in tall, deep shelving units on both sides of me.  They have an overhead watering system, with drains in the floor, and the place is humid, jungle-like and filled to bursting with plants.  I see a particular bonsai down a very narrow side aisle that I want to check out, so I tell the boys to behave, I'll be right back, and I go to investigate.  I'm digging through foliage and plants when out of the corner of my eye, I see something moving.  I jerk my head up just in time to see the cart, with both dogs staring right at me, shoot past.  I leap forward, skid around the corner of the shelving unit, take three giant steps, stretch into the diving lunge move...and literally grab the cart handle about one inch before it smacked into a huge wall of clay pots at the end of the aisle. 

Holy crap.

After I catch my breath, and determine the pounding of my heart isn't actually going to kill me, I start laughing.  The boys aren't as amused as I am, especially Max, but hey, it was a great save, and I'm totally relieved disaster has been averted.  It's also about this point that I realize the floor is slanted, apparently so the water from the sprinkler set-up will drain properly.  Go figure.

I do love a twisty trunk on a bonsai, it just looks so cool and Tolkienesque to me.  This one is bigger than Bob--and I don't like the peculiar container--but it's still a miniature tree, and it will be great fun to have another one.

So.  In the end I got some nice, inexpensive pots for the palms, made an unexpected exotic find, and managed to not nuke my dogs.

All things considered?  It was a good day.