I’ve gotten into the habit of posting a morning flower these days. I like doing it; I hope you enjoy seeing it. I love the light on our compost toilet bathroom every morning. I love the sight of Zinnia creeping up the side of the best to kiss us good morning, and I love the light on the flower that used to be called the Wandering Jew but is no longer.
Sunrise on our compost toilet.
When we stir, Zinnia showers us both with kisses.
Windowsill Gallery
Fewer events in my life are more pleasurable, meaningful, and significant than my visits with Zinnia to my Meditation Classes and the Mansion’s Memory Care Unit. Zinnia is a pleasure and joy machine; her appearance thrills and delights the people in the unit.
They laugh, brighten up, and remember their dogs and the memories of their lives. I decided to capture the experience in photos and let them speak for themselves when Zinnia comes. They all come out of their rooms to sit with her, touch her, and get some licks. It lifts my heart every time.
Zinnia does a lot of good there; I always leave feeling fulfilled and proud. She knows exactly what to do and loves doing it. She doesn’t mind the attention either.
We are making the world better than when we found it.
Zinnia is a magnificent, loving, patient, and intuitive therapy dog. I’ve interspersed the photos of her with portraits of the people in Memory Care who love her the most. Thanks for reading and for supporting my work at the Mansion. If you wish, you can donate to the Mansion Fund via Paypal, [email protected], or Venmo, Jon-Katz-13. You can also send a check to Jon Katz, Mansion Fund, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. I hope you enjoy the photos.
Jane and I have the most beautiful hugs when we meet. What a sweet person and gifted artist.
Zinnia got a head pat and belly rub at the same time. She was in bliss.
Ellen is one of her biggest fans. She is wild about Zinnia.
Mary is shy, but Zinnia brings her out with love and attention.
Art came down from the Mansion to see Zinnia and get his hand licked.
I tell Zinnia to sit on the couch so the residents can come and see her. She sits there for a half hour before getting restless. We leave when everyone has had a chance to see and touch her. I supply the Mansion and the Memory Care unit with games and art supplies created for the elderly or those with dementia. The donated money goes for any personal needs some residents might have and not have the money to purchase.
Thanks for your support.
As I enter the flower photograph season, an important time of year for me, I brace with yet another new and disturbing reality modern reality in zenophobic America.
Every time I put up a photo of a beautiful flower, one or two more people e-mail me to warn me that I might be killing Zip or Zinnia or Bud or Fate. A lot of the flowers I photograph, say the messages – almost all of the flowers I photograph – could be and are poison to dogs and cats and other animals.
Very few of the messages are hostile or meant to be cruel, but it isn’t pleasant or uplifting for me. And I’m still catching heat for refusing to let Zip in the house on cold nights.
Who wants to hear that every day?
I’ve had dogs and or cats all of my life and I’ve never lost one to a flower or a plant, although I know it is a genuine danger. But I don’t live in a city or walk my dogs on leashes. I live on a farm in the country, and my dogs run freely, as dogs should.
This is yet another new and curious evolution in the age of social media, where issuing warnings and alarms is a major and growing activity. Along with the flower warnings will come the dog in a hot car warnings, something I have always know better than to do without any kind of warning.
Now, when I mention taking a picture, people wonder of its the end of Zip and the other animals.
How, I wonder, am I suppose to deal with this new challenge to my love of animals and my growing love of flowers.
I’m not going to give up one for another, that’s for sure. Nor will be my life be shaped or dominated by life in a nation of alarmists, warners, and people who increasing admit to seeing pets as more and sometimes better children with four legs.
I don’t follow warnings from strangers on social media, nor will I pass along the alarms of people I don’t know and who don’t know me. This upsets some, but I’m just being honest.
I get my animal health advice from people who make me pay for it and who have studied animal welfare and health for six or seven years before practicing it. When it comes to health care for my dogs, I want the best, not the best equipped computers.
Nor do I follow the alarmist fund-raising machine of PETA who believe people like me are monstrous and abusive because I want to live and work with animals and believe they should live as much of their natural life as is possible. PETA is already counting the death of dogs due to warmer weather. I’d rather love them, personally. This makes me a monster, it seems.
Let me clarify and explain why I’ve decided not to turn this blog into a warning center and decline the now daily requests for me to warn people about flowers killing their pets.
I politely decline, saying I won’t want my blog to be yet another alarm machine. People can get that from the news about flowers and dogs or from their Aunt Fannie on Facebook or on Google in ten seconds. I’m not qualified or interested.
Before anyone misunderstands, I value and am grateful for the love and interest you all show towards Zip. I write about him daily, after all, it’s my doing. I receive more than just warnings about him, but the number of warnings is growing.
Many perceive my farm as a potentially dangerous place, which every home farm and garden in America is and could be. Some think I’m reckless and uncaring.
One irony of the social media culture is the more people love something, the more they worry about it. I wish hungry children got the same concern. We’re trying.
Speaking only for me, I can’t imagine telling someone with cats or dogs to keep them locked up and away from the 30-plus flowers listed as dangerous for asking people to get rid of their flowers or keep dogs from going near them. What an awful thing to do to an animal in the country, where they still have a shot at being animals, not furbabies.
We don’t have risk-free lives, and neither do my dogs and cats.
They are happy, healthy, and safe, and it’s my job to keep them that way and give them as good a life as possible for as long as I can.
In my 60 plus years of dog owning, no animal of mine has ever died from a flower. I know it’s possible, but I also know it is not likely, even on a farm in the country overrun with mushrooms and poisonous plants.
My animals travel widely and freely around the farm, and they are savvy about staying away from poisonous flowers and the many trucks flying by (a radically bigger danger to cats and dogs than flowers). Tulips, unhealthy plants, and wildflowers are all around the farm, both planted and wild, in all seasons.
Azalea, buttercups, chrysanthemums, gardenias, gladiolas, hibiscus, hyacinth, hydrangeas, mums, primroses, rhododendrons, and sweet peas are popular garden items that are poisonous to many pets, I am told whenever I post a photo of one. That’s another good reason, says one warning messenger, to keep my dogs “away from your neighbor’s award-winning flower bushes.”
She sure doesn’t live in upstate New York.
Zip is also a reason for animal lovers to send me warnings every time I take a photo of one of those flowers, which, it seems is every day now. (I even found the Calla Lily on one poison list. It could be a long summer.)
None of my dogs have ever gone near those flowers; neither has Zip. He’ prefers mice and rats and chipmunks and moles.
To be honest, I really don’t want to think of poisoning my dogs when I zero in on a beautiful flower photo.
It takes some focus and concentration to do that, believe it or not. Zip and Zinnia are almost always with me when I’m taking photos, am I settig them up for an awful sickness or death? Will eating the wrong mushroom be the end of him?
(Rose, Monochrome)
My vet says some flowers are poisonous, but in her life of working, people are more likely to have a truck run over them than lose an animal to a flower, she says. How do I reconcile that with the warnings I receive?
The American Kennel Club lists scores of trees, plants, and flowers that can be poisonous to dogs (or cats, in most cases). You’ll need some extra time to read it. I’d recommend it. This isn’t up to me, it’s up to you.
It can happen. Dogs are foragers, as are cats, sheep, and donkeys. There is no way to isolate them from every tulip (or the dozen or more popular flowers I get warned about all through Spring and Summer).
Our vet knows our farm, dogs, cats, sheep, and donkeys. She told me to keep the tulips, she loves the photos. She says she doubts it will be the end of Zinnia or Zip.
I don’t doubt that some flowers can be bad for dogs and cats. We are responsible for their care and do what we can to keep them self. But we live in a world where people and animals are always at risk, and we choose to take some risks, as everyone who lives on a farm with animals does. The farmers I know all died of heart attacks, their border collies and cattle dogs are still alive.
I’m not trying to be difficult or oblivious. I love my animals as much as the people messaging me.
I’m just preparing for a summer full of warnings as I post what is hopefully one beautiful picture after another in this increasingly gloomy and dour culture. If I wanted a life without risk, I would have stayed in New York or Boston or New Jersey, away from farms and coyotes and dangerous flowers.
It’s not going to spoil my photography or my summer. I promise not to kill Zip or our dogs our donkeys or sheep with my tulip photos.
We went for a walk this spring-ish day, which was warm and sunny. I focused on pictures of our animals, sometimes neglected for our flowers, snails, and forests.
Above, Zinnia plunges into the full pond. She loves the water. They seem relaxed in the sun, eager for attention.
I loved our walk; the animals were relaxed and happy to see us. We ran the very busy Zip, carrying a mouse into the barn. The mouse got away, and there was quite a chase. Zip prevailed. Zinnia plunged into every pond she came across. Birds are soon going to lose their feeders, they were all over them today.
He was too close for my camera to focus on, but I did get a fuzzy photo of Zip with his mouse. He was happy—he had gotten himself a mouse. Nature is rough at times.
I took a beautiful series of pictures of the hens close up. They make for beautiful portraits. Maria did some love with Fanny; it was a sweet time and a lovely walk. Maria is at a belly dancing class. I just left a hamburger on the stove, and the house is filled with smoke. Yuk. I got to go.
The old hen, cleaning her feathers.
I am peering behind the apple tree.
Grooming. I love the lines.
Zip carrying his mouse into the barn.
Maria is communicating with Fanny—the two love speaking with one another.
Bird on the feeder.
Sheep waiting to eat.
I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but I am at a loss to understand why anyone would take the advice of amateur vets and diagnoses online when there are trained, experienced, and compassionate veterinarians like Suzanne Fariello.
Dr. Fariellio and I have been working together ever since I asked her to euthanize Rose, who was dying of brain cancer. She is a wonderful vet, someone I trust. We have been through many dog dramas together. I appreciate her skills, honesty, and respect for my feelings about dogs, their health, life, and death. She has become a treasured friend.
Above, Nicole, Zinnia, and Dr. Fariello.
Zinnia is a sweet and wonderful dog but doesn’t like going to the vet. Dr. Fariello gets down on the floor, gives her a handful of treats, and all is forgiven. She says Zinnia is in excellent health, with perfect weight, heart, eyes, bones, and joints. She got all of her vaccinations for this year.
Zinnia is a good girl, a sweet and loving creature. I am always happy to learn she is healthy and robust. Dr. Fariello is intense and thorough. We always get to talk and catch up. She is also a cat lover, so we talked about Zip. By the end of the examination, Zinnia was licking her chin.
