{"id":1806,"date":"2012-04-17T18:28:07","date_gmt":"2012-04-18T05:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/?p=1806"},"modified":"2012-04-18T06:03:23","modified_gmt":"2012-04-18T17:03:23","slug":"salad-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/2012\/04\/17\/salad-days\/","title":{"rendered":"Salad Days"},"content":{"rendered":"

With Dad up in Wisconsin, convalescing from his recent hip surgery, it was inevitable that one of these days I was going to have to bite the bullet and deal with the lawn, back here at home.<\/p>\n

But before I got out the \u201cbig guns\u201d (i.e., the lawnmower\u2014which I barely remembered how to use from last summer), I thought I\u2019d try the kinder, gentler,\u00a0free salad bar approach<\/a> that had worked so well up in Madison recently. (If goats and sheep can trim a lawn, then why not hungry cats and mice?)
\n\"Salad<\/p>\n

The mood for our luncheon was festive and fun: I rounded up the tastiest assortment of gourmet salad dressings I could find. Giselle prepared her famous homemade croutons with asiago cheese. And when Charlotte heard about the breathtaking bird of paradise<\/a>\u00a0arrangement that her friends Bea and Dennis had sent to Dad up at rehab, she insisted we find some to decorate the \u201ctable.\u201d \u2014Which we did.<\/p>\n

\"Lawn
\nIn the meantime, a freelance illustration assignment had come in for me on lawn care. \u00a0Quite a happy coincidence: While they all munched, I slipped off my shoes and drew.<\/p>\n

Here’s my final drawing\u2014which will look even better when it\u2019s printed, I think (i.e., once the headline and body copy are dropped into that empty white hole).<\/p>\n

And just for fun, here are a couple other illustrations I\u2019ve done for the Hartford Courant\u2019s Home section in the past year, that also featured green, growing things. \u2014Which I find much more fun to look at and to draw than to deal with in real life. (Ha\u2014no surprise there!)<\/p>\n

\"Hartford<\/p>\n

Best wishes on a late Tuesday night, and may there be plenty of\u00a0salad days<\/a>\u00a0ahead for us all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With Dad up in Wisconsin, convalescing from his recent hip surgery, it was inevitable that one of these days I was going to have to bite the bullet and deal with the lawn, back here at home. But before I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,141],"tags":[12,13,7,64,48,98,245,276,112,46,247,14,8,562],"class_list":["post-1806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cats-and-mice","category-home-sweet-home","tag-blackie-2","tag-cats","tag-charlotte-2","tag-daisy-mouse","tag-flora-mouse","tag-flowers","tag-garden","tag-hartford-courant","tag-illustration","tag-jean-tuttle","tag-lawn-care","tag-max","tag-mice","tag-spring"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1806"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1838,"href":"https:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806\/revisions\/1838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.catdoodles.com\/dailydoodle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}