Texas Gardening: SUNDAY, July 30: Texas "Coffee" and Gardening in the Mornin, 1 by Susannah_C

Susannah_C wrote:
The nursery has become a huge treat (read: addiction) for me, as well. We have an organic nursery about four blocks away, and I'm there rather more often than my checkbook allows.

I'm a canine handler on a search-and-rescue team (we rescue/recover missing persons and victims of accidents/disasters, etc.), and we've had enough work this summer recovering lake accidents that I find the only real pick-me-up is to go home and plant something new in the garden!

So yeah, addiction is the right word.

I posted about this elsewhere at DG, but this summer we built a little play cottage for the dogs -- and the neighborhood kids -- in the backyard. The big project has been landscaping around that.

Here's the cottage, called "La Folie des Chiots" (the madness of the pups) -- photo below.


And here's the search dog (her name is "Puzzle") in civilian clothes welcoming you to the cottage front door! http://www.catoninetales.com/images/lemonade.jpg

The dogs love it when we throw open all the doors and have other dogs over for playdates. They race around the garden and into and out of the little house, sometimes pausing for a drink from a bowl of water inside.

This summer's struggle is our sad, failed St. Augustine, laid as sod in October and thriving all last autumn, but this year we lost at least 1/3 -- maybe 1/2 of it. So now we're considering alternative ground covers in parts of the yard and other kinds of landscaping. The good news: none of our dogs is particularly garden-destructive. And we find they like to have things to run around. They play more now that the landscaping has begun than they did when the yard was just open grass. They like having obstacles to weave through and around as they chase. When Puzzle just feels like running, she makes what we call "Crazy 8s" around the cottage, the Japanese maple, the reclining chairs, the container garden, etc. Sometimes the family Pomeranians chase her, and then we call it the "Folie 500". They have a terrific good time weaving around all the obstacles. Makes sense, I guess. I know Goldens *and* Pomeranians enjoy competing in agility, so maybe they're having a little competition of their own in the backyard.

Temp's climbing already! Iced coffee, anyone, with maybe just a hint of Bailey's and mint?




This message was edited Jul 30, 2006 12:00 PM

This message was edited Jul 30, 2006 12:00 PM

This message was edited Jul 30, 2006 12:01 PM