A new adventure

Now that we have finished up most of the remodel, and I am making inroads on the garden attack of the Weeds of the Overwhelming Variety, it should come as no surprise that we have not had enough chaos in the house in the last few weeks. This is expected to be remedied in the near future by the addition of a puppy. We looked around and researched breeds and have decided that an English Springer Spaniel will fit our requirements nicely.

These requirements being: good family dog, will play nicely with wee humans, will be of the hunter/retriever variety, and is large enough that Nate cannot injure it if he runs into in the dark hallway and small enough so that even when it is full grown it will look like I am walking it and not vice versa.

We are lucky enough to have two breeders for English Springers just a short drive away, and so were able to find a litter that will be old enough to take home yet this summer. This weekend we went to visit the puppies at the breeder. They are about 4wks old, and do not stop moving.

The whelping box is divided into two parts, one with a heat lamp, and the other with water and mom. This ideally will give mom a break when she starts weaning them. I'm not sure how long this 'break' will last seeing as they are getting quite adept at climbing over the partition.

The puppies have just started exploring around, and are not content with their side of the box.

They also like shoelaces.

And they are just now big enough to see over the edge of mom's water bowl.

Finally one stood still long enough for me to get a good picture.

One more month until we find out who will get to come home with us. That also means one month to get the house and garden puppy-proof. Oof.

Weeds, weeds and more weeds!

At my other house, I thought having a bit of garden was great. A few flowers, some veg and herbs, a back patio with fire pit, and look how nice my backyard is. This was also the initial thought I had had when moving to my Small Town. I have a much much bigger backyard, that came with much much more garden. 2300 square feet of garden to be exact. This means A LOT of area for growing of the above mentioned items.

You saw the nice flowers in my last post, but alas, this is not the way the entire yard and gardens look. Oh no, not at all. The rest of the garden seems to have been taken over by Weeds of the Overwhelming Variety. For the last few weeks I have been pulling weeds and pulling weeds and pulling more weeds. I have been trying to get them out by the roots so that they Will Not Return. I am not sure how well this will go, or if the Weeds of the Overwhelming Variety will win. I have now worn a pathway from my driveway to the local compost site with the pickup truck. I hope that they can make the weeds and their seeds die a painful death.

Here is what the 2300 square feet of garden started out looking like. You may not see them, but in these pictures are full-grown peony bushes, coneflowers, raspberry bushes, and a yucca. I know they are there, I saw them last year when I started out weeding. I then stopped, as I realized that I was probably pulling just as many flowers as weeds, so decided to wait things out and see what popped up.

In an effort to combat the return of the Weeds of the Overwhelming Variety, I measured the garden space (hence the knowledge that there are 2300 square feet) and ordered some mulch. Actually, more than some mulch. A Lot of Mulch. A giant amount of mulch. So much so, that when I called around for prices, the mulch people all asked if I were a commercial property. One woman even said she felt sorry for me that there was so much garden to reclaim. The end amount of mulch currently sitting in my driveway is 13 cubic yards. Not cubic feet, but yards.

This is enough mulch to fill a smaller sized dump truck, and creates a pile larger than our pickup. Now the plan is to shovel the mulch into a wheelbarrow, cart it to the other end of the yard, and pitchfork it into place. I figure if I put down about 4" of mulch it should help. It has to, I can't justify using that much weedkiller in one yard.