A few Moments From my Garden

The Plan

A few days ago, I showed you a picture of an area I have to clean up. Lots of branches to cut and to take care off.

A ditch is patiently waiting to be dug so I can harvest even more rainwater.

And I still haven't pruned all my fruit trees and I am running out of time!!

Today, I was planning on spending the morning on blogging and other work on the computer and then get a couple of hours of concentrated garden work in before I had to leave to open the gates and our Sustainability Center. Monday is garden day. Not too many people show up yet, but there is always work that needs to be done.

If you are one of the weekend freewriters, you will know what I mean by this next sentence.

The Interference

Here comes the interference: I hear cars honking in front of my house.

And that is not a good sign!!

Immediately, I get up and call my dog Boya. She is a Minpin and, true to her breed, is an escape artist.

Here, you see her digging to find something yummy to eat or at least to sniff. But she employs the same technique to the fences. Especially after a rain, when the soil is soft, she often can be quite successful.

Today she was. Her favorite thing to do is run out into the street.

And that she did - hence the honking.

By the time I had my shoes on and leash in hand to get her, my son was at the door with Boya in his arms.

Lucky for me, he had decided to come over and have some food with me and came upon the crime scene. (her crime) He was able to pick her up and bring her home.

You have to understand, I am not worried about her running away. She always comes back. But I am worried about her causing an accident since she has no respect for cars.

Instead of garden work, the rest of my time turned into "secure the property" work.

We found a loose fence board and replaced that. And we found a bunch of areas in the very back of the property where she had dug tunnels to the neighbor's yard.

That area seems to be the dog exchange area. His American bull dog leaps like a goat over any and all fence enhancements we placed there. and Boya tunnels under. We should just have a door there. But - they have lots of people visiting and not all are always closing the gate. And by now, you know what Boya does with an open gate. Yup. she runs through it fast as lightening!

We used a bunch of urbanite (broken concrete to those of you who don't speak Permaculture lingo) to build up a wall in front of the fence and used boards and hardware cloth stapled on the fence to plug up all the holes. At least we hope that we did that.

As we are walking along the fence line, I found a few nice surprises.

These bananas are the ice cream variety and are very delicious. I might cut them soon and cook some green and let the rest ripen in the house. Critters love bananas too!!