Jaci Dawn

And GARDENING.

We had almost perfect weather this weekend (my heart goes out to those in the Midwest who had tornadoes).

Today I woke up and decided to let the house fend for itself: it was too lovely and dry to be inside, and I wasn’t expecting any interruptions. I had a laundry list of work to get done in the yard. But first, I needed to pick up a few things from the store.

First stop: Fred Meyer’s (Kroger’s). I really was going there to look at their selection of decorative garden fencing, but while I was there, I had a coupon for 15% off of several sale items… I need comfy new sandals to wear with slacks to work, I wanted a purse that I could convert into a camera bag, and there was this big rack of baby clothes on sale.

What can I say?

I have been looking at camera bags that convert to purses, but they are very expensive. And very large. I wanted something compact that could work as a purse AND a camera bag at the same time. I found this. My 70-300mm zoom fits into a velvet bag, and both the lens and the camera with the 50mm lens on fit inside the purse. There are enough pockets for my purse essentials: pocket knife, flashlight, lipstick, wallet, cell phone, meds, spare keys… And it is a smaller purse, so I still have that nice compact feel.

I found a nice pair of strappy sandals for work, too, but I neglected to take a photo of them.

Unfortunately, Fred’s didn’t have much in the way of decorative fencing, so I had to settle with my “girly” purchases. Not that I’m complaining.

I went to Home Depot without Harvey. That’s almost a cardinal sin. But I reasoned that we (Harvey and I) took a mile-and-half walk before I had a full cup of coffee and I didn’t bring him along in the car, anyway. And I wasn’t going to swing back by the house to get him.

Don’t tell Harvey I went to Home Depot without him. He likes HD. So do all the other dogs that frequent the hardware chain store here in Oregon City. And there were lots of dogs there today.

I found what I wanted at Home Depot: nice decorative garden fencing and some 2×5′ rolls of hardware cloth.

My first job back at home was to Harvey-proof the fence, hence the hardware cloth.

It isn’t pretty, but it covers up the hole Harvey dug under the fence and keeps him from digging some more. I stapled the wire to the fence and I will cover what is on the ground with mulch later this Spring. Harvey is an opportunist and only digs where he finds an existing gap.  I have nearly all the holes under the fence blocked now, so unless Harvey gets really desperate and tries to dig where there is no existing gap… We’re at least good for awhile and I have three more rolls of hardware cloth in reserve.

He even tried it out. That must have hurt the big old paws some! He gave up, obviously.

The next project was to pretty up the top of the fence. We have a low fence in front and along one side of the yard. This isn’t a big deal with Murphy, who has never figured out he could scale a shorter fence, but Harvey has been known to attempt to climb over. Last fall, I jury-rigged the fence with pieces of wire decorative fencing, but that didn’t really look very nice. It was an emergency band-aid since I’d just pulled Harvey off of the fence.

I bought some bamboo fencing and stapled it to the existing fence (I used the staple gun – should’ve purchased fence staples but I didn’t think the project through that far. Eventually, we’ll get fence staples.)

I did the side fence.

And the front fence.

It looks funky from the inside, but not half-bad from the street-side, and that was my goal.

The effect is enough to keep a dog from trying to climb out, and it doesn’t look quite as trashy as the wobbly wire fencing I had up there all winter.

It doesn’t look like much, but I got in there and weeded one flower bed. And I replaced the decorative fencing that I took down last Autumn.

I took it down because Murphy was jumping over it, anyway. And I needed something on the fence to keep Harvey from trying to climb out when I turned my back on him.

But my peonies are coming along and I’m tired of having dogs run through there, stepping and peeing on plants. And the Dragon Lilies are coming up. I have to put extra wiring around the Dragon Lilies to keep the dogs from eating the spathe. I guess they think that because it smells like rotting flesh, it must taste like it, too?

The fun part of this weeding job is that I discovered an iris coming up. I thought I had lost it! I’m going to baby that sucker.

It should not have worn me out, but by the time I reached this point, I was done for. I pushed on for an additional thirty minutes, but I just had to call it quits.

It bugs me that I couldn’t get more accomplished.

And it rained overnight and will rain all week, so no working in the yard for another week.

“Way to go, Mom! You worked hard! Now I need a dog biscuit!”

Harvey, doing supervisor work.