Jaci Dawn

I can hear the rain pouring outside my window right now. It held off until tonight, and we had an absolutely gorgeous weekend for yard work.

I used the good weather to finish up dead-heading all the peonies and a few other plants (like the oregano) as well. But mostly, I used it to try to get ahead of the dogs. As in, I fenced off all of the Dragon Lilies (Dracunculus vulgaris) to keep them from being eaten when they bloom.

And I moved the little wire fences around in an attempt to further dog-proof the fence.

This is Culprit#1. He eats the Dragon Lilies. Hey, they smell like Dead Meat. Apparently, they are not poisonous to dogs since Murphy is still with us after several years of attacking the Dragon Lilies.

This is Culprit #2. He eats fences. And digs holes. He’d climb the fences, too, if he wasn’t overweight because he also eats anything edible, including dog poop.

Culprit#2 has been working on the bamboo screening.

He’s so fun. He does this not because he is bored (but the longer he is left out in the yard alone, the more damage he does), but he does it because he was born with a wanderlust that was firmly embedded in his personality by the time he was a year old and came into our family. We have been battling with him over the fence ever since.

This corner has him flummoxed. But, he can’t see any gaps and hasn’t tried very hard since I stapled up the wire.

Chicken wire is the most effective tool, but it is very difficult to weed through and I had to weigh it down with a lot of big rocks and old concrete blocks.

An unfolded tomato cage works on the big gate. He nearly had the gate open when I caught him here – he was just steadily applying pressure on it by poking his head under and pushing.

This arrangement is all because of Culprit#1: there are several plants there that I do not want eaten, and so I have a fence within a fence, and structures set carefully over the vulnerable plants.

They don’t bother the oregano, I just wanted to show you that I got it all dead-headed down to the moss and framed in. And to show you how tall some of the peonies (red stalks) are already.

My rosemary plant. Or, it was my rosemary plant until Harvey thought he smelled a critter – or a way to escape by digging under the house. Murphy helped with some of the digging. This summer, this corner is going to be covered with paving stones.

They are good dogs, really. Murphy is a territorial barker who occasionally barks at the wind, always barks at firecrackers, and challenges anyone walking down the street. Seriously? They aren’t even in our yard, Murphy. He does not bark non-stop, which is to his merit. He is actually pretty quiet most of the time. He does not try to escape, no matter how bored he is in the yard (besides, he knows how to open the back door and just lets himself in when he’s bored. He does not know how to close the back door).

Harvey gets bored easily. He checks out every weak spot in the fence and any time he is ignored for more than ten minutes, he starts to wreak havoc. He doesn’t usually bark when we are home except to ask for something (out, a treat, a walk). He barks when he thinks I am going somewhere without him. He barks when he sees we have visitors (“Oh Boy Oh Boy Oh Boy!”). He barks non-stop when we are not home and that is why we own a bark collar. He can be trusted for a couple of hours in his kennel without a bark collar, but not for more than 8 hours.

Murphy pushes on the fence. Harvey digs.

Our fence woes are not limited to dogs. The neighbor who owns this fence stopped me at the grocery store last week to assure me that they are going to replace the entire fence this summer – this section and the section belonging to their neighbor which is falling into our neighbor’s backyard. It’s a daunting project. They are aware it needs to be done.

They have two labs that dig. Mack and Daisy. I know Daisy real well, because she is the one that gets yelled at the most. “DAISY!” They know both “MURPHY!” and “HARVEY!”

I stopped here. I need to get in behind the grapevine and dog-proof that corner where the espalier and wood fence come together. Harvey has a big hole dug there under the fence and he’s eaten the bottom of the corner boards, so this bit is a little trickier. I think a little chicken wire, buried, in addition to the decorative fence.

What I did here was put decorative fence up against the wood, pushed it into the ground, and stapled it to the wood. Then I put a second decorative fence in front of it by about 6 inches. Harvey can’t get behind it to even start digging and he can’t get a bite hold of the fence bottom. If you click on the photo, you can see where he’s worked on this section before.

This, by the way, is “LET’S GO FOR A WALK!” barking. We put in a mile this morning.