Thinking of Spring

I've been thinking a lot lately, well since just after Christmas, about spring and renewal. Just a hint of warmer weather has me planning my garden. What to plant and what might not work. I am thinking that I will assume that after last summer's seemly lack of warmth that I am not even going to try to grow anything that will need an extended time of warm temperatures. So I will just stick to cool weather crops like lettus, carrots and staples like potatoes and onions. Last year I mostly grew weeds that I pulled up and fed to the rabbits to process for me. I did plant some seeds and nothing came up. So for the past few weeks my endeavor has been to block the dogs from going into the garden. I won't be able to grow anything if they are digging in the beds and chewing on stuff. So I've made repairs to the 4 foot wire fence that is supposed to keep them out. but Johaan fits thru it and Fritz and Penny push down the wire until it bends over and then jump over. So I've been decorating the wire with stuff I weave thru it. Like garden hoses that the dogs chewed up and rendered unusable, sticks, broken broom handles, broken rake, metal bird bath and pieces of a wooden chair that didn't fair so well in the rainy weather. It's a work in progress and I have a few weeks more to work on it. If all else fails I will be force to set posts and build a more permanent wooden fence. I'm thinking a picket fence. I know they don't like the pickets because I already put pickets on the gate and no one goes thru it or over it. I like a bit of whimsy, so I may just go for the picket fence. I have been also wanting to enclose my front yard more. Right now I just have the front along the sidewalk fenced, but I would like to fence the sides. With the Littles I want to contain them a bit easier.

On the dog front. I have a couple first going on. Our first litter of phantom marked labradoodles from our Tawnee and Baron and our first litter of miniature poodles from Liezel and Johaan. We still have a couple of Sadie and Fritz's boys from last summer. Our Penny went into heat in January and we put her with Baron, but we didn't see ties so it is possible that nothing happened Our Hiedi just went into heat and since it's been over a year since her last litter we will be breeding her again.

We also have a couple of new editions to our pack.

This is Nixie, she is a white with black markings miniature poodle. Nixie means water sprite or pixie in German. Nixie has a go forward adventurous personality, just like our Cubby.


This is Wini, short for Winifred which means friend in German. Wini is Teddy's friend and is a very light apricot miniature poodle. She is both playful and timid. Just like Teddy.