Dandelion Seeds

I’m not sure if it’s the dandelions but it was practically snowing seeds on my walk with Lloyd today! Perhaps these little fluff balls are why my hayfever has been outrageous today. They were in clumps all over the ground and floating in the air. 

Dandelion gone to seed with (hard to see) clumps of seeds around it.

It would be quite beautiful if they weren’t weeds!

My snuggley boy post walk.

Lloyd The Determined, Clever Menace

Did my usual damage check after Lloyd was left at home (all by himself!) for a couple of hours this morning. Note that this is pre walk so the following story is in no way his fault.. 

Somehow he managed to dig a massive hole (went down a good half metre) in the second vegie box while leaving the fence perfectly intact. I’m still not entirely sure how he did it but it would likely have involved him pushing the fence to make a gap underneath big enough for either him or just his paws to get through. Given the depth of the hole and the fact that the splatter zone was on the wall behind, I think he must’ve gotten his whole self under the fence. But the fence isn’t bent in the slightest. And he’s not small! And how did he get out again? I guess he took a leap of faith? 

The only other possibility I can think of is that he got into the first vegie box (I hadn’t fixed the fence until today) and jumped across to the second. But that’s still a decent jump and it’s over two intact fences with a half metre gap between them. Days like this I wish we had puppy-cam! 

Needless to say I was too impressed to be cross. Plus it wasn’t his fault. 

Plus he’s pretty cute. 

Lloyd The Menace

I pulled out the remnants of the tomato plants on the weekend and the freshly disturbed soil proved too tempting for a Lloydie puppy. The little menace has leaned his gorgeous little paws on the chicken wire to bend it enough that he can jump over it and dig up that lovely, pooey, soft soil. Time for an extra post for my very attractive chicken wire fence. As I always say, lucky he’s cute! 

Palmetto’s First Haircut

I mowed our palmetto instant turf for the first time. Look how awesome it looks! Who knew I’d be this obsessed with lawn? It’s so spongy and soft and lush. And green! I love it! 

Question: other than spending hours cutting the edges with secateurs, what’s the best way to neaten up the edges around the shed and garden beds?

And you can’t possibly have a post about the backyard without a photo of Lloyd. I thought I’d sit back and admire our lawn for a bit on a recliner chair that my sister bought me. Lloyd decided the extra height was just what he needed to get the best vantage point for his fly catching. No flies died. 

Puppy Proof Vegie Boxes Round 2

This is what Lloyd thought of round 1:

So ugly chicken wire it is. Hopefully it’s not forever.. 

I may be able to improve this. The way the corners sit means I had to cut off the edges. I could get around this with more stakes but they cost $7 each. Getting a bit pricey to make an ugly fence! At least I finally have some vegies growing again! Here I have Cherry Tomatoes and Black Russian Tomatoes. I also planted more herbs. 

And a Habanero Chilli plant. 

I’ve grown chillies before and they weren’t spicey. I blamed the Melbourne climate. But we have friends 20 minutes away who have grown various hot chillies and made them into the most awesome hot sauce. So I’m trying my luck with a couple of different types of chillies this season. Bring on some home made hot sauce! 

My Garden Muscles Are Alive!

Ah, my muscles ache, there’s dirt under my nails and my hands are hanging out for a decent lather of moisturiser. It feels so long since I had this feeling and I’ve missed it. My uni course is officially over! Results came out yesterday and I passed with distinction (76.25 average). Not amazing but I’m pretty happy with that given how busy I was first semester and how much I hated Deakin University in second semester (another story). I’ve put my books away and can’t wait for the extra $1.40/hour I will receive as a result of my new qualification. #nursebuysasuperyacht

So with that behind me and my super yacht fund set up I can concentrate on the turning our disgraceful backyard into something beautiful. The hubby ordered some Palmetto turf to arrive on Friday. It’s meant to be hardy, self repairing, soft, low maintenance and stay green over winter – what more could you want! So I had to turn our well trampled and dry dirt pit into something ready for some lovely grass to sink it’s roots in. Believe it or not this soil was brought in just for this occasion in February so it’s actually really nice soil – just looks (and kind of feels) like concrete in this picture. 

Several people will tell you that I’m really bad at digging. I’ve had to be rescued in the past when deadlines are involved. I try really hard and get really sweaty and sore but I don’t make much of an impression. It took so much work to get the soil looking like this! 

I’d been digging for 3 hours and hadn’t even reached the Maggie’s garden bed from the back fence. Adam came home from work and had a quick dig before asking me what my technique was “cos it’s really easy”. I hated him then but also had hope that he could knock the rest over quickly! He did the edges for me and made some more progress around Maggie’s garden bed before it got dark. 

It did get easier – there was barely any topsoil near the back fence so I was digging mostly clay. Still took half the day to finish though! I don’t get it. I can shovel loose dirt from the front of the house to the back of the house no worries – had plenty of practice at it too! Just today I shovelled 1/2 a metre of nice soil for the vegie boxes and garden beds and I even got a thumbs up from someone waiting at the roundabout in their car. I just can’t dig to save myself! Even with Lloyd’s help – which I devastatingly had to say no to cos digging is not allowed. This was very confusing. “Mummy can dig, why can’t I?” Lots of fast laps were required. #puppyparenting

Speaking of Lloyd, I badly underestimated him in my first attempt to puppy proof the vegie boxes. I thought it would be good to use a fence to stop him but I didn’t want something too high that would make it hard to work in the vegie box and shade the plants. I saw this cute garden edge in Bunnings – actually, it’s not cute, it’s plastic and horrible but at least it’s not chicken wire. I thought the points of the pickets would scare Lloyd off attempting to jump without impaling him if he did attempt. He does get scared of things (like concrete wombats and Labrador puppies) but he’s not scared of potential pain. He’s a cattle dog. He doesn’t feel pain. Perhaps I should just buy a Labrador statue to guard the vegie boxes! 

Not sure what my next puppy proof attempt will be. A higher fence that covers the corners? Might have to mull it over with my engineer husband. 

Lloydie the Plant Trimmer

Our puppy, Lloyd, really likes sticks. Unfortunately he doesn’t see a problem creating his own sticks by “pruning” our plants. In fact, green sticks are the best sticks to chew on! This means that our plants are slowly becoming standard plants whether we like it or not. Lucky for him, they don’t seem to mind. Check out this oddly shaped sea of red! 

My Helpful Boy

Woke up from my post night duty sleep to find that my baby boy has been doing the weeding for me! Whenever he’s alone outside his toys (bought and created by him, usually as a result of destroying something) always end up by the back door. I think he just sits there waiting between acts of destruction. It also makes it quite efficient when he wants to bring one of his special new “toys” inside. Love finding balls of roots and dirt on the lounge room carpet! 

Lloyd

I went missing again. Uni is mostly to blame. After ignoring uni during our wedding preparations, backyard renovations and honeymoon I had a lot to catch up on! Now exams are over and uni doesn’t start back for a couple of weeks. Time to catch up on my blogging!

The most important and exciting news: we have a puppy!

Meet Lloyd.

I signed up to all the pet rescue websites the moment our back fence went up, and was getting daily notifications about new puppies up for rescue. Lloyd’s four sisters appeared in my inbox one day (one black/brown, one red and two white), and we thought we’d check out Storm (the black/brown pup). She had gorgeous colouring and would be available for adoption that weekend, just half an hour away from us. The deal was first in best dressed. There were 16 puppies available for adoption and about 200 people turned up. It was crazy! We got there fairly early and our names were third on the list for this particular litter. Storm and her sister Karma were already adopted by the time our name was called. But Jesse (our Lloyd) was a surprise bonus since he was the only one I didn’t have an email about. We were told the pups were cattle dog cross breed but since they were picked up from a pound in NSW, no one really knows what they are. Out of the litter, Lloyd looks the most like a blue heeler, but there’s definitely something else in him. His colouring is lovely. He looks like he’s had a big night out and hasn’t taken his eye makeup off. His coat in red, black, white and strawberry blonde all in one and he has the blue heeler white tip on his tail. He’s a very handsome boy. We’re so lucky we got him!

We weren’t expecting to actually get a puppy that day so we hadn’t thought of names yet. We knew that he wasn’t a Jesse though and had to change his name pretty quickly so we had something to call him by. We started thinking of meaningful things to us and thought of Loy’s Paddock, where we had our wedding ceremony. I said “Lloyd kind of sounds like Loy” and Adam said “Yes! And Lloyd is Jim Carrey’s character in Dumb and Dumber! Oh, and we both like Pink Floyd and that sounds like Lloyd too!” So Lloyd he became. It didn’t take him long to find his feet in our house and he’s been putting smiles on our faces and love in our hearts ever since.

He’s nearly 5 months old now and is growing up so fast! He was 12 weeks and 5 kgs when we got him. He now weighs 12 kgs! He’s still very much a baby in his personality though. He’s highly intelligent, eager to please, incredibly needy and a little scaredy. Right now he’s lying as close to me as possible, snoring away in front of the fire. How lucky am I!?

Lloyd pondering in his paddock (Loy’s Paddock)

Lloyd “helping” me study

Lloyd after freaking out that the Yarra River is higher than it was yesterday after some rain. Required lots of running back into the river at high speed just to check.

I finally took the lids off the vegie boxes today (from when we converted them into seats for our wedding). I then went out for an hour, leaving the puppy all alone in the backyard. Apparently he can jump into the vegie boxes now.