Dogs In My Garden

When I am working in my garden beds, digging and mulching, my
dogs are my constant companions . . . they are little "Dog Gardeners".
Working in my garden on a shining Autumn day, with such wonderful
companionship is just pure blissssssss!

This is Paco, the Prince of the Household. He loves to lay in the warm earth.
Strangely, the dirt never clings to him and he's always fresh as a daisy.
There are few things a dog loves more than a nice pile of soft, warm freshly
mulched & manured topsoil, LOL! He's kinda sleepy in this photo, but he's sooooo
funny. Droll. The dogs LOVE the garden, wherever I go, they are with me.

This is my "Iris" bed which I'm preparing for the coming winter, adding new colors of Iris.
Dogs love irises, of course. Sometimes they help by digging their own holes for bulbs.

 

Xena, my big shepherd mix, also loves to garden, but her activities are focused on
tennis ball cultivation. While gardening, I periodically toss her tennis balls and I could
do that for hours and she'd just keep staring at me like this. She is also devoted
to burying balls and chewy toys in the Calla Lilies. It helps if I have made the
soil nice and soft and loamy.

 

Everything looks tidy and prepared for planting 200 Daffodil, Tulip, Crocus, and Iris bulbs.
It's a very happy activity to prepare the ground and plant the bulbs thinking
all the while about what will begin to appear in April.

 

This thing with the tennis balls goes on all day long. Xena is obsessed with the tennis balls,
she lives for that "thunk!" in her mouth when I toss it to her. All my work is done
interspersed with tennis ball tossing to Xena, all day, every day. I am a devoted dogmother
and work really hard to keep the dogs engaged and happy. It's not easy. You see the way
she stares at me? Her fixation is complete and it's all about forcing me to toss tennis balls.

 

This is Lily, my long haired Chihuahua, the Princess of the Household. Her fur never touches dirt, of course.
She would not dream of laying in the dirt. But she does love hanging out near me while I garden.

 

Hey . . .look at this soil! Hands and knees, removing weeds, breaking up clods, greeting worms (really essential),
aerating, adding manure, mixing it all up, laying on mulch . . .you gotta love your dirt. Paco LOVES the garden.