Changes in the Garden

Our garden

Four beds separated by brick paths

We put it in in 1997

Centered first by a bed of thyme

Then by an armillary planter

This spring, in the garden, I started to find . . .

Holes

Empty holes

Where once there had been plants

And bulbs dug up

And they disappeared

No part of the garden was immune to the

"holes"

I knew why

We had a "digger"

Mollie Mutt

She's 11 pounds of pure energy

And her front paws are a

"digging machine"

She's a terrier, you see . . . 

And terriers tend to be diggers!

Half of the new plants I bought were dug up!

She didn't bother the established plants --

She just went after the new ones.

To stop this carnage, we bought edging fence for the beds

Black, simple

Same lines as the "real" fence

She can jump over them

But she seemed to stay on the paths and dig from there

This puts a barrier between the walk and the dirt

I think it gives definition to the beds

And I like to see the plants and flowers cascade over the fence

I think it is an improvement

An improvement we should have made

even if we didn't have a dog problem!

But then there was the middle bed

A small bed with an armillary on top which also held flowers

However, it was her favorite place to dig

She dug up a goodly amount of my grape hyacinths

And I'm not sure what she did with them!

I tried putting up some old iron fence that I had around

the bottom bed.

Didn't work -- she continued to dig

Even though there wasn't really anything more to dig up in the bed!

So Wednesday morning, I moved bricks . . . and dirt

The bed is gone -- just more bricks

I like the armillary planter sitting on the bricks rather than in the middle of a flower bed

I think it is a win-win

Mollie was "advertised" as a terrier

at the no-kill shelter where we got her.

When we visited the vet today, Jennie insisted

that she looked more like a

Brussels Griffon than a terrier --

And I think she may be right!

I do think that she comes from Brussels Griffon stock

But how much, I don't know

And we won't know until we do a DNA test on her!

She's a funny looking little dog

and I joked that she was part Ewok and part Gremlin . . .

In reading about Brussels Griffons, I learned that the Star Wars Ewok was

based on George Lucas's Brussel Griffon . . . 

interesting!

I am hoping that the fence keeps Molly out of the garden.

So far it has.

And she has other places in the garden to dig

And she's welcome to dig there --

she just needs to stay out of the flower bed!

I'm not sure I will replant the annuals that were dug up this year . . . 

Our garden won't be as flower filled for 2018

But at Linderhof:

Man, dog and flowers need to live in harmony!