The Gardeners Anonymous Blog

Waiting for Santa and the Next Flash Flood Warning

That puddle on my patio is my septic system overflowing...yay.

Here I sit with nine dogs, three boys and a septic system that is slowly backing up into my house. We are waiting for the electrical system to fail, or a tree to fall, or both.  I have approximately 30% of my Christmas shopping done. Thunderstorms are expected throughout the day, and my husband is in the garage building an ark. 

Actually, my husband is building cabinets for one of the two rental remodels we have underway. I did try to steer him towards the ark idea, but he told me that if the world was going to end, it would have done so on Friday. 

I am expected to go out to the garage soon and start painting a door.

 Rusty helping me write after playing in the rain.

So here I sit watching my garden float away. What was once the lawn is now a muddy bog.  I have one dog on my lap, and eight at my feet. 

I just read the weather report: it says we might get a full inch of rain.  Judging by our rain gauges, the reality is more like 7 times that, and the rain shows no sign of letting up.

This is not doggie pee-pee. It is just rainwater seeping into my living room. 

My boys want me to drive them somewhere in this deluge.  I told them they would have to wait for the ark. 

Today I am wondering:

“How is Santa going to find us in this torrent? 

and 

“Why did we decide to do TWO remodels during Christmas?”

Second Time’s the Charm? A Doubtful Way to a Greener Lawn.

Around this time last year, I got the flu. While I was snoring and drooling on myself, heavily under the influence of a bottle of Nyquil, my gardener was busily fertilizing my lawn for the fall.  What he neglected to tell me is that he was planning on burying my then semi-beautiful lawn under two inches of “mulch.”

Like many of the best-laid schemes of mice and men, the plan went terribly awry.

My lawn looked like the La Brea Tar Pits from October through April, at which time some of the lawn started to poke through, giving the entire area a moldy brownie look.  Now it is filled with weeds and large patches of naked dirt.

My lawn will never again have that beautiful fresh sod look, but I am willing to try again.

So this year, we (that would include me), are trying again.  This time instead of burying the lawn, this is what we did:

1. Aerated the lawn

2. Seeded the lawn.

3. Fertilized the lawn.

4. LIGHTLY SPREAD mulch over the newly aerated, seeded and fertilized lawn.

Now all I can do is wait to see if the second time is the charm, and hope that I don’t get the flu.

Tomato Theif

My son came running into the house yesterday with a concerned announcement. “Mom!  I think one of the other dogs peed on Sunny’s face -- his face is all yellow.”  

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” I thought to myself. Dogs are into that kind of thing.

I looked at Sunny’s face.  Sure enough, it had some kind of yellow staining on it, and furthermore, he had some sort of red staining around his mouth.  Thank goodness, it wasn’t blood.

Sunny (a.k.a. Sundance Kid) is a friendly yellow lab:  a friendly yellow lab who eats anything that isn’t nailed down.

When Sunny comes to stay, I never have to clean up the plums or apples that have fallen on the ground.  Sunny does it for me.  He’s like a furry garden vacuum.  

Sunny with apple hangover

Drunk Skunk

Everyone knows that if you see a skunk in the daytime, you should probably stay away from it.  Really? Cause when I see skunks at night I usually run toward them and try to cuddle with them.

So there I was a couple mornings ago, nursing a migraine headache as I watered all the spots in my garden that my loser watering system fails to reach.  It’s a morning ritual.  I looked down at my feet, and there was what appeared to be a dead baby skunk. My immediate reaction was terror, and then I thought, “poor little thing, I wonder how it died?” It was unusual that it had died without letting off that tell tale…eh…odor.  

I was just leaning down to do a visual examination when the little skunk lifted its miniature head and stared me right in the eyes.  I did what every calm mature adult would do: I ran screaming into the house, calling the dogs in behind me.

Tiny wino skunk stumbling around my yard at 11 in the morining.

As if watching the zombie apocalypse, the dogs and I peered out my front window.  The baby skunk rose up and stumbled around.  The poor thing was so wobbly I thought it must be either sick or injured. Then, from my vantage point, I saw it choose a well-fermented wild plum from under the tree, and eat it. Then it ate another one, then another and another. That little midget skunk was drunk.

What to do with an intoxicated diminutive pew factory when one is trying to run a dog business?  Ol’ Yeller’s bright idea was to get our Havahart trap and bait it with breakfast sausage.

The whole time Ol’ Yeller was doing his Havahart thing, I was thinking, “why aren’t you baiting it with rotten plums?” Not surprisingly, the trap plan worked about as well as if I had invited the little thing to jump into the back of my car so I could drive it to the other side of the lake.

The tiny shit dwarf had no fear of us. At one point, my son and I threw plums at it in hopes of scaring it away.  Instead, the skunk staggered right up to me and looked up, as if trying to tell me that the plums I was throwing at him weren’t ripe enough.

Little shitty skunk ignoring trap, looking for more boozy plums.

My son, my husband, the dogs and I watched Pepe le Pew for an hour or so. Since dogs and skunks are incompatible playmates, I had to cancel a dog evaluation appointment and postpone another dog’s drop-off.  My son and hubby went to run some errands, and I walked inside to make a piece of toast to stave off the nausea building from my migraine. During this time, the skunk disappeared.

I thought this was the end of the story until three nights later.  As I was writing this story, my dog wandered out the side door.  Who should be standing there? You guessed it: that tiny striped wino.

For the second time in the 3 ½ years that I have had my dog, Moondoggie was skunked. I can now officially report that baby skunks produce the same amount of abhorrent stench as their parents.

Good times.

 

Gardening, Friendship and Martinis

My first lemon basil martini...yum.

When I need a break from reality, I go visit my buddy Jennifer.  Jen and I have a lot in common: we both have teenagers that drive us crazy, we both have husbands who drive us crazy, and we both like to drink martinis, taking brief breaks only to shop and eat. We love the beach and the sun, but most of all we both love gardening.  And, well…martinis.

Jen's garden

We used to be neighbors. We started a friendship over mommy stuff. The friendship grew over gardening, and it really took off after the discovery of our mutual affinity for vodka.

Jen's garden

Jen's putting green

Jen's Pool.

Jen, Gandolf, and Pixie relaxing between martinis.

And then she and her family just up and moved to San Diego. All she left me was her worm composter, a cruel reminder of what once was.

Cedros Gardens.

Oh, but there is a bright side. Now every few months I get to go visit my home girl in the Beach hood, where we gossip, eat, drink and stumble around various nurseries.

Cedros Gardens

Ah, sanity

margaritas and guacamole

This is All the Skunk’s Fault

If Moondoggie hadn’t gotten skunked the other night, I would not have been afraid to let her out into the backyard.

Moondoggie made it clear that there was another unwanted visitor in the back yard. She lifted her nose to the air and growled as if to say, “Let me at ‘em.

“Oh no you don’t, girlfriend.  I am not spending half the night scrubbing you with lemon soap and hydrogen peroxide again. Just let Pepe le Pew be, and go to bed.”

While there was something a bit different about her behavior this time, I was not going down that road again.  “Fool me twice….

So I made Moondoggie lie down and go to sleep, and I did the same, thinking my caution very wise.

And then I woke up.

I made my kids breakfast, I fixed myself a cup of coffee, and went out to peruse my garden. With my coffee cup in one hand and my rose clippers in the other, I ventured forth, eager to cut some fresh morning blooms.  I love their beauty and their heady scent filling my house.

I strolled over to my rose garden and…

WTF?

This is the first time Bmbi ate all the rose petals around the flower. He usually just bites off the whole thing

The deer-rat ate half my cherry tree also.

Damn deer.

Damn skunk.

Damn dog.

Damn it!

Large rat with antlers

Bad Breath and Doggie IQ

Woman’s intuition is a powerful thing. I should have listened to it last night.

There I was enjoying a nice sleep-aide-induced slumber when my dog’s frantic barking woke me up.  It has been warm, so I have been sleeping with the windows open, and Moondog heard something wandering around in the yard.

I knew in my gut that I shouldn’t let her out, but she kept making those low

warning growls. I eventually began to think there might actually be a person in the yard.  So I relented.

What a mistake.

I couldn’t get the door open fast enough for Moondog.  She jammed her head into the crack of the door and pried it open the rest of the way with her noggin. She launched out into the yard with Betty the bulldog hot on her heels like a flying meatball. 

She went tearing towards our RV with Betty snorting and huffing behind her.  I ran out in their furry wake with a flashlight. I shined the light toward the RV and saw Moondog lunging and snapping at something under the camper.

I was slowly climbing barefoot up the rocky, mulch-covered slope, wearing nothing but a huge T shirt, shining a dim cone of light toward my frenzied canine.  It was 1:30 in the morning. I had a head full of trazadone and I was having a hard time seeing what Moodoggie had cornered. 

In the dim beam of light, my eyes finally focused on Moondoggie’s prey. Prey? It was THE animal that strikes fear in the hearts of us mountain folk. Was it a Cougar, you ask?  A coyote? A rattlesnake?  No, it was something much worse… 

It was a stupid skunk, facing off with my even stupider dog.

 

As soon as I saw that black and white Pepe le Pew, I turned tail and ran back towards the house screaming for Moondoggie, hoping she would do what good dogs do and follow me.  BUT NO, she decided to attack the skunk.  For that transgression, she received a full spray right in her mouth, a skunk mouthwash, if you will.

After the altercation, Moondog came running to me alright.  Lucky me.  I tried to run away from her and lock her out of the house, but Moondoggie is the fastest dog I know. I am always bragging about her speed and agility. This time, I was wishing The Flying Meatball was my dog instead. 

She had the good sense to run back to the house with me, completely avoiding the skunk's fury.  I am now debating the intelligence of border collies vs bulldogs.

I was up another hour washing Moondog.  Before I could get to her, however, she rubbed her face on at least four of the Persian carpets. After her bath, I dried her off.  She immediately ran around rubbing her face on the Persian carpets all over again. During this entire disaster, Betty just looked at me with a look in her bulldog eyes that said, “I thought Border Collies were supposed to be the smartest breed?”

Pathways

I am finally installing pathways throughout my garden.

  In a perfect world, I would pay someone to carry out my designs. I have done it before—when my wallet was fatter. 

In leaner times I come to the realization that I myself must carry out my own designs, and do my own bidding, if you will. Whaaaaaaah!

Luckily I have a teenage son who can help me, so here goes.

I am trying two techniques, I’m sure they are both wrong, But… 

With the first technique I will lay out the design on the ground, take off the topsoil, lay down some permeable weed-block fabric and then cover it with 3-6 inches of decomposed granite. Make teenage son tamp down decomposed granite with nifty tamper-downer-thing purchase at hardware store.  Dogs can be like cats, they love to lie down right in the middle of whatever you are doing.

I line the edges with rock and voila…pathway. 

The second technique will be the same as first minus permeable weed-block fabric. If you really must know, I am trying out the second technique because I ran out of weed-block fabric.

My landscaper (who I can't afford anymore) never uses it. He says that you don’t need to, so we shall see which technique works best.