What’s Better Than A Dog In The Garden? Two Dogs In The Garden!

I was looking after my son’s dog yesterday, while Jake was playing his usual Saturday Lawn Bowls game. My husband plays Lawn Bowls too, so they both headed off at lunch time for their game, leaving me in charge of both my son’s dog, and our own dog.

Jake’s dog is a retired racing Greyhound, named Sharon, and our dog is also a retired racing Greyhound, whose name is Lenny. The two dogs have met before, but not for very long, and at Jake’s place, not ours. I was interested in seeing how they would go together, given that Lenny is a new dog for us, even though he is adult dog. We’ve only had him for about a month …

Both of these dogs are black, and big! Greyhounds can be quite tall creatures, especially male ones, and they can look quite imposing. I wrote a bit of an observational article about this meeting yesterday, while Sharon was visiting, this is the link to it. There are a couple of photographs there on the article, and this is one of the dogs:

Sharon on the left, Lenny on the right (writer’s photo)

I wish I’d taken a photo outside, because the black dogs look gorgeous against the green of the lawn! But when I was outside keeping an eye on them both, I’d forgotten to take my phone out there with me, so I couldn’t get a pic of them there.

But both of them took advantage of the opportunity, and lay down on the lovely fresh grass, in the sunshine, and warming themselves up after the air conditioning inside the house. Being black dogs, they can get very hot in bright sunshine though, so were happy to come back inside, after both leaving their mark on that I suppose not so ‘fresh’ grass!

By the time the two Lawn Bowlers were home again, these two dogs were seemingly much more settled together, and Sharon did her usual trick of not wanting to leave. I don’t know why, but she’s always done that, and Jake has to literally drag Sharon to get her out of the front door, to head off back home …

It was fine to have her for a visit, but I think I’m happier with just the one dog. And I’m sure our back lawn will be better off with just the one dog ‘doing their business’ on the lawn! And because Lenny is a male dog, he tends to ‘share the love’ and pee on various things, instead of just going in the one spot, like a female dog will. So the lawn isn’t too stressed …

What is stressed though, I’ve noticed, since getting Lenny, is our rose bushes. They’re only about a couple of years old, these roses, and have been doing OK, but because Lenny is a boy dog, and does what boy dogs do, these rose bushes are suffering.

The rose bushes are along one side of our lawn, so when Lenny goes out there for a ‘comfort stop’, he’ll often pee on one or more of the roses. A comfort for Lenny perhaps, but not so for the roses … I’ll keep an eye on these rose bushes, and see how things are going but I figure being well watered all over is going to be useful to stop any dying off, from the harshness of Lenny’s efforts …

Ah, the doubtful joys of being both a dog owner and a gardener as well … Seeing Lenny racing around the lawn at top speed, is definitely a joy though! He’s fast and loves to run, in Zoomies mode! Zoomies mode is when a Greyhound is out in the open yard, and will race around and around at top speed! Lenny certainly likes doing this!

I’m glad we have that lawn, so Lenny can have his top speed fun, then come back inside to rest up for another one later on, perhaps … Dogs do a lot of resting, and it’s looking like Greyhounds do even more resting than other dogs! I guess that fast running takes up a lot of energy …

So good food, lots of treats and plenty of water are there for Lenny as and when needed! Lenny is a good dog, and deserves the best!

Old Garden, New Dog

Dogs come into our lives for only a short time, comparatively speaking. Our garden has been here, in some form or another since before we moved here in 1988. We’ve added bits and pieces over the years, and removed things too, but the most important thing in the garden is a dog!

We moved out to our little piece of country South Australia from a lovely inner suburban cottage, but we couldn’t breed dogs there. So yes, we had to move. Our place had kennels already, and there was a swimming pool, both selling points for us. The actual house wasn’t much, really, and still isn’t. We’re interested in the outside stuff, more than the inside stuff.

So over the years, we’ve had many dogs in our house, and in the back yard, and dog run. But we gave up showing and breeding dogs, eventually, and then once our oldest dog was very old, our son began trying to convince us to get a Greyhound. We liked that idea, but felt it would be best to wait until our old dog was gone.

Missy has died now, and it didn’t take long at all for us to begin the adoption process for our a Greyhound of our own. Missy was a Pharaoh Hound, also a sight-hound, the same as the Greyhound, and we had some understanding of how they’re different to the Standard Schnauzers, which had been the breed we did most of our showing and breeding with.

This is Missy, our Pharaoh Hound, RIP Missy. (writer’s photo)

Missy lived a pretty good life, and had a humane ending, as is appropriate. Now came the time for our own Greyhound. So we looked at the South Australian Greyhound As Pets site, and found a possible dog. Sadly, he went to another home, not ours. Boo hoo about not getting Jamie.

But there was another dog that caught my attention, so I applied for Lenny. And was successful, Yay to that! We went and picked Lenny up yesterday, and things are going along well. I’d never got a new dog that was an adult, so it’s something quite different. There’s not need to toilet train Lenny, for starters, just watch him to make sure he doesn’t pee on anything inside … So far, so good with that!

And speaking of Lenny. here he is, our new dog, Lenny, former the racing Greyhound Lenny The Jet.

Our new dog, the Greyhound, Lenny. (author’s photo)

Lenny is a long way from being a young puppy, he’s an adult dog, but still with a good few more years left in him, and we’re looking forward to the three of us growing old together – me, my husband, and Lenny … Such things bring slowed down lives, but still good lives for us all! We’re looking forward to many more fun times in the garden together!

Caring About/For Nature

My husband and I live in a country area of South Australia, a little township near Mallala – the home of Motorsport in South Australia.

Redbanks consists of homes on blocks of land, far bigger than the land blocks in suburbia. We moved out here, so we could show and breed dogs, and did this for around 15 years. Then we gave up the showing first, and then the breeding of dogs.

This is one of the dogs we bred, but who never made it to the show ring beyond as a puppy.

Missy is no longer a puppy, that’s for sure, 14 years old and still happy with her life!

Missy is an old girl now, but as a Pharaoh Hound, she still holds strongly to her hound nature, and looks for things to catch and eat whenever she goes outside. But she spends far more resting, or snoozing on her comfy chair inside with us. I bet if she found another snake though, she’d be onto it in a flash.

So Missy will hunt reptiles – snakes and lizards, if she finds them, but there’s one thing that we don’t want hanging around, particularly inside the house, and that is big spiders. We get a variety of spiders at our place, some of them tiny little things, some in the middle, and some much bigger.

The tiny ones can be ignored, or watched by me for a while perhaps, and the middle sized ones can too, up to a point. Some of those middle sized ones are potentially deadly and if we see them inside, or anywhere outside where we might be in danger, we may kill them, before they can kill us.

But the largest spiders, they aren’t deadly to us humans, or to Missy either. If it was up to me, I would just leave those bigger spiders alone, wherever that are inside. They are Huntsman Spiders, and they kill flies, apparently, and having flies killed seems like a good thing to me.

But my husband has a bit of a phobia about spiders, always was, and probably always will. I’m not afraid of spiders at all. Wary of the deadly ones, for sure, but certainly not of the Huntsman Spiders. If it was left up to me, I’m just leave them alone, to go about their business, and catching and eating flies …

But I know Graham will kill them, if he can, spraying copious amounts of insect spray on them, and stinking out the room with toxic chemicals … I know what I have to do, it I see a Huntsman Spider, I have to catch it and take it out into the garden.

This is the spider I caught and finally released this morning:

Huntsman Spider (writer’s photo)

It took me three attempts to catch this beauty, but I got it in the end, and was happy to release this little beast back to Nature, and away from my poor phobic husband! My tool of trade for catching the Huntsman Spiders is usually a dustpan and brush, but for some reason that didn’t work this time. So I had to use that small plastic container with a lid.

I doubt the spider enjoyed being in the container, but once I’d let it out, it raced around on the bench there, climbing up it, as I used my phone to record video of it’s antics. I would have liked to have put a bit of that video here, but unfortunately was unable to manage that, it was a bit too technical for me.

Not to worry, you have the photo there to see the creature, and can see a bit of the old wooden bench the spider was climbing up, running along. Nature on the move, what a joyous thing in can be!

A Good Pond – Just What I Wanted!

I’ve had a good pond in the garden before, where I could sit, relax, get inspired, and just chill, as life just drifted on, beautifully, and fish also drifted, just under the pond’s surface … Then there was a terrible thing go wrong with the pond, the PH levels were wrong, or some kind of poison drifted in and poisoned the fish. I don’t know what it was that went wrong, I just knew the fish were dying and there was nothing I could do to stop it happening.

So that pond was allowed to stagnate further, becoming a breeding zone for blue tongue lizards, last Summer, and a sometimes damp resting place for blown around vegetation, and occasionally something that looked a little bit like a neglected pond, but with nothing living in it, in terms of fish.

But I have a pond now, still with no fish, but it is a good looking body of water, I have a seat there, and I’m slowly making this space my own … I expect in the new year, pool plants and then fish will happen, and we will, or at least I will, take far better care of the pond and the fish than I did last time. Those fish had been breeding there, and everything, but then it went wrong …

I will check PH levels, get rid of plant matter falling from the tree that gives shade for the pond, and I will care and care and care for our fish! I was sitting out there a half an hour or so earlier, listening to, and watching the fountain do its stuff. The fountain, which we didn’t have in the first pond, will hopefully do something regarding aerating the pond, or something. I’m fairly sure that was mentioned by the person who dug out the pond, and put all of the bits and pieces of the pond together, then filled it.

I might look into these things, and not just leave it at buying a few fish a few plants, and hope for the best … Living creatures deserve better than that. I’m hoping this pond area will yet again become a place of inspiration for me, somewhere where good words will be written, and perhaps a poetry collection or other book produced, based on those words written, inspired by my time ‘pondside’!

It will be a joyful time, if I can yet again hear frogs croaking from our pond, as used to happen before.

Fountain and frog,
both splash in pond
joyful times

If anyone has any tips and tricks about keeping a pond going, and going well, I’m all ears, I don’t want things to go wrong with this new pond, it would be too devastating …

Purslane Tea?

This is purslane, growing at my place. The frog is not real.

Purslane is a wonderful plant, a succulent, with excellent beneficial things inside its thick leaves and shoots. Purslane is a wonderful source of Alpha-linolenic which is an omega-3 fatty acid, and for for me, having this plant growing at my home is great, because I don’t eat fish or seafood, which are other sources for this nutrient.

 In a salad, Purslane can add a lovely crunch, as well as some ‘mouth feel’ from the mucilage inside those thick leaves. Or you can make a healthy tea from the plant, chopping it up and pouring hot water over it, leave it to steep for up to 15 minutes, then add honey if you wish, and drink. It is said to have a lemony flavour, but I haven’t really noticed any particular flavour at all.

That said this plant, commonly named a weed, has more goodness in it than that other green plant, Spinach, and if you have even a tiny bit of space outside, that gets about half a day of sunshine, find some Purslane and grow your own. At the end of the growing season, Purslane produces thousands and thousands of tiny seeds. These seeds get spread all around, and the plant will come back again, when Spring arrives.

It is such a beneficial plant, and so easy to grow, get yourself some. The green and pink plant, with tiny little yellow leaves is quietly delightful, in my opinion. And even though I’ve never had it before, I’m going out into my garden in a minute, to prepare myself a cup of Purslane Tea!

Spring is in the Air, and it’s lovely!

Spring is the time for the flowers to reign supreme with beautiful blossoms, and I am certainly loving the various flowering plants we have in our garden. The new roses planted by my husband have all, or have nearly all flowered, and those that haven’t quite flowered yet, have buds getting ready to show their beauty!

The fuchsias in their hanging pot just keep on keeping on with their elegant little flowers, the pigsface plants in hanging pots are going well too, except for the one that seems to have died … Oh well, the others are currently making up for the loss of that one.

The camelia that arrived when the roses did has finished flowering for now, they’re not a Spring flowering plant though, so I’m happy to wait for another fine showing of their flowers when their time is right. I hope the current growth of leaves continue, and that the plant gets taller and wider. The flowers look so lovely against a green and leafy background!

What else? Well, the thyme, also in a hanging basket is flowering too, tiny little flowers on the end of stems, that go into my cup of herbal tea too, when I have one, which is usually at least once a week. Our bottle brush tree is flowering well too, with its big red bottle brushes.

That is all happening in the back yard, while along the front veranda, the geraniums are almost all flowering still/again. So out of the window next to me, I can see red geraniums flowering, as well as pink ones, while if I stand up, I can see the lovely pink and purple flowering geranium that has interesting pointy leaves.

And if I actually go outside into the front yard, I can see all of the other geraniums we have in pots there, several different red or red and white ones, pale pink, and vivid pink ones. Lovely! And of course, there are always the big and beautiful trees we have along part of our front fence, five pine trees, another conifer that may be a juniper, and the three lovely sheoak trees we have there.

And of course, because we have plants with flowers, and we have trees, we also have the beautiful birds. There are the birds hatched this season, as well as older ones. There seem to have been many new Sparrows born around here, and they’re happily growing up, and doing the things that birds do, cheeping and chirping, looking for food, and connecting up with friends.

There are lots of young Starlings around too, but even better are the native birds that seem to have hatched out in our back yard – the New Holland Honeyeaters. I’ve seen some of the other honeyeaters we sometimes get here too, the White-plumed Honeyeaters, and I love them even more. They are plainer, with their sombre greyish-green feathers, but their quick and elegant flying to catch the flying insects is a delight to see!

Also delightful are the Swallows that visit us, to zoom around and down, to snatch a drink of water from our swimming pool, then up and around and off somewhere else again. Lovely little birds! Also lovely are the Murray Magpies, with their black and white feathers, and their delightful piping song.

Another of our avian visitors that I find delightful are the Galahs. I love these grey and pink cockatoos, with their crazy way of flying here there and everywhere, calling out raucously as they go, fun! There are other birds as well, Magpies for sure, and often, but not as often as is usual, the other black and white bird, the smallest of the three, the Willie wagtails. They like to get a drink from the pool too, as most of the birds do, but they all do it from a standing position, unlike the clever zoomy Swallows.

Watching the birds, and seeing the flowers, I just love Springtime in the garden at my place!

Exciting Event Today!

Yes, something excited in my backyard today, in the garden, but with no dog involved. I had signed up to do the Aussie Backyard Bird Count, for my first time.

I went our into the actual backyard to do my count today, although you can do it anywhere, not only an actual backyard. I sat down on a chair by our swimming pool, where a few different birds often drop in for a drink.

Today I saw 12 different bird species. There are actually more than 45 different kinds of birds I’ve spotted at our place in Redbanks South Australia, over the years, since we moved here in 1988, and since I began taking more interest in the variety of different birds.

Today I saw all of the regular ones, nothing too special, with a mix of native birds, and non native ones. The most common bird was a tie between the House Sparrow, and the Common Starling. One of the birds I counted was a guess, the Parrot might have been a different kind, but the two of them were zooming past up above, and thinking about it now I wondering were they actually lorikeets. Too late now …

This is how my list looked:
Common Starling × 20
Crested Pigeon × 3
House Sparrow × 20
Magpie-lark × 4
New Holland Honeyeater × 3
Noisy Miner × 3
Red Wattlebird × 3
Red-rumped Parrot × 2
Spotted Dove × 2
Welcome Swallow × 12
White-plumed Honeyeater × 2
Willie Wagtail × 1

with many thanks to the team at BirdLife Australia for sending me this copy of my bird count I submitted today. People can send in as many reports as they want to, up until 25 October.

If you’re in Australia, and would like to be involved, this is a useful page to read first:

FAQ

A useful link if you want to be involved!

Birds bring much interest to my life, with their song, their colours and their interesting behaviour to see. And of course some of them eat bugs that I don’t like, and they can assist to pollinate plants, a very useful thing.

I’m glad I saw one of the birds I love, and always have loved, since childhood, the Crested Pigeon. I was getting worried there, as the time approached the end, with no sighting, and then I spotted two of them off in the distance, above the area near our pond, but up high, over the trees there. Phew!

I’m sure there were many more Sparrows and Starlings around the place, I could hear birds in various bushes, but I didn’t see them, so didn’t count them. I know I will always see those two birds, even with a twenty second count!

There’s one bird I saw and heard earlier today, the Crow, or more correctly the Australian Raven, but I didn’t see or hear any while I was doing my count. I also didn’t see or hear any Australian Magpies, although they are common visitors to our place, and I saw some this morning, in the front yard.

I think for my next count, if I do any more, I will give it a go in our front yard, I get a better view there of the birds from beyond our place, and in the tall pine trees we have out there, along part of the front boundary.

This has all been interesting for me, I hope you found it interesting too!

Roses Brighten My Springtime Days!

Recently, my husband bought four roses and a camelia. The plants waited for a week or so, but then they were planted. The camelia had buds on it and quite soon produced some lovely big blooms, in a bright pink hue. Flowering season is now over for camelias, I understand, and the plant is now growing lots of new leaves, but no buds.

We’re not bereft of colour though, because it’s the rose bushes time to bloom. I mentioned on Facebook recently that I was particularly interested in, was the deep red flowering one, and that I hoped it would have that lovely strong ‘rose’ scent.

A friend asked whether it was the Black Velvet rose, and I couldn’t remember the actual name of it, and said I’d report back, once I’d checked. I didn’t get around to it that day, but I’ve just checked the names of all four roses bushes. That particular one is indeed a Black Velvet rose, and I’m looking forward to the first bloom to show itself to my eyes, and my nose too!

So, Black Velvet, Bonica, Iceberg, and Mary Mackillop, these are the different varieties of the new roses in our garden. We also have two other roses in our garden, about 15 metres away. I don’t know what the varieties of these two roses are named, they came with the house, and we’ve been here since 1988.

The bigger bush, is a red flowering bush, and the other one has a yellow blossom. Another rose has popped up next to the yellow flowering one now, and it is very much a basic style, the kind of roses you sometimes see growing wild, a very basic flower. It is a white rose, with a bit of pink on the flower too.

When all of these lovely roses are blooming, I’m sure that little area of our garden is going to be lovely and colourful! Roses are always going to bring good things to a day, when they are flowering! The camelia was certainly beautiful.

Another flowering plant in our garden is the mandarin tree, and that one is offering not much at all at the moment in terms of fruit, but it has a mountain of flowers, which I hope will go on to become fruit this year. Last year the crop was extremely disappointing, with barely any mandarins, after having much fruit the year before, it’s first crop of fruit after the tree was planted.

Spring is surely the most lovely of our seasons, so many flowers to see and sniff!

Safety in the Garden

Having a garden you love is a great thing. But being unsafe in that garden due to your disability issues is not so much fun. I and my husband and glad that the NDIS is going to make our place much safer for me to be out and about in.

We have a property of one and three quarter acres. Our house and back yard take up some of that area, the front yard takes up more, and then there is all of the rest of it.

There are two stables, and a horse yard, where no equine creature has trod a hoof for many years, that has become the area for bonfires, to dispose of cut back branches and other flammable and unwanted material.

Then at the back, there is a shed/garage with a non-working door, and further to the south of our place, a pond. All around our property are trees, shrubs, and weeds. The place is a favoured place for a wide variety of bird life, both native birds, and others.

Contemplating the pond, with fish living, breeding, and dying has been an interesting place for me in earlier years, but the pond is no longer viable for fish, because of debris dropped from the shade giving trees growing nearby. And sometimes walking to the back of our place is a little dangerous to me, because of my balance issues.

The person we are getting to ‘fix up’ our place will make sure the pond can go back to being a safe and lovely place for me to be at, when I am home, alone. Fish in the pond, and birds flying all around, bring lovely times of calm, when the problems I may have can drift away. If it was unsafe to get there, though, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as good.

Having Multiple Sclerosis, the balance issues I have are not surprising, and I am used to that, but I certainly would like to be able to safely get around our place. To that end, we are going to be getting work done by a gardener/landscaper, paid for by the NDIS. I have had some falls in the garden in the past, breaking my ankle, last year, and I’m definitely keen on the whole of our place being as safe for me as is possible.

Water and trees, bird song, and clouds in the sky, what lovely things they all are!

Plants as Poisons

I’m a writer, and poet, as well as being the editor of the local newsletter for the town close to where I live, Mallala. Some of my writing is nonfiction, some poetry (quite a bit of that), but most recently the type of writing that I’m been putting a lot of my time into, is writing a cosy murder mystery.

And as a person with a bit of an interest in gardening, as well dogs, (hence this blog), the idea of poisons that people can find in their own home, for the purpose of killing people is interesting. I have to stress, this is for the purpose of my cosy murder mystery writing only.

The town where my murder mysteries take place is a made up place, Talloola, but based it is loosely based on Mallala. This connection between plants and poisons, and killing with things a person has easy access to, seems to be an obvious thing to look into, for the purpose of those murder mysteries I’m looking to write.

I’ve begun work on the first book, “Hot Winds At Talloola”, and I’ve come up with titles of I think it was twenty possible books, with a little bit about what each book might be about. I’ve also written some words for book the second book. I can’t remember what the title for that one is going to be – I’m trying to concentrate on the actual writing of the first one.

So why am I here, writing this blog post? Hmm, a good question, that one. Putting off the writing today, will make me work harder at actually writing tomorrow? It’s an idea, but not a very sensible one, not really. Tomorrow is going to have its own distractions. Each day does.

I’ve blogged on my actual writer blog about this procrastination thing, here. Since I wrote that post, and put it up on my writer blog I’ve certainly added a good deal more words to the first of my cosy murder mysteries. Those twenty-five minutes of writing don’t happen every single day, but they could, and I will work harder at making sure they do happen.

Today, after I’ve finished this particular post about the poisons that might be growing in the yards of residents of Talloola, that will be a good time to get my twenty-five minutes of writing the novel, so that is what I plan to do. But thinking about the novel, and in fact the whole series I have planned, one of the poisons I know of is available quite close to the town of Talloola.

And what is this deadly plant, this source of plantly poison? The ‘killer’ plant is Castor Oil plant, the seeds of which contain ricin. I have seen many of these plants along the train track that goes though Mallala, and if there was a murderer in the town of Talloola, they would have ready access to ricin …

Another readily available potential killer is the well known, and widely grown Oleander (Nerium) plant. This plant is commonly found in front and back gardens, and I know I’ve seen it growing in several places in Mallala, and in fact there was such a plant in my own front yard when I was young. The plant has long slim leaves, and brightly coloured flowers. All parts of the plant are poisonous if eaten … I don’t know what they taste like, but perhaps Talloola residents should watch out with salads brought to community events, if they have people there who would like to see them dead …

And apparently the Peppercorn tree is another one that is, or can be dangerous. I didn’t know this before I started looking at it today. I just thought it was and extremely successful, and attractive weed that is growing in many places around where I live.

We certainly have many of these weeds/trees growing at our place, both large trees, and tiny seedlings. The birds and or the wind spread the seeds, and they pop up all over, wherever there is a bit of dirt, that gets water on it. The pink fruit and feathery leaves as well as the drooping habit of the branches makes for an attractive tree, but they will take over, which is why they are deemed to be leaves.

The berries are poisonous, and my cause vomiting and diahhroea, and the sap from the branches may cause dermatitis in some people, and when the tree is flowering, it may cause respiratory irritation, sinus congestion and headache in some people too. Overall, not a pretty plant in the nasty things it may do to a person.

So there’s a few plants that you wouldn’t want to see in your dinner dish, but who knows whether they may show up at a Talloola Community group dinner some time …