helping in the garden

 Autumn is  my favorite time in the garden, and I think Peppa is also enjoying her first autumn in this world. Here she is helping us install the new wormery tower under one of the apple trees. 

 

Some household members seem to think the new wormery is too colorful, but I love it. Here's hoping the worms enjoy coming and going through the holes under the soil. I was thinking of using it to process pet poo, but after a little research I decided to go with my reservations, as it's in an area where we grow food. I still think the only thing we can do with Peppa's poo at this stage is put it in bags and drop it in the rubbish bin.

One site I looked at suggested putting it in the household toilet and flushing it like human waste. I'm not sure about that either. On the other hand, it would save on plastic bags going to landfill.

Penny's garden of remembrance

Penny's ashes are buried in her special spot, outside the glass door where she liked to lie and watch the world go by in her last months. 

 At last it's time to plant the packet of seeds that came with those ashes - everlasting daisies. 

Now the  ground is prepared. We won't feed the soil, because they're Australian native plants and don't like a rich soil.

Hopefully, a beautiful garden addition in memory of a beautiful companion.

Life without Penny

Life goes on, after Penny's death, but we still miss her. Walking has stayed as a part of our daily routine, because of the Covid pandemic and the lockdown that says we can only leave our home for an hour a day. Of course, if we can only go walking for one hour, we want to do it! We did think that without Penny to galvanise us into action, we might not walk, but the pandemic has motivated us to get out.

Gardening is one of my great loves, and in many ways we are keenly aware of Penny's absence. For one thing, I can put down compost and not worry that she will be there like a shot to gorge herself on the delicious half-rotted stuff.

But... the rats have realised that Penny-the-Killer isn't around, and they are munching our plants to the ground.

We walked in one of Penny's favorite places the other day. (Well, every place was loved by Penny.)

Way back in 2012 we felt irritated that one of our short-cuts had been fenced off at Quarry Park. Well, now we see that it was a great idea to fence the area off, because the boring expanse of grass has been replaced by a lovely planting.

the eastern paralysis tick

Up until now we haven't worried about ticks attacking Penny, because they had not been reported in Melbourne. However, when we holidayed at Best Friend Retreat we put tick prevention on Penny, because we had heard the creatures were gradually encroaching into Victoria along the coast from the east. Penny had a bad reaction to Advantix, so I won't be using it again.

Which leaves us with a dilemma, because by all accounts the eastern paralysis tick has made it to Melbourne now. I guess we'll have to have her coat clipped shorter this year, and we'll have to check her regularly in the tick season.

We do have a tick removal tool, which a family traveller brought back from NewYork. We thought it was just a novelty until now, and when we looked at it, we'd feel so smug that we don't have to worry about ticks. What a pity we've now joined the majority of dog owners in having another thing to watch out for!

I've read that dog owners should keep the vegetation clipped in their yard. Not a hope of that here, because our garden is based on the 'food forest' concept.

dogs and coffee grounds

Because I'm a keen gardener, I was thrilled yesterday to find a cafe that allowed me to take home a big bag of coffee grounds after I ate there. I intended to put them around my blueberries, azaleas and camellias. I've read that they're really good for the soil in general, but that it can also be good to put them through a composting process first.

But...

I put the bag on the back patio and soon afterwards Penny got up from her snoozing mat in the house and went out to investigate the nice smell.

Hmmm... This might need a bit of investigating...
I decided to look on the Net for info about dogs and coffee grounds.

And it looks like it would not be a good idea to lay them on the garden beds out the back where Penny can wander at will. I'll have to mix them into the compost pile, or the wormeries (three of them) or put some in the Bokashi bins (five of them), before adding them to my soil.

Here's a site with info about dogs and coffee grounds. And this is what PetPoisonHelpline says:

Pets are more sensitive to the effects of caffeine than people are. While 1-2 laps of coffee, tea or soda will not contain enough caffeine to cause poisoning in most pets, the ingestion of moderate amounts of coffee grounds, tea bags or 1-2 diet pills can easily cause death in small dogs or cats.

I'll use the grounds neat on the camellias and azaleas, because Penny doesn't have free access to the front yard.

trapping earwigs and keeping dogs safe

Penny and I go out to the garden each night after dinner. I don't know when this routine started, but I do know she's got me well-trained. A few lengthy stares from her have me getting to my feet and unlocking the back door.

Penny inspects the garden and has a wee, and I look for slugs and snails and destroy them! We garden organically, so I use the collect-and-squash method. But what about those earwigs that are eating our baby plants? It's been quite a dilemma, because the little critters are too quick to be collected, and I'm too squeamish to stand on them, anyway.

Well, here's our new earwig trap, just set up today, as per the instructions on Deep Green Permaculture. 

Given that the ingredients are soy sauce, oil and water, with a drop of detergent to break the surface tension, I thought the instructions to cover the trap were timely. I've used a heavy bit of paver, hoping that Penny, who loves oily food, won't be inclined to push the paver aside and taste the bait in the trap.

The whole kit and caboodle is surrounded by the flimsy fence I put up when I buried lots of delicious rotten bokashi compost in this area, so I hope that will be an extra deterrent to Penny. She's good about respecting barriers. Well, usually...

Penny and the bokashi compost

Winter, and time to enrich the soil in our garden...

I usually dig the bokashi compost into the front garden, where Penny does not go, but a couple of times I've put it in the ground out the back. I usually place heavy pavers over it, so Penny can't dig for the delicious rotted stuff, and sometimes I fence it off.

Penny thinks it tastes nice. But hopefully she's older and less energetic these days and won't try to push her way through the flimsy barrier.

I don't bury the bokashi deep, because I'm too lazy to dig down, and I'd prefer to let the worms and other 'garden helpers' carry the goodness into the earth without destroying the soil structure.

Here's hoping!

the solar powered butterfly

We have a new garden toy - a solar powered cabbage white butterfly that is supposed to scare off intruding butterflies.

Penny hasn't shown any interest in it, which is great. But of course we humans can't leave well enough alone, so I threw a treat into the garden to lure her in there and see what she would do.

The butterfly fluttered right in her face and she ignored it. Hooray!

And I think it's doing its job. If you look carefully at the last part of the clip, you'll see a cabbage white fly to the tomato plants and go away when it sees the artificial butterfly moving around. The idea is that these butterflies are territorial and a female won't lay eggs on plants if she thinks another butterfly has already laid eggs there.

Look how delicately Penny backs out without damaging the baby tomatoes and basil. What a clever dog!

keeping Penny away from buried bokashi compost

Once again I've buried some Bokashi compost in our back yard, which means it's in the part of the garden accessible to Penny.

So I've covered up the spots where the delicious-smelling muck is hidden.

I don't think Penny could get to this lot, under heavy pavers.

But I'm not so sure about this spot, where it's under a piece of timber. So I threw down a collection of sticks to make it harder for her.

Now, this one, under a flimsy piece of timber, looked a bit vulnerable…

so I added a couple of heavy pieces of brick and a big pot.

Here's hoping for the best. Luckily, we're off to Best Friend Retreat for a couple of days this week, so maybe the smell will have faded by the time we're back.

disgusting bokashi compost tastes great...to a dog

Little Princess Goody Two-shoes Penny has blotted her copybook! She was caught in flagrante delicto this very afternoon, digging away with her supposedly sore front paws in the patch of soil where I had just buried some really stinky bokashi compost.

I think the nearest equivalent to this great Latin phrase 'in flagrante delicto' would be red-handed, but since she doesn't have hands, I'd say she was caught black-mouthed.

Penny is caught black-mouthed after snaffling compost

 I was so smug last time I posted about how I keep Penny from digging up delightful messy bokashi.

BetR2 commented that her Lucy would make short work of this barrier. I should have listened, lol. I guess Penny just pushed her way through my little fence, by the look of the skew-whiff way the bamboo sticks are standing now.

A not so dog-proof  fence around the bokashi

Digging for treasure in the bokashi

The next picture shows the new set-up. The problem is that our soil is clay and I don't want to break up the structure by digging a deep hole, so the bokashi is only a tantalising ten centimetres underground. What self-respecting dog could resist?

A challenge for Penny to think her way around the coiled up wire. Will she solve the puzzle?

Another attempt to keep the dog out of the bokashi

I hope not.

a welcome visitor

There's been strange activity in our backyyard the last few nights, and Penny has been in and out to see what's going on; but we couldn't figure it out.

Now we're wondering if it might be because we have an interesting visitor to our garden. It's a tawny frogmouth.

The other day we found a dead rat on the path, but Penny showed no interest in it. (Perhaps she only likes live ones, so she can hunt them).  It had a chewed tail, but showed no sign of what had killed it. We don't know enough about tawny frogmouths to guess whether one could kill a biggish rat, but I'm going to ask around and try to find out. And if it did, why didn't it eat the rat? All very mysterious.

Oh, wait a minute... Here's  an article in The Daily Mail about these gorgeous birds - they eat 

cockroaches, spiders, beetles, mice, lizards, centipedes, scorpions, snails and slugs. 

Okay, that's also going to be helpful in our garden. But I doubt the bird killed the rat.

When we spotted this welcome visitor in our agonis flexuosa tree, we all hurried out, cameras in hand, to photograph it, but Penny wasn't interested, and the bird was unfazed by all the activity a couple of metres below its perch.

Maybe it will do a better job at scaring off nighttime fruit thieves than our plastic owls did. The night diners have scoffed nearly all our apples and most of our apricots, and now they've started on our nectarines.

By the way, I've just visited the Australian Museum site  and read that these birds are not actually owls. They are more like nightjars. 

I"d better go now. I want to pop outside and see if the tawny frogmouth is still there!

a dog supervises the gardening

It's been beautiful weather here in Melbourne today and I headed out to the garden to work. And I took Penny with me.

She lay in the shade near the garden bed and watched me pull out (oops! I meant, harvest) the weeds.



Penny was on her new Snooza Orthobed, which is advertised as being good for older dogs, or dogs who have had surgery. Who could resist? The amazing thing was that as I carried it into the house from the car when I bought it last week, she was nudging me and following me and as I dropped it she walked onto it and lay down - before I could even tear off the label.

The advertising says:

Orthobed
Perfect for older pets who have trouble getting in & out of kennels or baskets. The low profile convoluted (egg carton shaped) foam provides the ultimate comfort for post surgery, older pets or those with hip ailments. The removable hidden zippered cover is washable with a sturdy polyester drill back & a cosy mock lambswool top. Lightweight & portable - you will travel easily with this bed.

I could certainly recommend it so far.

Anyway, Penny kept an eye on me and on the neighbourhood. She checked out my method of 'harvesting' the weeds and throwing them down as mulch - the weeds that don't have seedheads, of course.



And she found an interesting stick to take inside as a souvenir.