Serendipity Gardens by Carol Hegel Lang

Spring is just around the corner and my mind is shouting, “Oh no, we will have a puppy in the gardens this spring and that could spell disaster!” It has been 10 years since we last had a puppy in our gardens and you tend to forget about what happens in spring with muddy gardens and a long-coated puppy. Roosevelt is now 6 months old and he definitely is a puppy, and one that doesn’t always obey the commands you give hi

m like “Come” or “No.” He is a good puppy most of the time, but when he is loose in the backyard he seems to forget the “Come” command totally.

Another thought that has been running through my mind jumps forward a bit to planting season in the gardens. I so remember our other beardie when he was a puppy and would pull out the flowers right behind me as I planted them. We were wondering if he would ever grow up and behave in the gardens, and eventually he did, but his first season in the gardens was a disaster.

So far Roosevelt hasn’t paid much attention to the squirrels like Buddy did, so he hasn’t started chasing them. With muddy spring gardens ahead of us I am hoping this will continue. Buddy hated the squirrels and he was sure he was put in this yard to rid us of all of them and would plow through the middle of the oval garden as he chased them to the tree. Eventually I knew his path and moved flowers out of his way, mulched this path through the garden and put the bird bath right in the middle of his route so he would have to go around this part of the garden.

When we brought home this adorable bundle of brown fluff it was fall and the gardens were pretty much done blooming so it didn’t matter where he walked in the gardens. We usually had him on a leash so he didn’t get very far in the gardens. There were times we had him loose and he found the spot where I had taken out a large, tall phlox and didn’t have time to mulch the area. He loved digging in this spot where I also had dumped out the containers in the garden filled with potting soil. He would come into the house filled with dirt in his coat and a face that was full of soil and he really was a mess.

It will be an interesting spring, to say the least, as we both learn where he can or can’t be in the gardens. Beardies are very slow to mature and usually it is about 18 months of age when they finally start obeying commands and come when called. They are extremely smart dogs and were the poor man of Scotland’s choice for a dog to stay out in the hills with the sheep because they could think on their own, a trait that doesn’t fit well with a dog living in the house or gardens.

One of the blessings about having a dog like Roosevelt is that he doesn’t carry the heavy and long coat that Buddy did and grooming him has been a breeze. As he gets older and it gets later into the muddy spring, hopefully he will not get that long, heavy coat that is a magnet for water and mud. They are beautiful when they get that longer coat, but it really is a challenge to keep them clean and usually we have clipped them down in late May so we don’t have so much to groom. If you have a puppy that doesn’t stay out of the gardens or digs then you really need to keep that coat clipped down to a more manageable length.

As I have mentioned before, I have not ordered any plants or seeds because I just don’t know what Roosevelt will be like in the gardens. I will start out small with taller and heavier containers that hopefully he will not bother.

“Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.” — Roger Caras

 

Carol Hegel Lang is a green thumb residing in Albert Lea. Her column appears weekly. Email her at carolhegellang@gmail.com.