I love, absolutely positively love early summer mornings. Getting up with the sun and working in my garden almost feels like a guilty pleasure. I hope that feeling never goes away.

Visiting my various garden beds, watering, checking on my mother plants, looking through our fruit trees, making sure the grass is still growing, trimming the hedge, it is all so so so good!

Someone recently asked if my garden was dog friendly. I actually had to stop and think about that, because really I never have. I would say it is friendly in the sense that my dogs can go anywhere in our yard, gardens, they can dig their wallows to lay in the cool dirt, walk through the raspberries and make a trail system, investigate the flower beds, and run through the grass.

We probably have flowers and herbs that are poisonous for dogs, in fact I know for sure bleeding hearts are, but we have never had a dog munch down on anything other than grass, sweet spring grass.

If a plant gets toppled by  playing dogs, I don’t stress about it. I just figure that if a plant is not hardy enough to handle four border collies, well than it doesn’t get to come and grow in my garden.

Our edibles are in raised boxes. If we don’t want anything pee’d on, it is raised. This keeps us all successful and without conflict.

I have happy children, happy dogs, and happy plants, so I am going to say all is good.

I will add though, after 11 1/2 years of training in our yard with four active performance dogs, I do have to beg, will, wish, bribe, and do full moon dances just so the grass will grow, and hopefully some will come back the next year. I add about 50 pounds of grass seed a year, aerate once or twice in the spring, and will let ANYTHING grow that is green and not prickly.

Photos – everything is coming on so nicely this year! Cheers & happpy gardening, Nancy