NewfandHound

One Dog One Bone Pools

If your starting in on your spring landscaping to-do list then you can add these two adorable and durable pools from One Dog One Bone to your list. The Dog Bone pool is 11"x 44"x 66", holds 85 gallons of water and is only 21 lbs dry. The Paw Pool is perfect for the hounds, only 6"x 38"x 39", holds 20 gallons of water and is only 7 lbs empty. The pools are made from heavy duty truck bed liner material and costs come with shipping! Don't wait until the hot weather kicks in, get ready for it now!
 

Sustainability Goes to the Dogs

(Picture from Ready Made)

Not sure what I noticed first, the dog house or the cute little cream dachshund! I'm thinking that this would be a better addition to my new garden than the fountain we put in.  This green "woof" house was designed by Stephanie Rubin, a landscape designer from L.A., who wanted to experiment with green roofs on a smaller scale.  This lead to the creation of Sustainable Pet Design and Stephanie launched a variety of dog and bird houses made out of recycled material and all include green roofs.  You can find directions for the design above over at Ready Made!  

More directions can be found here at an article about Stephanie in the Seattle Times. I think I've found a weekend project for our dog house that was barely used, maybe it just needs a little makeover to make it more appealing and inviting to the hounds.

Annie's Annuals- Art in the Garden

I took a trip over to Annie's Annuals last weekend to supplement my plant order from Village Nurseries and because I couldn't hold in my curiosity any more after reading about them in BBC Gardens Illustrated.  What an amazing article to find, an American nursery in a renown British garden magazine.  If you are interested in art they are having their annual Art in the Garden weekend on July 10th and 11th from 10-4 pm.  There will be several local East Bay artists that you can meet and see how they work, and even take home an affordable piece of work along with a few plants!

As soon as you walk underneath the "It All Began In The Garden" sign you're transferred to mulched paths that wind through a variety of gardens and seating areas that invite you to linger and take a closer look at the plants  As you venture through you'll see the talent that the staff has in highlighting different planting combinations or their sense of humor in their choice and placement of garden accessories.

Inspiration surrounds you at every turn and Annie isn't afraid to show off her collection of natives, ornamentals, grasses, rarities, all in one spot like in the container collection above.

Be prepared to spend quite a bit of time browsing if you haven't gone through their catalog because there are acres of plants to go through, each with a sign describing the characteristics of the plant along with a picture at maturity.  Great help especially when you are dealing with rare plants or trying to decide between two of your favorites. 

Who can resist taking a peek at the chickens they have by the trailer?  They add a nice rural touch to the yard and seem to be a favorite with the crowds.

 

Although I didn't find the climber that would quite fit with the arbor and with a 120 lb dog potentially using it as a fire hydrant, I did find Carex divulsa which will work well around the paths and the dogs!  It's formerly known as Berkeley Sedge and can be used to create a mounding, lush meadow that requires such low maintenance that it is going to become a favorite in our yard this year.  Lucky for us there is an abundance of it at the nursery.  Although their plant inventory is quite large I did find the grass selection a bit small and the price was very high compared to other nurseries in the area.  At $4.50 for a 4" pot it's  going to take a lot to fill in around the paths.  Luckily they are starting their summer sale on the 10th, 20% off all plants through the 18th!!!  Perfect timing.

Curb Appeal- Front Yard Gardening

We've decided to take the plunge and start renovating our front yard to add a little more curb appeal to our house.  We realized last year that we actually liked hanging out in our front yard, talking to our neighbors, watching people walk by, trading home made jelly or something that was supposed to be jelly when we were done.  After a month of waiting for the rain to stop and a few consultations with our neighbor who is a contractor Ray got started in on the framing of the deck area.

Next came the stairs.  We were able to go right over the existing stairs and hideous brick planters which were so bad that I've forgotten what they looked like already.

Here's the large and small dog test to make sure everything is stable and secure

  

Next stage was adding the arbor   The final touch that pulled everything together and added some architectural interest as well as passive cooling to the front section of the house.

And we're done!  The ADA ramp was an extra special touch that will soon disappear and hopefully be replaced by a more appropriate, and much smaller, ramp.  I'm very proactive about preventative care and the hounds, and now Foyle, are used to them so we include them with any large change in elevation. Next the landscaping!

Water Trough Gardening

Now here's a Newf-proof garden that a coworker of mine has started this year.  She lives outside of town in open space that is occupied by a herd of deer during the year so she developed a fenced garden with a unique iron gate to keep them out.

All the pathways around the house were constructed with decomposed granite and the theme was carried through to the vegetable garden to make access easy and clean.  Large livestock water troughs were brought in and used for the raised gardens, making it very easy to pick produce and maintain the vegetables.  It isn't uncommon to see troughs throughout Petaluma so they fit right into the landscape of the site and the surrounding area, and are easy to find.

We need to fence in our garden area also so the dogs don't destroy what we actually accomplished to grow this year.  Especially important is keeping them out of the tomatoes because the leaves contain solanine which is toxic to dogs.  Check out the ASPCA website where it lists toxic foods for animals; did you know that avocados are toxic? 

A few things in the garden today

I'm not very good at sitting down and relaxing but yesterday the weather was actually nice enough to hang out in the front yard and take advantage of the quiet time to work out a few settings on my camera.  I'm still getting used to my "new" Canon Power Shot SX20IS that I've had for a while now but the instruction manual was so poor and vague that I've just been trying out settings on my own.  So, here are a few pictures using the 20x zoom and I was pleasantly surprised.  But if you want to see some really beautiful garden photos then take a look at the slideshow from Annie's Annuals located in Richmond.  It is a well known nursery that I found out about by reading BBC Gardens Illustrated of all places

 

 

 

 

 

  

Moss Graffiti- Eco Art!

All Photos by: Anna Garforth

There's a new movement around that everyone can participate in without getting carded for trying to buy a can of spray paint.  Moss graffiti is a great way to incorporate your desire for tagging with your desire for seeing more green in your neighborhood, leave a personal message in moss.  It seems to have been started in London by Helen Nodding who was fascinated by the ability of weeds to grow in the most unlikely cracks and holes in a city of concrete and steel.

There are several recipes out there like this one from Supernaturale,  or this recipe, and are pretty easy to concoct yourself at home.  Next you need to find a shaded surface and you can either spray or paint your design.  Stencils may come in handy if you have them, but test out your artistic side and let it flow...or grow in this case.

 

I know of a few cracks in my sidewalk that could use a little artistic touch.

African Gardens- The Bag Garden

The organization Send A Cow based in the U.K. has helped African families develop a unique way of growing a large amount of vegetables in quite a small area- essentially a large bag!  The Bag Garden uses one large bag with compost and soil placed around a center column of rocks and stones.  The vegetables are then planted around the edges and can fit up to 50 different plants.  When water is poured down the center column it is then distributed evenly throughout the bag and not wasted, especially important in extremely dry environments.  Unfortunately the kits can only be sent to U.K. addresses, but I think it's an easy enough design that you could duplicate it in your own backyard or apartment.

How a Newfie Gardens

This is how Foyle helps me in the garden, by testing out the water to make sure it's just the right temperature before I water the plants.  He just can't resist the temptation of liquid spraying at full force from a hose, or from walking in the mud right after I've finished watering the tomato plants.  But despite his moments of fun we managed to finish planting two of the boxes this afternoon and get the growing season going finally.  I think we're a bit late but the weather has been so bad lately that I doubt I could have successfully started much before now.

So good he just can't stop!

 

A friend of mine needed to get rid of some concrete caps to an old wall so we went over this morning and picked up about 100 sq. ft. to use in the backyard.  We figured that they would work out great as little paths in the vegetable beds The hounds, who love to run on any type of a path, found it very useful  to use while exploring the new plantings.  I think we'll use the rest to build a "patio" for the compost bin and the tool shed to go on next weekend.  

Foyle is supervising the installation of the plastic fencing.  We all know that it's more fun to walk through the beds right after seeds have been planted and watered.  The muddier, the better!  We'll see how long it takes for the hounds to go under the fencing, and for Foyle to go through it.  It hasn't been hard work today but it has taken more time than I thought.  But I am a little proud that we've expanded our garden and are trying to grow more organic food for ourselves.  I'm still doing research on different mulches to put over the plants and found that the Organic Gardening website has some great information on the topic as well as making a compost tea that my neighbor swears by.

Chickity Doo Doo

We were at Osh on Saturday buying amendments for the planter boxes and the front yard when I saw this on the shelf and couldn't stop laughing just because of the name.  Chickity Doo Doo is actually an Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI) certified product that is a 100% organic fertilizer made from composted chicken manure, which happens to be great for flower and vegetable beds.  It was developed by two former teachers, John Weiss and John Nortman who formed R&J Partnership in Madison, Wisconsin.  They buy chicken manure from Creekwood Farms which is an egg producing farm and transforms about 21,000 lbs of chicken manure that would have been "land-spread" into dried pellets.  100% organic means that I can use it in our planting beds without worrying about the dogs being affected by deadly toxins.  Now this doesn't mean they are allowed to roam freely in the beds, but if they happen to then I don't need to panic!