…or rather, they’ve finally moved *away* from the building. For about 2 months now, I’ve had trays of seedlings against the back of my house, all in various stages of hardening off. First it was the tomatoes, and then when I finally got all of those planted and/or off to good homes, I liberated the flower seedlings from their basement refuge. Just to spend the next month or so draining THEIR trays every morning.

But now, I’m happy to report that ALL of the damn seedlings are planted. HAHAhahahah! (that’s my version of a crazed, maniacal laugh) In the end, I was just stuffing them into the ground willy-nilly, color scheme be damned.

Of course, since they’re all just snippets of greenery at this point, the riot of color that they’ll become isn’t yet evident, and when they do start blooming (hopefully) I can just move things around. I have a feeling my beloved cottage garden-esque melange of colors is going to look a little….half-baked, shall we say. This is what one gets when one starts dozens and dozens of different kinds of flowers, and only has a dinky backyard in which to plant them. I did manage to pawn a bunch off on my mom and friends though - god forbid a seedling should go to waste! Sheesh.

And of course, my prediction that it would never rain again once I bought my froggy galoshes has come true so far. Let’s see, I bought them on Tuesday, and that night on the evening news they were promising a HUGE storm would come through on Wednesday, flash flood warnings and all. Then more rain last night, more rain today.

Needless to say, it hasn’t rained since Tuesday.

So, to shift gears a bit, this journal wouldn’t be complete without mention of my gardening “helper,” also known as The Hudson.

Hudson_journal.JPG

Wreaking havoc and destruction everywhere he goes. Last year, his biggest blunder (at least as far as I was concerned) was eating my lovely Moon & Stars watermelon plant that I had coddled from infancy. It just goes to show you, when things are too quiet, someone somewhere is up to something. There I was puttering around in the garage, and Hudson was suspiciously quiet except for the quiet jingle of his collar. Instinct kicks in, I dash into the backyard….too late. He had eaten all the leaves off the watermelon plants and had left only a little stub. So much for my melon-growing efforts.

This year, he started early, gnawing down my primrose plants when they were just emerging. Mind you, these were the plants I started LAST year from seed, which only bloom the 2nd year. So I’ve been waiting over a YEAR for these fricking flowers to show themselves, only to have them mowed down like so much grass. They’ve recovered, but in the meantime, Hudson decided he wanted to find whatever was behind the flower box against the garage, and again when my back was turned, dug all the soil out of that box, sending it flying hither and yon.

Of course, I had just planted all sorts of melon seeds in that box, in hopes of getting them to grow up the trellis. So much for my being able to tell people this summer that I have “nice melons.” Sigh.

And today Hudson is *really* in the proverbial doghouse. I have quite a few birdfeeders outside and have noticed in the past week a bumbly baby raven/crow wandering around, nibbling seed here, hiding under a bush there. He seemed a little slow and awkward, but I figured that was because he’s still pretty young. Anyway, I’d been throwing him some seed and in general keeping an eye out for him. My cardinal sin was naming him, Max, because we all know that once you get attached to a wild creature and name it, that’s when disaster hits. So again (I’m sensing a pattern here), I go in front for a couple of minutes, and when I go back into the backyard, there’s Hudson mauling poor little Max. I dashed over but it was too late; Max had gone to that great rookery in the sky. Poor thing.

Finally, while others here have mentioned their Chia creatures, I believe I’m the only person to be in the process of making a Chia Schtinky. What is Schtinky, you ask? Well, despite the fact that he’s a 100+ pound Doberman, Hudson gets very attached to his stuffed animals. His latest is a stuffed bear that was once white; as you can imagine, after a dog has been carrying a stuffed animal around in his mouth for some time, sucking and chewing on it, it gets a bit….fragrant. At which point it becomes a Schtinky. And like a small child with his toys, Hudson dragged Schtinky outside, promptly dragged it through the grass seed i had just thrown down, coating the damn thing. Blech. I expect it to start sprouting any day now.

I’m off now to buy some beer….to set up my slug and earwig traps so that the little bastards can die a slow and painful boozy death. More to come……