RIP Ratthew

We finally have a successful sunflower! And this is not the biggest one, which is yet to come. I grew four of them from seed, and one -- the weakest and skinniest -- bit the dust while we were in Italy. The other three are powering along, two in the garden and one in a planter at the side of the house.

I always feel like I've had success once a plant blooms and I've posted its picture to my blog.

The Bailster and I took a couple of walks yesterday, once around the neighborhood in the morning and to the cemetery in the afternoon. I'm trying to make this our routine.

She's a little harder to photograph than Olga because I have to keep ahold of her leash. But she is gradually learning her name, and I've ordered a long (10-meter) training lead from Amazon which hopefully will let her roam a bit more widely while still giving me control (and making sure she returns to me). I also ordered a label for the lead that says "No Dogs -- I Like People," which should warn away any canine owners who want to put their dogs nose-to-nose with Bailey.

We had some excitement yesterday in the garden when she killed a rat right in front of me. Dave was inside with a visiting nurse, learning how to self-administer his new Crohn's injections, and I was sitting on the garden bench reading. Bailey wandered into some bushes and suddenly I saw her pounce, and next thing I knew she had Ratthew in her mouth. I will spare you the picture. That dog is earning her keep! We buried Ratthew.

Speaking of garden benches, this was yesterday's project. Our new bench, meant to replace the deteriorating one that has become a source of wasp building materials, arrived and Dave and I put it together. (Bailey was very helpful too.) This one is made entirely of metal, so hopefully it will hold up in the weather better than the wooden one did, although it lasted ten years so I can hardly complain.

Here's the new bench in situ. It's comfortable! I set the wooden one in the far back corner of the garden for now, so the wasps can continue to chew on it, but I'll have it taken away later in the autumn.

Here was my other garden project for the day. Several months ago I planted a teasel in a big plastic pot, and I recently noticed that Nicole the Nicotiana apparently also dropped a seed in there, so then we had two plants competing for space in the single container. Yesterday I put them both in the ground, where hopefully they can coexist with room for their roots to spread. (In the process I found two more toadflax brocade moth caterpillars, which I was careful not to harm.) This is about the worst weather I could imagine for planting a plant -- the ground is as hard as a paving stone -- but I used lots of water so that helped a bit.

Our afternoon walk in the cemetery was warm, and when I turned on a spigot to give Bailey some water, she promptly rolled around in the puddle just like Olga used to do. I guess this is a staffy thing -- luxuriating in mud! Needless to say, bathing was required when we got home. Only a dog can manage to get muddy in a drought.