Spring Garden

Ash

It may feel like winter but it’s time for our garden. Mom has a space right outside the kitchen door. It gets lots of sunshine. She likes it so she can just step outside and clip some herbs or pick a tomato.

I like it too. The earth is nice and moist. It’s been dug up a lot and it’s easy to make a nice hole to cool off. This is me earlier in the spring when the weather was hot. After some heavy ball chasing, I was ready to chill. So I plopped myself down right in the middle of the garden space.

How was I to know she had sprinkled some little seeds? She said something about lettuce and chard. I looked for the seeds but couldn’t find them. So she told me to go find another spot and then she crawled around in her garden for a while.

Last year it was really funny. She put up this flimsy little barricade to keep us dogs out of the garden. I jumped over it and everybody else just pushed right through it. She had some summer squash that held on for a while. But every time they got just about right to pick, a little chipmunk ran out of the rock wall and ate the ends off.

I remember there were these three little lettuce plants. Mom had a separate fence around them to protect them. Then my pal Pepper went crazy after we’d been playing ball. She pulled up all three plants and threw them on the sidewalk. Oh boy, mom was NOT happy.

So here’s the problem. Mom wants a garden close to the kitchen. Us dogs want a cool spot next to the kitchen. We’re arguing over the same space. Different values, different needs. Who gets to say? Can we figure out something that works for all of us? That way nobody would be mad and nobody would get in trouble.

Mom’s thinking about a raised garden at one end of the space and our cool spot at the other end. I can’t promise we’d stay out of the raised bed, but we might. And who knows about the chipmunk. Anyway, gotta run.