Hot Diggity Dogs.

Gwennie and I found a lady bug in a plant we purchased at Home Depot today.

Lily is a hot, diggity digging dog. I knew that. We have had to move things and rework things to keep her digging at bay. Over time she has stopped digging up plants.

Enter Penelope.

She is another digging dog, its obvious she is at least part terrier. (As she is part American Pitbull Terrier.) First she and Lily dug up my garden (which I have posted about here.) Then she started digging next to the house. When we put the concrete in for our patio area, I told Will I wanted it to have a couple of feet between the concrete and the house. I wanted to plant herbs and more tropical plants there, ones that would require no direct sunlight. Instead its become a mess. Lily would dig all the plants up, nothing lived there really. It was just never what I had imagined it would be.

A few months ago, I put 12X12 inch pavers in to cover up MOST of it. I left a plant, a ruella, in that was doing well. (If you followed the above link, you can see the pavers behind the mess that once was my ficus, sniff sniff. There is a green spot that is the plant that was thriving amidst the pavers.)

Enter Penelope, once again.

She started digging a little around the ruella. Then slowly it was more, and more. Every day the hole was getting bigger and the dirt spreading farther. But its so hot, I would tell myself. I can't deal with this today.

Yesterday I went to Lowe's to get more pavers, but they didn't have any flat carts in the garden section, and Gwennie was crying about a drink, because she was soooo "stirsty"! We just walked out of the store and went home to find two dogs curled up in the cool, freshly dug up dirt of their new den.

Do you really blame them? The soil is moist and cool there. They had dug deep enough that part of them was under the pavers. When we would get home I would quietly peek at them, curled up. It was cute, and I totally tried to get a picture of it, to no avail. Penelope was covered in fine dust, that she would proceed to shake all over the kitchen floor. It was just messy. Penelope was turning brown, and her mouth, from laying in the dirt was always filthy.

Doggie den of filth.

Today I went to Home Depot, on my way home from dropping Rhayn off at chess camp. I picked up twelve pavers.

I still had to move the dirt back to the hole, and also use sand to smooth it out. Luckily the sand box is pretty full and very close to my project. I turned on the outside ceiling fans (and they felt good!) and began my daunting task.

Finished, for now, project.

Whew. It took about an hour. I was exhausted and drenched in sweat when it was done. But it is, and hopefully she won't dig up the dirt at the end of this. It looks alright, but honestly, I like the idea of plants there more. I did purchase those two clay pots in hopes that I will be able to pot some plants in them. I am thinking cacti. Something the dogs will NOT dig up. For now though they will remain empty. (I want to get some "fun" cacti, possibly from the Desert Botanical Garden.)

***************UPDATE****************

Well, I went out of the house for a few hours, to pick Rhayn up from camp and take her to gymnastics. I came home to the above mess. Which involved another twenty or so minutes out there where I added the last few pavers, and sadly dug up the ruella (you can see it next to the blue pot, which houses a nearly dead cactus.)

Do you ever feel like all the work you do is pointless? Yup, that is exactly how I feel at this moment. Ugh.