The Recovery of Rom

It's only been a day since Rommel came home all stapled up from the veterinarian, but he is improving. He's sleeping most of the day and very slow moving, but he's bright-eyed and actually eating. Eating is a new thing for Rommel - he's never been a big eater and to see him actually eat a whole bowl of dog food is new to us. Oddly enough one of the best high-caloric foods to give a dog to increase their appetite is beaver. Really. Beaver. So Farmer B and Aidan made a beeline for the natural pet food store to buy him a can of Beaver. I learned from the company's website that the food is made from surplus beaver that would normally end up in a landfill. I have never heard of surplus beaver - this has opened up a whole new world for us.

We wonder if this enlarged spleen might have been an issue for most of Rommel's life. He's always been a light eater and never been motivated by food - maybe his spleen has always been pushing on his stomach and intestines and caused some discomfort. I guess we'll never know.

On a brighter note I made Rommel a little addition to the tshirt he's been wearing. I call this my "post-surgery anti-lick dog suit". It's what all the cool post-op dogs are wearing. Farmer B's tshirt has been cut around the neck to accommodate Rommel's large neck. I also cut the sleeves off - along with a lot of the front of the shirt to accommodate his large chest and front legs. I cut a slit up the back so I can tie it "cheerleader-style" on his back to stop it from drooping. This wasn't quite working though - he could still stick his snout under the bottom edge of the shirt to get to his massive row of staples. So I got a piece of super-soft MM microfleece and sewed it to the bottom edge of the shirt. The piece I sewed looks like a large "V" shape - with a bit of extra fabric at the bottom of the V. The "V" pieces come up between his hind legs and have been sewn to the top of the shirt - where the "cheerleader" ties are on top. This keeps the soft fleece on his staples and prevents him from licking at his wound. Obviously we have to take his shirt off when he goes outside - and at night we're still putting on his Elizabethan collar so there is no chance he'll rip out any staples while we're sleeping. Its not pretty, but this set-up is working great for him.


Thanks for all the kind words and thoughts on his recovery. We should get the pathology results on Monday or Tuesday and we are hoping to hear the words "cancer free" more than you can imagine.

Since this is a gardening blog, I went out to the garden to take some photos of our plants to give you all a status update tomorrow. These photos will not be for the faint of heart.

A real emergency

We're taking a small break from gardening right now thanks to a real emergency in the family. Our beloved and quirky German Shepherd, Rommel, was acting a bit off this week and vomited all day and night on Wednesday. On Friday he wasn't acting any better and we could tell he was in quite a bit of discomfort. We took him to the vet and got x-rays and we were told he probably had an obstruction causing a blockage in his stomach. There was something large and out of place on the x-ray and the vet could feel that there was something large in his stomach that shouldn't be there - we assumed he'd eaten some trash or a toy and that he'd be better once it was taken out. He ended up in Emergency surgery on Friday. The vet called halfway through the procedure with the worst news. It wasn't an obstruction - his spleen was four times the normal size and was so fragile that his fingers were poking through it. They didn't think he'd wake up from the surgery.

But he did! Rommel did great during the procedure and woke up happier than ever. He's at home recovering with us right now. The vet told us that our next hurdle we need to overcome is getting the pathology results back - most of the time these things are an aggressive form of cancer. He feels quite positive that we might be one of the rare cases where it's not cancer, but he also did his best to prepare us for what could happen.

So we're still in shock and just trying to take care of him and make him feel better. He's only 4 years old and has always been a healthy and happy dog. Now he's all stapled up and is sleeping peacefully. He's wearing one of Farmer B's tshirts all the time to stop him from licking at his wound. After all, a tshirt is much more dignified than an Elizabethan collar.

And to top it all off, there's a hurricane headed our way too…so we have no idea how our poor little failing garden will do with that.

Updates to come. Send some good juju our way...we definitely need it!

The Doctor

I have been riddled with guilt at our dying plants and decided to get an official diagnosis. I lopped off a bit of yellowed, holey leaf from our mostly-dead yellow squash plant and put it in a Ziploc bag to take to the nursery. When I got there Mrs. Personality saw me walk in with a leaf in a bag and immediately announced that I needed to wait in line for the Doctor. I glanced around and saw a man with a pull-cart holding a large red bucket with a half-dead tree limb sticking out. Behind him was a woman with a dead looking wormy thing in a Ziploc bag. I had obviously found the line for "The Doctor." We all gave each other sympathetic glances… like we were all members of the same failing gardener's club.

The Doctor came over to the short line and gave us all the stink eye. The Doctor, as he's called, was one of those old rotund white-haired guys that looks like he should be on a WWII reunion show. He had a faded old ball cap and he'd spent a lot of time in the sun. The Doctor came over to the first man's dead tree limb, pulled it out of the red bucket and tossed it into a large trash can. He said "There - you've got your bucket back. Follow me." The man and The Doctor wandered over to a section with a lot of bags and bottles and I could see him explaining what was wrong with the man's tree - then the man went to the cash register with an armful of stuff. The Doctor then came over to the woman with the dead wormy thing in the bag. He sneered at it and held it up to the light and told her to follow him to the bottles and bags section. She put the wormy thing back in her purse and then she went to the cash register with a white bottle.

It was our turn. The Doctor came over to us and said 'What do you need?' I handed him our bag. He said "What you been feeding your plants?" I said "huh? Um…I dunno…. Soil?" He said "This plant is suffering from malnutrition. Simple." Then he got my bag and tossed it into the trash on top of the tree limb and said "What kind of fertilizer have you been using?" I said "I…uh… I guess we used some when we first got the soil ready. We tested our soil. It was good. I think we -" He cut me off and said 'You put a handful of fertilizer in the hole before you put the plant in, right?" I said "No, I didn't think that -" He shook his head and said "Well what did you expect it to eat then?" I stared blankly. He pointed to my 2-year-old's stomach and said "You feed him don't you? So why don't you feed your plants?"

He had a good point. He brought me over to the bags and bottles section and tossed me a bag of Gardener's Special Plant Food and told me to sprinkle a handful around the bottom of each plant and water it in. Repeat every 30 days. He also said that when I water the garden that I'm doing it wrong by watering it for only 15 minutes. He said if it doesn’t rain I must water the garden for 25 minutes. Period. I still felt like some sort of evil bugs must have been eating the leaves and asked him if he was sure there wasn't any sort of insect damage. The Doctor looked insulted - "I don't know," he said "It was hard to see past that severely malnourished plant."

The Tale of the Tumbling Tree

Back in April of this year I looked out of the back window one early morning and noticed a large black and red woodpecker hammering away at one of our trees.

He was so beautiful and large so we all spent quite a bit of time peering at him with the binoculars. The sawdust and tree chunks were flying and we felt quite privileged to have such a beautiful bird in our own backyard. We looked him up in our Florida wildlife book and discovered that he's a Pileated Woodpecker, which is America's largest woodpecker (about 18 inches long with a 30-inch wingspan).

We were so caught up in our own Mutual of Omaha moment that it didn’t dawn on us that the stupid bird would end up hacking an enormous hole in the tree. Later that day we came home and assessed the damage. He had pecked a good sized hole on one side of the tree and a couple of decent holes on the other side. There didn't seem to be a whole lot of "tree" between the holes, but we figured the tree would be fine - after all, they're just woodpecker holes.

July rolled around and I went outside and noticed that our friend had been back to finish the job. He pecked an enormous hole in the tree big enough for a cat to get in. Farmer B said that the trunk would be too weak to survive hurricane winds and since we're smack dab in the middle of hurricane season, the tree would have to be chopped down now so that it didn't hit the house later. We're both tree lovers, but he was convinced it would fall and hit the house or the screened-in patio. I told him that woodpeckers don't kill tall trees and that the tree would be fine.

A couple of weeks ago Farmer B and I compromised on the fate of the tree because we both agreed it's a tree worth saving. After all, this is a tree with a face and I'd miss him smiling at me every time we walked into the backyard. Farmer B would shimmy up a ladder and tie the tree to the closest neighboring tree with a large rope. This way if the tree fell down in any high winds the rope would stop it from falling toward the house and we'd all be saved. I thought it was a silly idea and that a big rope would be unattractive, but I agreed because a rope is better than a chainsaw.

Well we all know how it ended, don't we?

Microburst.

Fallen tree.

House and patio undamaged due to fancy rope contraption.

Farmer B - 1.

Kate - 0.

Space Toads - a How-To guide

The other evening we were inspecting the garden when we found a little brown toad sitting next to Cyril the Gnome. We do get quite a few toads in our back yard, but this was the first garden toad we'd seen. Aidan and I got to talking about toads and he asked me where toads live. I explained that they just find a warm moist place in the dirt among the leaves in the backyard and that becomes their home. Then I had an idea - making a toad abode is a fun kid craft and it would be yet another way to involve the boys in the garden - I realized we'd need to use "real" paint with this, so we made this a project for Jace's naptime. I asked Aidan what type of toad house he'd like to make and he promptly announced that he'd like a toad spaceship so the space toads could go back to their home planet.....oooookay. This is how the Toad Spaceship was born. Here are the directions in case any of you think that your garden or yard isn't complete without a bright silver Toad Spaceship.

You'll need a pot, some paints and paintbrushes, strong glue (or hot glue gun), flat marbles, a piece of card stock paper, some thin wire and a permanent marker.
We had a broken pot that I glued back together. The pot was seriously in three pieces and I got it back together with some E6000 glue (this is not glue for kids to use). The big chip out of the front would be perfect for the door. I used a Dremel tool to smooth down the edges of the cracked part so it wouldn’t be sharp on any little fingers. Aidan and I painted the entire exterior of the pot silver. The silver paint is regular acrylic paint from the craft section of Michaels and cost about $1.20 for the bottle - it is very quick drying. Aidan enjoyed this and it went quickly using the big brush. We gave it two coats and waited for it to dry - about 5 minutes or so.

Then I painted a black arch around the broken part to make it look more like an even doorway. If we did not have a broken part, I would have painted an arch on it anyway to create a faux doorway and just tilted the pot back in the dirt so he could get underneath. This crack just added to the effect and gives the toad somewhere to enter into the spaceship.
Then I cut out a circle in a piece of cardstock paper to create a window frame stencil. I placed that stencil on the pot. Aidan colored in the circle with black paint - we did that all around the spaceship to create the window frames. I then handled the glue and put a dab of E6000 glue in the middle of each black window. Aidan put one green flat marble on each dab of glue to create the windows.

We then got a little bit of red paint and dipped the wrong end of the paintbrush in the paint and made little red dots around the doorway. Aidan needed a lot of help keeping his hand steady, but he did pretty well with a bit of assistance.

I then grabbed a Sharpie and made a series of 4 vertical dotted lines on the pot to create an effect of panels - like you'd see on a real spaceship. At the top we drew little flies and bugs with the Sharpie so they'd know they'd be toadbait if they came inside, according to Aidan. Aidan also insisted that it needed a moonroof so we glued another flat bead on the top hole.

Then we got some wire - it's very flexible and thin- I think it's floral wire, but anything would do. We wrapped it around the top of the spaceship and then wrapped a bit around a pencil to create a curved effect. We threaded a couple of plastic beads on it and put a dab of glue on the back to hold it in place. This is so the spacetoads can communicate with other spacetoads, of course.

I then grabbed the Sharpie again and wrote the word "Space Toads" on the top of the ship and it was done!

After all the glue and paint were 100% dry we took it into the garden and gave it a home. To make a toad abode likely to attract a toad you should place it in a warm spot and place some dead leaves in the bottom. You can lay the pot on its side and partially bury it or do like we did and sort of tilt it back and bury it a bit that way. Then just wait for a full-moon and the arrival of the space toads.

Release the Hounds…er…ladybugs

Did you ever have one of those experiences in life where you anticipated an event, but when the actual event came around it turned out completely opposite from what you anticipated? Yeah, that was me tonight. We have recently had some new plants sprouting in the garden and I was so afraid that whatever killed our squash and zucchini and has severely injured our watermelon and cantaloupe will want to dig in to our newly-sprouting leaves. I decided that releasing the ladybugs had to be done right away to save the garden. The time for the garden assassins had come. It was now or never.

I suppose when I bought the ladybugs I had visions of this being quite a romantic experience. I imagined myself at sunset sort of waltzing through the garden like a pixie spreading a bag of quaint little red and black spotted ladybugs all over the plants. I was actually looking forward to it. The reality of it was so so different. Oh my God, it was different.

I took the ladybugs out of the fridge to awaken them just after dinner, as I was instructed by the nursery. Even though they looked dead, they all did indeed start crawling around their mesh bag after about 30 minutes of warm air. I was also told to put them in the garden after I water it because they'll be thirsty. I remembered this at about 8:30 pm so I dashed outside and turned on the sprinkler. I came inside to do dishes and then got ready to go outside and release them at 9 pm.

Let me paint a picture for you. I've got a bag of 1,800 crawling ladybugs, a large camera, the baby monitor, the phone, some child-safe scissors (all I could find), a chip clip (that I pulled off the BBQ chips to re-seal the ladybug bag) and a Coleman battery-operated lantern that I pilfered from our hurricane supplies. I went outside and the minute I hit the dark I was inundated with about 9 million tiny, biting, buzzing, flying insects who were attracted to the stupid lantern. I went to the middle of the garden and plonked down the lantern and attempted to cut open the top of the bag of ladybugs. I had been told that for the best effect I should sprinkle about 1/4 of the bag out each evening for 4 days, so I knew I needed the chip clip to reseal the bag and bring the remaining 3/4 ladybugs back inside.

First of all, I couldn't cut the plastic mesh bag with the Crayola kid-safe scissors, so I had to rip it. When I ripped open the bag I got to relive a scene from The Mummy. About 900 of the 1,800 ladybugs decided to make a beeline up my arm. I just peered down and saw all these little dark colored beetles swarming up my arm and I assure you that in the dark they did not look like the cute little red and black ladybugs you're imagining. I started shaking my arm madly and hopping around trying to knock them all off. I dropped the bag of remaining bugs somewhere near the tomato plants and danced over to the watermelons hopping and squealing and trying to dislodge several hundred of them from my elbow. Let's not forget the 9 million tiny, biting, buzzing, flying insects that are still attracted to the lantern and my legs. I got most of the ladybugs off and went back to the bag.

At this point I had already decided that this would be a one-time event where 100% of these little buggers were going to be released and I was not going through this again. I grabbed the bag and took out their "nest" and put it under a tomato plant and then ran around the garden again trying to shake the few hundred stragglers from the bag. I know I ate at least one. There are at least 10 still in my shirt as I'm typing this and I have at least 25 bites from the mystery lantern bugs. A moth the size of a hummingbird got caught in my hair causing me to shriek like a banshee, which then caused the dog to start barking at my insanity like he wanted to kill me. I tossed down the bag, the scissors, and the chip clip somewhere near the basil, snapped a few photos and called it a night.

Oz or Bust

Our garden hasn't even been planted a week and it was just put to one of the biggest tests of its short life: It survived its first natural disaster. We were driving home from the grocery store yesterday and commenting on the very black ominous sky off to the South. It was raining and getting dark, but then things got scary quickly. Swirling winds were moving our very heavy Yukon Denali back and forth on the road. Leaves, twigs and very large leaf-covered branches were flying in a circular motion around the car. The air was grey with debris and the car was almost unmanageable.

Farmer B and I immediately assumed that we were on the edge of a large tornado. We drove home as fast as we could, dodging downed trees and branches. We saw large oak trees severed in half and the winds were outrageous. When we got home we could barely close the doors to the car because the wind was so strong. We carried the boys as we ran to the house, getting whipped by the wind and small debris. When we got inside, our entryway was covered in a layer of water from the insane winds blowing the rain underneath our front doorway. Our house alarm was going off and the dogs were scared from all the noise. We glanced into our backyard and saw three trees that had fallen down. Once it all passed we looked out front and found another tree had blown down. The fence between our house and our neighbor's house was down - along with most of his fence too.

I took a short drive around our neighborhood to see how it looked and other than many downed trees, basketball hoops, fences, flagpoles and missing sheds everything seemed okay. The local weather guys are calling it a microburst, which I can tell you feels a heckuvalot like a tornado.


But the most important tidbit? The garden fared well! Cyril the Gnome fell down at his post, but the garden actually looked great. I'm glad we didn't release the ladybugs into the garden the previous night because I'm sure they would have been blown away. We actually have some string bean sprouts coming up and the pumpkin sprouts are even bigger. I have no idea why the garden looks better after such a harrowing weather day, but it does. The gardening gods were definitely on our side.

Farmer B and Aidan spent the afternoon cleaning up the yard. One of our biggest trees fell over and it took a lot of cutting with the chain saw to get it small enough to load up in the trailer to haul away. (Farmer B predicted that this tree would fall and tied it to another tree with a rope last week so that it wouldn’t hit our house when it fell - I'll explain this premonition in a later post).



It turns out that the dog gets really silly when he smells fresh sawdust that's spit out of the back of a hot chainsaw. I will just add this to the long list of quirks about that creature.

And how did the night end? With a lightning strike across the street that caught trees and bushes on fire in an empty lot. The fire department showed up to put it out and the boys got their kicks watching the flashing lights out of the bedroom window.

Can I call it a day? It didn’t look this hard when Dorothy did it. And my little men didn't even sing me the Lollipop Guild song.