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A while ago I told you how we had a tiger snake, and that we had to get rid of our lovely cottage garden out the back, because it's the kind of place snakes like to hide in, and coincidentally the kind of place that Schnauzer Princesses like to hunt in. My human thinks that's a bad combination.

So my human gave the gardening human some paper money to remove the lovely garden. It looked like this when he finished. I had to check it out, of course. Then this weekend, my human spent several hours in the pouring rain picking up all the rocks, and raking the dirt and sowing grass seed. So now it looks like this. You can see all the bricks and bits of birdbath that had been hiding under the cottage garden. Plus there's a big stone right in the middle, that was too heavy for my human to pick up or even roll. We decided to keep it there as a feature.

My human doesn't have any pictures of me helping, because it was very wet and she was soaked and covered in mud and frankly a bit grumpy and not at all appreciative of my efforts to enlarge the holes left over from where the stones were. She suggested that maybe Schnauzer Princesses shouldn't overtax themselves, and perhaps I should repair to the shelter of the house, there to rest my weary bones.

She was right, of course, because I am a delicate little Princess, but I decided to screw my courage to the sniffing-place*, and help from the inside.

Here's how I helped on the back room couch. Then I helped on the chair. And in the laundry. If you look closely, you can see how muddy my beard and paws got, with all that helping. But it's ok, they got nice and clean after I spent some time on the lounge couch. By the time she had finished, my human was so cold and wet and tired and sore, she could barely move. But she managed to make some herb & parmesan dumplings to go on the beef & guinness stew she fortunately had the foresight to put into the slow cooker before she started on the garden. So by the time she had warmed up in the shower, it was all ready for her to eat.

This is what the stew looked like a few minutes after she put the dumplings in. They took about 45 mins to cook coz it was in the slow cooker. And I helped by eating some of the beef!

Now my human gets to use her new sprinkler to water the grass seeds every second day, and stand there with the hose on the other days (we still have water restrictions, even with all the rain). I help by standing inside the door and barking at her because she won't let me out in case I dig. As if I would!

She put couch ("pooch cooch") in the main part of the garden, and kikuya around the edges where it's not so sunny. Those types of grass manage well in the kind of heat and sometimes lack of rain that we get, so by next summer they should be well-established.

I can't wait until it grows enough for me to spend some time in the back yard!

* I hope you don't mind my literary quotation from Macpup by Hairy Schnauzerspeare. Dogagories: helping 
I can't believe that your help wasn't more appreciated. I don't understand these peeps at times. I love your artwork inside the house. You are such a cutie.


March 8, 2012 at 7:31 AM 
Oh Sasha - you should have put out a loud call over here to me Scarlet and Zoe - with the four of us - we would have helped with digging ponds and other garden features, not to mention turning everything fabric into brown fabric inside!!! BOL!!! You backyard will be like a park in no time! Mum thinks the rock feature will be fine - but she'd be happy to "mosaic" it when and if we travel your way! ;-)


March 8, 2012 at 10:46 AM 
You are a pawsome landscaper & you should be praised for both your talent and your willingness to help.

Sasha would you be interested in being a Featured Blogger on my blog PetBlogsUnited.com? I'd love to have you in the spotlight. You can e-mail me at PBU at comcast dot net.


March 8, 2012 at 10:52 AM 
We haven't been on our river walks since November because of snakes. They really cramp your style. But we think your new garden is going to look great.

XXXOOO Daisy, Bella & roxy

March 8, 2012 at 6:49 PM 
Wow, Sasha - I can see that you were a really great helper - especially on that chair - ha! ha!


March 17, 2012 at 6:22 PM 
I miss you Sasha!


April 21, 2012 at 6:03 AM