She is coming up on 15. She doesn't see real great but she will give him a run for his money. He's good about not playing too rough with her since she isn't as strong in the legs as she used to be. She used to like playing really rough with lots of body slamming but she just can't do that anymore. She will punch him with her feet and they will mouth at each other a lot.

She gets around better than Kye. He's pretty sore in his rear with the hip dysplasia. It's really taken its toll on him. I can coax him through a couple miles of walking but much more and it's a very slow process anymore. He's 11.

That's the way Z'ev was - he was still instigating play with Ami, lots of pawing, face stuff just not much running and definitely no body slamming - any that was accidental landed him on his butt and ended the play. He was that active until 2 days before he died - which is why i still sometimes wonder why he died what seemed suddenly. I keep wondering if taking him to the concert stressed him or if, because I hooked at him a bit when he tripped me going out the door if somehow that made him lose his will to live. Sigh.

I hope when the time comes it's a fast endeavor but we will see. I had concerns with her late last year thinking we were getting close to the end. I couldn't get her glucose numbers under control and her weight was slipping again but luckily a food change and dosage adjustment after got it sorted. She didn't feel good during that time and was looking pretty rough.

So as of January we've had Kasper a whole year. The year went by fast and he seems to have settled in pretty good.

Christmas at my parent's place.

Kasper and his best friend Koda. My husband applied for a job back down south closer to family. If he gets it that means us moving...again. While being closer to family would be nice my heart breaks at the idea of Kasper having to leave his best friend. I can't feasibly do a 2 hour commute so he can have dog park time with Koda.



Keeping me company while I pot up cold crops in my garden room. Broccoli is ready to go out and I will start hardening them off soon but I have the fence down on the garden right now and it must be up before I put anything out or the deer will eat it off.



Kenzi bringing a little snow in the house. Haven't had much this year.

Hellebores are starting to bloom.

Wow, seems like yesterday you got Kasper. The hellebores are pretty - I've never tried them. We have folding an inch high but nothing blooming. Love your garden set up. Do you heat the green house?

I can heat the greenhouse but typically don't. I bring everything to overwinter in my garden room in the basement that stays cool. Once seedlings for the garden get too large for the grow lights in the garden room then I will move them to the greenhouse and heat it as necessary at night. I just have an oil heater I setup out there. The floor of the greenhouse are bricks and they hold heat decent so I don't usually have to run the heater too long. Mostly just needed for that wee hours of the morning before the sun starts to come up.

Daffodils are about 4 inches tall and the tulips are a couple inches now. Hellebores are always first. they are such easy plants and the bees do like them if they come out to find them.

I think I may have to find a spot for hellebores!

I tried some new lights a few weeks ago - my kitchen is dark and there is no under cabinet lighting. I wanted something plug in that wasn't obtrusive. I was looking for LED replacement for my plant stand since t8 fluorescents are getting hard to find. Came across Barrina grow lights in black with very low profile and linkable. In 1 ft lengths. I gambled and I'm thrilled. I was able to install them, use only 1 cord and hide that behind the SS backsplash for the stove, Velcro the switch to the underside of the cabinet frame and it works wonderfully. An upside is that some cuttings are absolutely loving the light and have explored in growth, even giving me flowers.



So. Moving again - you've done so much with this property, has to be a bit wrenching.

Love to see pictures of your garden room!

Those are bright little lights!

I am aggravated at the potential of having to leave all that I've done. We've been in this place 5 years I think. We literally left the last house the season my peaches produced for the first time about a month before harvest and some stuff here are just now starting to produce. I got peaches and cherries for the first time last year. The apples should be able to produce this year. The prospect of starting again is daunting. Property down there is flatter but oh so rocky. We don't have rocks here. We are brick red clay but there aren't rocks in it any bigger than a piece of gravel unless you just happen to run into a shelf rock.

lol. My garden room is trashed right now, which is why Kasper was laying outside the door instead of inside it. It's basically an unfinished john deere room that had the garage door swapped for a normal exterior door. I have metal racks along one wall with grow lights on the shelves for seed starting. I have the room torn apart right now because I was going to be all fancy and use up the oak flooring we tore out of the upstairs and do a feature wall with it, so I have a bundle of hardwood taking up a ton of it that I haven't gotten put up the wall yet. Have bead board to put on the ceiling to cover the exposed ceiling joists. I don't know why I come up with projects like this when I know I am so slow to get them done. My husband will help and do major remodels on the main places in the house but he doesn't really help with my personal projects.

@Amymeme I don't think any of us would ever do anything that would hurt our pups or make them lose the will to be here ... maybe it's cold but there will come a time for all of us and nothing's gonna change that. You enjoyed your monster as much as I enjoyed my monster with a few "Why the hell did I take them on?" just for good measure.

@TwisterII I like your plants, hate your snow and enjoy the pictures of your pups.

it's good to have Jimmie back 'round again. He's got a beautiful pup!

I got the garden (such as it is) now lets see if it'll sprout before the birds get to the seeds and then maybe grow before the "waskally Wabbits" get to them.

Jenn - i doubt I'll have peaches this year. With all the warmth this year, the buds have already started to swell and show a bit of white. And there is no way we will not get a significant cold snap before safe warm weather in late May.

I’ve missed a lot! I can’t believe Kenzi will be 15! You are doing an amazing job with her, she looks great. Diabetes can be hard enough for an adult to live with, I can’t imagine how tough it be to keep under control in a dog. Kasper is very pretty, and Kye I’ve always loved. So nice to see them doing so well together.

It blows my mind that kenzi is 15. No clue where the time went. Kye is 11. Not sure where the time with him went either, though he acts closer to his age. He doesn't get around so well anymore. Kenzi gets around decent still, but she's mostly blind and is half deaf now. Her hearing was holding up fine but started to drop off fairly quickly about 6 months ago. We do our walks in couple mile chunks. Couple miles in the morning and a couple miles in the evening and they still get through it, albeit slowly.

The bradford pears are starting to bloom but so far the fruit trees are holding off. I am seeing some buds come on but no busting yet. My orchard is on the side of a steep hill (for instagram users my garden is @hillsidehorticulture) in a little darker spot tucked between the shop and the house so it will tend to hold off a little longer than some folks trees will and if we do have a cold snap it is at least protected on the north by the shop. One of the commercial orchards up the road have apricots in full bloom and they got hit a couple nights ago. We went down to 27 which tends to be the edge of devastation for apricots.

I strangely had an apple tree die last winter. Not sure what its deal was. They are usually indestructible. It's replacement showed up Friday so I got it and some new raspberry bushes put in over the weekend. I'm moving my strawberries to a tower situation at least for this season. I usually have them in a bed under my blueberries and they do great that way but it was time to renovate that bed for weeds. We will see how the tower situation goes. I want to swap the location of my black currants with the location of my boysenberries. That is going to be a chore though. We prepped the lawn mower for the season last weekend. Going to have to do a first cutting on the dog yard potentially this coming weekend. Everything is turning so green! I also need to get my strawbales cooking for my sweet potatoes. The price of sweet potato dog treats has gotten insane so I'm just going to grow them this year. They do insanely well with the strawbale garden method. I have a dehydrator and have made the treats before so not a big deal processing them along with all the other stuff I process through the season.

Ooo - tell me about straw bale method for sweet potatoes!!!

Works like typical strawbale gardening. Set your strawbales on their sides with the straw ends facing up, dump a bunch of blood meal over the top of them, then water the heck out of them every day or every other day for the next few weeks to get that blood meal down in them and start them "cooking". Once they have cooked they will settle down and start growing mushrooms and toadstools. The fungus is what I use to determine they are safe for planting and won't burn my plants. Can plant your slips in directly if they have decent roots on them. I think I'm going to plant about 4 per strawbale and see how that goes. The more you pack in the smaller your potatoes will be but my aunt planted like one per bale a couple years ago and literally got some sweet potatoes the size of basketballs. I tend to hold back a couple strawbales uncooked for as the season goes along and the growing bales start to break down so I can pack some extra coverage around them through the season if needed. At the end of the season we just cut the strings on the bales, open them up, and start picking. Grandkids treat it like an easter egg hunt. Or in the case of my aunt, who can find the biggest sweet potato. lol.

Thanks, Jenn!