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When they are not terrorizing each other, they are best friends.

It is confirmed that being retired makes you impulsively a bit off center. Since we picked up Ranger, aka Pup 1, we have discussed that having a second dog to grow up with him was a good idea, but we have a July trip to Florida planned to visit daughter and family, taking grandson 1 with us and all going to Disney world.

Ranger has spent the past weeks riding around in the mountains with us in the car so that he continues to like the car rides and will go with us. Daughter has a vet friend with a new practice, hospital, and boarding facility and the plan is to board their golden and Ranger for the couple days we are in Disney. So far the plan is workable.

Last week, when Ranger had his play date, we realized that he is a rough and tumble player and that waiting until he is 6-7 month old to get another puppy
might not work, that he might totally intimidate a puppy. We discussed what kind of second dog we wanted, vacillating between another mastiff and a German Shepherd. I grew up with two shepherds and have a fondness for them. After checking with daughter to see if we could bring two young dogs with us and getting an affirmative, we started our search, looking at both mastiffs and shepherds. We found an Amish breeder in Lancaster, PA with two 14 week old female shepherds, AKC registered, for a very low price and gave them a call at their family owned hardware store, confirmed that they still had one of them and set off yesterday with Ranger, to check her out. Because she is two weeks older than he is, she is similar in size, though not as heavy and seems more agile, so we are hopeful that the adjustment to each other is quick.

We are now on our way back to SW Virginia with Meeko, a 14 week old female GSD and Ranger, the 12 week old male OEM in the back, her in a travel kennel until they are better acquainted and him loose in the back where he prefers to travel. He wanted to play when he was out of the kennel and the space is too limited and she was still a bit intimidated by the whole process.

The trip was interesting as Lancaster is still very Amish populated outside of town and we saw many open and closed horse drawn carts, a 6 draft horse team plowing, and lots of dairy farms.

     Well, phase 1 is planted and rained upon.  It is too early for this region to plant what I have done, but who could wait when the temperature have been in the 70’s nearly daily for the past couple of weeks and the forecasters are calling for more of the same for the next couple, the peach trees are blossoming, the berry bushes are leafing out.  I figure, the worst that can happen is that I lose some seed and have to start over in a few weeks and the best case is that we have lettuce, radishes, beet and turnip greens a few weeks earlier than usual.  The onions and shallots will be mature when they are mature and they generally go in the ground about now anyway.

     About 1/3 of the patch is cleaned up and planted.  The rest is a work in progress, to get ready for the potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, squash and greens that are thriving under the grow light in the kitchen.

     Our contractor neighbor that repaired our driveway and did the grading around the house came by Saturday to see if I needed a garden plowed.  He didn’t even notice it last year when he was working here.  Though I didn’t  need his help on the garden, I did still have a very rough patch of turf below the garden that was very hard to mow and he came back with his tractor and plow and started breaking it up to disk later, making it smooth enough to mow later this season.  In exchange for this labor, we are going to let him mow the fields for hay this year, we have brush hogged it for a couple of years to try to make the fields healthier.  This will reduce our labor this year as a benefit to us, we will only have to mow the areas around the house and garden instead of all 30 acres.   This is a win win.  Maybe next year we will have livestock and will need the hay, but not this year.  This year we will start with chickens and see how that goes.

It has been a couple of decades since we took our children on play dates and today we found ourselves revisiting this idea with the puppy.  It turns out that a friend has just gotten a new Anatolian Shepherd puppy born the same date as Ranger.  She was looking for some socialization time for her pup and we have been seeking the same.  Though we both live in Southwest Virginia, we live about 75 minutes apart, so we met on the Blue Ridge parkway at a picnic area that had no visitors and turned the two pups loose.  It took about 5 minutes of circling and sniffing before they were chasing, tumbling, nipping and digging.

The adults sat, talking and laughing at the pups antics.  I think the hour and a half was well spent for both puppies and ours slept all the way home, totally worn out.  He normally plays this time of the night and he is still sacked out.

So the snow came and went and the temperatures are near 60 today.  The daffodils even on the road up the mountain are in bloom, the forsythia in town  is blooming.  My forsythia is budded out but not blooming, the iris are sprouting as are the daylilies.  The fall planted garlic is up and strong.  I have seen snow much later in the year than this and our average last frost date in during the first week of May.

There is so much temptation to start planting, but I know from experience that it would be a grand mistake.  I do have 2 Asian pear trees and 2 Dwarf blueberries that arrived this week dormant and do need to be planted very soon.  First I must get rid of the creeping crude/plague.   Yesterday on day 7 of this malady, I finally called the doctor, I tend to just try to fight these things off myself, usually successfully, but I felt I was losing the battle.  My visit was scheduled this morning and I received the diagnosis of definite bronchitis, possibly early pneumonia and left with two prescriptions to aid my body in healing.  The doc said that he has seen more cases of pneumonia from this winter’s bug than in any other year he has been in practice and that it seems to linger.  Thanks Doc, I needed that news.

The seeds I planted on Sunday are beginning to sprout.  There are mini cabbage, kale, and chard sproutlets and at least one of the tomato varieties is up.  Yesterday I received notice that the sprout lamp had shipped, so it should get here in time to strengthen the sprouts and keep them from getting to leggy.

Spring really is coming and with it, a whole new garden season.

      On March 1, the local paper stated that it was meteorlogical spring with the Vernal equinox still 3 weeks away and the last frost date for our area still at least 6 to 8 weeks away.  This is the time I start getting serious about my garden.  Having purchased some seed in early winter, some stored from last year, and the remaining sitting at the local Post Office waiting for me to come down and claim the package that contains the onion sets, potatoes, 2 more blueberry bushes and 2 Asian pear trees.
     Deciding that my seed starting indoors has been only marginally successful the past couple of years, I ventured to town and purchased a heat mat to go under the starter tray and ordered a seedling lamp that hopefully will be delivered before the seedlings can do more than germinate.  This is the day that I begin.  After pulling out the seed and marking on each package the planting date for this region, the seed is now organized by planting date in a neat arrangement in a small box.  Yes, for those of you who do not know me well, I am pretty obsessive about organization.  The gardening calendar with the plant by chart is nearby.  A flat of 3 types of tomatoes, 3 types of peppers, cabbage, kale, and chard planted and sitting on the heat mat for sprouting.

     As I sit doing all of my planning and planting of seedlings, looking at the calendar that says to start putting the early seed in the ground within the next week, it is snow flurrying with a forecast of 3 to 5 inches of snow by midmorning on Monday.