Spring Preparations?

I think that most of us that have some form of garden, are looking to doing some Spring cleanup/preparation work in the not too distant future. Much of ours is dictated by almost 80lbs of Shepherd/Rottweiler… aka Ray!

Throughout the year, he regularly has his “spring lamb” moments (leaps around with no apparent goal in mind); “zoomies” (charges around at high speed); spreading his scent (pmail) by the “usual method”, and also from his pads by going through a scraping motion with all four paws. With the exception of his pmail, which typically is against a plant, all the other activities are on our back lawn (the term “lawn” is used rather cautiously!).

Those of you with large dogs will probably understand the situation, but smaller dog owners… maybe not. When Ray is excited and behaves like an overgrown puppy, his feet do most of the work. Typically he “digs in” just prior to launching himself and, when almost 80lbs of dog is transmitted down through those claws which are firmly planted in the grass, then soon there will be large tufts of grass (with roots attached) flying through the air.

One of our first Spring jobs, as a result of Ray living here, is to completely over-seed the grass area. Our lawn will never appear on the front cover of a gardening magazine, and in fact it would never appear anywhere between the covers either, but all three of us do enjoy our back garden in the warmer months. We just have to over-seed every Spring in order to repair the results of Ray’s exuberance during the previous 12 months!

The above photo was taken a few days ago, and the snow has all gone now, but Ray was taking his responsibilities seriously… or at least that is how it would appear. Was he doing some trimming of areas that did not respond too well to being his pmail drop of point during the Winter? Was he simply picking up shrub and tree debris?

Regardless, it will soon be time to get back outside and clean-up after Winter (she’s a messy season!), and there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Ray will be outside with me and “helping”.

Can you imagine the absolute satisfaction of totally over-seeding a lawn, and then watching Ray slowly remove all traces of the project over the Summer months! It’s a matter of perspective really isn’t it! If Ray is happy… I am happy!

26 thoughts on “Spring Preparations?”

    • Enjoy your temporary dog! Can’t be much different from having grandchildren, in that you can get so much pleasure from them and give them back later! You don’t have that ultimate responsibility that you have with your own offspring! 🙂

      Like

  4. Our dog lot is the size of a small back yard. Lucy and Riley have destroyed a good area of it, so I had my son dump free mulch from a neighbor’s tree to reduce the mud being tracked in. It has helped. I will have to figure out what to do about seeding, too. It is probably time here to take care of that. Thanks for the reminder!

    Liked by 1 person

Comments are closed.