Land of the magic lawn

This weekend has been the first one in a long time that we did not have any plans. Absolutely none at all. It was wonderful! I was able to fit in cleaning the house, doing some Christmas shopping and planting lawn all in one weekend without stress and crazy running around involved. Did I mention how wonderful it was?


Note magic sand to the top of the photo...

I've more or less finished planting grass for the time being. We had a truck load of sand delivered last weekend which is meant to be "special grass sand". If what the delivery man told us is true we should now enter into a grass growing bonanza period. I am still very determined that I will have an agility area to use by the middle of next year.


Revegetation area/dog exclusion zone

The sand was also purchased in a last ditch attempt to help save our poor sad looking back yard lawn. It did quite well last year but after a solid twelve months of being used as a race track by the dogs there are huge patches of dead grass and very little healthy green left. We've curbed the worst of the hooning because Murphy isn't allowed to run with the others while I'm outside anymore. The poor old bugger invariably gets cleaned up by someone so if I need to go outside which is what generally triggers the game, I bring him inside.


Orchard/bird exclusion zone

Colin has been busy setting up bird netting to protect our fruit trees this year from the local wildlife. Not a single piece of fruit was had last year after the birds helped themselves so Colin was determined to beat them to it. The apple trees are absolutely covered in fruit and the peach tree is looking pretty good too.


Apple tree


Passion fruit

Peaches

In between work and growing lawn I have been attempting to do some dog training. Riot is learning "sit pretty" and a few other bits and pieces for a bit of fun. As always he is such a quick learner when it comes to shaping and he really enjoys trying to figure out what it is that I want him to do. I haven't done much of anything with him for a while so it will no doubt do his brain some good. And it certainly won't hurt to work on my dog training skills.


It's hard being this good looking but someone has to do it!

Sonic's shaping is well, an interesting experience. He barks throughout each and every session. If I don't reward him immediately that he thinks he's done something clever he throws himself from a sit to a down and vise versa until he realises that I'm not going to give in. On the up side he is now offering a back up and a bow. I'm hoping that we can progress with something a little more exciting over the next couple of weeks. It's been about four weeks now since the paralysis tick incident so in another couple of weeks I'll start to exercise him properly and I'm sure he'll be very happy to have a trip down the beach. Now we just have to wait for his fur to grow back!


Maybe if I had some fur...