Life updates and plans

So 2017 was a pretty crappy year, huh?

Despite the constant feeling of doom we had some good things happen. We adopted a puppy from the Oregon Humane Society. He name is Bee (Beezus Marie when she's bad) and she's pretty much the best dog. We adopted her during a heatwave where temperatures reached 107 and our backyard was being hardscaped. It was chaos. You haven't lived until you've scraped puppy poop off your kitchen mat in 107 degrees while some construction guy tries not to stare at you.

Our hardscaping is done and I have declared 2018 to be "The Year of No Big Projects, Damn It. Just Enjoy Your Fucking Garden, Heather."

We replaced the franken-fence at the entrance to the backyard with a proper fence and a gate that keeps the dog in and random runaway dogs out (I can't tell you how many dogs have appeared in our backyard, meaning I spent the day trying to find their owner instead of gardening).

Before

After

We hired someone to do it because we are not good at building fences. The gates never close right and they're always a little crooked. This stupid little run of fence makes me SO happy every time I see it.

Before

After

I'm also planting more flowers because more flowers are more better. I am not optimistic but I am planting flowers as a way of staying sane.

I lifted this from Facebook, the artist is JM Nieto

I've also been trying to simplify the front garden. I'd like the luxury of having a bad year or two without having to worry about maintaining the public area of our house. As a result I think we're becoming "the agave house" but I don't care because I like my agaves and I have pups coming out my ears. I'm buying more of the plants I already have in an attempt at cohesion. I look forward to spending a lot of money to reduce my front garden to three plants, then changing my mind in a few years.

I'm also trying to figure out how I want to use this blog going forward. I'm considering turning off commenting so this exists as more of a garden diary. It's not that I don't want to hear from people, it's that it stresses me out to feel like I need to reciprocate and comment on the blogs I read. There's only so many times you can comment, "Gosh, that's pretty" before you start to sound and feel like an idiot robot.

Bee is going to keep widening the pathway she's put right here. Dogs are funny.