Ho hum

Sitting on the swing with a jacket listening to the squirrels drop acorn clusters like atom bombs and watch oak seed helicopters fly around...even a few brownish leaves falling.  Four years, not counting growing up in Uh-HI-uh,  you'd THINK I'd be use to the coming of fall, but I am SO NOT READY!!  This summer has been a blur with thankfully a few positive splashes over the top.  Of course there are a few reasons I am ECSTATIC for school to start which you can peek at over here.  One negative spot to my summer has been my poor pathetic garden.

This side of the mowed part is my sad, thin plant space.

There are accumulating reasons for its non-productivity, but mainly: put in too late, not enough water- oddly enough that spot is UNDER water more often than than not- and the final straw: the poochies and dead fence collars.

I was so excited my tomato plants were growing like crazy, literally a jungle from only 4 plants and on Saturday I had to tie them up AGAIN. A dying cherry tomato plant my dad had given me had more than recovered and was producing several yummy clusters Monster Man had already picked, leaving multiple little green and bright orange ones. YAY!!  My poor green beans...out of five rows, only four pathetic plants came up. Not sure if that was due to Monster Man being the planter or birds going crazy over my garden space the few days after.

The dead fence collars are the result of Man Eyes which is the technical term for a male person literally NOT seeing what is directly in front of his freaking face.  *That will be discussed further in a a whole 'nother post!  Basically, he unplugged the Invisible Fence that keeps the dogs in our yard.  So over the weekend, the collars beeped the dogs all over the yard in the SAFE zone, wore down the batteries until they were toast. So by Tuesday and I've had to call the dogs YET again from two yards away, I finally figure this out--  I saw the cord dangling...crap!!  He had unplugged the fence (in the house) to plug in his computer.  Well,  just slap me stupid. AAARRGGGHHH.  Dogs now need retrained on fence area...because safe zone was beeping them all weekend. No wonder Lucy is acting like a freak- she's been so well trained to the fence I rarely even have to put a collar on her and she's flipping out and running around like a spazz. As an added bonus, both collars are DEAD.  Now the garden is beyond the 'Safe' area were the dogs normally can't reach.  I stress normally.

Anywho... so now I've figured why dogs are running amok, had to wait a day or so before I could get more batteries - tell kids to help keep an eye on the dogs.  Mr. FixIt the next afternoon yells at Lucy to get out of the garden. Oh man!  He informs me she was picking tomatoes. ???  Dog that freaking picks tomatoes!!  Run down to check my few crazy tomato plants and OMG!!  She had carefully picked every flippin' cherry tomato off the plant. Green. Red. Orange. All GONE.  Three near-ready-to-pick beefsteak tomatoes from one of my wildly growing plants. Gone.

Naked tomato plant. Guilty party is top left peeking around a tree, "Who me?...naaahh."

Then I saw the green beans. SMUSHED. Broken. Flat in the mud...near some very big paw prints.  GREAT!  Apparently while Lucy delicately picked tomatoes for a snack, Lyla tromped through my few beans, one pepper plant, and pulled 6 cucumber plants totally out of their mounds. 
AARRGGHHH!!!    Thankfully, upon scanning the neighbor's garden it appears untouched. Only one edge paw print and plenty of tomatoes, etc, appear undisturbed. THANK GOD!  I retreated to the massacre,  picked my 7 green beans that weren't quite ready but on broken stems, and sternly scolded both dogs.  Cooked those beans with my rice for lunch. Damn pup.

And I'd wondered the day before, when I'd caught Lucy with a tomato, which kid had given it to her.
Damn dog. I hope she has some killer heartburn. For a week.