I’ve always believed that it’s important to feed my pets the healthiest diet I possibly can in order to ensure their health.  Even when I had reptiles (yes I had several lizards at once believe it or not!) I used to make special salads for my iguana and prepare special food to feed the crickets that were fed to my lizards.  So you can only imagine that now that I have a dog how careful I am about her food.

Luckily there are high quality dog foods out there – you just have to do a little research to make sure it really does have quality ingredients like those described in the above information.

My Labrador Retriever Midnight has been eating quality dog food since she came to live with us at eight weeks of age.  She was quite ill when we got her and we had to give her a lot of tender loving care to make her healthy.

She’s four years old now and she’s doing great.  Obviously from the photos and stories that I post every now and then you can see that she’s a great dog.

She has a great personality and I think she might even have a sense of humor .. because she’s downright silly … just look at this last picture – I swear she posed for this by rolling over with her favorite bone in her mouth. I call her my silly girl.

How do you care for your dog? Do you try to feed your dog a food with quality ingredients?

We spent yet another weekend – Or rather at least one day this weekend doing some more yard work in order to prepare our garden for winter. This time we were busy putting away things like our solar lights, garden ornaments and trimming back some of the plants that had become overgrown. I also took some time inspecting my rose plants and I cut out any dead branches that I noticed.

When the trees finally start to drop their leaves we’ll gather up some of the leaves and put them on our garden beds as we normally do each year. A good layer of maple leaves on our plants seems to help protect them through the winter.

Most winters we don’t get a lot of snow. Oh we get snow, but it snows, then it melts and we have a week or two of deep cold but no snow cover .. so if the plants are bare and exposed to all that cold it can really hurt them – so at least the deep leaf cover helps. Then of course it will snow again and our garden will have a foot or two of snow on it for a week or two until it melts again and that will keep the plants and ground insulated for a short while .. but the temperature changes the garden goes through through the winter because of our lack of good snow cover yet fairly cold temperatures can be quite hard on the plants if they aren’t prepared in the fall.

Do you put mulch or leaves on your garden beds in late fall to protect your plants over the winter?

It’s not that hard to raise a healthy and Happy dog, but like anything, you do have to work at it a bit.

Pets, just like people need regular medical checkups, a balanced healthy diet and love and attention.  The better the quality of care it stands to reason that your pet will have a long and happy life in your home.

We have a four year old Labrador Retriever and I have to say that she’s my favorite girl. She makes me laugh and smile every day.   She keeps me happy and healthy by putting a smile on my face and by getting me out for walks etc and I keep her healthy and happy by playing with her, walking her, feeding her good food and making sure she sees her vet at least once a year for her check up and shots.

How do you keep your dog happy and healthy?

Anyway … Last weekend I decide it was time to get a start on preparing the garden for winter so we got to work at putting away our patio furniture and tidying up the garden beds to some degree. We still have a lot of work to do, but at least we got things started.

While I was working in the garden I noticed that quite a few of my fall flowers were blooming so I got out my camera and took quite a few pictures. Here’s a few of my favorite garden photos from last weekend:

Toad Lilies! The only time of year that I can see lovely Toad Lilies blooming is in late September through October. Aren’t they absolutely lovely?

Then there are these lovely chrysanthemums. I have a large planter of them on my front porch blooming their pretty little heads off.

Sedum always shines at this time of year. I always think of it as kind of a filler plant in the spring and summer, but come Autumn it’s a star when it begins to bloom and turns lovely colors.

Monkshood is another Autumn favorite of mine. I have two types of Monkshood growing in my backyard garden. I believe the type in the photo below is Monkshood Azure.

This last photo is my favorite. Of course it’s a rose. This rose is Chicago Peace. It’s not as colorful as it would be in the Spring or early summer … but it’s still lovely. If it weren’t for the little tiny green leaf on one of the petals I think this would be an almost perfect picture of this rose.

Do you still have flowers blooming in your garden? If you do what’s blooming?

I’ve often wondered how many gardeners own pets? It just seems that a love of nature and a love of pets goes hand in hand. Of course … pets can be pests in the garden if you’re not careful! We’re lucky in this regard – our Labrador Retriever, Midnight, has always been fairly good in our garden. She loves the backyard and ever since she was a puppy we taught her to respect the garden beds. She doesn’t go into them at all! Now that’s a good dog.

Naturally our good dog is well rewarded for her behavior in the garden and in our home. She’s a good girl and she’s well loved. As I said she’s well behaved in our garden and fairly well behaved in the house too. I suppose we treat her like one of the family with all the love and attention she gets.

So – fellow gardeners – Do you have a pet dog or cat? Do you pamper it with love, attention and good food?

As most people that read this blog know I’m an organic gardener. I don’t grow a lot of veggies in my garden, but I do take pride in knowing that what I grow is organic and thus all the healthier for my family.

When I’m out shopping I try to either buy organic products or products that have been produced with “green” means or sustainability in mind.

As the information above states most people probably don’t think about where their coffee comes from, or at least they didn’t a decade or so ago .. but that’s slowly changing. I’m happy to say that Green Mountain Coffee is fair trade coffee which means that it’s a quality products and the people who produce it are making fair wages, and the coffee is harvested ethically and sustainably.

I haven’t actually had a chance to try Green Mountain Coffee, but the next time I go shopping I’m going to look for it and pick some up if I find it. I’d certainly be interested in tasting it.

Have you tried Green Mountain Coffee? What did you think?

Nah … well my Browned Eyed Susans and Phlox David are certainly on the way out, however, just as those plants are winding down, others are beginning to shine.

For example, my Toad Lilies are covered in buds and I expect I’ll have blooms next week. I’ll also have blooms on my three Monkshood in the next week or two as well.

My Sedum are already changing color and looking lovely:

The large potted Chrysanthemums that I purchased at Costco at the end of August are blooming away too:

Aren’t they lovely?

My Cosmos have been blooming all summer, but this one looked so pretty the other day and it happened to have a bug on one of it’s petals as well – can you spot it?

How is your garden doing this month? Is it changing as the temperatures change? Tell me what’s blooming.

We’re at the height of summer and I find that almost every day we’re having a meal in the garden on the patio. It’s lovely to sit outdoors enjoying the beauty of the garden and when we’re lucky it’s bounty as well.

As I mentioned in my last post, our tomatoes are just beginning to ripen and very soon we’ll have cucumbers and beans. We’ve already been enjoying strawberries and raspberries from the garden and I expect that we’ll continue to enjoy them for another month or so.

It’s at this time of year when I most enjoy entertaining. I love inviting a few friends or some family members over for an informal visit. We’ll get together and have a barbecue or just a snack and a few drinks. Just a chance to get together – but of course it’s always in the garden surrounded by my lovely flowers and all the lovely scents they produce.

One quick and simple treat that I whip up when guests come over is cheese and crackers. I almost always have both cheddar cheese and a soft cheese on hand like Boursin Cheese and of course a variety of tasty crackers is always handy.

Do you do a lot of entertaining in the summertime? Do you keep supplies on hand for “drop in” guests? Supplies such as tasty spreadable cheeses like the Boursin cheeses discussed above or other quick foods?

My tomatoes are growing like weeds. I have four Sweet 100′s tomato plants that are covered in tiny green tomatoes. I can’t wait for them to ripen so that we can have a taste.

I also have five regular sized tomato plants – a variety of patio tomatoes and Early Girl Tomatoes and each of them have several large tomatoes on them in various shades ranging from green to almost red. We’ve already had about four ripe red tomatoes from one of the plants already and they were lovely. Yum.

Unfortunately earlier this evening I seem to have had a reaction to the large tomato plants. I noticed that the tomato plant vines were flopping over so I got some bamboo stakes and some plastic green tape and started staking the tomato plants and within seconds my hands and arms were on fire – burning and itching.

I’ve never had a reaction like that to tomato plants before. I knew that the leaves and plants could be irritating to the skin but I’d never experienced any problems. I had been working with my roses earlier and I had some scratches on my hands and arms so maybe that’s why the reaction was so bad … but man … I can still feel some burning! I had to go inside and take a Benadryl in the hopes that it would calm the reaction down. If I’m still feeling the itching and burning on my skin at bedtime I’ll put some hydracortizone cream on my hands and arms. Luckily I happen to have some prescription cream.

Have any of you ever had a problem with touching tomato plants in the past? Is it an allergy or just a bad irritation? I have had tomatoes come up in allergy tests but I can still eat them most of the time.

BTW Don’t forget to also check out my other gardening blog Organic Gardening Tips. I’d love to have you come visit me over there too!

Every few years I get the urge to redecorate my home, but of course, who can afford to complete refurnish a home? Pretty much no one these days, I’m sure.

I’m sure you know I don’t redecorate my home every few years. When I was much younger than I am now it was much harder than it is now to overcome the urge to go out and buy new furniture.

What I did do was to try to purchase furniture that I thought I could love for many years after carefully thinking about what styles I really like in my home. The information above discusses several iconic American home furnishing styles such as Beach Cottage, Shabby Chic, Deluxe and Classic and Lux and Modern.

The style my home is furnished in is a cross between modern and shabby chic. Yes I know it’s an odd mix, but we live in a house built in the 1920′s that we’ve been renovating ourselves.  We’ve opened it up so it has a very modern open concept and half of our furnishings are very modern and the other half are the exact opposite – antique or vintage.  We get quite a few compliments about our decor and even people walking past our house when our doors are open stop to look and comment so I guess it must work.  The main thing is that we like it.  I satisfy my urge to redecorate by moving the furniture around rather than going out and buying new furniture.

What is your decorating style?