Yard Work, take 3

I've been trying for two days to publish an entry about my gardening adventures. Suffice it to say that cable service leaves a little to be desired. Blogger throws your masterpieces in the trash, too, if you lose your internet connection and you can't get them back. So I'm trying one more time, though it gets shorter every time.

Anyway, I bought five plants in an effort to start a garden on the piece of lawn, if you can call it that, in front of my house. Digging the holes to put them in proved to be a much bigger problem than I anticipated. I had to pound the ground repeatedly with the sharp edge of a hoe to even break the surface. After that I used my hands to rip and tear at the mass of roots under the grass with all my strength to expose the anemic soil. It was a pale brown without the slightest sign of insect life. I will need to fertilize if I expect my plants to survive. Eventually they were in the ground and looking alert and happy after I doused them with water. As I worked I smelled something cooking and didn't realize that it was my own piecrust in the oven, burning. I also ruined the custard filling by under cooking it and trying to make up for it by finishing it in the microwave. This produced sweet scrambled eggs, and I had to call the whole thing a failure. It's just as well. I would have eaten the whole thing and I'm supposed to be on a diet.

The day before, I spent the day repairing and redesigning the chicken pen. The neighbor behind me left me a message Wednesday that a dog had broken into the pen and terrorized the chickens while I was gone to Bangor. Her husband removed the dog and herded the chickens back where they belonged. I saw the dog later, a little black thing that resembled a cross between a skinny Boston Terrier and a rat. His owner was chasing the little brat up the street wearing an expression of exhasperation and fear that has graced my own face so many times in the past.

My fence repair included securing one of the limbs I had cut from the lilac tree to the bottom of the chicken wire with pieces of picture hanging wire. This should prevent anything from getting underneath. Then I made a gate by weaving a smaller limb through the holes on the chicken wire to stabilize the bottom and sides. For added security I placed another piece of chicken wire along the outside of the fence extending along the ground for about a foot to discourage digging.
Eventually I hope to learn how to confine animals.

Actually, I know how to confine them. Have enough money to build a proper fence instead of making one using pieces of wire and twigs for the chickens, and changing my attitude towards dogs. I would have to become a person who believes that a well-trained dog is a happy dog, that dogs should come whenever their "masters" call them, even if they don't want to, and that dogs want to be subservient because of their ancestry as members of a pack.

It would be quite a stretch.