When we first moved to our home in Ayrshire the back garden was basically a small field with no notable features. For years we kept it that way, thinking that made it a better playground for Beanie and Biggles, and as youngsters they certainly did lots of playing in it.

I’m not exactly sure what was going on in the next photo but let’s assume it wasn’t anything weird and just move on…

Anyway, the point is that the lockdowns forced on us by the government changed our thinking about the garden, and since then we’ve been filling it with things like fruit trees, raised beds for growing our own veg, and a couple of areas where the grass can grow longer and wild meadow flowers can flourish.

Now we’ve added this thing:

..which once cut, assembled and painted turned into this:

As we planned each project I entertained the worry that we were taking valuable space away from Beanie & Biggles, but now it’s all in place I think the result is a net gain for the pups because their garden has become that much more interesting. They still have space to play – though as older Beagles they don’t do that so much unless I’m throwing a ball for them to fetch – but all these new elements have given them more places to investigate, places to hide when we’re trying to make sure that no-one has somehow gone AWOL, and places to lay poo traps.

They’ll never notice me under here. First they’ll get worried that I’m missing, then they’ll give me extra treats.

OK, so which one of us is going to chew the hose?

I just dropped one directly under Dad’s pullup frame, Beanie! He’s gonna love it when he treads on it!

There certainly have been plenty of poo traps. Both our furries have hit all the high traffic areas, causing smelly shoes and smelly wheelbarrow tyres, but I think the best work has been done by Biggles. One day to get some extra growth going in our wildflower area Susan bought some “seed bombs” – little brown nuggets of earth and seed to drop on bare patches of the lawn. We started out with 30 of them, but a few visits from The Biggly Boy we had more. I’m pretty sure Susan spent the next few days carefully watering some of his seed bombs! Regardless there should be an explosion of color over the next month or so and I’m looking forward to getting shots of the pupsters against it.

If Beanie and Biggles ever do feel the the loss of wide open garden space, they’ve still got plenty of space on our local beach. We’ve had a fantastic run of weather recently during which some pandemic lockdown restrictions were eased, but we’ve still had no problem getting large stretches of sand and sea to ourselves.

Despite having all these facilities at her disposal, Beanie regularly complains that conditions are barely adequate for a Beagle of her standing; she sometimes has to repeat her requests for a blankie and has to remind me whenever tea is running late. Susan counters these claims of hardship by saying that our two must be the luckiest, most pampered Beagles on the planet. I hope Susan’s right, because that is absolutely the way it should be for a furry princess and her pesky brother.