While the governments of the world have been busing taking dystopian nightmares from the sci-fi genre and treating them as how-to manuals, we’ve been busy in the only bit of the world that we can control: our home and garden. In recent weeks we’ve been able to harvest some of the results of that effort, including onions, potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, cabbages,cucumbers, peas, chillies and strawberries.

We’ve grown regular-sized strawberries for ourselves, but the small furry types have their own dedicated mini-strawberry plants too

Every day the Beaglets have tried their best to help; sometimes their efforts have been welcome, sometimes less so. It is true that the netting covering our fruit plants is there partly to keep the birds off, and partly to defend against premature harvesting attempts by the black nose brigade. On the days we’ve been mixing manure into the soil, the doggy toothbrush has showed a mysterious tendency to go a rich black color, requiring a particularly thorough rinse after use.

Oh compost! Yes I can definitely help with that!

It’s always good to have a bit of doggy company when you’re planting things..

..because let’s face it, planting can get boring pretty fast

I can confidently say that if a squeaky fox sneaks into our garden..

.. that fox will have a very bad day

Hedgehogs don’t get the fox treatment, but they do get woofed at. A lot. And always in the early hours of the morning, right when the humies would really just like the Beagles to come back inside so we can all get to bed.

Anyone who knows Biggles will be surprised by this last shot. All through his life, The Bigglet has been completely incapable of catching anything. He can’t catch tennis balls, he can’t catch treats, and on occasions when Beanie has caught some kind of doggy virus, he hasn’t even managed to catch that. Yet, against all odds, he did catch a pesky fly, and even more amazingly, I caught the moment on camera.

So despite all the craziness outside, Beanie & Biggles’ little world has remained remarkably stable. This however is soon to change, because one of the furry bundles in the picture below is coming to join us!

Eh? Say that again because I clearly misheard you!

Surely you can’t be serious Dad!!???

Yep it’s true. We went to see a new litter at Tannahill Beagles a week ago and one of the tri-colored girls in it will be ours. That’ll really shake things up and make all the big world stuff seem like a storm in a teacup. I can’t wait but it’s fortunate that I’ll have to, because I’ve got a ton of puppy-proofing to get done before she arrives.