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.

As I mentioned in earlier posts we’ve started using some of our rear garden to grow flowers, fruit and veg. For the first half of the year things went pretty smoothly; most things grew readily and apart from the odd slug nibble we had few problems. Now we’re properly into summer we’re discovering just how hard it can be to stay on top of pests. We’ve found that Neem oil and washing up liquid sprays can help defend against aphids and similar parasitical insects, and that nets can help prevent the deployment of hungry caterpillars and the theft of unripened fruit by birds, but when it comes to larger furry pests, you’ve just go to be ready to shout “Oi! Get out of there!” really loudly.

This is one of those aforementioned “Oi!” moments

Defending against all these destructive pests can be wearing, but earlier this week we were confronted by a genuine tragedy. If you’re a Beagle owner you might want pour yourself a soothing drink and take a deep breath before reading the next bit of this post, because I can promise you, it’s going to hit you hard.

We’re well aware that Beanie & Biggles are heading into their golden years, and we know from friends and neighbors that a decline in health can hit older dogs swiftly and with little warning. We’re also aware that both our pups (but Beanie especially) are skilled manipulators who will find the drama in any situation and milk it for all it’s worth, so when Susan heard a wailing coming from the bedroom earlier this week, she wasn’t sure which situation was about to play out.

Certainly the wailing was soft and pathetic, more like the sound of a Beagle in genuine distress than the indignant complaints of a spoiled furry brat. She hurried to the bedroom as fast as she could and discovered that this time she was indeed facing a genuine tragedy – something that no-one who cares for Beagles would ever want to face.

Susan found Beanie lying on the bed, staring at the window. The Beanster looked limp and somehow smaller than normal, and out came that weak, plaintive wail once again.

“What’s wrong Beanie? What’s the matter?” she asked. And then she saw it. Up on the window sill, out of reach but not of out sight and certainly not out of sniff range, was a bone shaped biccie.

It was in fact a biccie that I had left there earlier in the morning. I hadn’t done it out of cruelty, but out of simple forgetfulness while transferring the contents of my pockets from my dirty jogging pants to a clean pair. I’d remembered to re-pocket my handful of poo bags, my Swiss army penknife and my half-used snotty hanky, but some how the “emergency biccie” – which I always keep in my right hand pocket – slipped my mind. Over the many minutes and hours that Beanie could sense the biccie but not consume it, it grew to consume her very will to live.

In many episodes of Star Trek even the most dire emergencies get resolved in the final two minutes. Similarly this tragedy was sorted by picking up the biccie and tossing it towards the Beanster; one catch, chomp and speed-swallow later, all was well and the end titles could roll.

Never let anything distract you when you’re changing your pants, or next time it could be *your* Beagle being tortured by the emergency biccie that is just out of reach!

Anyway, now that you’ve come through that emotional roller coaster, here are some soothing shots of some of the stuff growing in our garden.

And if that hasn’t soothed you, try scooting your bare bum over a freshly cut lawn. That always seems to help the Beanster.

Biggles has always had a thing for director-style chairs; he seems to like a seat that really molds itself to his shape. Such chairs tend not to last, especially if we get lazy and leave them out in the rain once too often. I installed our last serviceable director’s chair in our new shed and he makes regular use of it on cooler days. He seems to enjoy it even more if I’m not in there; it’s become his own private little snoozing room. The clumsy, shuffling sounds that accompany him getting into the chair and getting comfy always bring a smile to my face.

On sunny days however the shed gets too hot to spend any time inside, so he just mopes around on a regular dog bed looking bored and sorry for himself, which is clearly unacceptable! In a stroke of luck Susan spotted the perfect replacement director’s chair in The Range, able to handle being left outside even on typical Scottish monsoon/heatwave/monsoon combo days. Biggles’ initial reaction to  his new chair was disappointing, but then I don’t think he’s ever really got the whole flat-pack concept.

Are you sure this it Dad?

It doesn’t really get you far off the floor does it?

OK, I’ll try it but don’t get your hopes up.

Oh the chair’s inside, you say?

OK, give me a minute to dig about in here…

Nope, it’s not looking good Dad

I mean the head rest is OK, but that’s about it.

No, still not seeing it Dad.

Oh right, yep I like it now. Just get me a chew and a bowl of water and I’m good for the afternoon.

We can leave the frame in place on the deck and it only takes a second to slip the fabric bit on or off in response to the weather. It turns out that Biggles is smart enough not to try climbing into the chair when the fabric isn’t in place, which is a good. Less good is that Beanie, who normally finds chairs like this too squishy and unstable to trust, tried the chair one time and seemed to like it. There may be noisy squabbles in our future.