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?

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?

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?

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Wow I’m BAD. I run the Green Thumb Sunday meme and I haven’t done one since last November. Yep, bad bad bad meme creator!

Ok it’s time to get back on track. This meme is still alive … barely, but I know some of our members are still posting Green Thumb Sunday posts regularly, at least more regularly than I have been lately.

I don’t have a good excuse for my absence. As usual I haven’t been feeling well thanks to my Crohn’s, but yes, I’ve still been gardening and so far this year I’m amazed with my garden. I just need to start posting about what I’m seeing and doing more often, now don’t I?

So … if you’ve been participating in Green Thumb Sunday or waiting around to see if it was going to start up again … come on, let’s see some Green Thumb Posts. (please).

As I said above I’ve been amazed with my garden this year. I think it started waking up in February … way way early! By March 15th I had my first Crocuses blooming. Usually they don’t bloom until near the end of March.

This was the first crocus to bloom in my backyard this year. It bloomed on March 15th! Shortly thereafter more and more crocus popped up. They’re all done now though.

Years ago when I first started gardening I planted Snow Drops .. but I rarely ever saw them. Either they bloomed too early for me to notice or it warmed up to fast and they faded within days … unnoticed. It was obvious this year that they’ve been growing, multiplying and thriving as I had a few large clumps come up in March.

I even had a few tiny Dwarf Danfordia Irises come up too

They’re a little faded in this photo as they were already wilting by the time I noticed them. They didn’t last long. We’ve had some warm weather in March and April which wasn’t all that good for making Spring flowers last.

Here’s a shot of my center garden bed … full of red and white Tulips, Heuchera, Astilbe, perennial Geranium, and tiny shoots of Phlox and Hostas and probably a few other plants that I’m forgetting … I took this picture on April 18th. I just wish that I’d pushed the hoop that I use to contain the Phlox when it grows down a bit before I took the photo!

This is a wide shot of my garden. It’s small, but for the middle of April there’s a heck of a lot of plants up. All of my roses have fully leafed out now and more and more plants are coming up each day. Right now I’ve got Daffodils and Hyacinths that are just about finished blooming and I think my Glories of the Snow are pretty much gone. I have a feeling that I’ll have roses about two weeks earlier than usual this year too.

And Finally this is my dog, Midnight, enjoying some sun in the garden. She’s growing and blooming too. She’s two and a half years old now and still very puppy like in a lot of ways … just thankfully not quite as hyper as she was a year or so ago! LOL

How is your garden doing? What’s blooming? What’s growing?

Wow, in this case, that old saying “Birds of a feather stick together” really is true!

I can’t imagine these little birds getting any closer! The two outside birds almost look like they’re being ear muffs for the bird in the center! Cute!

I don’t think that we have this kind of bird in our area, but we do have slightly similar looking small birds that seem to love our backyard and our clothes line! They sit on the clothes line fairly close together like these birds too! But not quite as close!

It’s hard to think of this tiny little deer as a pest when it’s so cute, isn’t it?

Luckily in my area I don’t get deer in the garden. Even though I’m in a large city (Toronto), just a few blocks away from me, people that live near a ravine complain about having deer in their gardens! So I guess I’m lucky that I don’t live there!

I get raccoons and squirrels in my garden and of the two, it’s the squirrels that are the biggest pests this year. They keep digging holes in my garden beds! They’ve also dug up some bulbs and displaced small plants. Little buggers!

What kind of garden pests do you have to deal with?

I wonder if they ordered a salad and a cocktail?

BTW – sorry that I haven’t posted a Green thumb post or any updates lately. I’ve been getting my gardening done (planting young plants and seeds etc), but I’ve also been very sick with Crohn’s so I haven’t felt up to writing.  Sorry!  I’ll be making some updates soon.

The Blue Jays around here aren’t very friendly.

Sure, they’ll eat from the bird feeders and visit some of my plants, but the minute that either my husband or I go outside or one of our neighbors enters their yard the Blue Jays are gone. I’d never get a shot of a Blue Jay landing on a hand held camera in a million years!

It’s been quite rainy here in Toronto today, but the rain has just stopped and the suns out … who knows for how long … but I’m going to try to go out and get a little gardening done.  I have some annuals to plant in planters and a few bulbs to plant in the garden beds.  It would be nice if I could get this stuff done before it begins to rain again!

I don’t know if this bird is overjoyed that it discovered some berries and it’s doing a flip in the air as a result … or if this is just the start of a very bad landing ..

What do you think? Bad landing or joy? Or maybe it’s just really windy?

Either way it’s both a pretty picture and a funny picture at the same time. I think so anyway!

Isn’t this the sweetest thing? Two tiny fawns (baby deer) hugging in a field of flowers …

I think it’s adorable. I only wished that I’d seen this with my very own eyes. Too cute!