She flies through the air with the greatest of ease

until she crashes on the floor. And then she runs and hides under the desk.

I have to face the facts -- my heart, my muse, my furry soulmate, the love of my life is getting old. Chelsea turned 13 last September, and while little dogs live long lives, she's still considered geriatric and she can't do the things she thinks she should be able to do.

Chelsea is as close to a cat as a dog can get, without all the aloofness that a dog could never pull off. She stalks prey, she isn't afraid of heights, she sleeps on the windowsill in the dining room, she's nimble-footed. I love watching her jump from the sofa to the chair to the ottoman to the other chair. She can just about make a circuit of my living room without setting foot on the floor. She jumps from my bed to the side chair and back again, and hardly shakes the bed. Until last night.

When we go to bed, Doodlebug hops up his little doggy steps and settles right in beside me. Chelsea comes to bed until she thinks I'm asleep, and then she hops into the chair to sleep alone until about a half hour until the alarm goes off, then she comes back to bed and stays there until I get up.

Last night, she missed the chair and landed in a heap on the floor. She sat there a bit dazed for a minute, then literally shook herself off, jumped into the chair and settled down for the night. She moved a little slowly this morning, but she does that from time to time -- we're all getting older. When I got home from work tonight and let them out of the bedroom, she made a mad dash for the chair in the living room -- she likes to be as close to my level as she can get, probably in a ploy for the alpha position. She tried to jump to the ottoman, but misjudged the distance and fell again. She sat hunched over for a few minutes, and I felt everything to make sure she hadn't broken or dislocated anything. She seems ok now, but she's still moving slowly. A visit to the vet may be in order ...

I'm not worried about losing her -- she promised me the day I picked her up from the shelter that she's immortal. But, damn, it sure is hard watching her get old.

And on the garden front, the beans are growing, the lettuce is starting to look like lettuce, the zinnias are working on their second set of leaves, it looks like the blueberries will survive (even though I haven't put peat in the container yet to acidify the soil), the daisies are getting taller and the lavender is still a no-show.

Watching the beans grow ...

Today has been kind of a quiet day, and long, which is the BEST on weekends. It feels like it should be after 6:00, but it's just 3:15. Ahhh, extra hours today ...

I sat outside for quite some time earlier, just reading and watching the beans come up. I swear, they're growing so fast I could almost see them break ground, unfurl their leaves and reach up to the sun. But not quite -- I think they knew I was watching and would only grow when I looked away. Anyway, this is how they looked this morning. In no time at all, they'll be shading the lettuce, which is exactly what I wanted them to do. I was finally chased in by two wasps who insisted on buzzing around the glider. It looked like they were trying to eat it -- even though I washed it off, perhaps there's still pollen left in the pores of the wood. I've been stung too many times by wasps and wasn't in the mood to be stung today, so I surrendered and left them to it. I needed to clean the aquarium anyway, and now the fish are happy and I can see them again. I know I skipped cleaning for two weeks, but that tank was just way too murky for normal fish muck. They may be getting too large for the tank -- I probably should start thinking about moving them to my friend's pond.

The pups are enjoying the day, too. Chelsea has been sleeping on the chair by the window with her head propped on the windowsill, letting the breeze blow over her and waking up to bark at passing people, cars, bees and whatever else goes by the window. Doodlebug has been right by my side, as always. He had quite the accident early this morning, so I've been trying to take him out every hour today, and I'll pick up his water around 8:00 tonight so that he doesn't drink so much before we go to bed. Not a pleasant experience for any of us, but I can't yell at him for it because he can't help it. He's just getting old. I guess I could put him in his crate at night, but that would be punishment for both of us. I'd miss his furry little body curled up behind my knees.

Since I still have a good part of the afternoon stretching out ahead of me, I think I'll go rubber stamp some cards. Or read a bit more before starting dinner. Or take a nap with the pups ...

We interrupt this gardening blog for a book review.

Incredible Vegetables from Self-Watering Containers by Edward C. Smith. Copyright 2006; published by Storey Publishing.

As I mentioned below, I've been gardening for years, but only in raised beds in my backyard in Indiana. I grew flowers in containers, but not vegetables, so my patio experience with vegetables is new to me.

Being the consumate book collector, when I find a topic that interests me, I look for a book to support it. Or two or three, and then I buy them all. I'm all about having information and choices. Deciding to raise veggies in pots on my patio was no different, and I found a book! Huzzah! Sadly, the huzzah is for finding the book, not for the book itself.

Let me start by saying the photos are drop-dead gorgeous. Close-ups of luscious vegetables at their peak abound. And there are LOTS of them. All very exciting and inspirational. The actual gardening info, not so much.

The most helpful part of the book, to me at least, is the chapter on soil. Explaining how a plant takes up water and nutrients and why putting regular garden soil in a container is not a good option was very helpful info. The part of this chapter that just seemed silly to me is about starting and maintaining a compost heap. Good info, but if you're an apartment dweller -- not really an option.

The author also spent a great deal of time taking about what he planted in his earth garden. I would have rather had that space dedicated to more info about what to plant in containers -- that's supposed to be the focus of this book. And I wish the info had been more on patio gardening, rather than the author's experience of using his containers to supplement what he grows in his earth garden. What also slightly annoyed me is that the focus of the book is self-watering containers, but Mr. Smith spends a large amount of time talking about growing herbs in regular pots because they thrive on poor conditions such as dry soil and hot weather. That's great to know, but please don't devote a whole chapter to herbs that can't be successfully grown in self-watering containers. Instead give me options--tell me about the ones that will do well.

I guess I'm jaded. I know a lot about gardening. I have many, many gardening books -- from Square Foot Gardening (my holy bible of gardening) to books on starting seeds. I thought I needed to know a lot more to garden in containers, but after reading this book, I probably knew enough to get started without it.

If you're new to gardening, read the book. But try to borrow it from a library first before you spend the money for it. I found most of the information it contained on the Internet. If you already have earth-gardening experience, my advice is go to gardenweb.com and visit the container gardening forum.

All that said, this is a beautiful book, and I will refer to it from time to time, especially the last part about varieties of plants that work best in containers. It just isn't going to become the reference that I'd hoped it would. And all of this is just my opinion -- yours may vary (that's what makes the world so interesting).

Almost after

The seeds arrived yesterday. Little packages of life held dormant by a hard seed case. Seeds are the absolute most amazing thing to me.

Take a tomato seed, for example. One little seed, if watered and given sunlight, can grow up to be a plant over 10' tall that willingly provides a bushel of luscious, juicy red fruits that are perfect for adding to a slice of bread slathered with mayonnaise and garnished with lettuce. And bacon. And sprinkled with generous amounts of salt and pepper. One tiny, seemingly lifeless seed is where it all starts.

I've had tomato seeds survive the worst of winters in my garden (I was never very good about cleaning out the beds at the end of the growing season). At the first thaw, those little seeds crack open and out comes this amazing plant that can grow inches in just one day. Multiply that by the dozens of tomatoes that got left in the beds in the fall, and you can just imagine what I had growing in the spring! And nothing smells more like spring than a tomato plant.

You know, God sure knew what He was doing with all the seed business. And I am so humbled by it all.

The before before view

This is a view of my patio, sans garden. We're looking out from the west corner to the sidewalk and the street beyond. The patio faces south. There's a good view of the short hedge in front of my patio. There's a 12" wide strip of dirt behind the hedges. Empty dirt people!!! It won't be for long. That's what all the zinnia seeds are for. I figure they're hardy enough to start growing in a semi-shady location, and they'll be taller than the hedges in front of them in no time at all, so shade won't be an issue at that point.

My patio looks small in the photo, but it's actually quite large. The strip along the front is about 10 feet wide and 4 feet deep. The shaded part under the porch of the apartment above me is about 6 feet wide and 8 feet deep. I have a table and chairs tucked in the corner -- just right for having a cup of tea and reading outside. You can also see the corner of my wonderful glider, which I don't use often enough.

My garden containers are supposed to arrive later today. I'm working at home today to wait for the Fedex delivery person. Since the containers were shipped with soil, I'm thinking those boxes are going to be heavy. I'm going to ask him to just wheel them right around front to the patio.

Woohoo -- I can't wait to get started!

Well, how 'bout that?

I have a blog again! This time we'll see if I can last longer than two weeks -- I get bored easily ... can you say ADD? No, I don't actually have ADD, but I tend to get distracted by life, and pretty yarn, and interesting books, and the dogs, and cleaning the fishtank ...

I guess a first post should be all about introductions. Let's see. I'm 39 (well, not really, but did you think I was really going to say how old I am?). I'm all about doing stuff with my hands -- playing in the dirt, crafting, cooking, petting the dogs, etc. I have wonderful friends, but most of them live in other areas that aren't within driving distance, so I tend to spend lots of time e-mailing them and sending photos of my dogs or the traffic on the way to work or the dogs ...

Did I mention my dogs? I have two. Doodlebug is old -- around 16. He came to live with me about 11 years ago, so he probably doesn't remember any other home. I sure don't remember a time when I didn't have him. He's having age issues, and I'm trying to work out a good way to keep him from pottying all over the floor. We're exploring doggy diapers. Fortunately he doesn't seem to embarrass easily. Chelsea is my other dog, and she's my heart. That's her in the photo, which was taken about a year ago. I've had her since she was a baby, and she'll be 13 this year. She's a spunky terrier who saved my life when she was about 6 months old, and I promised her a place in my bed for the rest of her life. Both dogs are black and little, and people tend to think they related because they think they look alike. They really don't -- they're both just black. And little. They've been with me through two major moves -- one from South Carolina to Indiana, and then from Indiana to North Carolina. As long as we're together, they seem to take it in stride. My lovebird, Sailor, is also old -- he just turned 11.

The whole point of this blog (besides getting back in the habit of writing something interesting) is to describe my garden adventures. When I lived in Indiana, I had five very large raised beds that I had so much fun with. One year I planted a purple garden in one of them. Everything was purple. Purple beans. Purple eggplants. Purple radishes. Purple zinnias. Purple Brussels sprouts. I like to combine flowers with vegetables and herbs, and I tend to push the limit of how much you're supposed to plant in a finite space.

After spending last summer in produce Hell (how can the grocery stores around here not have good tomatoes in the summer, and where in the world is the farmer's market I hear everyone talk about?), I decided this year I was going to do something about it and spent some time perusing catalogs and reading about container gardening on Garden Web. That's a terrific site, by the way. Most people are very helpful, and very willing to share what works for them.

My apartment has a great patio, and it faces south, so it gets sunlight all day. Just right for tomatoes! I ordered five Tomato Success Kits from Gardener Supply, and I'm waiting for them to get here -- they're supposed to arrive on Tuesday. After I ordered them, I realized I didn't need to get five tomato kits -- I could have just bought one tomato kit and ordered plain planters for everything else, but oh well. I'll just have extra tomato fertilizer and red mulch for next year.

I also ordered a bunch of seeds for green beans and lettuce, as well as zinnias and marigolds. I ordered herb plants and two blueberry plants that are supposed to do well in containers. And I bought a Shasta Daisy plant because, well ... Daisies. I shouldn't have to say anything else about that!

Oh, and I bought a book on container gardening. Because I've never done this before! Everything should be here the beginning of the week, and I'm anxious to get started!