Dog days of summer.

Spending my summer days hanging out with Rennie and Kingston

Backyard shenanigans.

This post is for Grandpa, who wanted to see more photos of the pets!

Kingston has been working on his tree climbing skills:

(a difficult feat without claws!)

And Rennie loves his ball and his bones:

New shade garden.

Last fall my husband trimmed away the lower branches of one of the evergreen trees in our backyard, leaving behind a big open garden space to fill up.

After thinking about it all winter (and doing a bit of research on plants that grow well under pine trees) I finally settled on my plant selections, which are all perennials. In this photo I was just choosing plant placement before digging:

Here is the final result:

I planted: 'Jack Frost' Brunnera, Columbine, several types of hosta, Jacob's ladder, Solomon's Seal, Lady's Mantle and daylilies from my mom's garden.

The area actually gets more sun now that the branches are trimmed away, so it is more of a 'part-sun/part-shade' garden.

Here's a few shots of our pets from this weekend:

Rennie (who tore up and spread all of my potting soil around the yard

while we were away this weekend)

and Kingston finding some shade under a chair.

Meet Rennie.

After being without a dog for about a month, my husband just couldn't

stand it anymore and found this little sweetie who was being given away.

His name is Rennie, and he's a 5 month old black lab/shepherd mix.

So far he's fitting in pretty well, although he loves to chase Kingston (our cat) around

the house and gets into trouble when we're not home.

(We've come home twice to a disaster in the living room-my houseplants are toast, but

we have learned that our throw pillows are machine washable!)

We're working diligently at training him. So far he's getting the hang

of SIT, STAY and SHAKE. I think he'll catch on pretty quick!