Gilbert the Good – reseeding the lawn

 

Gilbert the Good – reseeding the lawn

While practising my role as a Monty Don stand-in dog, I watched Barry reseeding the bare patches in the lawn. Well, they call it a lawn but it’s just a stretch of grass between the trees. There are lots of trees.

Anyway, there are a number of brown bits where the grass has disappeared. It happens every year. Here’s a photograph from a few years ago. It was even worse then.

I watched carefully as Barry mixed earth and seeds and sprinkled them over the blotches and then raked them over. It did look nice and I thought I would help so I went out this morning and rearranged the earth. It smelt so good! I admit I did get a bit carried away and it didn’t look quite as tidy as I thought it would.

When Barry saw it, he thought at first that a fox might have got in and been busy but then he looked at me and knew it was no fox.

I’m learning.

‘I’ve tried to be good, ‘cos I know that I should’ . . .

TTFN

Gilbert

 

Gilbert the Good - a Monty Don dog

 

 Gilbert the Good – a Monty Don dog

I told you a while age that my humans call me a Monty Don dog. Monty Don presents a television programme called Gardeners’ World and there are two dogs that help him, a Golden Retriever and a Yorkshire Terrier. I’m more the size of a retriever – well, I am a Labrador Retriever, so that makes sense.

Anyway, I think I could offer my services to Monty Don if he ever needs a stand-in, say if his dogs are on holiday or something. I like helping in the garden. I even bring things indoors sometimes – the odd branch, perhaps, or I particularly like flower pots and I don’t mind if they’re full or empty.

               I like to stick my nose in when Janice is weeding. Some of the things she pulls up look quite appetising. She pulled up a lot of mint the other day as it was growing everywhere, even in the pond. I like mint. It smells wonderful.

.Barry has been pruning trees and then he does something called ‘graunching’ which is very noisy. I stand well back. I don’t like loud noises.  He uses a big machine and wears things on his ears and over his eyes – I don’t know how he can see what he’s doing! Then he puts all the graunched bits back on the garden. He says the graunched bits are now called ‘mulch’. There’s a lot I don’t understand but I’m willing to learn. I could graunch some branches for him if it would help. He wouldn’t even have to take them off the trees.

I like smelling the flowers. My humans told me that Buddy Liver Spots liked to stand among the plants in the conservatory. He hated getting wet, so never went swimming, and always walked round puddles if he could, but loved to run through long wet grass. He was a Dalmatian, though, and I’m a Labrador, so we are quite different.  My long-ago relatives used to help the fishermen haul in the nets in Newfoundland and I’m sure my distant cousins still do. All Labradors have partially webbed feet so we’re all good swimmers.

I don’t like going into the garden when it’s raining and neither does Roxy, but we love to go walking when it’s wet. Bertie, who came before me, didn’t like going out in the rain when he was a puppy. If he needed a pee he used the cats’ litter tray. I haven’t done that and I’m too big now, anyway. I’m a good boy – I know that because my humans keep telling me I am.

Anyway, back to being a Monty Don dog. I think  I’d enjoy being on television. Lights! Camera! Action!

 

TTFN

Gilbert