My garden

I have a known talent in my family. I'm known for killing green things. I generally can't keep a plant alive in my house to save my life. Normally it's from overwatering as opposed to under but sometimes it's just my brown thumb.

This year though, I made a decision that I wanted to be able to grow and can some of my family's food. I bought magazines, read the internet and thought long and hard about how and what I wanted to plant and grow.

We have 2 dogs so a traditional garden plot was out of the question for this year. While ultimately I would like to plant fruit bearing trees and bushes in the perminter of the yard for our use and consumption, I want the dogs to have as much yard as possible for playing, running and being, well, dogs.

So I opted to do container gardening this year. I figured it would keep me small because once you start gardening it's easy to get excited about seed packets and small green shoots and reall over commit yourself and kill everything while you are learning.

My first container I planted sugar snap peas that I had grow from seeds, plus 2 more seeds, just in case these failed since I was planting them at the begining of April and we could (and have) still had frost and snow this month.

I also planted carrots and rosemary, sage and chives in that same container in a circle pattern in accorance to companion planting information. I also put together a bamboo tripof for the peas to climb and so far things seem to be going great in that pot. I am starting to finally see carrot seeds spouting.

My second container I dedicated to strawberries so I bought two different kinds. One is a big ever bearing variet and the other is a smaller, low lying variety. The big ones already are begining to spout berries and if everything goes well we should have a nice, albeit small, strawberry crop this year.

My third container I didn't plant until 2 weeks ago. In it I put the only surviving cumumber plant that I raised from seed, two other piles of cucumber plants, one specifically for pickling, radishes, white onions i had raised from seed and yellow onion "sets" or starters. I have watered them, loved them and checked on them. I have covered them with the plant blanket when there was a chance of frost or snow and have whispered to each and every one of my plants.

And then Saturday one of the dogs got into the container with the cucumber and onions and dug it all up.

I wanted to kill her. The rage is my wanted to choke the very life from her. My babies were destroyed. I leave an entire yard and this dog felt like she was totally cool just digging into my 32 inches of space.

This is the same dog that I suspect dug out my blueberry bushes. Three times. This is the same dog that eats crap that isn't food but instead chews on books, tin cans, diapers and box tops for education.

I stood outside in the chilly night air with the deck light and a flash light digging in the wet uprooted earth and recovered my poor cucumber plant and 3 onions. I replanted what I could and told my husband to take the dog somewhere else.

Instead he told me no. He told me I couldn't kill the dog (at no time did I seriously want him to kill the dog and when I felt that rage I got awat from her) or even hit her. That that wasn't the woman he married and he would leave me.

So the dog redug out everything I planted at midnight. She did it sometime between 3 and 8:30am.

My husband doesn't care.

He chose the dog over me.

He chose the dog over my hard work, my hours of effort.

He chose the dog over what I consider the stepping stone to being totally prepared in case the world as we know it ends.

He chose the dog over our food safety.

And it stings. And I'm hurt.

And no matter how much he tells me now that he chooses me first, I don't believe him. If he chose me first that dog would not have had the ability to redig up my container. It would not have had the ability to destroy every shred of food safety and self reliance that I felt.

We had rigged large tomatoe cages at my Mother in laws idea and insistance and I am grateful because I was just so devasted I couldn't put my heart into working on it anymore.

But I dont want to touch the dog. As far as I am concerned she is a destroyer. And I can't even look at my husband. He cares more for the dog than for humans in my mind.

And I dont know how to deal with that.