The puppies introduction to the world started with visitors after Christmas. Now at seven weeks old, we increased their exposure to new things by having workmen in the house drilling and banging around.
January 2, 2012
For some reason it is only after Christmas that the Wisteria seems to call me for its winter prune. Before that, it just seems to be doing fine and then after the holiday, it suddenly seems in dire need of a serious prune. As many of you will know, I usually do (or at least start) the job on New Year’s Day, but this year the weather was so wet and gloomy that I only started on the job today.
If you have a wisteria to prune and are not confident as to how to do it, take a look at the video I did of the process last year. Some friends of mine watched the video last year and after pruning their wisteria, had blooms on it for the first time last spring. I can’t promise that this will happen for you as the plant has to be mature enough to flower, but if lack of pruning was the cause for few or no flowers, then the video should help. Even if the plant isn’t ready to flower yet, pruning is important in establishing a framework for the future.
Wisteria Knot
If you don’t get the structure right from the beginning then you can get congestion points or “knots”. Here a side shoot has grown and forced itself behind a main stem. This has created a very congested area where it is virtually impossible to get in to remove material. In previous years, I have pruned as much as I could, but the problem just gets worse as each year even more shoots make the problem worse.
This year, I will prune all around the area to give myself as much visibility as possible. I will not worry about the three bud principle as I am not trying to get flowers here, but rather to resolve the congestion. I will then take my pruning saw to the major offenders and hopefully that will sort the issue out.
Hopefully this will be in the next week or two and I will post after the job is done to let you see the results.
December 31, 2011
Well finally, the two topics of this blog come together – the puppies have experienced the outside world, ie the garden. The playpen is now a feature of the garden for the next few months. Thank goodness we designed the patio area with this in mind and the pen is very close to the house making it easy to transport the pups between the two locations.
Obviously they aren’t outside for long and they spend most of their time in their indoor pen, but they are starting to learn that we would prefer it if they went to the loo outside. This is fairly natural behaviour as naturally they don’t want to soil their sleeping area – but it is necessary to help this natural instinct. When they wake up, the first thought is to go to the toilet – it is therefore important that they are put outside as soon as they wake up. They probably go outside about six to eight times a day. The good news is that this hard work is paying off and we hardly ever have a poo indoors. There have also been occasions when the pups have made some noise and when taken outside have promptly made good use of the facilities, so the message certainly seems to be getting through.
As time goes by (and the weather improves) the puppy we keep will spend much more time in the garden, and no doubt give me much more to blog about 
.
