This is Harold.
Harold is 15 weeks old today. He is a miniature wire haired dachshund and he belongs to Sarah – and, as you can see, he truly loves her.
This is a white Scabious. The scabious also belongs to Sarah.
And this is the Thames estuary just outside Faversham where Sarah, Harold and the scabious live.
And this blog is merely an excuse to post pictures of Harold, and of Sarah’s garden, the latter created just two year’s ago out of a pile of builders’ rubble and open this year for the National Gardens’ Scheme!
Mind you, Sarah does have form as a gardener. For years she manfully dug and beat into shape several allotments in north London and until recently she wrote the weekly gardening column in The Lady.
Now, in her relatively small patch in Faversham, she is able to grow some very well behaved vegetables, indulge herself with a deep herbaceous border, pick from already well established raspberry, blackberry and gooseberry bushes and await her crop from an extremely healthy looking little apple tree.
Down the mega sunny wall a small green house is home to heavily burdened tomatoes and cucumber plants while water butts collect the rainwater from its roof and that of the small brick shed – all is left of the original builders rubble. And it has now all but vanished under a keenly climbing rose and a clematis.
Back on the brick patio outside the house pots are filled with herbs, with iris and with ‘interesting’ plants – like this pretty little daisy whose name I am sure she told me and I have forgotten.
Of course the patio also provides an excellent place for Harold to sun bathe… And – ‘Come on,’ he says, ‘I thought this blog was meant to be about me! All you have talked about so far is all those boring old plants….’
When I went to stay this weekend Harold had only been allowed out in the street for a few days so the big wide world was still very big, very wide and VERY exciting! Since modern dog training says that whatever you do you must not drag them from the enticing smells at the side of the road, progress into town was slow – to very slow. However, once we finally made it into the busy Sunday morning market progress ceased entirely. Every person we met was greeted as a long lost friend…
and as for other dogs…… This poor retriever was very puzzled by this funny little runt with the flapping ears…
Although Harold wasn’t too sure when it came to investigate a bit closer…
A bit further down the street, he’d obviously decided that running away was not the answer…
After all this excitement, a lap to rest on while we had lunch was very welcome…
…and once we finally got home, he couldn’t even be bothered to sort his ears out before crashing on the patio….
I had never met a wire haired miniature dachshund before but Sarah assures me that they are the most delightful, fun, loyal and loving of dogs – and certainly Harold is a total joy. Except, of course, when he decides to play with the latest, rare and very expensive specimen plant that you have just fitted into the herbaceous border….. Does puppy training work for plants?….
10th July……
Obviously there is an unspoken law that all wire-haired miniature dachshunds have to have names starting with ‘h’ as Jacquie Broadway has just sent me pictures of Haggis and Horace…. Haggis a relatively old man at around a year old, Horace about a week younger than Harold…… Thank you, Jacquie…..
