Well I woke up quite early this morning. Somewhat happy that there is only another day and a half of school left for my three youngest kids. I was also a little scared with just over two long weeks left before they start camp. What to do with three young girls? Anyway, Once the kids were all settled into school for the day, I then did some paperwork that I’ve been putting off for some time. Then I treated my husband to lunch before heading over to The Home Depot. I had hoped to buy material to build a fence for my garden.

For anyone that knows me, I absolutely love gardening. I’m self taught at everything. I prefer to do things my way and instruction hasn’t proved to be the way for me to learn. I’m not saying I hated school or anything. I just feel that if there is anything I really want to be good at, I have to teach myself. Any way, I’ve always wanted a garden, but have only recently been able to have one thanks to my husband. We moved in to his house in July of 2010 and I couldn’t wait to get started, but it did wait until next summer. Because I had to tackle the inside of the house first. Then there were two other things standing in my way. One giant ugly bush on either side of the house. They just had to go! It’s always been said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Well to me, any talk of beauty was completely lost on those two bushes. Well my loving husband agreed that it was indeed time for them to go despite the fact that he looked out at them his entire childhood and then his adulthood.

With that handled and absolutely no experience gardening, I was off and running. Home Depot became my next best friend. I can’t really tell you how many trips I made there, but I have my loving husband to thank for being my chauffeur and helpful assistant. He doesn’t have a green thumb but he has just enough patience to put up with me when I’m on a mission.

So I started laying down anything with color that looked good. Then I decided I had to make a walk way. I decided what I wanted and then laid it down. It’s funny what you can do without knowing what you are doing. I hope that makes sense. Many passerby’s made warm and pleasing comments, and I was grateful to be able to give them joy. The winter came and took all the color with it.

So this year I started again. I put in some rose bushes, some Asian dwarf bushes, and more ground cover to keep company with my existing plants. Then, I thought it would stand out more if I lay down some white pebbles in the back part of the garden while mulch covers the front part of the garden.

Back to today. My intent while shopping at The Home Depot was to find some rocks, or wood to use to build some type of a wall. This would hopefully deter the dogs tat seem to love my garden as much as people do, but not for the same reasons. Worse than that, their owners don’t seem to want to stop them from harming my garden. Then argue with me if I ask them to remove their dog. Now, this is not true of every dog owner. There are many respectful dog owners, but there are others that just don’t care.

As I’m sure many of you have experienced, The Home Depot is normally filled with a bunch of wonderful and amazingly smart people, but for some reason today, those that helped were “punching out for the day”, “on a lunch break”, “not my department”, or just plain just didn’t know how to help me. I was soon approached by a familiar face, but just couldn’t remember her name. She was an amazing help to me. Because time ran out after waiting so long for help, I was only able to get material to make signs for the garden to ask pet owners not to allow their pets to use my garden as their public bathroom. I did not leave with the rocks or the wood that I had intended on buying. Viewing the long lines, and school letting out soon for the day, I decided The Home Depot could wait another day.

Well, in the words of Gloria Gaynor “I will survive”!