I suspected that a Labrador would be my sanity's undoing: I was right. Last weekend Steve purchased a expensive miniature weeping maple tree for the back corner of our house. We planted it, along with the four rose bushes he got me as well (ah!). It looked beautiful! When we stepped back to admire it, I said, "what's that in Wrigley's mouth?" only to discover our lightening fast 4 month old Labrador retriever puppy happily chomping away on what remained of the top half of a brand-new rose bush.
Choking back my surprise, I simply sputtered, "Wrigley!" to which he so innocently looked up at me as if so say, "me?"
The next morning found me bright and early at Lowes. I stormed into the garden center like a marine. My mission: to find the most indestructible fencing made by man. I found the fence aisle in the garden center only to find the amount of fence I needed required a cart - and a large one at that. Once equipped with a cart, I stormed down the fence aisle with an ever increasing manic gleam in my eye and I hoisted various types of fence into the cart I could hardly keep myself from rubbing my hands together and saying, "wha ha ha!" Had I been born an evil cartoon villain, I would undoubtedly been twirling the end of my mustache.
My conquest complete and Lowes quite literally out of green garden fencing posts ( I bought the last 8) I ran to the checkout, fully aware that every minute spent here was one more minute my Labradors would be gnawing, clawing, drooling, digging, or otherwise happily unleashing their destruction upon the unprotected rose bushes/weeping maple. The checkout girl must have sensed my mania, because she was unusually quite. Her lack of conversation, however, made me suddenly very intent on telling her the entire story. I remember finishing with a flourish..." and THAT is why I need 50 feet of fence." From the frightened look in her eye, I could tell I wasn't too far away from the villain twirling his mustache after all. I zoomed home and immediately began fencing out the labs from specific zones of their fenced-in yard.
I put up a decorative white fence around the roses and weeping maple. Unfortunately, it was as two-man job, and what should have been easy looked more like a three stooges episode; when I put on end in the ground the other would pop up, etc, etc. Eventually I was to the last link in the fence and it was almost complete. I sat on the ground and painstakingly fiddled with the white wire, attaching it just so. One more section, I thought, and it will be safe!!!! It was then that I looked up. And who looked me directly in the eye, from the "safe" side of the fence -- but Wrigley. Then he grabbed a mouthful of weeping maple swooping lazily by his face, and giving it a playful tug, snapped one of the remaining limbs in half. Satisfied with his new toy, he sauntered directly toward me and my gaping mouth, and walked directly toward me THROUGH the fence.
Apparently, it was too wide.
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