Closing out the year, gardening with a dog

We got a dog, and I've [willingly and positively] allowed that to suck up any downtime I have, so I've neglected my blog. And vacuuming. I've been blogging a lot in my head, though, and even taking some pictures for blog posts, like Bloom Day and Foliage Follow-up (both of which I had grand ambitions for and missed by a mile). So that has to count for...absolutely nothing, I get it.

She's very sweet and we named her Daisy:

We adore her! She loves the cat (sometimes too much) is great with the boys, and is working through some fear issues around grownups. She's about 1 year old and lived on the mean streets of Austin for part of her life, so it hasn't all been roses for her. And speaking of roses...

Before we got a dog we made a list of pros and cons, and I feel like we did a pretty good job going into this with our eyes wide-open. That said, there were a couple of gardening-related surprises, as you might have guessed:

1. My favorite surprise: I've developed an appreciation for some of my neighbor's yards. When you walk by them 15 times in a week you start to notice things (especially if your dog wants to sniff everything). Future posts planned....
2. When she gets excited she likes to run fast. Back and forth. A lot. She has unintentionally shredded a few low-lying plants, like my Philodendron 'Hope' and some of the strappy-leafed Giant Spider Lily. Nothing that can't be replaced, or won't come back in the Spring. (The Hope philodendron were disappointing anyway, and I was thinking about replacing them with Oakleaf Hydrangea.)
3. She also likes to dig when she gets excited or bored. She's easy to redirect and she only digs in bare ground areas (no plants so far), but yeah. This is a manageable one - we just don't leave her outside unsupervised (she wants to play with us anyway, not alone) or we give her a bone to chew. She loves it when I'm outside with her, raking the many many MANY leaves. That makes one of us. (Although I did get a leaf vac as a gift for my birthday, woohoo!!)

And speaking of gifts [I am the QUEEN of segues in this post], I also got the fire pit I'd been coveting!! Thanks mom and dad!! We picked it up the week of Christmas, and used it for the first time on the weekend immediately after:

Here's another angle, because it's awesome:

And here's us using it!!

Ryan and the boys

I don't know what I'm doing here - marshmallow roasting gang signs?!?

As predicted, I ate half a bag of marshmallows, and burned at least 97.6% of those.

I need to make a cover for it so we can use it as a coffee table in the summertime, so that has gone on my long list of winter projects. And there will be more on that in 2016, but for now:

Farewell to 2015, and Happy New Year!!