Bee Stings and Boxes

This weekend was definitely eventful. The bee sting part of the weekend is a guess to be honest...let me explain.

Friday night I noticed Oliver's nose was swelling on both sides. It was weird to say the least. We figured he was reacting to some kind of bug bite. It really wasn't very bad as you can tell by the picture below, so we weren't too worried. Ok, that's a lie. I was really worried. He is like my child. And wouldn't you be worried if your childs nose was swelling?

I guess I should saw we weren't worried enough to take him to the 24 hour emergency vet. Yes, they have those. Dogs have emergencies too right?

So we gave hime some children's benedryl and let him sleep at the foot of the bed.

This was a treat for Oliver. He NEVER gets to sleep with us. We tried that when we first got him and he pooped on our bed. That was the first and last time we let him sleep with us...until now. He also likes to move around a lot in the night and sometimes wander to the top of our bed and lick our faces.

But we decided it was a good idea so that we could keep an eye on him.

So Chad and both checked on him periodically throught the night and we didn't think it was getting any worse. Boy were we wrong because this is what we woke up to:

He couldn't even see his face was so swollen. I felt soooo bad. The poor thing just layed there. Although he must not have been too miserable because he still managed to bark at everything that we passed.

So we rushed to our vet that opened at 8 and they said they see a lot of dachshunds with alergic reactions to bee stings and bug bites. So they gave him a stronger antehistemine and also a steriod shot to help with the swelling.

The swelling was almost gone within a couple hours. And he was back to his normal hyper barking self. So that was Friday. All I can say is that the pictures still make me feel like a bad pet owner, but at least we will know what to do next time. Hopefully there isn't a next time.

Onto Saturday...

Saturday we started our garden project. I have been planning out my garden for the last few months. Deciding what to plant, how much, where to plant and what to plant in.
Since we live in an apartment my mom graciously offered up her back yard to us. But there still was only one little section that we could actually plant in.

So I enlisted my wonderful husband to build me two planter boxes. Because that one little section of dirt was just not going to be enough for the big plans I had for the garden.

So we bought some wood and set out to build the boxes. And when I say we, I mean Chad. He won't really let me help. I want to, but he wants it done just right so I let him do it his way.

Because we spent most of the day shopping for material, this is as far as we got on the boxes.

While Chad worked on the boxes, I started planting with what space we already had.

And actually I have to give credit to my mom and stepdad because they helped me a lot. Tracy helped me mix the dirt with compost and get the soil ready to plant.

And my mom taught me how to plant the strawberries and watermelons, which is what went in the section above. You have to create hills to plant the strawberries in and troughs on either side of every hill. The troughs are where you water. Strawberry plants don't get watered directly, but rather their roots spread out to the troughs and get the water from there.

The watermelons were similar. But for these we created circular mounds instead of rows.

My little sister Ariana helped as well. She and I both planted the strawberries together.

Tonight we will be finishing the boxes, filling them with dirt and planting the rest of our some plants and seeds. We bought some plants such as tomatoes, peppers and swiss chard. The seeds I bought and will plant tonight include: onions, carrots, spinach and some others I can't seem to remember right now.

So stay tuned for tomorrow's blog about the rest of our garden!