An addition to my gardening tools that has proven invaluable thus far this summer is the Chuck-it.*

Technically, I suppose, it’s not a gardening tool.

Really, if you want to be truly accurate, you’d have to call it a dog toy.

However when gardening with two border collies, one of whom is under the age of three, that line gets a little blurry. Anything that keeps them out of the vegetable beds and therefore increases the odds of asparagus surviving canine assault counts as a gardening tool. The Chuck-it has the added bonus of keeping your hands from getting slimy with dog spittle and this is nothing to scoff at when you’re handling dried peat moss.

That said, I think my next “garden tool will be a wriggling fence around the veggie beds. Rowan enjoys the effect of plunging the ball into the dirt too much for anyone’s health.

And in parting, another shot from the same evening as the last post. It was a spectacular sunset.

*A Chuck-it is like a hand-held stick with a ball holder on the end that launches a tennis ball about twice as far as you can throw. It also allows you to pick the ball up without touching it. The oddly shaped balls that you can buy that bounce higgledy-piggledy are excellent for dogs who fancy themselves adept at catching regular balls easily; takes their egos down a peg or two when they miss and makes them work harder for a catch.