Greetings, everyone. It is I, Chess the purebred, highly intelligent border collie. You may remember me from such enjoyable posts as “Another Lonely Day” and “Stinker’s Revenge”. Here I am after my dinner at Le Splendide Hôtel where I live; my waiter hasn’t cleared the table yet.

The guy I live with, whom, strictly entre nous you understand, I consider to be rather less intelligent, says my mouth is open in almost all pictures of me.

Look who’s talking.

If I could roll my eyes, I would. Anyway, I was left alone again today for what the guy I live with claimed were “very good reasons”, though he didn’t bring me back anything at all. He did deliver a box of bugs to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The bugs were part of my mommy’s collection and the guy I live with says he startled the security guard at the desk when he showed her a couple of enormous grasshoppers.

First he went to see Mike Kintgen’s garden, because the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society was holding an open garden day. He took a bunch of really dumb pictures but there are some that are passable. Here’s one.

The guy I live with took a lot of pictures of the lawn, which is Legacy buffalograss. He says it was really beautiful.

Here’s the side yard, facing south.

Orlaya grandiflora in the side yard. The guy I live with forgot to sow the seed he got this year. I tried to tell him that if he didn’t sow the seed, there would be no plants, but he paid no attention to me.

Caulanthus crassicaulis. The guy I live with wants this a lot. Native to dry areas on the western slope. The botanical name translates to “stem flower fat stem”. That’s funny.

In the front yard, Teucrium gnaphalodes.

And then in the back yard, Pelargonium ‘Splendide’ in a pot. Nice, huh. “Splendide” always reminds me of Rimbaud, Les Illuminations, “Et le Splendide Hôtel fut bâti dans le chaos de glaces et de nuit du pole“. I think Rimbaud didn’t have border collies; if he had, he might not have had such a sad life.

That was Mike’s garden. Instead of rushing home from the museum afterwards, the guy I live with had to stop at Whole Foods (where he didn’t get me anything), but first stopped off to take pictures of the ‘Forest Pansy’ redbud both he and my mommy admired. He went right up to the front door and asked the people living there if he could take pictures of their tree, and they said yes. He mostly took crummy pictures of the tree.

All in all, he wasn’t gone for very long, partly because he couldn’t talk about bugs for two hours at the museum, because he doesn’t know anything about bugs, though I must say that lack of knowledge has never been a hindrance when it comes to him talking. It didn’t thunder like he thought it might, and when he came home we had a nice nap.

Oh, I guess I should show at least one plant from our garden before I say adieu. Here’s a  shot of Echinocereus triglochidiatus White Sands form (which by the way does grow into a huge plant, contrary to what some people claim). Not coccineus, as he said last year . Like it matters.

And now I’ll say au revoir.