Hello everyone; yes, again, it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to tell you all about our fascinating day in the garden. You may remember me from such posts as “Still More Spring” and “Look What He Did”, among so many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
This is how our day started. Well, I mean after out walk and stuff. It didn’t snow, and it didn’t rain, and it didn’t freeze, like they said it would. The guy I live with had these visions of moving two yards (2.3 square meters, I think) of pea gravel in a blizzard.
The guy I live with says, incidentally, that the driveway adds a certain something to the front yard. It was cracked when he and my mommy moved in, but the spalling, noticeable in the lower left, only started this century.
This is what you might call the end result of the gravel delivery. Genius, huh.
Here I am wondering what’s gotten into the guy I live with.
He says he has big plans for this pile of gravel. I bet. Though he says he could just leave it the way it is, because he got this book a while ago and now he’s talking to me about it.
He doesn’t quite know what to make of it. He says the writing is excellent, but …… There’s this quote, “a valley is the topos of its own emptiness”.
The guy I live with now says the pile of gravel is its own topos of something, he’s not quite sure what. Note, for instance, the way the pile echoes the topos of the raised bed in front of it.
And, he says, the lone conifer there (Juniperus oxycedrus) symbolizes the human condition, “alone in a sea of undifferentiated and indifferent particles”. Or maybe he just forgot to move the juniper.
Okay, really, it’s the base for a new rock garden. He’s excited about it. Especially now that all the work moving the pea gravel into the back yard is done. He made me stay in the house while he moved the gravel. I didn’t like that much, because I wanted to stand in the way while he maneuvered the wheel barrow.
The guy I live with is going to plant irises and stuff here. He got a bunch of seed of things like Iris petrana, the black iris of Jordan, and believe me, if he gets this to germinate and it turns out to be hardy, he’ll be completely insufferable. “Oh,” he says, “juno irises too.” And now he needs someone to go to Iran and Afghanistan and places like that to look for iris seed. He’s raised about five dollars for an expedition. His nephew went to Iraq a while back and the guy I live with suggested he look for irises but he was busy.
Let’s see….. The guy I live with forgot to take pictures of crocus in bloom, but he did take this picture. He says “notice the play of light and shadow on the various textures, and …” oh, I can’t keep this up. This is a picture of the “way back”.
The guy I live with doesn’t have any sense of design and makes no bones about it. He does know how to pile up gravel, though. And talk a lot. Interesting stuff, too; believe me.
My mommy had a sense of design and the guy I live with found this picture which is pretty darn seasonal so I’ll show it now.
That’s it for today. I tried to be as coherent as possible, but you know who I live with, so…..
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
A smiling Chess photo really cheers me up. Thank you for so providing. Has the person you live with noticed differences between the place in which you live and the place of The New English Garden? It doesn’t look much like Beth Chatto’s dry garden. I quite like your “way back.” And I do think your person has a sense of design if he picked the color of the gravel.
Bummer about being made to stay in the house. It happens, though. I feel bad for my doggies when I confine them inside .I hope you enjoyed a nice nap in a patch of sun. Or did you monitor the wheelbarrow activity?
I have to stand in place until I do what the guy I live with wants me to, which isn’t always fun.
The new gravel pile, which is the only color it came in, doesn’t look much like Beth Chatto’s garden, but hers is not featured in The New English Garden. It was described as “so 1980s” by the author of the book, elsewhere, and it does have plants in it, which is probably a major disqualification.
I sat at the kitchen window, watching, very sadly. Very, very sadly.
Spiffing Halloween decor. She had so much talent.
Yes, she did. She liked to make arrangements for the house. I think that’s a coyote skull, which was purchased. Maybe even a cast.
Not every skull was purchased, though ….