Greetings and salutations everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to be both amazing and delightful at the same time. You may remember me from such posts as “Left Alone” and “Left Alone” among so many others, most of which have a distinct title, except for these two. I was left alone twice, and felt I had to say something about it.
Here I am in a characteristically semi-pensive pose, not wanting to have my picture taken but sitting still anyway. If it looks like I could use a cuddle, it’s because I could. I admit I get a lot of cuddles, but I could always use more.
The guy I live with has been fixing things left and right. Sawing and drilling all day long. I don’t much care for the noise. He says it’s to prepare for the onset of winter. Like a muskrat or something. The guy I live with claims that muskrats don’t prepare for the winter, but I don’t think he knows that.
He fixed the downspout from the gutter just today; it split apart last winter after many winters of providing excellent downspout service. He filled the cracks in the patio which appeared a couple of winters ago. He started to put up an arbor on the northeast side of the house, to mirror the one that my mommy built on the southeast side, and he’s working on fixing the fence in “the enclosure”, a little area in the back that my mommy built for herself, with a bench to sit on, with a certain border collie whom you all know. Sometimes my buddy Slipper would hog the spot and I would sulk, because the spot was really for me.
This is the fence. We’re facing north-northeast in this picture, and you can see, more or less, that watering on the other side of the fence, which is the “way back” garden, has caused the fence to rot and fall apart. He pushed on the fence from the other side and it almost fell over, so he decided it was time to fix it.
You can also see there’s a whiskey barrel on the right. It just sits there. A lot of things around here just sit there, doing nothing. The guy I live with just sits there, a lot, but sometimes, like in the last few days, he gets up and starts to fix things.
He wandered through the garden and took some pictures of plants, which the garden still has. I guess we have to say that now. That’s because the guy I live with has been reading about all these postmodern gardens where plants have no place, which he says is just completely weird, and he doesn’t know why everything has to be so weird these days. I’ll show some pictures to prove the garden has some plants in it.
Sphaeralcea ‘Desert Sunset’ is still blooming. I know about this plant because half of what the guy I live with insists is a “lawn” is taken up by it. We used to have a nice, soft green lawn that I could stretch out on, but he decided that wasn’t progressive enough, so out it went. I mostly stretch out on the soft Pottery Barn sheets on my bed, anyway. Everything evens out, I guess.
And the crocus. This is Crocus kotschyanus HKEP 9317 again. (He just saw HKEP 9322 coming up this evening, and he was very excited.) He likes plants with numbers. Some people think this is peculiar, but he says that’s their problem.
As he was raking leaves off one of the raised beds, he noticed Crocus oreocreticus. This doesn’t have anything to do with cookies; it comes from the mountains (oreo) of Crete. He still thinks of cookies, though.
Well, that’s it for tonight. Tomorrow the guy I live with is going back to Home Depot, he says, for more lumber. That means more sawing and drilling. And of course, coming inside to give me a biscuit from time to time, and drink coffee, and look really busy.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
I like your photo tonight, Chess, as you look quite fetching, even though restraining temper at having to pose. Question: If the person you live with is raking leaves, judging by the leaves in the photo, how does he have time to saw, drill and drink coffee, never mind give cuddles and hand out biscuits? Although giving cuddles and handing out biscuits would certainly top my list of things to do while companioning purebred Border Collie Chess.
Thank you, Chess, for sending me to the blog Federal Twist. Enjoyed it, and the NY Times article it to which it linked. Wondered at first what the fuss is about since my garden can bear close resemblance, but after a bit the photos became mesmerizing. I liked the pool with black water.
You should give thanks, dear Chess, for a fence made of wood. My neighborhood is filling up with the vinyl sort, pah, pah.
I like fences made of wood too. So do the squirrels. Our neighbor was going to put up a white vinyl picket fence so the guy I live with hired someone to put up a wood fence in the front yard as quickly as possible, since he already had a permit. He says people rarely do what he expects them to do and in fact doesn’t understand most people at all.
But anyway, he’s fairly efficient at getting things done, when he’s in the mood to get things done.
He says to check out The Anxious Gardener, too.
DBG tinted their water black, too. You can see it here https://paridevita.com/2012/10/04/dbg-in-october-part-two/. (It was my mommy’s last October, so it’s sad to think about, but all of these are her pictures.)
He says tinting has become a fashion, and even so, it’s attractive, since it adds an air of mystery, which is always good.
Now I am thinking of cookies, oreos being a particular favourite.
(I corrected the spelling of oreos…..) The guy I live with really likes Newman’s with peanut butter filling, which sounds mighty good, but I’m not allowed to have chocolate.
Sorry for laughing at your Left Alone Left Alone winge. It truly is a monstrous crime [in a cuddlesome purebred border collie’s mind] to be left alone, biscuitless, with only a blog to keep you company. I know the feeling. That’s why I always keep multiple packets of oreos handy.
Tinting?? I never heard of tinting one’s garden pond. Must put that on my List of Procrastinating Things To Think About.
Nice fence. In Japan they cut out little doors at the bottom of fences so that foxes can get in and out. My neighbor put up a handsome new stockade privacy fence (wood) this Summer and he cut out a little door at the bottom of it so my cats can still come to visit.
I just got a vintage copy of Eleanor Perenyi’s book, Green Thoughts, from 1981, back when the author’s photo was allowed to take up a whole back cover. She has THE BEST AUTHOR PHOTO EVER. She’s sitting in her beautiful garden in Stonington, Connecticut, dressed in an embroidered Romanian peasant blouse, holding a high ball glass in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. Now, that’s my kind of gardener.
Tinting is very popular. If someone does it somewhere (almost always east of the hundredth meridian), they do it here. It does obscure gross stuff floating in the water.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_cranky_gardener/1998/06/the_antimartha.html
Article on Henry Mitchell. With cigarette in hand. Also that way on the cover of One Man’s Garden.
Oh, Chess! I miss seeing your handsome, expressive face when you’re too busy to blog! I think maybe I should make you my screensaver, or maybe I should hang a photo of you above my computer (the dilemma would be choosing from among so many exquisite options). Or both.
I love the color of “Desert Sunset” flowers. It’s my favorite color (except for black & white in dogs, and all the other colors sometimes)
I have to say, my heart gave a little leap when I saw the photo of the fence. It looks a LOT like the back corner of my garden when we lived in Flint. I still miss that garden. Oh, I could tell you stories about that fence! The top of the fence was flat & wide (maybe a 1″ X 4″?), and we called it the squirrel highway because the squirrels would run along it — on their way to make terrible messes somewhere, no doubt. And the dogs I lived with loved to chase along the fence, barking at the squirrels. One time my husband called me at work to tell me that Dollar, our first black standard poodle, had caught one of the squirrels by the tail! The squirrel got away & left Dollar with a mouthful of squirrel fur –PA-TOOEY! The previous owner had planted grapevines (not bushes) along one section of the fence, and when the grapes were ripe, possums and raccoons would sit on the squirrel highway to eat all the grapes. If anything drove the dogs I lived with crazier than squirrels, it was possums and raccoons!
The guy I live with suggests making a ball out of some chicken wire and nailing it to the top of the fence, which might discourage squirrels from running all the way along the fence.
My grandpa Flurry used to catch rodents in the garden, but the rodents didn’t survive the encounter. He loathed the idea of rodents in the garden.
It’s okay to use pictures. The guy I live with doesn’t make money from horticulture (though this year he did make $98…). That’s why the blog looks as “plain” as it does. But other dogs in the house might be jealous.
Now, if you were to get a Desert Sunset, it might not be that color. The typical one is more pink. The plants are in full bloom right now. Very attractive even if they do hog space on my lawn.
Hi Chess, the look on your face definitely says I don’t want my photo taken, where’s my cookie. Nice autumn leaves on that tree near the fence. My aunty is currently on the east coast of the USA searching for autumn colour. She chose this time of year for her northern hemisphere trip for the autumn colour and cool weather, so far she’s feeling too hot and the colours seem to be alluding her. I think she is ready to come home. I can’t wait because she has bought me a new squeaky toy and also I miss her two cats who visit me all the time, I love them and am sad they are not here.
Anyway I have possums to chase in the garden at night and the odd wallaby to scare away…c’est la vie.
ps. Don’t tell anyone, I just discovered I am afraid of cicadas when they are coming out of their shells, I barked and barked yesterday until my person came to let me in the door because I was afraid to go through my doggie door because the emerging cicada was too close.
The guy I live with suggests that your aunty will never find “autumn colour” in the USA, because of Noah Webster and his drive to wipe out the awful Norman, i.e. French, influence from the English language, even though he liked the French and knew they saved the colonies’ hindquarters during the Revolutionary War, so all the USA has is “autumn color”. The guy I live with is kind of a smarty pants, don’t you think?
Colorado doesn’t have much autumn color except for aspen by the zillion, which people drive up into the mountains to see. Most aspen are yellow in the autumn, but there are some fairly rare oranges and reds. People have heated arguments over whether or not the red leafed ones are always red every year and whether or not the soil has an effect on the leaf coloration.
All kinds of things can be scary. My mommy made “Bug Jars” out of those tall jars that salsa comes in (I don’t like salsa byt my grandpa Flurry did), with holes punched in the top for air, and when the guy I live with rescues spiders and things that have fallen into the kitchen sink I have to leave.
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