Greetings and salutations, everyone; once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to tell you all about my day. You may remember me from such entertaining and informative posts as “The Sand Man” and “A Day At The Opera”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristically sad pose.
Have you ever seen anyone look so sad? So pathetically sad? So sad it redefines the definition of the word “sad”?
Well, the guy I live with left me alone today, so that he could go to Denver Botanic Gardens all by himself. To give him some credit, he’s never done that before, and it is right before the holidays and stuff, but he wanted to see if he could do it, and he did. I stayed at home and guarded the house, and made sure the carpet was level. I can do both things at the same time.
This is right by the entrance. (I’m supposed to say these are really large files and you can embiggen them if you click on them. He and my mommy watched The Simpsons at every opportunity. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you know that already.)
Yucca faxoniana and Y. thompsoniana, and Hesperaloe funifera
Yucca rostrata
He went over to the “dryland mesa” after that.
The guy I live with said he was particularly “intrigued” by these next two opuntias, both of which were labeled “Opuntia sp.” He says to say that “sp.” is pronounced “spuh”, if you didn’t know. That’s the way he and my mommy pronounced it, because they thought it was funny. Lots of people have no sense of humor, but they did. The opuntias are particularly blue, with tints of purple in the winter.
Then more purple pads.
Another Yucca faxoniana.
And maybe a Yucca elata.
Then to the Rock Alpine Garden.
crevice garden
Then he came home (he said he was only gone two and a half hours, but it seemed like three hundred), we took a nap, got up, I had my dinner, and we went on our walk.
me turning around on the path
And that was our day. It turned out okay after all.
The guy I live with says he hopes you enjoyed this little trip to DBG, even though I wasn’t there to make it really great.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Chess you are absolutely adorable, but some times a guy has to do what a guy has to do and go off to take some pretty cool photos. Someone has to hold down the fort now and then, but he always comes back to you and you look pretty happy in that last shot. 🙂 You so remind me of our Annie with those looks. 🙂
He always does come back. That’s the best part of my life. He even brought me something from Whole Foods, which was mighty thoughtful.
The picture of me turning around was just to show that I really am a purebred border collie, and not a sad impostor with hound dog lips. My buddy Slipper, who was my first cousin, had the regular pointier muzzle.
I had fun honing my embiggening skills. I even embiggened you, Chess. It looks like it was a fine day to go to a Botanical Garden. Especially when there is an exceptional dog to guard the fort and assure a level floor.
Today I also had fun watching a video of border collies that was posted on Huffington Post. It showed them staring and stalking very, very slowly. I stalked one of the dogs I live with in slo mo while staring, and he trotted away from me, looking back over his shoulder, while making a high-pitched whining sound I’ve never heard him make before. I don’t know if that meant I was doing it extremely well or very poorly.
We stalk. I’m really good at it, too, even though I’m getting on in years. Stalk very slowly.
Though this afternoon, even with the arthritis I have in my right front leg, I raced out in back because I think there was a cat in my garden. A cat. I startled the guy I live with, who now pictures me as being more of the snoring-away-in-my-fort kind of purebred border collie.
I’m supposed to say that the pictures of me were taken with a point-and-shoot, and the ones at DBG with a DSLR. I don’t see that that makes much difference, but he said to say it.
Great photos today, as usual Chess, from miserable to ecstatic, what a face. Something yummy helps too. I bet your guy now makes an alpine rock garden for you to wander through, I can just see it now.
Thanks. I do already have rock gardens to wander through,the whole of the front part of the back yard, but there aren’t huge rocks like at DBG. Huge rocks are expensive and heavy.
Instead of a crevice garden he has that sand pile. A rock garden minus the rocks, he says. Kind of like the “new English garden”, which seems to be a garden without any plants, and even sometimes without any garden.
Splendid day at the botanic garden, Chess, and a splendid accounting of a couple hours spent by your person Away. Certainly those trails at the garden seem made for a stroll by a purebred Border Collie on a leash. Those photos couldn’t be shot at the Huntington Desert Garden — too many people in the way of the plants. Photo of you turning is appreciated as it is nice to see your tail in action. All the person you live with has to do, Chess, is look at your grin in the final photo, and he’ll see a dog wholly capable of leaping up and chasing after a cat.
Chasing cats is quite a bit of fun, since, after all, it is my garden. I have two paths that lead straight to the Way Back where cats might lurk. They try to eat birds at the feeder. Cats belong indoors. A number of cats around here have disappeared, just like that, and yet people still let their cats outside.
The guy I live with says it was a pretty quiet day at DBG. Maybe people were out shopping.
I very much enjoyed the garden tour (lots of pointy plants!) but the best part of the day was Chess’s smiling face at the end.
I completely agree. There’s a pet food company whose motto is something like “a good day for a dog is a good day for everyone”. Totally true.
Thank you for this small taste of the DBG!
Sure. Of course, now that those blue-padded opuntias have been singled out, I imagine they’ll be guarded.
The other purple padded one was “Coomb’s Winter Glow’, I think.