Hello everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to tell you all about my day. You may remember me from such delightful and riveting posts as “The Abandoned House” and “Bunnies On The Grass, Alas”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. Looking very purebred, if you ask me.
It was pretty nice today. The guy I live with took a picture of the thermometer, the one of the patio in the shade, about 4 o’clock this afternoon. You read the thermometer on the left to see the current temperature.
The snow is melting, at least a little. Technically, according to the guy I live with, it’s sublimating; that is, evaporating in the sun. He thinks the sand pile looks pretty good.
Oh, and by the way, the arbor that my mommy built has a seat on it, which you can see. You can also see how much the garden slopes down to the “way back”.
He also took a picture sort of pointing into the sun, which they say you’re never supposed to do, but he did anyway. Those are dwarf conifers in the pots there. They sit outside all winter. The guy I lived with raked the path, which you can see, to help with the melting. Oh, sorry, sublimation.
And then a picture of me sniffing something.
Well, so, maybe I should explain the title of today’s post. I’ve said before that the guy I live with is kind of a nut, and today he got all excited because he got what he calls his “seed-starting equipment”. This is it.
Isn’t this weird? Salt shakers, and two beakers. He said he got two beakers because “they’re made of glass”, and it took me a little while to figure out what he was saying. He’s really excited about this. I already said that, but saying it again shows how excited he is. One of the salt shakers, the one not on the cutting board, does hold salt. It isn’t involved in this project.
I know beakers hold water, and they have measurement lines on them; that part I get. But the salt shakers? He kind of explained this to me but I confess my mind wandered off to something else, like biscuits, for instance.
The guy I live with says he’ll show what this is all about when he actually starts doing something with them. I can hardly wait …..
That’s all I have for today. Salt shakers, and beakers.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Beautiful final photograph. Looking at it makes me feel chilly. Our sunset tonight over the Pacific was a fiery red promising heat tomorrow. And, Chess, that’s as close to an action shot as we get from you, sniffing out Something in the back yard. I like that photo, and I also like the one where you’re demonstrating how purebred you are. In that one, you look like you’re sublimating a fierce desire to leap at the biscuit box.
There is an action shot of me in “Watering–The Movie”, in which I play the part of me, very well too, if I do say so myself, which of course I do. It’s not very chilly here. The guy I live with claims that the snow we’ve been getting in the last few winters is some kind of new “melt-proof” snow. Maybe one of those government experiments you hear about on TV. The coyotes are back, too. We already made a movie of them (“In The Night”), but we’re hoping to make another one pretty soon. That’s probably what I was sniffing. That, or somebody’s dinner. I forget now.
Intrigued … as you expected!!! LOL.
We aim to be intriguing. It has a lot to do with a large package of oncocyclus iris seed the guy I live with received a while back. If this isn’t spoiling things, I mean.
Ah, a warm day for your guy today Chess, what we had for our overnght temp a few days ago, unfortunately it then got to 32 during the day. Nice pics of you as usual, I especially like you sniffing the air in the garden. I am an air sniffer too and inside I like to walk around when there have been guests here to sniff where they walked so I can smell where they were before. My mum thinks I should be a sniffer dog with police or customs or something because I sniff so well. I am intrigued with the beakers and ‘salt shakers’, at first I thought the shakers might have been for shaking out small seed onto potting mix but I cannot see the correlation with the beakers so like you I can hardly wait to see. I love the wintry garden shots and the melt occurring, very agreeable.
You know, they say we can tell peoples’ scents even if they haven’t been here for days. Some people even other people can smell, but that’s a different story. The guy I live with occasionally says he wishes “body spray” were flammable upon exposure to sunlight…… (He doesn’t really wish that, he just says it, because sometimes he tries to be funny.) Sniffing would be a good job, especially if they offered benefits, but goose-herding sounds pretty undemanding too. The guy I live with thinks people don’t believe how may geese there are here at this time of year and keeps saying he’ll go take pictures, but he doesn’t go to the parks where they are. It’ll never be that warm here in the winter time, which of course it technically isn’t yet, but temperatures of 18 to 20C are not unheard-of during winters here. The guy I live with likes those temperatures the best, because then things start to happen. Maybe, though, he says, not with the new melt-proof snow.
G’day again Chess from way down south of you. I’m really enjoying those lovely crisp cold snow pictures that person you live with takes. Maybe i’m jealous seeing that we are expecting next week to start at about 35 Celsius, which is about 95 in your language and to finish the week at 40 Celsius (104). Yes, we are used to it but not really, its still a shock when it arrives. They say to keep cool!
Can we borrow some snow please? Tell that guy to check his salt consumption as well, it could be a concern!! Can’t wait to see what happens with them and Chess, your purebred characteristics are certainly evident.
Why thank you. The guy I live with says the post office won’t mail snow. Probably because the initial postage, by weight, would turn out to have been too much by the time the snow got down under, and he would have had to insist on a refund, which would complicate things horribly. I can do Celsius too. Purebred border collies originated along the border between Scotland and England, hence our name. Collie apparently comes from coal, which color we partly are, though some of us aren’t at all. There can be red-and-white border collies too. Go figure. I also know the mnemonic, 16C equals 61F; 28C equals 82F. Why we still used Fahrenheit here is beyond me. 40C is too hot for a purebred border collie.
Hi Chess, glad you can do Celsius as well. We have an older generation here who still use imperial measurements when ever they go into a hardware store. ” Can I have 10 sticks of 4×2 please”. The young register staff usually look dumbstruck, “what’s a 4be2? Anyway, I don’t think your snow will get past our strict quarantine service and if the U.S Postal Service is anything like Australia Post, Forget about it I say! Chess! I grew up with Cocker spaniels since me parents use to show them and I remember seeing quite a few of your red and white kin at dog shows, very nice I must say!!
The guy I live with says that a few years ago there was a very fuzzy red-and-white Aussie girl puppy, with huge feet, being walked down the street, and the guy I live with declared “Puppy Tax”, which meant he got to go cuddle the puppy before she walked away, and he was so smitten with her he tried to distract the woman walking the puppy by shouting and pointing “Look over there!”, but it didn’t work. He also says people here thought the metric system was a Commie plot, or one of those conspiracy things, so we still use the old measurements. We don’t measure the garden in rods or anything like that, though. It’s hard to get rid of snow. Like some house guests. One winter, it snowed so much that a neighbor plowed the street so people could get out of their driveways, and the guy I live with said they could pile the snow up in front of his house. It was about 3 meters tall and 7 long. He put a sign saying “Free Snow” on the pile and there were no takers. Imagine that.