Hello everyone; once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to tell you all about my day in the most informative and enthralling manner possible. You may remember me from such wonderful posts as “A Futile Effort” and “After The Equinox”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose on this very chilly and windy day. If you didn’t know what to do on such a day, well, this is what you do. The wind is blowing, from the cold, flat, empty Arctic tundra thousands of miles to the north of us, where there are probably no purebred border collies, right down into our back yard, and even though it’s sunny, the wind is really cold and so, after the guy I live with discovered, with a triumphant shout, that he did have an extra bag of coffee beans and didn’t have to go to the store, we’re mostly staying in, except for our invigorating walks, of course.

It’s not as windy as it was the last time I said it was, when the neighbor across the street’s metal trash can was blown up (not down) the street, meaning uphill, of course, but it’s windy. In fact, our neighbor called here a while ago to ask the guy I live with if he knew where her trash can was, and it was only then that he put two and two together, which he rarely does. I guess he didn’t realize it was her trash can, or he thought they’d seen it roll up the hill and ran to get it, or something, whatever. It’s possible that he thought it was just  a trash can which rolled up the street, instead of one of our neighbor’s trash cans. Like this is a neighborhood where trash cans have been seen to roll up the street, occasionally, and no one thinks anything about it. Except maybe to say to themselves, “There goes another trash can.”

One time, in fact, one of the paint buckets, which he uses all the time for gardening, was blown all the way up the street, and then blown eastward, up that street (it traverses the northern slope of one of the “outwash mesas” we’re surrounded by here), and then down again, so it was blown about five blocks total. He found it when he was driving home from work.

Maybe enough talk about cans and buckets, now. The guy I live with actually did something today, and I know how astonishing that seems, but he really did. You know Shepherdia rotundifolia, well, he got some more seed from Alplains the other day, and decided to sow it in the calcined clay recommended by the Forest Service. In studies they did, germination of seed in a regular seed mix was only about 12 percent, compared with 66 percent in the calcined clay, so that’s what he used. It’s like kitty litter but harder. He got it from Eastern Leaf. I mean, if you couldn’t tell. The packet came with 25 seeds (really more like 30), and so he got the pots ready. He uses a lot of dishpans here, too, as well as paint buckets, and yogurt cups. Large ones. When my buddy Slipper was really sick sometimes all he would eat was Greek yogurt with honey. It makes me sad to think about it, but I like yogurt too, and I got some then. The one with strawberries and honey is my favorite. I think when the guy I live with goes to the store, which he says he’ll do tomorrow, he should get some more yogurt. He has about half a dozen of these cups, but more couldn’t hurt, and it’s fun to help empty them. The one with fig in it is good, too.

I got distracted, sorry. Here are the pots, filled and ready to go.Then with the shepherdia seeds in them.I know this because I was watching. You can see the ramp for aging border collies, one of which I’m, built by my mommy, and semi-refurbished by the guy I live with. You can also see the wooden threshold has been worn down by twenty five years of purebred border collies going in and out. The guy I live with says this look is called “shabby chic”.

Anyway, the seeds were pushed into the calcined clay and then more was added, and the pan was filled with water. The guy I live with says you do that, instead of watering from the top, like with a watering can, so the seed isn’t redistributed or disturbed in any way. It’s what he calls “careful gardening”, though “mindful gardening” might be good too. The clay absorbed the water pretty quickly. The water’s not completely absorbed in the picture, here.In a little while, the pots will be put in the seed frame he just made, and then we’ll just wait. I don’t like waiting as much as the guy I live with does. Not that he likes waiting, he just waits. It’s one of the few things he’s better at than I am.

There was a hawk in the cottonwood out in the field, and so the guy I live with went out to take its picture, but it flew away. Meanwhile, I ate some snow. Not as good as yogurt, though. That’s me behind all the grasses and stuff, eating snow. He did get a picture of the saxifrage, Saxifraga × kellereri ‘Johann Kellerer’ again, and, like I said the last time I showed a picture of it, the buds are showing some raspberry color now. The guy I live with says he thinks he’s the only person within a thousand miles in any direction who’s this obsessed with these saxifrages. Some people like them, but he’s nuts about them. My mommy liked them too. He posed some of her scanned slides a while back, here (they’re darker because they were designed to be projected onto a screen, he says).  You can see that spring is inching its way closer. The guy I live with, who’s comfortable talking about meters and stuff, wonders if they say “spring is millimetering its way closer” in places where they use that measuring system. I don’t think so. If they do, well, then, it really is more millimetering than inching, as far as the guy I live with is concerned.

So that was my day, or most of it anyway. I’ll get back to what I do best now. 

Until next time, then.