Greetings and salutations everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to tell you all about my day in the garden, or, in this case, my day doing nothing. You may remember me from such dazzling posts as “Windy And Melting” and “Show And Tell”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
Posing for my picture was about all I did today, besides my walks. There’s snow on the ground, it was a little chilly, and the guy I live with had to go out for a while this afternoon, so we didn’t really do anything gardening-wise. It’s hard to believe that back in the last century, at least according to the guy I live with since I wasn’t born yet, that Adonis amurensis could be starting to bloom right about now. Here are some pictures of it from days long past. These are similar to ones he posted before, but not quite the same. 
I have to admit that I didn’t have much of anything to say today, but I’m getting very close to the 500th post, and the guy I live with found some more of my mommy’s pictures, so we decided to post these instead of saying anything really interesting. After all, the guy I live with can talk at length without saying a single interesting thing, so I have a very good role model. 
Some poppies. More ‘Marschall von der Goltz’, and a red one that my mommy didn’t like but took pictures of anyway (with “gardener’s garters”…the grass, I mean), and then ‘Victoria Dreyfus’. I think the poppies are gone now. 
And then, the peony ‘Prairie Moon’. This might still be here; I’d have to ask the guy I live with, who gave away a lot of peonies and other plants during The Great Upheaval, which he says is still going on. Anyway, this is a very pale yellow single peony. It looks white, but it isn’t.
From what I understand, peonies no longer fit into the guy I live with’s “new vision of the garden”; there were peonies planted where the new, “exciting” sand pile is now. He has visions of sand piles instead of peonies. I think I know what my mommy would have said about this, but we won’t go into that right now. The guy I live with did point out that the peony has not bloomed as well as people say peonies do, and he doesn’t have very much patience with that sort of thing.
Whatever. Tomorrow he says there’s going to be more seed sowing, of the furious kind, of course, since there’s still a lot of seed to be sown, and seed, as he continually points out to me, means more plants, and more plants, I guess, means happiness, of a sort. And besides, spring is almost around the corner.
“And then it will really start to snow” says the guy I live with, ever the optimist. But it’s true.
I’ll leave you with this picture of me and my buddy Slipper, heading down the path together. I’m not really sure which one was me in this picture. One was me, that’s for sure.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Chess, it sounds a cozy day for you, the kind you like. You certainly look grand in today’s portrait.
Your mommy’s photos are knockouts today – yes, really. One of the light yellow single peony with golden stamens especially holds the eye. The textures!
The photo of you and your buddy Slipper sashaying through the garden as a team, sigh, is adorable. I think I can tell which one you are —
We were a team, for a while. I tried to hog all the attention, of course. My mommy saw flowers in a way quite different from the way the guy I live with does. I think, though, this is about the last of them.
I love a nothing much day. Bad weather is required.
Sometimes, even nice weather can be an excuse for a do-nothing day, in our view. Say you don’t feel like doing anything, and nothing really needs to be done, or it can be put off (which is almost everything), then you don’t do anything, except maybe sit outside and enjoy the sun.
Got your book on Penstemons out of the library today hoping it would be the edition with colour plates of drawings and photos and indeed it is! It is a thing of beauty. Also got Columbines (and etc) also with colour plates. Really lovely.
Thanks. The columbine book is kind of an embarrassment, since the quote on the very first page was wrongly attributed to Parkinson, instead of Gerard. Proofreading error on the part of yours truly. You stare at a text over and over and over (etc.) and eventually the mind starts to crumble. There were supposed to be more watercolors, but the illustrator was a procrastinatrix. (Just made up that word.)
I like the purebred border collies in the author pics.
Seem to remember Flurry not wanting to stand still for his picture….
Stunning photos. Her close ups are an inspiration.
Thanks. She liked close ups better than faraway shots. Except, of course, of purebred border collies.
All sorts of shots near and far are good of purebred border collies.
Agreed.
There is certainly nothing subtle about a peony. Or oriental poppies, for that matter. We used to stake and support to high heaven, but the rains (coming always, it seems, just as the blooms have opened) would beat the blossoms to pieces, leaving them hanging their battered heads in what can only be described as a sort of shame. My grammy is starting to mutter (rarely a good sign in these parts) about adding them to the compost, or at the very least sending them into exile to live out their lives with the grasses and weeds in the orchard. Like roses, always beautiful in pictures…reality?… not so much.
The guy I live with thinks that reality could stand some improvement. Muttering can be a bad sign here, too, and usually spells doom for something in the garden. Peonies can be given away; one benefit is that you get the experience of smelling the roots, which he says reminds him of cola, cinnamon, and cloves. They fall over here, too. Though what happened in the last few years before they were given away was “balling”, no flowers produced because it got too cold. With one exception, springs, this century, have been unusually cold, with snow in May every year. I like snow in May, but the guy I live with has a different opinion.
Nearing the end of her shelf life, my grammy claims she is giving serious thought to making peace with indigenous species, calling it gardening, and leaving it at that.
There is that idea. Not necessarily a bad one.
(Besides, look what they’re calling gardening in England now. See “The New English Garden”.)
Once again your mommy’s photos are a burst of color in my unending existence of drab, grey, below-freezing days. I hope that the transformation of the sand pile rivals the roses and peonies and poppies. You and Slipper are cute, of course.
Thanks. We’re not sure why WordPress isn’t sending an email saying there’s a comment, today, but computers are weird. My mommy loved her digital camera, even more than she liked the film cameras.
It started out sunny here, and melting, now it’s cloudy and gloomy. Oh well.