Hello everyone; it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to bring you the latest news from our garden. You may remember me from such memorable and delightful posts as “A Rare Visitor” and “Grace Under Pressure”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristically hopeful pose. Talk about grace under pressure. I’m gazing longingly at the cabinet where the biscuits are kept. If you didn’t know how to gaze longingly, this is how it’s done. 
I got a biscuit, of course. It was a really nice day today, and since it was, the guy I live with raked up stuff and cut stuff down and walked around and looked at things, and he might even have done some thinking, but that part’s hard to tell when it’s happening. Sometimes he just stares at things and pretends to think.
Along with all the sweeping and raking, the guy I live with found a ladybug. 
At first he thought it was an expired ladybug, since as you can see the wings were kind of sticking out strangely, but he blew on it and it started to move. He took a tiny stick and poked the wings, to see if they would retract, but nothing happened. The ladybug crawled all over the scoop you see here, then fell or flew down to one of the seed frames. See it, there? 
The guy I live with, like any normal person, has always thought ladybugs were cool, and of course they’re very beneficial for the garden. And they bite, too. He said you don’t go to the hospital and get treated for a ladybug bite or anything like that, but the bite is noticeable.
Every time he sees a ladybug he remembers being a kid, and one of the neighbor kids claiming that the ones with bigger spots were called manbugs, which was possibly the beginning of an almost infinite number of dumb things he’s heard over the years. But he always thinks of it.
The guy I live with also remembers a dog named Ladybug, who greeted people at a bookstore he and my mommy went to a lot. Ladybug never got up; her tail just wagged. He said you had to step over the dog to get into the store. That’s how the smartest dogs do their guard work, of course. Someone tries to sneak in, and they fall over the dog.
Anyway, the ladybug disappeared.
After all that work, raking, and looking at a ladybug, the guy I live with took some snowdrop pictures and then suggested we take a nap, which we did, and that was excellent. 
He also took some pictures of the “third wave” of cactus seedlings, just in case anyone thought it was hard to grow cactus from seed. There must be at least three hundred of these. Maybe four hundred.
Isn’t this a little ridiculous?
Well, later on, the forecast called for snow, but instead it rained a little, after it got dark. It hardly ever rains here in the winter time. The guy I live with says possibly six times since he and my mommy moved to this house in December, 1985. Three of those times were just last winter. And it doesn’t rain all that much when it does. But it smells really good outside.
“Unlike inside”, said the guy I live with, but whose fault was it that I got two pieces of turkey? Anyway, he has a candle burning.
That’s all for today. Not really very much, but I wanted to show the picture of the ladybug. And me, too. 
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
A nice variety of things to talk about again today Chess after your adorabe biscuit face. Very interesting. It is nice to know the weather was nice for your guy to get out and do stuff, even if it was just looking and thinking. It is probably strange to see a ladybird in the winter, it must have been lost. Tuckered you both out and off to sleepy byes you went. As usual great Chess photos.
The guy I live with says that years ago, at the driver’s license place, there was a sign which read “In order to get better pictures, we need better faces”. As I have an excellent face, excellent pictures are the logical outcome, don’t you think? There have been a few bad ones of me, but that wasn’t my fault. There were honeybees at the snowdrops yesterday. I just made the guy I live with get up at 5:30 this morning, for no reason, really, so he’ll probably be sleepy all day today, and it’s supposed to be nice again, too.
Yes I do agree and such a story your face usually tells. Dying to hear why you made your guy get up so early Chess. I’m getting closer to those sheets. I started resting my chin on mummy’s foot when I thought she was just pretending to be asleep and then I actually nosed her in the head another morning. I live in hope.
I don’t know why I had to get up so early, but I did. It gave us an excuse to take an early nap, though. Living in hope isn’t too bad. Maybe one day she’ll realize how much better a dog’s life can be when they get to sleep in a real bed..
A truly soulful longing gaze—I have no doubt it brings you much success.
Speaking of ladybugs—my grammy once lived in a house that was on their migration path. Come early autumn, the sunny side of the house would be covered with ladybugs and many (and I mean MANY) of them would make their way into the house through various crevices and then huddle in groups in the ceiling corners. They would spend the better part of the winter in their huddles, but come late winter they would become more active and begin flying around, frequently dropping into family meals or morning cups of coffee. My grammy put up with this inconvenience thinking she was providing shelter to the noble ladybug only to learn that they were not “ladybugs” at all but an impostor species from the Orient. That’s the point at which the Electrolux was brought into action…..
The guy I live with planted a buffalo grass lawn next door, and one year it was so ladybugful that you couldn’t walk on the grass, because they flew up by the hundreds. He spent some time looking at native vs. non-native ladybugs and got a headache. My mommy would say that they’re not “true bugs” and so, hearing her voice saying that, he looked up true bug and his headache got worse. He doesn’t mind bugs so long as they don’t crawl on him.