Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to thrill you and chill you with the latest news from our garden. You may remember me from such amazingly wonderful posts as “White Fever” and “Snow In The Forecast”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. We purebred border collies can be quite serious indeed.
You know how they say “March comes in like a lion, but goes out like a lamb”? Well, it never does that here. It comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lion. The weather this morning was very liony.
I’ve never seen a lion, or a lamb, but I know what lambs are without even seeing one. If I saw one, I would know exactly what to do, without being told. My grandpa Flurry went for a trial once, when he wasn’t even one year old, to see if he knew how to herd sheep, which he’d never seen before, and he herded them here, and herded them there, and won a blue ribbon which said “Herding Certified”, so I can tell you I know what lambs are. It’s my job, though, now, as I’ve said before, I’m retired.
What with all the liony weather this morning, we got up later than usual, there being no real need to get up any earlier, but I began to worry that the guy I live with wasn’t going to take me for my morning walk in weather like this. I put on my worried face.
And then added a little, for effect.
But the guy I live with said I was worrying for nothing, since we were going to go. He just hadn’t drunk enough coffee yet. I suppose it would help if he didn’t fall asleep on my walk. So eventually we did go, and I got all covered with snow. It was excellent, as you can imagine.
Later, he was just kind of milling around, after shoveling the liony stuff off the sidewalk, and then the mail came. There was a small box of cactus seeds from Mesa Garden. Cactus seeds are little.
After filling pots outside, and pouring hot water on them (the hot water helps moisten the soil-less mix), and waiting a few minutes for the water to cool, he brought the pots inside and sowed the cactus seed. He bought some propagators from Garden Talk, to grow more seeds. Like he needs more seeds, huh.
The propagator has drainage holes in the bottom, so he lined the bottom with heavy-duty foil. He misted the seeds sitting on top of the soil-less mix.
Then the propagator went on the shelf under the lights. There’s a heating mat beneath it.
We’ll see how long the seeds take to germinate. Watch this space for further news. 
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Hi Chess I do always enjoy your weather videos. It finally stopped raining here but still a bit cold and gloomy skies. Mummy hopes that tomorrow it will be sunny so she can go and tend to all her potted plants which really need some serious tending. Your guy could just about start his own nursery with all the seed he has planted, can’t wait for your weather to improve to see all the new plants he will have to find places to plant. Over the months, the cold hasn’t stopped him, you have showed so many pots of seedlings to plant and seeds waiting to germinate, your guy is going to be busy forever. At least he always has time for you and your walks, in the snow even, with a biscuit afterwards I’m guessing. I’m just going to go outside and bark again now, there is a yappy little dog that lives up the road and whenever it barks I feel the need to go and bark too, it is driving my mum batty.
Barking at other dogs is a lot of fun. I like to do it, and lunge powerfully at them, when I’m on my walk. The neighbor dogs especially. The guy I live with has to hitch me to an extra leash (a regular one) so he can “control” me because I’ve become so muscular, dragging him along on my walks. I don’t bark standing at the back fence like I used to though, with my buddy Slipper, racing back and forth. There are a lot of seedlings. The guy I live with got it into his head that he was going about gardening all wrong. He had a visitor last year who set him on the right track again, though I bet she didn’t know it. After my mommy died, he went to nurseries and bought all these plants it turned out he didn’t really want, and so now, he’s trying to make up for it with a bit of seed sowing. Most of the baby cactus will find a home in a nursery, probably. There are more seeds germinating on the shelves outside, too. (The seedlings are perfectly cold hardy.) He says rain is nicer than snow. He doesn’t have to shovel rain.
Scrolling upon your worried face made me bust out laughing. That seems sort of wrong somehow, but also very right.
Also, when I scrolled to the little black things on lined paper, I thought it was mouse droppings. I was glad to learn it was cactus seeds.
Titan will be hitting us tomorrow with rain, then ice, then sleet, then snow. I had a feeling when I saw that name on the list of storm names that we would be in trouble if we got to the T storm. We are in big trouble, I think.
We could show mouse droppings, though I think this might put off some people. Titan doesn’t sound like a friendly name at all. The guy I live with saw sleet once, when he was in Toronto. He thought it was interesting. (He also visited Niagara Falls, which he’d never seen before. It was in April, and it was still icy, with blocks of ice the size of a house. Horseshoe Falls, on the Canadian side, of course. He says it was one of the coolest things he’s ever seen. Loud, too.) One thing I do worry about is the guy I live with forgetting that we go on two walks every single day, regardless of the weather. He never forgets, but I always worry that he will. He says that for someone who lives in the moment I seem to remember a lot of things that were in moments past, but apparently not this one. I say, look who’s talking.
I’ve been to Niagara Falls a few times, most recently a year & a half ago. I wrote a piece about how the sight/sound/smell of it beckons the wildness in me and how I get the same sensation watching the raging Ohio River in the spring from the observation deck at the Falls of the Ohio State Park.
The guy you live with is better than I am. The dogs I live with don’t always get a walk (yesterday & today), and they only get one a day. In my defense, there are 3 of them, so I get 2 walks just walking them (Daisy & Sammy together, then Buddy by himself).
Titan delivered as predicted. Snow day, with schools & universities closed. Hoping there is no Ulysses.
Yeah, he said it was pretty impressive. It sounded scary to me. Pieces of ice as big as a house. We walk every day, twice a day. Once in the morning, after breakfast, and once in the afternoon, after dinner. I understand that the border collies before me got walked in the dark, but the guy I live with can’t see anything in the dark, and I’d have to lead him around. U could be for Ultrasaurus, too. It’s 57F (13.9C) here, sunny, and the guy I live with has been doing some gardening. The wind came up, and knocked over the personal greenhouses, so he thought that tying them up better might be a good idea. He said they wouldn’t do any good for the cypresses if they blew away to Kansas.
Me too — I had to laugh at that face! Truly Oscar-worthy.
Chess, I was wondering if The Guy You Live With talks to his cactus seedlings. Old Hank Williams, or new Blake Shelton? (Somehow, I think cacti would prefer C&W.) Is that the secret to growing Cacti from speck?
Speaking of Oscar, I’m only watching for Best Costume Design (I have a horse in that race) but I am hoping that Amy Adams doesn’t win. That Golden Globe speech was so icky — I can’t take her thanking that whelp of hers again.
The guy I live with does talk to his plants. Mostly in a sort of sad, imploring way. But they get to listen to opera, which he says makes them grow. Most of the ones he’s growing are native to here, or New Mexico. Some from Utah and Nevada. He guesses people listen to country and western (“both kinds of music”) around here, but he wouldn’t know. Probably more people who live outside the normal growing ranges of cacti like them than people who live near them. One of life’s ironies. He didn’t know who Amy Adams was. He says he does now.
Chess, you’re quite the manipulative purebred border collie, aren’t you? but in a straightforward way, not at all devious. You know the Drinking Game? There should be a Biscuit Game with a biscuit handed to you for each high C in the guy you live with’s beloved opera.
Yesterday – Saturday – during a meeting in the Japanese house at Descanso Gardens we watched as rain fell on old native oaks and their camellia understory and on the orange bridge curved high over a rocky stream. On the way back home, we were treated to a classic L.A. traffic jam as a dammed-up drain created river flow on I-5. Took us an hour and a half to navigate, and I thought we’d have to float the last bit. We were lucky – driving south we saw north-bound traffic backed up past Long Beach. Sometimes it’s better to stay home, Chess, and wait for your guy’s return. No better time to practice the Big Eyes you’ll use on his reappearance.
I’m not particularly clairvoyant but I see cacti seedling photos in both our futures.
We purebred border collies know how to look very, very, very sad. My buddy Slipper showed me how to do it. He had the kind of lips, with a moustache, you might say, that he could use to look very sad indeed. The guy I live with doesn’t mind waiting in traffic all that much, any more, though he usually has to tinkle when it happens. We have freeways here. They go in the wrong directions for people who want to get anywhere, though.
Chess, your sad, sad eyes are mostly undercut by the nearby happy presence of your cheery chew-toy. Stage it better, border collie, and you’ll receive more biscuits.
There is that. Though, notice that my lamb chew toy is upside down. That looks kind of sad, doesn’t it?