Hello everyone; once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to bring you the latest and most up-to-date news from our garden. You may remember me from such riveting posts as “Baby Blue Jays” and “The Dog Days”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. My ear is getting scratched, as you can see. I like that.
Why not another picture of me? Okay then. Not quite in focus, but still me.
That’s a good start. Both I and the guy I live with know it’s April Fool’s Day, but we decided not to do anything about that, because something even better happened. You may enjoy this.
A couple of nights ago, our driveway and the garage door were egged by what the guy I live with describes as “a bunch of street toughs”. He also says they’re morons, but that’s such a common condition it’s almost superfluous to mention it.
What I suggest you do is take a very close look at both our driveway and the garage door, our quality, freshly-painted, custom-made in Italy garage door (you know, like you see on a lot of garden blogs), and see if you think the egging had any real impact on the guy I live with’s state of mind. (I noticed the egg on the driveway.) The egg is visible on the second panel from the left, in the bottom row. 
Pretty funny, huh. The guy I live with almost said the yolk was on them, but decided against it. Fortunately.
Fairly close to the expensive custom-made garage door, Aloinopsis spathulata is blooming. Look at all the buds, too. 
Before we go into the back yard, I need to show you the Peniocereus maculatus again, just to show how weird it really is. Next to it is a red opuntia from the San Gabriel Mountains in southern California which is going to be tested for hardiness. 
In the back yard again. I’m supposed to say these were shot with the 85mm lens on the DSLR so they can be embiggened. (My mommy loved The Simpsons.)
This is Crocus tommasinianus ‘Pictus’.
Colchicum hungaricum ‘Velebit Star’. If you thought colchicums only bloomed in autumn, I guess you would be in error. These are really little, though, unlike the ones for fall.
And Colchicum hungaricum ‘Valentine’. It’s not so in focus, for some reason, but has pink lines in the middle of it. 
And another shot of the pink form of Chionodoxa luciliae, with bee.
I guess that’s all for today. The garage door thing was good enough to post all by itself (well, and the pictures of me). The guy I live with planted a yew tree today, but we already have some yews here, and there would be all these yew jokes, like when he had it the wrong way around and had to make the yew turn, and, oh, forget it. I’ll leave you with a characteristic picture of me, in my fort. (I think my fort needs a good scrub, which it gets every so often.)
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Like the ram that ran off the cliff because he took a ewe turn, only different.
Uh huh. Just a little different. Yew wouldn’t think yews would do well here, but they do. It makes the guy I live with feel “frightfully English”. Even the Irish yew, the upright Tacus baccata, does well here.
Come now, you have a perfectly cromulent garage door.
Now that the lousy Smarch weather is done, maybe the door can get painted again. With maybe a little scraping first, huh. After it snows. The house was egged before, about 25 years ago. The dried yolk is still stuck to the screen on the upstairs window. (I know this makes the place sound ultra-classy.)
I finally found the bee, Chess. Took me a while, began to believe you’d done April Fools after all, but, no, that little bee was buzzing. Or nuzzling. Whatever its bee business was.
The Aloinopsis spathulata is a great plant, looking much like an aerial map of our over-packed rose garden. Is there a peak time for bulb bloom in your garden, Chess?
Love the diversity in your portraits, dear dog, Chess in happy bliss and Chess at his most urbane and wise gazing out from his fort. Looking at the fort rug and the beautiful Italian garage door (also urbane), I have the belief blue sets the color theme around your house.
The house colors were because the guy I live with kept pestering my mommy about what color to paint the house, and she said she hadn’t decided yet, and finally the guy I live with said he was going to pick out the colors, at which point my mommy said we’ll go to the hardware store and get paint today, and so she picked out the colors then and there. (He had her figured out by then.) But now he thinks he should paint again, and in different colors. Maybe slate green or something like that. This is the time of year for bulbs. Though September is good too. There aren’t any summer-blooming bulbs here any more, because they need way too much watering for here. Mostly South Africans; gladiolus (species like dalenii, oppositifolius), galtonias, eucomis, etc. There was Aloinopsis schooneesii for sale at the cactus sale, but he forgot to get a couple. But there’s another plant sale in 23 days.
The guy you live with should train the mice to become attack mice. That will scare off any local street thugs.
I currently have two patches in my hall that must be repainted because my pure-bred rescue Siamese used them as scratching posts when he was a kitten. Since he is just turning two on tax day, I’m going to wait a bit long in case he has a relapse.
I really like the blue. It is a good luck color that wards off the evil eye. With street thugs like that in your neighborhood, you need it.
Attack mice. We have another excellent mouse movie which we’ll probably post this evening. Featuring squirrel. The guy I live with had cats before he met my mommy, and then the two of them had cats. They lived in a townhouse that had “grass cloth” for wallpaper on one wall, and the cats would climb that. Before he met my mommy, though, the cats were really naughty. One time they grabbed a brand new roll of toilet paper and ran around the townhouse with it. It unrolled as they ran, of course. They got into the instant breakfast (the guy I live with didn’t cook in those days; he might never have turned on the stove), and opened all the packets. They also knocked over the one potted plant, and left a neat pile of dirt on the floor, with a present underneath. The guy I live with declared Martial Law after that. Nothing really changed, of course. The blue was my mommy’s idea, and makes the house look like it’s in Provence. (So he says.) Our little neighborhood has a blue nickname, because of the very high percentage of people in the police department who live here. It’s a pretty quiet neighborhood….
Ooh Chess I do love a good ear rub. Was your guy egging yew on to crack these funnies today, I liked them. Lots of things starting to bloom in your Spring garden, they all appear to be tiny and low growing. Very pretty Chionodoxa luciliae.
There was this one time, when the guy I live with was in an office building, and this elderly dog named Ruby walked up to him, and he took her ears and started rubbing them with his thumbs, and Ruby almost melted. There was a woman standing nearby who said, “Oh, a pro.” He’s really good at ear rubs. Paw rubs are important too. (The guy I live said I spend so little time on them it’s a wonder they ever get sore. I thought that was kind of rude.) It snowed last night. Almost all gone now.
That was rude, I’m a bit the same. Guess what, yes it teemed down last night, more on the way, I guess you have to laugh we’ve gone from one extreme to the other.
After my mommy passed away, the guy I live with had to call his sister to see if dogs really just lay on the floor all day, doing nothing, and she said yes, so he didn’t feel like he was doing a bad job attending to us. I do walk well over three miles (4.8km) a day, and go out to the back fence to see what’s going on. And spend a lot of energy eating, too.