Hello everyone; once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to bring you the latest and most up-to-date news in our garden. You may remember me from such amazing posts as “Slush Fun” and “Gardening In The Snow”, among so many, many amazing others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. That’s one of my toys, there. 
It’s supposed to snow, tonight and tomorrow, and snow a lot. That’s okay by me, but the guy I live with would rather have rain. But then he would have to cover the seed frames with window screen, to prevent “drippage”, and snow doesn’t do that, it just sort of falls on the seed pots, but on the other hand, it can break branches and do all sorts of other stuff, so, well, oh, I don’t really care, I’m a purebred border collie who goes with the flow, and here’s another picture of me instead of hearing the guy I live with complain.
Not really a whole lot went on today. The guy I live with hauled a bunch of rocks, even though he keeps saying he’s done hauling rocks, he still hauls them. The front yard is full of rocks now.
He had to do some cooking, since there supposedly wasn’t any food in the house. Of course there was, but mostly just cookies, and I don’t want him eating my biscuits. He made badami murgh, which if you aren’t familiar with it, is Indian almond chicken, and you know that scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (which by the way has been totally spoiled for the guy I live with by Amy Farrah Fowler) where John Rhys-Davies looks down into the Well of Souls and says “Indy, why does the floor move?” My mommy would come up and see what he was cooking and say things like that. “Why is the sauce green?” (I don’t think it looks so green, but he says it is.)
“Why is the sauce green?” Why? 
And after the cilantro and ground spices were folded in.
It reminded me of the time my mommy was sitting in her chair at the table and looked at her dinner and said, “I’m afraid of my food.”
I’m not having any, that’s for sure. The guy I live with, who is not to be trusted in such matters, said “It wasn’t all that hot”.
Um, let’s see. Oh. Me again. 
Now, before it snows and the guy I live with gets all “I hate snow” on me and stuff, here are the miniature beavertails I said I might show, and so I am now. They’re in pots until the snow melts, which it probably all will on Monday.
Opuntia basilaris
A couple of corydalis, too. Forms of Corydalis solida. He has to sit on the path in the south rock garden, which is called Mount Zot for very obscure reasons, to take these pictures.
Harkov
Purple Beauty
That’s it for today, I’m sure. If there was something really interesting, I guess I’ve forgotten what it was, and I know the guy I live with has forgotten. 
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
I love all the you pics today Chess, what are you doing to that toy. Food’s yum and the miniature beaver tails are cute but it’s all about you, as it should be. Did you enjoy your walk?
I did; both of them, thank you. It was kind of a boring day. What with all the rock hauling and everything. The guy I live with says he’s going to get a new tire for the wheelbarrow maybe tomorrow, or the next day, or sometime.
That last photo of you was the cutest dog photo that I’ve seen for some time. We had a beautiful day today -sunny and hot enough to wear just a t-shirt. One of my little magnolias is showing its first buds. I hope your weather improves soon. I still don’t understand the mania for cacti but hey – it must just be me.
Well, we live in a desert. Okay, semi-desert. The guy I live with often asks people which city gets more rain, Denver or Tucson, and people are always surprised by the answer (it’s Tucson), so semi-desert really doesn’t mean anything at all. Desert makes more sense. Cold desert, if you will. (The winter snow we get is useless to plants except as insulation against cold air.) It was very spring-like today (it’s 58F…14.4C….right now, at 9:25 p.m.) and it’s supposed to rain later tonight, then snow starting some time before noon, then stop by midnight tomorrow night. This happens all the time and I have to listen to all the complaining. Most of it really centers around all the mud I get to track in on the carpet he just shampooed. The guy I live with, philosophical as always, was absolutely sure that if he bought magnolias the buds would never freeze (I don’t know why he thought that), and so about three years ago he bought a bunch, and the buds froze the very next year, and so he gave them all away.
Greetings, my fellow noble monochromatic canine!
A beautiful day has dawned here on the Eastern Seaboard, which means we will probably have clouds and showers by midday. Or not. Regardless, my human charges have a rash of outdoor activities planned in opposing corners of the realm.
My daddy continues to rebuild his old truck. He bought another not quite as old truck to drive until he gets the old old truck spruced up, by which point it will be time to rebuild his new old truck. It’s more than I can keep track of but for some reason it seems to make sense to him, in a life is a circle sort of way. My daddy says the only thing new trucks are good for is scrap value. He’s very old school when it comes to trucks. He can afford to be, since, living on a small island, the longest distance he ever gets to travel is under 20 miles. My grammy made a sign for his shop wall that says “Busted Knuckle Garage–Repair and Despair Under One Roof” His knuckles are holding up okay, but he is nursing a nasty burn on his neck from a mishap with a welding torch. I did not witness this, as welding torches are way too scary, a point which I am sure is not lost on you, Chess, and I beat feet when the welding torch gets brought out. In general, I don’t like spending time down at the shop, since it’s usually too noisy, unless I am with my mommy, whose presence makes everything wonderful.
My grammy is procrastinating about getting out into the garden. The day is a-wastin’ and she’s drinking a second cup of tea, checking her email, and reading the paper on-line. There’s a narrowing window of opportunity to get the spring clean up and mulching done and, just like every year at this time, she is fighting off the urge to just plow under the whole kit and kaboodle, bring in a pile of rocks and call it all a Sculpture Garden.
My grampy is anxious to pull out the lawnmower and make a few passes on what we ironically refer to as the Lower Forty. Grampy was a man born to mow and he takes great pride in the fact that he has never used a self-propelled mower in his life! Mowing is his aerobics. My grammy wishes he could find a quieter pastime, as the sound of the mower grates on her nerves, but then it does help to forestall the day when the realm will be swallowed up by noxious and undesirable invasives and it keeps my grampy from going to seed, so to speak. As with most things, we must take the good with the bad.
One thing’s for sure: there’ll be plenty of complaining around here before the day is through! Looks like we both have our work cut out for us. Oh, and please do stay away from the green sauce–you’re mommy was right to be scared! Cheers to you both!
Well, today, as you can see from my latest post, which is almost entirely about me, and so super-excellent, it’s too drippy and chilly to do anything in the garden, and so, except for my walks, we’re mostly staying inside. The guy I live with and my mommy had separate spaces, even in this tiny little house, and he says that helped the relationship, instead of them having to shove each other out of the way while they were working on whatever they were working on. He says the spaces are too separate now. But it worked out pretty well, except when my mommy cooked a turkey, and the guy I live with kept wanting to peek at it in the oven, and he was told not to. It’s so far not really snowing like they said it would. The weather people made it out to be this gigantic blizzard that would cover the city in so much snow, it wouldn’t melt until July. That could still happen, though I doubt it. The guy I live with has a lawnmower. Push type. No, seriously. But now there’s no lawn. Or no lawn to mow in the sense most people used “mow the lawn” in. He thought about getting a scythe, but that’s as far as he got.