Hello everyone; once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to bring you the latest news from our garden. You may remember me from such weather-related posts as “Drip Drop Drip Drop” and “Snow On My Nose”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in an extremely damp, yet noble, pose.
There really isn’t a whole lot going on right now, because it’s raining or snowing, depending upon what minute you go out and check, but that never stopped us from posting before. I really like weather like this, but the guy I live with says it’s “too drippy”.
I got to go on my morning walk, in the rain and snow, of course, and I had a good time. You can also see that the canal has water in it now.
I needed a biscuit after my walk. Doesn’t it look like I do? (You can see some biscuit pieces on the little rug there, but those were from before. The other rug was being washed.)
Here’s a picture of the drippy garden from the upstairs window.
Here’s Squirrel eating seed. I don’t know the name of this one, so I call him Squirrel. He has his own personal umbrella, as you can see. 
And here’s me being cute. It isn’t all that hard for me, really. That’s the kitchen rug on the chair there, after it got washed. The guy I live with shampooed the carpet the other day, but that was the other day, and today is today. That’s the way we have to look at things. 
Well, so, the biscuit pieces got vacuumed up, and the rug went back in its place on the kitchen floor, and so practically everything is back to normal now. The guy I live with says he might do something with seeds today, but I bet nothing gets done, which is okay, too. 
I’ll leave you with a little movie we made about the weather, and how drippy it is, and kind of gloomy, too, but, as the guy I live with would say in one of his more philosophical moments, good for the garden.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
It’s not easy looking noble while drippy, as I well know. But I think we both pull it off in excellent fashion. My grammy says your drippy weather is forecast to be here by Tuesday, which, as these things go, would have been the next day that she would have had an opportunity to work in the garden. Oh, well…..another time then when the weeds will be bigger and easier to see. My grammy is putting away today’s gardening implements as I write this, or rather she is sitting in a comfy chair directing my grampy. She’s the Gardener and he’s the Groundskeeper, so technically the tools are his responsibility. My grammy would say that a clear division of labor is crucial to any successful enterprise, especially when working with a spouse. I wouldn’t know but I continue to use my acute powers of observation to try to learn as much as I can about my human charges.
Humans are kind of peculiar, as you’ve no doubt discovered. The guy I live with put down a towel so I wouldn’t track mud into his newly-shampooed carpet, and then a couple of hours later he went out to see if the epimediums were up in the shade garden, because a friend asked him about them, and he couldn’t see that they were, and guess what he tracked all over the newly-shampooed carpet? I do worry about whether or not he’s forgotten my breakfast or dinner, or that we go on walks twice a day, but so far he hasn’t, and he wonders why I worry. Pot-kettle, I say. I know he worries about me, a lot. But not about so many other things. Oh, you should have seen him after he retired. Especially the day he got his last paycheck. And then the first pension check, which was prorated, and came to about six dollars. He was certain that was what he was going to get every month, and that he’d made a terrible mistake in retiring. I never think things like that. There’s about half an inch (1.25cm) of snow on the ground, and it’s 3:15 p.m. This is pretty typical for April. Less drippy than in the movie I posted, when it was dripping so loudly I had to go outside to tinkle. (I like to save that for my walks, of course.)
Oh, Chess, you’ve been a busy blogger since I’ve been battleground host, antibiotic versus infection. Doing nothing suits me just fine, but it doesn’t do for every day. Now the guy you live with, dear dog, never is without occupation, either in house or garden. Astonishing how often your carpet is shampooed. But then I’m lax in such matters, the better to stroll around the rose garden. Your film offering is most soothing to watch. Thankfully, I’d read previous comment and pre-tinkled.
Every single photo in this post today is excellent, but the one of you at the bottom of the stairs? looking up? Scrumptious! and most excellent!
Thanks; I like getting all soaking wet, even at my age. We walked in a blizzard this afternoon, and that was really fun. Blizzards at this time of year are pretty much business as usual, though the guy I live with has certain words he uses when it snows in April and May. It’s snowed in May every year except one, since the turn of the century, and before that (from 1961 to 1999), one time, on the first of May. The guy I live with calls it Climate Worsening, and wanted to trademark it, but never did. But anyway. The shampoo attachment to the vacuum cleaner was indeed “a valuable addition to our modern lifestyle”. At first he thought he would have to, like, channel the spirit of Leonardo to figure out how it worked, but he read the instructions and the second time he attached it he did it without even reading the instructions. Pet-safe shampoo too. Infections are no fun.
Excellent pics today Chess and my mum liked the background music to the drippy movie, which was also excellent. Is there a photo you don’t look cute in… I don’t think. You’re too huggable. I’m glad you especially enjoyed your walk in the blizzard and got drippy and trekked mud when you got home and had a biscuit, I’m guessing, to finish off an excellent walk.
It was all just basically excellent, thank you. The weather service says it’s –7.7C at 8:30 a.m. here, and the guy I live with says he doesn’t want to go outside until the sun starts warming things up. He’s so lucky he has me to fill in with posting when he has nothing on his mind, isn’t he? (That’s like always, these days.)
Thank you! That’s my favorite garden view: from above. It’s the only way to grok a garden, if you ask me, which nobody did, but is the reason I don’t enjoy reading a majority of gardening books. No maps. I do not really enjoy a linear garden experience, like from walking to and fro and having to piece it all together in my mind. I am not interested in looking at photos of flower beds or sketches of plantings. I love maps and their non-sequential information and I love a garden experience that lets me “get” it as a whole. Your garden now makes sense to me, Chess, and I can see personality and a point of view, and trails and “rooms” and color patterns and spatial variety and a delightful diversity of texture. It looks wonderful.
It’s dark and gloomy and raining today on the shores of the Long Island Sound and it’s windy, too. But in the low 60 degrees so it could be worse. Me and my cocker spaniel will take numerous walks so the house will be filled with the fragrance of Wet Dog all day. Yay.
Thanks; the guy I live with says it’s “kind of a mess”, but that’s because of the quality of maintenance. “Rather less than one might expect on grounds of this size, don’t you think?” That’s what he says, anyway. It’s really only part of the back yard; the part you can see from the upstairs window. Maps are always excellent. That’s one reason why he likes Three Gardens by Graham Stuart Thomas and The Year at Great Dixter, by Christopher Lloyd, among others. He says he pored over maps when he was a kid. You can get dog shampoo. There’s a reason why I know that.