Greetings and salutations everyone; once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to bring you the latest, most up-to-date, and possibly weird news from our garden. You may remember me from such posts about things disappeared as “The Missing Trowel”, to mention just one of the weirder ones.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
I know that you’ll think that we’ve reached a new low here, but really, the guy I live with says this is important, so I’m posting about it.
The guy I live with wonders if anyone has seen his coffee cup.
It’s white, with a blue Qwest logo, and full of coffee. It was last seen at 8:34 p.m. last night, when he filled it with coffee, and looked at the stove clock to make sure it wasn’t too late to drink coffee. After that, it disappeared completely.
Using another coffee cup to play the part of his favorite, this is where it was filled with coffee.
Then, the full cup of coffee gets moved to its strategic place on top of my fort, for drinking purposes. But it wasn’t there. It “turned up missing”, as they say (though neither I nor the guy I live with would say something like that).
strategic place
The coffee cup, unless it’s being washed, by hand, is never anywhere else. The guy I live with doesn’t walk around with a cup of coffee in his hand, and doesn’t take the cup into any other room.
He called his sister, and emailed a few friends, to see if it had suddenly appeared there. He got a haircut today (to help him think) and asked the barbers if they’d seen his precious coffee cup. He even went through the trash.
He was very much afraid that he’d find it sitting in the strategic place this morning, or get a picture of it in the mail with a ransom demand.
Okay, well, that’s the news of the day. Seriously. The missing coffee cup.
I’ll show a couple of pictures just to prove he does have other things going on besides spending hours looking in places like the washing machine for the stupid coffee cup.
Pediocactus simpsonii, grown from seed twenty years old; flowers scented of roses
Violets. Years ago the guy I live with bought some violets from Canyon Creek Nursery, hoping they would spread, and they have. He got the reddish-purple one, too, and wanted to get more, but the nursery stopped selling by mail the year he wanted more violets. My mommy couldn’t smell violets, for some reason. Lots of flowers were spoiled by the snow the other day, but there will be more. This is kind of a dumb picture, with all the sunlight in back. I stepped on the plant right after the picture was taken, too.
So as not to make this post seem completely pointless, we have what I think is a fairly cute mouse movie for you.
Mouse fights. I bet you didn’t know they did that, but they do. (About .08 in the movie.) It looked like no one won. Maybe the mice carried off the coffee cup, except that the back door was closed, and they haven’t been in the house lately. Much, that is.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Good for you Chess giving up and dropping to the ground, I had a chuckle. I thought you were very patient whilst trying to figure out what your guy was doing. I hope you got a nice reward for being such a good boy. Loved the violets, lucky you stepped on them after the photo, that’s good thinking for you and I loved the mouse movie. Of course I don’t need to say how much I loved your pics and movie. Interesting post, I must contemplate the missing cofee cup but I will return…
Thanks; the coffee cup still hasn’t reappeared. I did get a reward. The violets are really all over the place, which is okay. They’re also a month late, like a lot of other things. The mice are now more interested in being outside than inside, because there’s stuff to eat. They’ve always lived under the troughs.
Unlike the guy you live with , I do in fact walk around with my coffee cup, especially on Sunday morning. I also walk around with a wine glass, but that is usually in the evening. They are misplaced quite a bit, and I find them later (sometimes days later) in the garden with dead bugs floating in them. I have to say the bugs seem to prefer wine over coffee.
My buddy Slipper liked both wine and coffee, but the latter only when it had cream and sugar in it. The guy I live with finds walking and carrying cups full of liquid at the same time, without spilling the liquid, to require excessive coordination. The post about the missing scissors https://paridevita.com/2012/05/27/after-all-these-years/ was probably the first time anything lost has ever turned up here. Mostly things just vanish.
Today’s mouse movie provides all the evidence one needs to solve the mystery of the missing coffee cup—those critters are clearly over-caffeinated! If it was my investigation to conduct, I’d begin by interrogating the head mouse. When something goes missing around here, we always blame it on Gramps, or rather his ghost. In all fairness to Gramps, or rather his ghost, he’s probably not responsible for anywhere near the number of missing objects that have been attributed to him. But I know it in my bones—them’s meeces is guilty as all heck! But I will, nevertheless, check with Gramps, or rather his ghost, the next time he pops in. Just to say we covered all the bases.
The guy I live with “remains baffled”. He considered looking through his ancient Sherlock Holmes books for a, uh, clue, but decided not to. Had the cup fallen to the floor and broken, we probably would have heard that, or at least he would, because I’m usually asleep. Oh. The missing cup has been found. The guy I live with was sitting at the laptop, and suddenly looked over at the microwave oven, and remembered putting the cup in there to heat up the coffee. So he opened the door to the microwave, and there was the cup. In his defense, it never occurred to him that he could heat up coffee in the microwave until recently. See, my mommy refused to allow such a contraption in the kitchen, and it wasn’t until after she left us that the guy I live with’s sister gave him an old microwave, which he still hasn’t learned to use properly, except to reheat food.
We are happy to hear that the mystery has been solved. Please tell the guy you live with to take heart: my grammy knows a guy, a mathematical genius, no less, who found a lasagna in his oven a week after the party for which the lasagna had been cooked. Cups of cold tea are found in our microwave ALL THE TIME! Gramps, or rather his ghost, has often been blamed for putting them there. Also perhaps worth mentioning, heating up coffee, tea and sake are arguably the only things for which a microwave should be used.
The guy I live with might argue, because the frozen Indian food from Deep, Mirch Masala, Udupi, etc., is really excellent. Other than that he just uses it to reheat stuff. Like coffee, which he’s dome ,aybe three times, but has now learned his lesson. The guy I live with did put a bag of salad greens into the pantry one time, and didn’t notice it for several weeks. At the other extreme is the chicken he has to buy because he thought he put one in the freezer but cooked it instead. I never put things in places I can’t find them. I don’t have very many things, though, and maybe that makes a difference.
I knew where the cup was, but that’s because I am reading backwards to catch up after a busy week. I used to buy from Canyon Creek; wonder why I stopped. Maybe they went out of business. Must Google. The plants were always good.
It was getting a haircut that obviously made the difference in problem-solving ability. Canyon Creek sent a letter to customers about a dozen years ago, maybe even more, saying they were getting out of the mail-order business. It was a sad day indeed. Maybe they kept on with violets and salvias, but the catalogs stopped coming in the mail. Apparently they’re still around. There’s a website that offers garden design.
I got a box of plants from them every year. Yes, I remember that letter now.
It’s sad, but things change. There’s still Cistus, and Joy Creek, and Digging Dog, and Las Pilitas, and Wild Ginger Farm, and Far Reaches ….
Cistus and Joy Creek are a mere four hour round trip for us and one we try to make at least once a year. Well worth it. I am scared how much I could spend there now that we have a van instead of a little car!
Well, one way to save money is not to bring very much, and leave the credit cards at home. The guy I live with always does that, of course. He’s a shining example of moderation in all things. I mean, he’s so moderate he decided not to move to Portland, just to distance himself from all that temptation.
Portland would be a dangerous city for your guy’s pocketbook. And I think your climate is better for the plants he loves most, perhaps.
Probably, but he could easily change. Being able to grow hakeas, callistemons, grevilleas, and a lot of manzanitas would be quite delightful.
So it is!
Maybe nurseries shouldn’t take credit cards; too much temptation …… there are a few that don’t.