Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to bring you the latest, most up-to-date, and most with-it news from our garden; in other words, all the news that’s fit to bring you. You may remember me from such with-it posts as “The Mouse Movies” and “An Icky Day”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristically sad pose, after learning that I don’t get anything at all to eat until about ten o’clock tomorrow morning. 
This can’t be right, can it? I might not make it that long without food….
The guy I live with explained to me that I just have to have some blood drawn to make sure the Rimadyl is working okay inside me, but why, oh why, does this have to be about food instead of something else? If the guy I live with said, let’s say, that I couldn’t listen to any Wagner played at top volume for the next day or so I’d be okay with that, but food? I like food a lot.
The guy I live with just said “That’s obvious”, which is think is pretty rude. He did point out to me that he shared some really runny and smelly cheese with me earlier today, and it was really good, and he also said this will all be over before I know it, so why can’t it just be over now?
I know he really cares about me, what with me being my mommy’s little angel and all, but still. I’m used to waking up, getting out of bed, going downstairs, having the back door opened for me, and having my breakfast made for me, in just that order. I don’t like changes.
The guy I live with telling me that everything changes hardly helps at all.
One thing that did change here was the color of the stone, now stones, or rocks if you insist, under the pinyon. There are supposed to be more, but for now there aren’t.
Oh, and by the way, if you really want to be thought of as with-it, as they used to say in the Sixties, long before I was born of course, you call it “stone”, and not “rock”. Though, these are rocks, so I don’t really get it. What the guy I live with thinks of is that memorable phrase in George Schenk’s Moss Gardening (one of his all-time, top five favorite gardening books), about rocks I mean, is “pieces of the planet”. Here are two pieces of the planet. The right color, this time. 
In our plant pictures section, I only have a couple of pictures. (That’s because the guy I live with only took a couple of pictures.)
Another “this really is a plant” type thing.
Neohenricia sibbettii
And Stomatium mustellinum opening its flowers. This was taken about 8:00 p.m. tonight. He had to lean over the trick-or-treater fence, visible at the bottom, to take this picture. 
The guy I live with says that the flowers of most stomatiums are scented, like of pineapple or banana. I don’t care for pineapple so much, but I used to like bananas. I don’t know why I don’t any more, though a banana sounds pretty good right now, since I haven’t eaten anything for three minutes. My grandpa Flurry really liked bananas.
Well, if you don’t hear from me in the next couple of days, it’s because I’ve withered away to nothing. The guy I live with says that won’t happen, but I just don’t know….
Until next time, then.
I hope …..
the miserable gardener 
Oh, the photos, Chess, perfectly convey your current distress and malaise. Can you both distress and malaise at the same time? I think the photos prove it.
The Neohenricia sibbettii is beautifully placed amidst the *stones*. And I gotta love any plant emitting the scent of pineapple.
About you withering away? not from the evidence in the pinyon photo, dear dog. May your blood test show Good Health.
Thanks. The guy I live with thinks (for once) that the tests will be okay, since he watches me very closely, obsessively even, and the Rimadyl has really helped, but the tests have to be done. Just to make sure I can still keep taking it; that’s the whole point. But I haven’t eaten in almost two hours now. ….. I do know that I get tested and stuck with needles way more than the guy I live with does. I know that says something, but still, two whole hours without food. The guy I live with said there used to be a stomatium in the back yard rock garden and it had these little yellow bottle-brush flowers at night, and he would try to get my mommy to come out at night and sniff the flowers. She never wanted to, because this was in February. Way back when winters here weren’t so awful. He says Stomatium agninum is the one that smells like bananas, and you don’t even have to bend down to sniff it.
Chess, your pictures are heart-rending, especially the one where you can barely drag yourself down the garden path. Just remember that it is upsetting to the guy you live with to watch you suffer from pangs of hunger. Try to sleep as much as possible, and soon starvation will be a bad dream.
Thanks. I’m home; I’ve had my breakfast, and everything seems right with the world. Whew, huh.
Happy Earth Day, Chess, to you and the guy you live with. I really do think you should have been up there with the “intriguing selection of critters” in the Google doodle. Eat slowly now, it’s easy to get carried away when you’re half starved.
Thanks. We forgot all about Earth Day, and then the guy I live with did some digging, to sort of honor it. I notice a surprising thing. The guy I live with is still all in a tizzy (or, to use a purebred border collie word, “beflortled”) about the whole thing, fasting, having to go to the vet early in the morning, and all that, but for me, things are back to normal and everything is fine. He hasn’t learned anything from this.
I know what I’m like if I don’t get my breakfast cup of tea on time. I get mean and I chomp on whoever is keeping me from my daily Assam. But I know that pure bred border collies don’t have a mean gene in their bodies so at least I don’t have to fret about the Guy You Live With getting chomped. Heart shredded to pieces, yes; teethmarks, no.
That is a handsome flagstone path. Oh, I can imagine how warm those stones can be to bare feets taking their human and canine bodies and brains on an evening walk in High Summer. I love touching warm stones at dusk. It’s the only time I can get my hands on photons.
I got my breakfast the minute I got home, though, and so all my deprivation of the night before was completely forgotten. My mommy set the flagstone. The guy I live with did all the heavy lifting, but the really big one (the one that the dark pot is sitting on), had to be wrestled into place very carefully. (It about three inches, 7.5cm, thick.) The one I’m about to walk on has lifted a little, but otherwise, they’re so level, they’re level. Cool to lie on, too; I sat on the stone and watched the guy I live with scrape out grass after we came back. Watching is fun.