Hello everyone; once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you the latest news from our garden, or, in this case, just to show a bunch of pictures because the guy I live with says to. You may remember me from such posts as “Nest-Building Time” and “Why A Duck?”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristically horticultural pose.If you looked at this and thought I’m lying in the dirt among a bunch of grasses that really should be mowed, well, this is my “lawn”. The things I have to put up with.

Here’s another shot of it looking in the other direction, like if you were standing on the other side of the pile of gravel (a “garden”) that’s behind me and to my left. The “garden” is in the foreground here. The buffalograss he seeded a while back isn’t growing as quickly as he wants it to, but I would point out that he goes out and looks at it about once every half hour, and so no wonder it seems like nothing is happening.

He did promise me an actual lawn, which we purebred border collies kind of require, and so this is what I have to work with in the “way back”. If this looks weird to you, that’s because it probably is.The first sowing of buffalograss seed didn’t do what he wanted it to (I know why; he didn’t sow enough seed), and so the other day he sowed a whole bunch, and covered it with this reddish sand. I’m sure that will work.

Here are some plant pictures, just to prove that something other than fretting about grass growing is going on here.

Let’s say this is Calylophus hartwegii. It’s a calylophus, anyway. If it were more in focus, you might be able to tell which species it really is, but the combination of fresh yellow flowers and orange spent ones is fairly attractive.It’s related to Oenothera caespitosa. I know this is a really grainy picture, but the guy I live with read the instructions for the camera, and was “trying stuff out”, which is why this came out the way it did. It also explains why the house is full of hawk moths. They spend the day inside the house, and then the guy I live with has to capture them, and put them outside. I know I’ve said that already, but I need to again, for reasons which will be obvious in just a bit. And there was a lot of moaning and groaning about not being able to get the color right on Penstemon strictus. He didn’t know what happened there, but I do have a picture of Penstemon strictiformis, which, if you’re a snob like he is, is “even cooler”. It looks just like strictus to me.

That’s Rosa kokanica to the left.Well, right now I would say that that’s all I have for today, but the guy I live with, who, aside from being busy rooting cactus and watching grass grow, has been putting hawk moths outside, as I said, and the other night he put one out in the front yard, and saw the moon, and had just read the camera instructions where there’s a button you push and you can take “beautiful night pictures without the use of a tripod”, and so he took some moon pictures, and if I didn’t show them, he’d be all put out and stuff.

So here are some moon pictures. These are looking southeast. 

Now that’s got to be all I have. It was about a zillion degrees (F or C) today, and I roasted, so the guy I live with insisted on shampooing me, which was okay because now I feel better, at least a little cooler, and you can see how fluffy and shampooed I look when I was checking out all the barking going on in the neighborhood. I thought about going out to the “way back” to see what was what, but decided not to. The guy I live with’s motto is “why do stuff?”, and I guess that’s mine, too.

In fact, on the little chalkboard next to the wall phone (we still have one of those), there’s a quote from Jack Kerouac which has been there for years: “I am the Buddha known as The Quitter.”

The less you do, the less trouble you can get into. In theory, anyway. 

Until next time, then.