Hello everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to tell you all about my day today. You may remember me from such posts as “Dogs” (the post where I introduced myself) and “Pictures Of Me”, which featured pictures of me, among so many, many other posts featuring me.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. This post will be mostly about me, so you already know it’ll be excellent. 
My day started out pretty much like usual. The guy I live with started poking me with his finger at about 9:30 or so, and finally rolled me out of my cozy bed at about 9:45. I got my breakfast, and went on my walk. The guy I live with pointed out the huge clouds piling up over the mountains, but my walk was still sunny, and everything was okay. This has been a really rough summer for me, though.
This is what the sky looked like at noon. Looking northeast.
It started to thunder, and thundered like crazy for about an hour, and it even rained a bit. The guy I live with took a picture of, well, the thing he always takes a picture of, in the rain and wind. Ipomopsis rubra, again. (The pot down at the bottom of the picture is indeed slanted…it isn’t your eyes….and is empty, too.) The camera didn’t get wet like I thought it might. 
While it was raining and thundering, the guy I live with did a bunch of vacuuming (I don’t like that, either), because he said I’d left biscuit pieces all over the new mats and rug. He didn’t get around to vacuuming this side of the rug. You can see that the light is on, on the kitchen table. (The aquarium sitting on cinder blocks used to have a turtle in it. The turtle lived a very long time but went to a new home after my mommy died. It was big, and pretty scary.) 
The guy I live with got hopping mad when he discovered a mouse had gotten in the house last night, and pooped all over my toys. He washed and dried my toys, and then put them back in my toy basket, next to the bookshelves with my mommy’s books. That’s my Nippo, the hippo, on top, there. 
Then, the guy I live with took some pictures of plants, since there are a few in the garden here. This is the Rocky Mountain bee plant, Cleome serrulata. It’s as tall as he is.
Over to the right of this, growing in over two feet of pure sand and gravel, is Agastache ‘Desert Sunrise’. It doesn’t need any watering to do this, if it’s growing in deep, permeable soil. (If it rains, I mean. By the way, the clematis in back is growing in regular garden soil, and is much lower down; there’s a slope right behind the agastache.)
The first of the cyclamen started blooming about a week ago. This is Cyclamen fatrense, grown from seed. More cyclamen are coming in the mail, soon, and guess who’s all excited? 
Way out in back, Sphaeralcea incana, blooming all orange. We have to have a chain-link fence back here, because this is a flood plain. The top of the fence was added later, and was bent by “overweight raccoons” climbing over the fence to get stuff. I bark at them if I see them. 
About two o’clock in the afternoon the sky looked like this.
The guy I live with took some pictures of the baby cactus sitting on the shelves, to show how much they liked all that rain a week ago. Happy, happy cactus. 
And, then, of course, the guy I live with completely freaked out when he saw my hind leg. He was sure I’d injured myself.
It was grape jelly, from the oriole feeders. He felt pretty stupid after he realized that.
Speaking of stupid, I’m sure you’ve noticed the “Wardian case” on the patio table. My mommy arranged stuff inside it, though it’s been knocked over a couple of times and needs rearranging “at some future date to be determined later”. 
Well, a squirrel saw the snail shell in there, grabbed it, and carried it up to the top of the patio cover, because it thought the shell was a nut. What a maroon, huh? The guy I live with yelled at the squirrel, who eventually realized that it wasn’t a nut, and so the guy I live with got a ladder and retrieved the shell, and returned it to its rightful place. We had snails here one summer a while ago, and then another summer a couple of years back.
At dinnertime, which is 3:47 p.m., the sky looked like this.
Then at 6:30 p.m. Purebred border collies look at the sky a lot, if you didn’t know. It’s important to know whether or not you can be out in the garden, puttering around, or hiding in your fort. 
At around 7:15, I thought I heard some rumbling, but pretended it was okay. “Sometimes it helps to look in a different direction”, the guy I live with said, and sure enough, a thunderstorm was heading right for me.
Looking southwest.
It rained for a minute or two. There were some creatures who weren’t at all fazed by the weather, but knowing this didn’t help me one little bit.
There was kind of a sunset, anyway.
Well, that was my day, or at least most of it. I guess tomorrow will be the same, because it’s mostly been the same for almost longer than I can remember. The guy I live with says that everything changes, but the weather doesn’t seem to, much, so I can just hope that he’s right. For once, huh.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Oh my heavens, Chess, the emotions you run through in a day! At one point in your fort you look besieged by thunder but it looks like calm returned in the end. If I had a boxful of clean toys I’d be feeling pretty cozy. Those birdies look pretty cozy out in the rain, I guess when you have pretty red flowers to sip from and grape jelly to eat rain is not much of a bother. What does bother me is a tilted pot, and our backyard is lined with them. The backyard is my husband’s domain, and I look out there to see if the climbers and shrub roses are blooming or if there is a bird having fun in the fountain. I keep my eyes above pot level. I do like watching the sky, especially – yes! I know it’s hard for you to understand – as a storm develops. It’s especially fine out in Dog Park on the Silver Strand when the wind comes up and the sea is frothy white and large grey clouds just sail the sky. We say, “front coming.” Usually doesn’t rain, though, and hardly ever thunders. Firework booms are much more frequent. Thank you for all the garden photos, even though I already have all the flower names written down so I can order. I love looking at your garden, Chess. A treat it is to see it develop.
Thanks; the tilted pot is because it’s tilted, according to the guy I live with, who also explained that there was a tower in Italy like that, too. On Mount Zot, the rock garden here that gets regular water (once every ten days, say), there’s a flower pot lying on its side that has been there for as long as I’ve been here, I think. I don’t know why it’s there, or why it hasn’t been picked up, but it hasn’t. The guy I live with also wanted to retire to the West Coast, which in a way he still thinks of as home (not like here, though, and this home), because according to the Bell Labs book he consulted way back when he was at work (it had to do with grounding telephone cables that come out of utility holes and go directly to a building), the area west of the Cascades and Sierra Nevada has less than five storms with lightning a year, and that sounded ideal for domesticated purebred border collies. (Meaning, ones who needed cuddling, instead of ones forced to herd sheep out in the middle of lightning-prone nowhere.)
You are 1 cool guy, Chess.
Thanks; I guess I would have to agree. It’s been pretty much one continuous thunderstorm here since May, and I don’t like that at all, and yet I’m tough enough to know when to hide in my fort. (Except when we had the “upslope”, and got all that rain; there was no thunder at all.) I just came back from my morning walk, and the same clouds are building up over the mountains as yesterday. The guy I live with says they can’t be the same clouds, but they look like it to me.
Boy, that basket of toys looks familiar! The dogs I live with have such a basket, with some of the same toys — the hippo and the hedgehog (sounds like an intriguing title for a children’s book). I wash their toys every once in a while, too, although because they get grossly dirty rather than because of mouse poop (so far, anyway, knock wood).
Love those red flowers. I planted a cardinal climber that I started from seed so there would be red flowers for the hummingbirds. It’s climbing way more than I’d anticipated. It started blocking the spot in the deck railing the dogs look through to watch for passersby. They found a way to deal with that, though. I went out to find all the vine from that spot had been ripped off & was laying on the deck floor.
Ah yes, blame the dog. The guy I live with has been talking about getting a cat, again, and at least there will be someone to blame for things around here. Cats do bad stuff all the time. Mina lobata, or Ipomoea lobata, is another wonderful climber, attracts hummingbirds. Easy from seed.