Hello everyone; yes, 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 (and the house). You may remember me from such newsworthy posts as “Sprinkles” and “A Wet Afternoon”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristically weather-related pose. If you think I look pathetically sad, that’s because few creatures can look as sad as I can. 
Incidentally, you may wonder about the thing to the right of my fort. That’s an old-time heavy-duty wooden yardstick, labeled “Chas. H. Dauchy Co.”; that was a paint company in Troy, New York.
But back to me and my tribulations. The weather prediction for today was a “seventy percent chance of showers”. That sounded okay, but it thundered on my morning walk and so I had to hurry home, to get all snuggled into my fort. Nothing happened for a while, and then we got some showers.
The guy I live with explained that this is an election year, and that, since words tend to lose meaning at times like this, what you saw on the movie could possibly be defined as “showers”. I stayed in my fort, but the guy I live with collected about seven gallons of rain water for the house plants.
Yes, we do have house plants. Actually, a lot of them. Here’s one blooming right now, in the house.
Huernia oculata
The sky started to clear, and then it started to get cloudy again, and there were, yes, “showers”. This is what the “showers” looked like from my fort. (I didn’t make this movie, though.)
Eventually the “showers” stopped, and the guy I live with decided it was “high time to get a good hummingbird picture”. They fly away when they hear him turn on the camera, so this was about the best he could do. The light was “weird” again because it was all drippy outside. 
People like me know that the most practical place to be in weather like this is to stand in front of the refrigerator, in hopes that a biscuit might come my way. One did, after a while.
They (the same people who predicted “showers” for today) say it’s supposed to “dry out” for the upcoming holiday, so I better get out my water wings, huh. The guy I live with said all the rain was good for the autumn-flowering bulbs, to come later, but all I care about is less thunder, and more biscuits.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Chess, I saw the weird light post before a stressful meeting, and this post afterwards. Your trials and tribulations, while no doubt stressful to you, take me away from the cares of this world. I’m assuming that the movie in the previous post is supposed to be pitch-dark? This rain one, however, is filled with luminous greens.
My brother (the one with all the wildlife) buys his bird food from Costco. It is apparently quite cheap. I’m told that the Costco cat food is highly rated by Consumer Reports. Perhaps your guy should look into dog treats from Costco and/or dog food. I love the hummingbird. I haven’t seen one in the wild since I left LA back in 1992.
I know this is a dumb question, but does the guy use rain barrels to collect rain for the house plants?
The movie from yesterday was indeed taken in the dark, though you can see a few flashes of lightning which eerily illuminate the back yard. If I weren’t terrified of thunder and lightning I could have stood out there and been especially awesome, when briefly lit. My food is now I&Love&You Beef Booyah Stew. It comes in cans. The guy I live with is a superb hunter. The stew is really good, and has about the same calories as the totally icky prescription food which I decided I wouldn’t eat. He said that was okay. He considers himself to be a fairly sophisticated consumer of food, but does draw the line at those beef balls (also come in pork, shrimp, etc.); the gray spongy things that you can float in a bowl of Thai noodle soup, say. I therefore decided to draw the line at the icky gray food he was trying to force (gently force) on me. No rain barrels. The dishpans which have been featured in some pictures, but also, if you remember the Trash Can of Mystery sitting on the flagstone; well, that was used to collect rain water pouring from the (blocked) gutter over the driveway. (The guy I live with made a mental note to clean out the gutter again.) We can’t remember if this is technically illegal or not, but it was only seven gallons. For the house plants. There’s a weeping fig (Ficus benjamina) in my bedroom which was looking very unhappy earlier this summer, and it got a drink of rain water, and immediately grew zillions of shiny new leaves. The guy I live with got the message. No need to fertilize; just use rain water.
Weird, cool flower. You’ve got a pretty nice view from your fort, dear fluffy boy.
Thanks; I agree that the view is nice, though I prefer to lie out on the patio. Or, if the guy I live with is working in the garden, go out and sit with him. It’s fun watching people work. Weird flower indeed. It doesn’t smell, unlike many of the others.
I read your last two posts, Chess, in the desert, a place devoid of something that enables video-watching and commenting. (gnashes teeth) I was smack-dab in the middle of gated planned-communities with rolling green lawns, trees, bushes, and herds of gardeners all armed with noisy machines. What have we done with the desert? Deserts are special spots of unique beauty and peace and, yes, struggle. Now home again, I can watch those lovely videos of rain pouring down, and remember the days of watering houseplants with captured rainwater. (heaves big sigh) Oh, why would filling trashcans with rainwater be illegal? The place you live in is almost as strange as the desert I visited. In the end photo, Chess, you appear much the high-ranking Border diplomat having his portrait done by the current society portrait artist. Certainly you deserve the reward of a biscuit after portrait-sitting duties are complete.
Thanks; I do get a lot of biscuits, though the guy I live with says I have to mind my calorie intake now. I think a picture of me painted by Sargent would have been memorable. (My mommy was agog when she saw the real life Sargents at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.) The guy I live with says we’ve gotten about an inch of rain for the month of August. The movies make it seem like much more, don’t they? It’s rained almost every day, but usually just brief sprinkles, accompanied by lots of thunder. Apparently runoff from the gutter is someone else’s water, though if it runs off into the garden it’s ours. That’s why the sand piles, for plants that grow in such environments, and also why most of the garden is mulched with rock, not pieces of wood. Water permeates the rock, but just bounces off wood. The guy I live with reads California water blogs, too. I guess that once people travel past the “tree line” (Gary Snyder’s definition of “the west”), weirdness sets in. As I said before, people with relatively tiny green lawns in this neighborhood pay a couple hundred dollars a month for water; our bill this month is fifty-six dollars.