Greetings and salutations 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 some pictures of our garden before it gets frozen solid. You may remember me from such posts as “Carpets” and “The S Word”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. I regret to say that this wasn’t a day for totally focused pictures, but I think you can still tell it’s me.
They say it might freeze tonight, though maybe not for our garden, since we’re so close to the foothills, and when cold weather comes from the west, it stays warmer over here because of the westerly winds, so, we’ll see. (When cold weather comes from the north, forget it.)
Here’s the cold weather. This is looking west-southwest. 
The guy I live with thought it might be appropriate to take some garden pictures, just in case. Some of these aren’t hugely in focus, either, but it started to rain a little, and he said it was hard to hold the camera and an umbrella at the same time. (Yes, we have an umbrella.)
I’m in the next couple of pictures, which of course makes them really excellent. In the second one, there’s practically nothing in focus, but you still get the autumnal effect. 
The rarely-photographed path to the “way back”, by the shed.
The rose ‘Darlow’s Enigma’ is blooming in the little garden, my mommy’s garden, on the right. The garden starts right by the post, there. 
And the willow aster, Aster praealtus, elsewhere in the garden. This starts flowering really late. (We’re not going to say “Symhphtytrhm” or anything like that; we say “aster”.)
The redbud is all yellow now. This one is from Oklahoma. I’m not sure that makes a difference. 
And the spindle tree, Euonymus europaea.
And what’s really flowering like crazy are the various selections of Salvia greggii. They either like the shorter days or the cooler weather. Maybe both. 
Oh, well, time for the big news. If you read the blog before I took it over (I know, like why would you, but, say you did), you’ll remember the trellis and the state of disrepair which it was in, well, look at it now.
The guy I live with bought some lath, and spent some time rebuilding the whole thing. The only really weird thing about this job is that the ones slanting from upper left to lower right are inside on the left panel, and outside on the right. Oh, and the panel on the left is narrower than the one on the right. My mommy would not have approved of this faulty arrangement, and would have made the guy I live with redo the whole thing according to her exact specifications. Or she would have done it herself.
“We’re not building the Taj Mahal”, after all,” the guy I live with would say, when they worked on things together.
But, of course, they were.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Hi Chess, you’re looking great. Love always the garden photos, even if they are slightly out of focus, my mums eyes are slightly out of focus at the moment because of allergies so she loves them all. We miss our big rambling garden so we always enjoy yours. We’re glad you’re getting some cooler weather as you don’t like the heat, we’re having the opposite even though it is swinging from summer to winter all the time, don’t quite know where we are weather wise just pot luck on the day.
Thanks; apparently it was hard to focus in the wind and rain. Right now it’s just above freezing, but they say that if the wind comes up, it might warm up later in the night.
My dear Chess, you show a much lessened view as you sashay away from us. Perhaps you take a sniffing moment, thus allowing the guy you live with to hoist camera for the money shot. I note the absence of Crocus from your diary tonight, thus jeopardizing the guy’s reputation for being Crocus mad. Such a sweet shot of the rose – alas, I do not grow Darlow’s Enigma – and of the aster which in our yard is invasive to the point of being the garden’s groundcover. I agree it is big news the lath finally has been repaired. Your guy and my husband evidently learned their carpentry skills at the same school. The big news here is we have acquired an oak from the Santa Ana Botanic Garden, the island tortured kind, Quercus tomentosa. Now to place it. Roses will have to move, of course. Santa Barbara has some great native gardens as they have a long history of doing such there. We saw three gardens by Lockwood de Forrest, Jr., (really III) and Isabelle Green’s own home garden, full of cisterns and a pond, grey water uses, vegetables, fruit trees, vines and native plants. Weather was perfect, much as it appears where you live, Chess. I was talking to some Northern California guy about this garden blog I read posted by a Border Collie, and he whipped out his phone to show photos of his own Border Collie. A lovely dog, really — but not a patch on you, Chess.
Thanks; I have lost some weight. My walks aren’t very long, these days, because my left leg is still sore from where the toenail broke. But I still have a good time. There’s kind of a lull in the crocuses just now, or, maybe, no one looked at them today. There are four Darlow’s Enigma in my mommy’s little garden, three of which were planted after she left us, and they scent the whole garden for a very long time. They were killed right to the ground, or almost so, by last winter, but grew back. (They’re on their own roots.) We used to have a pond, or pool, here, but it got filled in a few years ago. The guy I live with suggests the oak might be Quercus tomentella……California has a lot of very cool oaks. There are maybe thirty oaks in the garden here, but mostly little ones, and almost all scrub-type oaks. There would have been three times that many, but a lot of them died, which can happen with container-grown oaks, especially if their roots are unhappy in some way.
Fall (aka autumn) looks lovely there at Chess manor. I like the new trellis — it has an intriguing M. C. Escher look to it.
Thanks; it only slightly froze here last night. Not enough to start a clean-up project. Enough lath left over for another trellis, though, maybe.