Greetings and salutations, everyone, and Happy New Year. Yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here pretty much just to say happy new year and not much else. You may remember me from such posts “Winter Creeps Onward”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. 
Maybe it was the cold we had night before last (the thermometer reads bottom to top, on the left)
or maybe the guy I live with is just losing it, but he’s been saying “We’re living in the future” an awful lot lately. I know this sounds weird, but see, to him, someone who grew up in the 1950s, the year 2015 seemed so far in the future that he could hardly think about it, and now it’s here, and it doesn’t seem like the future at all. Which is why he says we’re living in it, because it’s the present, which is the same as the future but less imaginary, and it isn’t anything like he thought it would be. He says there’s a lesson to be learned from that.
It’s still chilly here, but not as chilly as it was. Just gloomy. The guy I live with says it feels like “someone else’s winter”, which is weird. I mean, to say. Who else’s winter could it be? 
True, if you look back at posts at this time last year, it wasn’t “so horribly snowy” until a little later in the month, but not every winter is the same here, so I don’t see how he can say any of this. Whatever, huh.
Oh and he also wonders why people say “twenty fifteen” when they said “two thousand and one” for the year 2001, instead of “twenty oh one”, but, oh, well, you know. Hopefully no one will say “two thousand and fifteen” because who has the time for that?
So I guess this is going to be a long haul for the guy I live with. He doesn’t just mostly sit here waiting for spring, though. He spends a lot of time down in the laundry room
and in the upstairs bedroom (which was never a bedroom). 
Yes, the irises. (The flat on the right in the last picture is cactus seedling, but the rest are irises.) He got these things called “nanodomes” to fit over regular flats, so he didn’t have to buy more propagators. The nanodomes have vents on the top, too.
You might wonder about the strip of burlap in the first picture (it filters the light), and the lack of any light on the second-to-bottom shelf. That’s because the fluorescent lights he had were over twenty years ago, and nothing happened when they were plugged in, so he has to go get more, eventually, but the seeds germinate a little better is there isn’t blazing light on them. At least that’s what he says other people say.
There is another fluorescent light in the bottom picture, and it’s over on the left, a vintage 1950s fluorescent lamp. In other words, as old as the guy I live with. It still works, too.
Isn’t that all extremely interesting? Maybe it would be if you didn’t have to live with it every day. The constant checking of the iris seeds in their little paper underwear things, running out to the garage to get perlite and plant something if a seed has germinated, and so on. Fortunately there aren’t many ungerminated seeds left.
That’s how he’ll spend his winter. I have a better idea of how to spend what looks like it will be a long, long winter indeed, and I’ll show you how, and then let you go. Oh, and Happy New Year, even though I already said it once. 
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Once more with feeling Happy New Year!
Thanks; same to you.
Hi Dudes,
HAPPY NEW FUTURE!
Loved ALL of the post. It was so wonderfully, wonderful.
The crazy Dr. Oncocact and his faithful companion.
All the very best. You’re two of the things that make life sweet.
Cheers, Marcus from Down Under
Thanks. A lot. Though, the guy I live with says he wants to be known as “Lord of the Oncocyclus and Keeper of the Flame of Shoshana”, after he learned that some scholars think that the ancient Hebrew word referred to irises and not lilies (hence Iris susiana), and that the Biblical “lilies of the field” were actually oncocyclus irises. “It just sounds cool”, is what he says.
Oh, I don’t know, I said “two thousand fourteen” all last year; why would I not say “two thousand fifteen” now? Hmm… However you pronounce it, best wished for the New Year to you, Chess, and The Guy You Live With. -Beth
Thanks, and same to you.
“Two thousand fifteen” does take an awful long time to say, though. I mean, one extra syllable. (The guy I live with is the epitome of sloth.) Like the snowdrop that was blooming up until a while ago, he would just say “the snowdrop”, instead of “Galanthus elwesii var. monostictus Hiemalis Group”, because life is too short, I guess.
It’s just like those crazy French, who add the word “and” only in the case of 101, 201, 2001, etc. But, being the cultured creature that you are, Chess, you hardly need a French lesson from little old moi.
Yes, very cultured indeed, and now wondering why people said “nineteen aught five” for 1905, but no one said “twenty aught five” for 2005. Or maybe they did and we weren’t listening.
Wishing you a good New Year.
Thanks, and same to you. Now if it would only warm up some. (Supposed to be around freezing tomorrow, I think, during the day.)
Just returned from Dog Park – Petey informed us he needed to run *now* – where we talked to a gentleman who was there straight from Park (maybe Parker?), Colorado. He informed us snow was three feet deep. Another lady chimed in, saying her trucker husband had spent New Year’s Eve with his truck parked on the side of the highway somewhere in Colorado. He himself shivered all night rolled up in a sleeping bag and blanket in 34 degrees F, no heat. At least the guy you live with, Chess, should be happy for the snow covering his outdoor plants and seedlings. And I can quite understand the guy’s monitoring of seedlings with a set-up such as he has arranged. He undoubtedly, he is practicing his idea of the Danish art of hygge – a concept currently all over my blog world – while you practice your version so well shown in the last photo. Nice to know you two are acquainted with Marty McFly. Happy New Year to you both!
Thanks, same to you. Parker is a town here. Or I guess a city. When the guy I live with moved here, “dragged kicking and screaming from California”, Parker was like a gas station and maybe a feed store. Then there’s South Park, a real place, an hour’s drive west, and up, from here. In, um, Park County. He had to look up hygge. My grandpa Flurry had a saying, “Roasty, toasty, cuddly, cozy”, because when he was super old he got tucked into bed (my bed, though it was his then), and snored away all night, under the covers. Speaking of things Danish, there is a breathtaking blog from there. http://polarbearstale.blogspot.com/ Breathtaking because it’s so beautiful, and because it’s so much like my mommy. I mean when he showed it to people who knew her, their jaws dropped, it was so much like her. He even commented, and he doesn’t do much commenting, on the blog a while back because it struck him so.
Oh, such a site! Thank you. Ups my hygge immensely. Tells me much about your mommy, Chess.
You’re welcome. Is that not a gorgeous blog? Now the guy I live with is thinking about Taste of Denmark, a very good pastry shop not very far from here. “They even have cheese danishes.”
I think people say “two thousand and one” because once upon a time there was a movie of the same title that, although I’ve never seen it seems to have made quite an impact on the culture. After all those “teen”-years, a “thousand”-year was quite a novelty. Once we knew that the two-thousands would be so, ever so much worse than the nine-teens, there’s nothing fun about it ay more.
this reminds me of a little story I have about numbers and the way they are spoken. Back in the 1990s, when I worked for an English company and thus spoke to Brits every day, I was discussing a number that, on the page, was written “1900” (it was dollars, by the way). What I said aloud was “Nine-teen hundred”. The Brit to whom I was speaking thought that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard, and I had quite a time convincing him that in America, counting off hundreds by the elevens, twelve’s, thirteens, etc. was very normal. This was back when the Brits also said things like “One thousand million”, but I think they have converted to our “billion” by now.
Thank you for explaining your thermometer. I’ve never seen one that reads top to bottom.
The thermometer reads bottom to top on the minimum side. On the maximum side, top to bottom. Think the glass tubes are really one tube in a U-shaped configuration. We don’t look at the max side very often at this time of year. It’s weird, you say “two thousand” instead of “twenty hundred” but you say “twenty one hundred”. The guy I live with has only made one New Year’s Resolution (I, of course, don’t need to make any), and it isn’t to start saying “two thousand one hundred”, or worry about people who do. The movie. The guy I live with saw it when it first came out, and he thought it was interesting that it introduced people to classical music, but that’s about it. It was rented last winter during a long period of intense boredom, and the movie was even more boring. Some things don’t stand the test of time. He also says the Britons probably converted to “billion” because of Carl Sagan. “Billions and billions of stars.”