Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the excellent purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you the latest news from our garden. You may remember me from such white-colored posts as “Wright’s White” and “A Hint of Winter”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristically pensive pose.
It’s really sunny and windy today, which is why I’m squinting.
sunny and windy
The guy I live with is “fiddling with seeds and stuff” and not much else is going on, why is why I’m lying out on the patio. There’s a rug out there, especially for me, and as you can see, I’m lying on it in the first picture. The concrete is pretty warm, too, though, and so I lie on it, sometimes, too.
Some of the gardening (the fiddling with stuff part) struck me as fairly pointless, but it happened anyway. I mean, the plant he transplanted itself wasn’t pointless,
but you might understand why I say this was pointless when I tell you that this plant is actually dead. Why anyone would move dead plants around in the garden is beyond me, but he does it anyway.
“It might not be completely dead”, he said, as he moved this agave into the front yard.
Well, you see the color of the leaves, right? And that streak of liquid running down one of the leaves? Dead.
Now, it could be, because it sometimes is, that the inner leaves are still alive, because their color is right, and the guy I live with didn’t really feel like putting his hand in the agave to see if the leaves were soft (a sign that it’s dead), so that was the justification for moving the thing.
You can hardly see it here anyway.
The agaves with the white spots on their leaves there were damaged by the sudden cold in November, but they’ll recover. The guy I live with, who supposedly knows everything, says they didn’t have a chance to get winter-hardy before that cold spell.
Whatever, huh.
He saw this yesterday and got all super-excited for a couple of minutes.
Crocus niveus
And then of course there are the snowdrops. Some part of this picture is in focus; you can try to find it if you want to. 
You can also see the coiled seed pod of Cyclamen hederifolium here. 
Some self-sown snowdrops almost growing in the front yard.
I guess that’s it. There would probably be a lot more to talk about if the guy I live with did more interesting stuff, but he rarely does.
At least I get to lie out on the patio and not feel like I should be doing something else.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
That is the most smoochable picture of you, Chess, that’s ever been on this blog. I love it when you squint. (I’ve been remembering and feeling poorly about my own dearly departed dog today, and your face made me very happy. Can’t help it — you’re my virtual DoG.)
SUN! And blue sky!! And shadows!!! These are things that we have not seen here on Long Island, which rolled its eyes on desperate predictions of “the Blizzard of the Century” and only got a piddling foot of snow. And SNOW-DROPS!!! And Crocus!! Now that, that hurts. It’s only a foot of snow, but it buries any hint of flowery presence.
Well, to make up for it, there IS that smooch able picture of you. Thank you, I needed that.
Thanks, and, you’re welcome. I completely agree that I’m smoochable; my mommy used to give me smooches all the time, and now the guy I live with does, too. The picture does make my rather un-purebred-border-collie muzzle a little big, but my mommy thought my “hound dog lips” were very fetching. It’s supposed to snow here in a couple of days, if that helps…..
All those white flowers! I perceive moving half-dead spiky things holds no allure for you, Chess, but certainly the guy you live with engaged in interesting stuff when he earlier planted the cyclamen, snowdrops and crocus. And now we have lovely white medicine sprung from the earth to cheer us. I have a heating mattress pad, Chess, its virtues discovered in Australia, so I know how good the body feels when lying on a heat source and the good way bones feel when warmth penetrates. You also have the sun beaming and the gorgeous blue sky as a comfortable cover. Lucky dog!
Thanks; I am pretty lucky, and I get steak for breakfast and dinner. (Something called “London broil”.) In fact, though, I like to lie out on the patio even when it’s cool, and when it’s really windy, like it was today (but isn’t now).
I hope that plant proves to be alive, after all.
Thanks, but we think not. If you look at the garden into which it was moved, there’s an ocotillo at the extreme left, casting weird ocotillo-like shadows. It is quite dead.
Hi Guys,
One should live in hope. The “dead things” might “undead” themselves to move your garden into that twilight zone of the Garden on the Undead or the Season of the Living Dead or Zombie Agaves take on the World.
Lovely to have a bit of “White Fever” as a counterpoint. I don’t think Crocus niveus ever sees a HINT of snow in its native homes and haunts but it seems not at all put out.
Cheers, Marcus from Down Under
Well, the guy I live with did take Classical Greek in college; maybe that’s why the crocus is happy. It’s seen more than just snow. The gaping maws of rabbits, for one thing. You have to admit that not very many gardeners grow dead plants as well as we do.
I hope you greet them every morning with, “Kalimera”. I have often wondered why this plant is not so widespread. It often grows alongside others, like C. boryi, cancellatus ssp mazziaricus and laevigatus, that are very far flung, but it stays steadfastly in the Mani despite being a very adaptable garden species. M
Things like that are very strange, are they not? Why this crocus seems reasonably happy here is anyone’s guess. The only Greek the guy I live with remembers is “poikilothron’athanat’Aphrodita” (high-throned, deathless Aphrodite), which is probably good enough, huh. Funny, the guy I live with said he was going to get a girl border collie and name her Mani. (In this case, Sanskrit for “jewel”.) It was a good thing he didn’t, because the world really revolves around me.
The first dog that Don and I had was a female Retreiver that we named Mani. She was stolen after we moved out into the county.
The guy I live with says no one would swipe me because they couldn’t lift me, which I think is rude, and because of my need for steak and green peas.
They lifted up the pen fence and enticed her out with McDonald’s. No one stays outside all day anymore because of that.
McDonald’s cheeseburgers are really good. Plain, of course.
Plain is best. Toby got one on the way home from the vet’s office. He loves that place cuz they love all over him.
It’s a pretty good test of whether or not we’re feeling well. When we first thought there was something wrong with my buddy Slipper, two plain cheeseburgers were brought home, and Slipper didn’t want his. I got two; and the guy I live with called the doctor, because that was a bad sign for Slipper. I only get one about once every two years, which is a shame.