Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the getting-huger-every-day purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here, this time, mostly to talk about me. You may remember me from such posts as “The Ugly Garden”, among an increasingly large number of others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. I do know that my nose is slightly dirty. There’s a lot of dirt out in back, and I like to stick my nose in it. 
Since we don’t have a bunch of garden pictures, how about another one of me? This is me trying to hide from the camera.
This one is pretty good too.
Anyway, remember that it was raining pretty much constantly for over a week here? Well, last Saturday it rained, and then it started to snow. Everyone in Denver was like, “It’s the end of the world”, but it snows in May here all the time, and when I woke up on Sunday, it was a winter wonderland. 
I thought it was really excellent. Much, much better than rain. For one thing, it’s fun to eat.
The snow was gone by the end of the day and things were more or less back to normal by Monday morning. 
That didn’t mean that the guy I live with raced out and started gardening; just the opposite. He mostly sits around and drinks coffee and water, and plays with me when he thinks I need playing with, which is most of the time.
Speaking of that, yesterday I got to go to Puppy Day Care, which is at the same place as the Bad Place, though it turned out this time instead of getting stuck with needles and poked and prodded, I got to play with a bunch of other puppies all day long. I played and played. There was this one puppy, with really short legs, which I was told was called a basset hound (the guy I live with said it probably came from the French meaning “low”) and I really liked playing with the basset hound. When the guy I live with came to get me, I said goodbye to the basset hound, and I got my report card, with pretty good grades, or so I hear.
The guy I live with said he was able to move a bunch of seed pots while I was away. He said that he had this freedom to do all this stuff, without my “help”, but then at some time in the afternoon he got all teary and started to miss me a lot, but that’s the kind of person he is, I guess. I was really tired when I got home.
Here are the seed pots in shade, and none of these has any germinated seeds in them. He says that’s okay. Oh, and if you’re wondering, that’s Nedgehog, my toy hedgehog there. It’s not like some weird giant bug or anything. 
The seed pots in sun all have seedlings in them, and I think you can see some of them.
Right across the path from the patio where these seed frames are, the evening primrose, Oenothera caespitosa, is blooming. It started night before last, I think. It blooms at night and smells like lemons.
So that’s pretty much it. It snowed, we didn’t do much, and then I went to Puppy Day Care, and now I’m home. The guy I live with says I can go next week if I want to, and I think I do.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Puppy day care sounds like fun, I only ever got to go to training with my mum and we weren’t allowed to go near the other dogs, you are very lucky and yu get to go again!
It was a lot of fun, though kind of exhausting. I learned stuff. There are people there who are like these “puppy experts”, and I get graded on stuff I do. And I forgot to say in my post that the guy I live with packed my lunch for me, too.
My dog Daisy has a hedgehog too and it’s her favorite. The cat likes it too and hunts it and carries it around and cries out while she does it. Daisy doesn’t know about this. Would you want a cat to share your toys? Do you share at day care?
I don’t think I would care to share my toys. They’re ones I inherited, you know, and so they’re kind of special. I actually have two hedgehogs, but one doesn’t have a name. At Day Care we share everything, except for my lunch, which is my own personal food. The guy I live with said it reminded him of carrying a metal lunch box to school and feeling like an idiot, because all the other kids had paper bags, and of the smell of milk in a thermos. (He’s fairly lactose-intolerant, too.) And then of the cafeteria and mushy green peas and what he thought was ice cream that turned out to be mashed potatoes served with an ice cream scoop. And then forgetting his lunch money.
I had a lunch box, too…several lunch boxes. The problem with them is that the thermos that came with the lunch box always, always got broken, sooner or later. They were very fragile, and they were lined with glass. I wouldn’t know about the breakage until lunchtime, when I’d take the thermos out of the lunch box and hear the tell-tale slurrying of milk mixed with tiny bits of glass. Until I got a new lunch box, I’d have to buy my milk at school — 5 cents for half a cup. Yech. These days I can’t stand the idea of drinking milk.
Mani, you are blessed with a happy and lovable resting face. (Wait. Do embiggening pure bred border collies ever rest?)
That photo of the evening primrose! Beautifully shot, totally in situ: the wonderful grey and greens of the leaves and seems, and the delicate pink of the buds, and the 3/4 portrait of the flower in bloom: I grade it A+.
Thanks; yes, I do take naps. I live with an expert napper, and we take naps together. I’ve never had cow’s milk, and the guy I live with says it’s icky. In more solid forms, like Brie which I’ve never had, it’s quite palatable, according to him.
You have a puppy pal! You play well with others. I’m so happy for you. Do we get to see photos of you and your bassett friend? Is it a girl bassett or a boy bassett? TGYLW appreciates you more, I’m sure, after a day apart.
We’ve had gorgeous, sunny, warm weather here in NYC. Your Denver snow is WEIRD. My library had our first plant sale on Sunday, which went well. I bought marigolds and two roses for my coop (yes, we are conventional) which have been planted. It is amazing how controversial planting a rose bush can be in group living.
Yes, I do have a puppy pal. Several. I think the basset hound was a boy puppy. The guy I live with forgot his camera, of course. The picture of me outstanding in the garden was the only time we’ve seen the sun in about the last three weeks. It’s gloomy here. The guy I live with is “super hoping” that this doesn’t mean the weather will be like this for the next four months, which can happen.
I’m interested in all those pots of seeds. I hope you will show us some more photos of them when they get bigger.
The pots of seeds are, apparently, “interesting”. Many are from extremely old (15 to 20 years) seed from collecting expeditions. (Not done by the guy I live with, who is a stay-at-home, stick-in-the-mud type person who enjoys vicarious travel to remote places via seed purchases. Or, in the case of the old seed, seed gifts.)
You seem no longer wary (about your new home with the guy you live with?), and look a relaxed and totally excellent puppy, Mani. Our Petey was wary because he was found abandoned in a locked apartment, then turned over to the Humane Society where he languished for months). After he lived with us several weeks, we let him off leash at Dog Park — and brought him back home again. I think he trusted then his rescue would last. Not quite your story, Mani, but I imagine the same dynamics operate in altered form. The way you have adjusted to the guy’s seed mania is inspiring. The older seeds, it sounds like they suffered abandonment. Future photographs of the pots will be forthcoming, I hope. The words “Oenothera caespitosa” are copied down and a search launched. Here we play host to the invasive pink Mexican primrose which is not smelly at all.
Thanks; the guy I live with forced me to go on the leash…until I made him carry me the rest of the way…to go see some neighbor kids, including a really tiny one. I didn’t know humans came in that size, but I liked him, which made the guy I live with very pleased. He’s had to put up more fences, which I guess is okay. The thing about the seed pots is that a whole lot of these came from a collection and he was given them on the off chance that some might germinate. A surprisingly large number of them have. The others might come up next spring, or never. The oenothera has a number of varieties, one of which is quite small (variety crinita). Its common name, east of here, is “gumbo lily”, which refers to the icky clay in which it grows. So obviously it doesn’t need “drainage”; what it wants is water in spring, which is gets here, and then wants to sit in dry or dryish clay soil for the rest of the year. Native here, up the street, and to California too.
as much as I love the plants, never met a post that wasn’t improved with puppy pictures. what a great romp.
Thanks. The way I look at it is that since I am the center of the guy I live with’s universe (though he does like plants of course), the blog is embettered by being a lot, or even mostly, about me.
Embettered? Oh my lord, Mani, thanks for the concept. I’m adopting it forthwith. Mmmwwaa. (sound of kiss smacking)
Indeed. Taking a cue from Jedediah Springfield (“A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man”), the guy I live with said “A little logodaedaly can scarcely hurt, from time to time.”
You are 1 beautiful puppy.
Thanks; I guess, not to be immodest or anything, that I would have to agree. (I’ve seen myself in the mirror.) It gets me out of at least some trouble.