Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the less-than-huge purebred border collie, the “velociraptor in a puppy suit”, filling in for guy I live with, and here to bring you the latest news from our garden, and to talk about me a lot. You may remember me from such me-oriented posts as “Mostly About Me”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristically horticultural pose.
It snowed the other day, about four inches, and some of it is still here. Here I am in the “old rock garden” with a stuffed toy. I like this one being stuffed, for some reason. Don’t ask me why. It’s a purebred border collie thing. 
Here I am walking down the path. Those plastic things are “protector deals”, according to the guy I live with. 
Here I am behind the “scorpiris garden”, inspecting something that needs inspecting. We have to have the chain link fence there, by the way, no matter how crummy it looks. Flood plain and all that. 
Here I am on my walk. My walk is usually really excellent, though I like to leap and lunge a bit more than the guy I live with likes. I can’t help that. It’s what velociraptors do, you know. The guy I live with said that horrible things were happening all over the world, and that I should be glad that I’m here, and not somewhere else. I am, for sure. 
Practically at the end of the picture above, the canal, which is to the right of all the willows there, makes a slight curve. You can see it’s still filled with water, which the guy I live with says is “unusual for this time of year”. He says that about everything.
We don’t walk there because the path is surfaced with chunks of broken concrete, for some odd reason. Maybe there was a sale on it. 
The creek also has a lot of water in it. There’s a lake to the south of here that’s been drained a bit. 
The creek goes under the canal through a culvert, and appears on the other side of the canal road.
In fact, there’s so much water coming down the creek that our path is flooded about halfway down. Just beyond the willows there. 
The big roots of the cottonwood have been undercut, some, by all the water flowing down the creek this year. There was quite a bit of water earlier this spring. 
On our way back home, the guy I live with showed me a nest. He said it was empty now, which is a good thing.
That was my excellent walk. In fact the whole day was pretty excellent. We didn’t take an afternoon nap like we sometimes do. We just did stuff, and went on walks in the morning and evening.
Sometimes, though, at the end of the day, there’s nothing like a good velociraptor attack to makes things perfect. It started out as tug-of-sweatshirt, but ended with a really good, leaping chomp.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Hi Mani from me, the half Border Collie without papers. I didn’t realise you had so much snow the other day, I thought it was only a little slushy bit. It must have been fun to play in. The garden looks good even with that flood fence. I suppose there are no flowers in your garden at the moment, all the bulbs will appear soon, you’ll have to watch where you walk then. On your walk what is that tall fence on the left in the first picture. and is it the back of your house in the distance in the second one. It certainly is a lot of space to run around in. Does someone mow it all, it looks like it. It’s hard to tell from here but is it a small or large nest and what used to live in it? I nap off and on all day between snacks but my mum doesn’t. My mum says we are also lucky we live where we live, too many bad people doing bad things in other places.
Yes, we had quite a bit of snow, eight centimeters, according to the guy I live with, but it mostly melted. I didn’t play in it as much as I thought I would, because there was a really cold wind, too. I like wind, but this was a bit much. There are still crocuses. They came right up after the snow. The guy I live with says they keep coming up, until, eventually, they don’t. That tall fence is a big business that’s to the northeast of us, along the canal path. Kind of a long way off. The guy I live with says there used to be a woodland there, with an abandoned house, and it was like “Blair Witch”, which I’m too chicken to watch. Part of the field is mowed and where it is, is my path. Mostly. That’s a wasp nest up in the tree. I don’t like wasps.
Oh, yes, it’s a wasp nest, Mani, and you don’t want to encourage the creatures. We once stayed in Zane Grey’s house on Catalina Island where the swimming pool was infested with wasps. Unpleasant. Pleasant was a talk in Texas on bulbs, mostly heirloom. Crocus was a big favorite. You could see people whispering to each other in astonishment, “I could pull those stamens to harvest saffron?” As I wrote above, oh yes. Loved seeing your landscape and, you know, you. Couldn’t see you in full velociraptor glory; perhaps my computer machine will have calmed down by tomorrow. I suspect the machine has been infected by a bad wind. Better than wasps, I suppose. I wish you continued excellent days of just doing stuff, Mani, far away the horrible things.
Thanks. I know that bad things have happened here, and that that’s bad enough, and so I’d rather think of breakfast and dinner, and my walks, and gardening, and playing with my buddies at Day Care. They were Thursday buddies according to the guy I live with, when I went last week. I could go to Day Care twice a week but the guy I live with says he gets very sad when I’m not here. He also says that when people talk about saffron, and the saffron crocus, Crocus sativus, well, if you want to see Really With It you can say, with “the same sort of tone of voice with which you would say, ‘Oh, there’s an even better Thai restaurant than the one you think is the best’’; perhaps you haven’t been there’”, that one (you have to say “one”) can also get saffron from some other species, but those are less common in cultivation. It’s an excellent movie and I should say that the guy I live with’s sweatshirt was already in pretty bad shape before I started attacking it. It’s very attackable.
My 4 month old puppy, Miguel, came over to see what that noise was when I played the video. I didn’t know how to explain a velociraptor to him, so I’m not sure what he made of it. Your walk is much more watery than his walk. No snow here, yet. I’m looking forward to seeing Miguel experience his first snow.
The fierce growl of the velociraptor is indeed terrifying. The actual velociraptor stuff comes right at the end, where I decide to leap into the air and chomp the guy I live with’s arm. He also says that when it gets colder, the southern half of the creek path will dry up, and we can walk there. Snow is really excellent. You can eat it, too.
Gosh, Mani, that video was very close to shocking. What happens when TGYLW is wearing one of his fancy shirts and you get into that mood? I can only watch your videos on my phone now but it’s just as scary on the small screen. Maybe one of those dog training gauntlets should be gathered along with the leash and harness. Have you thought of going into police work? The criminals would be mesmerized by your beauty. Back to a gardening question…please ask TGYLW if this is the proper time to order Cyclamen Coum from that catalog a few posts back thank you. Your walks always look so rural I was surprised to see a big business with a tall fence so close. I guess that’s the magic of a green space isn’t it? Creepy old houses are to be preferred but that’s progress.
Thanks; it was supposed to be shocking. I can be both vicious and deadly, obviously. The guy I live with doesn’t have any “fancy shirts” and generally doesn’t mind me going into Velociraptor Mode. Oh, if you lived in a place where it didn’t get too cold it would be okay to order Cyclamen coum now. Or, order them, and grow them indoors until next spring. They need to root into the soil. I thought cyclamen tubers were pretty good, by the way, when I was littler. Guess who didn’t appreciate that?
Oh my, those teeth! I am so glad you live in a place far from all the recent scary things in the world. Thanks for taking us on your excellent walk.
Thanks; they are frightening, aren’t they? I show them to sparrows and grasshoppers, and things like that; just to be terrifying, you understand. I’m glad we live where we live, too, and even though the guy I live with had told me about the bad things that have happened here. I still feel very cozy when I get tucked in for the night. Speaking of that. The guy I live with got a book for his grand-niece’s birthday, which I’ve looked at, some, and I have to agree that it’s the most incredibly cute thing I’ve come across, for tiny humans. It’s called Thank You and Good Night, by the person who does my favorite comic strip, Mutts.
Love Mutts!
We do, too.