Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the fairly small, yet not totally miniature, 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 posts as “Weirdly Lit”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
Pretty cute, I know.
Not much has been happening here, because it snowed the other day.
snow, the other day
The sun came out and melted most of it, though. As you can see. 
There are still a few crocuses in flower. The guy I live with says you can get saffron from these, too.
Crocus hadriaticus ‘Purple Heart’
And super-weird stuff going on downstairs in the laundry room.
seedlings of Stomatium meyeri
Oh, and Pinus mugo ‘Carsten’s Wintergold’ is starting to turn golden.
Squirrels have made nests for the winter.
Since not much gardening is going on, besides the usual tidying up, I like my walks best of all. The sun is going down earlier and earlier, and so today’s walk was really at dusk. The guy I live with took the camera, hoping to see an owl, but there weren’t any. He says if he doesn’t bring the camera, there will be owls. That must be one of those rules of life things.
The water in the canal has been shut off, from higher up near the mountains, I guess, but there are still ducks in the canal. 
They go the other way when they see me coming.
going the other way
The farthest east part of our walk takes us this way. You’ve seen this before, but maybe not at this angle. Still some snow on the path, and a lot of mud. Mud is excellent, if you didn’t know. 
I had to check to see just how much water was left in the canal, at the sluice. Not very much.
There used to be a farmhouse north of where I’m standing, and that’s what the sluice was for. There used to be an old iron wheel to the right of where I’m standing, to let out the water, but it’s gone now.
We walked a slightly different way tonight, and then turned around. Those are wild plums, Prunus americana. The guy I live with says the plums make a good jelly.
We take a turn off the canal road and go around a sort of loop, then go back up to the canal road. On the way up, you can see where the creek goes under the canal, with the water glinting in the distance, almost in the middle of the picture. The canal road is over to the left, but it’s hard to see.
I think these willows are kind of scary. And you can see the water from the creek, down below. 
It was getting pretty dark, and cold, by the time we headed down the creek path, which goes to the south. Fortunately I’ve blazed a new path, which sort of follows the one that Chess, the purebred border collie who lived here before me, started.
There’s still a bunch of water in the creek so we had to turn around where the path was flooded. Really, I wanted to slog through it, because paws are made for slogging, but the guy I live with didn’t want to have anything to do with slogging. It was getting really dark by then anyway. Another scary willow there. That tree you see off in the distance is sort of where the path ends, and we turn around, when there isn’t slogging to do. The area in the foreground is soaked. 
Well, that was my walk tonight. It was pretty good, even though we didn’t see any owls. I saw one the other night on our walk, and it was a lot scarier than any willow. It even hooted at me. I didn’t care for being hooted at, much.
And, anyway, at the end of my walk, the couch is always there for me.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
You deserve a good rest Mani after all that walking and then typing, enough to tucker you out.
Thanks, I think I agree. It was an excellent walk.
I think you are leaving out a paw-wiping sequence, Mani, between the return home and ensconcement on the couch. The photos today are all beyond excellent, and I’m grateful you took us along on the walk, even without owls. I agree with you`that willows bare of leaves at dusk are scary enough, all beckoning and grabby. When I was watering the garden today – in preparation for abandoning it while we’re in Yosemite for a week – I believe I saw the crocus I planted earlier this year rearing its head. I shall check tomorrow, thanks for the reminder. I’m sure some dish on the Thanksgiving table will require saffron. All the posts you give us filling in for the guy you live with, I toast them for the light they bring. I especially like the photo of the moon shining on the snowy path and the cutsie pie pic of you. But then, all your pics are cutsie pie, and to the max.
Thanks; I agree that I’m pretty cute. In case you were wondering, the carpet was just shampooed yesterday. The guy I live with wonders now why he did it. That’s it, the willows are beckoning and grabby, like those along the Withywindle.
I’d be so happy to see an owl. I got buzzed once by a great horned owl. I didn’t hear a thing, only felt it passing over my head. Then it landed on a roof across the street. This was in the middle of a dense Portland, OR neighborhood. It looked like a giant cat sitting up there in the early dawn light.
We have them here, a lot. The guy I live with says we mostly hear them in winter, so I’ll be sure to be ensconced in my fort when they start hooting. That’s what the poles in the “way back” are for. So great horned owls can perch on them. That sounds kind of scary to me ……
Those willows do kind of remind me of those trees that try to grab you. Did TGYLW ever read “The Colour Out of Space” by HP Lovecraft? Trees and much else behaving creepily in that one. I have some weeping Norway spruce trees, quite large, and people say they look creepy. It looks very cold in that picture with the misty moon. I wanted to comment on your previous post, but it looks like the comments shut down after a week, is that new? Anyway, I like Mutts too, but have you ever taken a look at Pearls Before Swine? If not, here’s a link to Yahoo and the most recent strips. http://news.yahoo.com/comics/pearls-before-swine-slideshow/
No, the guy I live with has never read any Lovecraft, but knows who he is. He says that “The Willows” by Algernon Blackwood is, like, super-ultra-scary. Pearls Before Swine is a favorite, too. The comments get shut down I think after ten days; that’s been the case for quite a while now. We just haven’t been posting regularly like we should. Not very much has been happening here, though I don’t see why I couldn’t just do posts featuring me all the time. The reason the comments get shut off is because its cuts down on the spam. When all posts are available for commenting, the amount of spam increases like you wouldn’t believe. I don’t know why. It goes into a special folder where we look at it and delete it.
Bloom County 2015 on the Facebook is most excellent. Did the 100th cartoon today. Love to see them all cavorting together — Opus, Bill the Cat, Steve; Mutts’ dog, cat and Ozzie; and the crew of Pearls Before Swine, including Stephan and Spandex biker. Woozer. Put yourself into the mix too, Mani. Then really woozer.
I think we saw that. The lady of the house liked Calvin and Hobbes, and also Zippy, and sent letters to both cartoonists, and got signed letters back. Pretty cool, huh? I like Mooch and Earl a lot. Earl more, of course. Now, we don’t get any money for this, but the other day was the guy I live with’s grand-niece’s fourth birthday, and she got “Thank You and Good Night”, by the person who draws Mutts, and it’s so adorably cute, it’s cute. Almost as cute as I am.
Mani, there is an excellent game to be played at the sluice called Poohsticks…oh, wait. I think you need a bridge for that. But you have the athletic form and visual prowess it takes to be an excellent Poohsticks player, I do believe. I once wrote a fan letter to a New Yorker cartoonist about a cartoon he did about singing dogs, and he sent me his signed proof of the cartoon. Cartoonists must be the nicest people in the world. We got our first frost of the season today on the shores of the Long Island Sound, and a beautiful light pillar at dawn which I tried to take a photograph of but it’s hard to get a clear shot of sky here on the Isle of Long. I drove to the highest hill in our village (near the train station) to get as good a look at it as I could, but I think I should have just gone up on the roof of my house. And yes, I think that if there is not much happening in the garden under your watch, then a photo blog of pure bred border collie doings would be most excellent (but I think it would turn into an Instagram, and not a blog, if I know anything about the latest happenings in social media, which I don’t).
Indeed, the guy I live with has heard of instagrams. Heard of, that’s all. I think a post of nothing but me would be excellent. He also says his favorite cartoonist for The New Yorker is Roz Chast. And he has heard of Poohsticks, too. We don’t have a train station near here. We can sometimes hear trains, off in the distance.
“Train in the distance” – Paul Simon. Says it all.
There aren’t any train tracks really close to here so it might be in someone’s imagination ……however the Big Scary Owl hooting on my walk last night was not in my imagination.
I have a poster of Peter Ellenshaw’s “Reflections of a Friendship” hanging over my desk. It shows Christopher Robin, Pooh, and Piglet playing Poohsticks from a bridge that looks like it might be in Monet’s garden. It’s one of those images I’ve never grown tired of.
Poohsticks looks fun. We don’t really have any bridges over water right around here, but I could just give the guy I live with a couple of good chomps and say that’s the game.
The original Poohsticks bridge was in the Ashdown Forest in Sussex,though there are many depictions of it which resemble Monet’s bridge.
“Rule 10. People who play Poohsticks are usually nice people. When you arrive at the bridge and there are other people already playing Poohsticks – don’t worry, they may ask you to join in but remember, sooner or later they will run out of sticks.”
The guy I live with was going to say “Sooner or later we all run out of sticks”, but I told him to be quiet, because I never do. My latest one won’t fit in the back door, though. Except sideways.
straight from the hudson valley, miss mushy (the cat) and i are wishing you and the guy you live with a warm & wonderful thanksgiving. this morning, i am grateful to see your post & your sweet face, and am happy to know that after a good walk you get to relax on the couch.
Why thank you; same to you. It’s snowing here, and that’s fun for me, though the couch is an excellent place to be after a cold, windy, snowy walk.
Love the photo of you checking out the sluice. Dogs really know how to focus when checking things out.
Another great thing about dogs is that they can be so comforting in sleep mode.
I have 3 or 4 American plum trees in my yard. They haven’t produced enough plums for making jam yet. Something to look foward to.
What I didn’t know was that last summer, by the sluice there, there was a wood spider. Largest spider in the state, apparently. It might have been the summer before. “It was so huge, it was huge”, according to You Know Who. He claims that when he got close to it, it went into defense mode. And was scary. But anyway, whew, the jam from wild plums is good, I hear, if the birds don’t get the plums first.
Squirrels like the plums, too. And I’m no match for them.
Some of us are, though. But squirrels climb trees.
Might be Hogna carolinensis, the Carolina wolf spider. The bite can get nasty.
Probably. Monstrously huge and gross.