Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the not-totally-small purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you up to date on what’s been going on here, which is hardly anything. You may remember me from such much-more-action-packed posts as “A Velociraptor’s Day”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. 
Here’s the reason hardly anything has been going on here. The guy I live with is starting to complain about it. I like it, and that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?
He’s been doing stuff like this, to keep himself amused. He got some iris seeds from the Aril Iris Society and started to germinate some of them, using this really arcane procedure. He began talking about doing embryo culture instead of this, and having a bunch of test tubes and Bunsen burners and retorts and even maybe a deal-topped table like Sherlock Holmes had. I could only sigh. 
Obviously there’s something to all of this, because look at the iris seedlings from the last batch of seeds. “You cut across the micropylar barrier to bypass the need for cold treatment”, he says. I knew that, of course. The seedlings are in propagators, which is why the picture looks the way it does.
I still go on my walks. I found something really gross and interesting on the canal road this morning, but the guy I live with wouldn’t let me keep it. He gets to play with razor blades and bleach, like you saw in the picture above, but I can’t have something that a coyote left last night. That doesn’t seem fair.
This is me, walking along the canal road this evening, hoping that I can get the thing I’m not supposed to have, without anyone noticing. It didn’t work out, but the walk was still fun. You can see that there’s no water in the canal now. 
There’s still some water in the creek, but not as much as there was. The guy I live with says it’s much too cold for me to jump into, which is of course what I want to do. I never get to do anything. 
I go on my evening walk right after dinner, and it gets dark really fast. You can see what the field looked like when we walked past it, before walking down the canal road, and then back, like we always do. Then we go down the creek path in the field.
By the time we got back here, to walk down the creek path, which goes to the right of the trees in the middle there, it looked like this. There were bunches of ducks flying in the distance, right to left in the picture, so to the southeast, but they aren’t in this picture, for some “photographic reason”. The guy I live with super-hoped to see an owl, and even more, get its picture, but there weren’t any owls this evening. 
It started to get cold, and someone, not me for sure, decided we had to go home, which I didn’t really want to do, but of the two of us, I can see much better in the dark, but I guess that doesn’t count. The guy I live with says he needs to see where he’s going, too.
So that’s all that’s been happening. Snow, complaining, iris seed stuff, and walks. Oh, and naps, too. Can’t forget about naps. 
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
a delight, as usual. cheers.
Thanks; we try to be delightful. Or at least I do.
I was walking my girl the day after Thanksgiving and there was a half eaten turkey drumstick in the road. She didn’t get to have that, either. You dogs must think people are pretty stupid sometimes. Like when we take something away and then don’t even eat it ourselves. I’ve poked through a seed coat with a sharp instrument, but I’ve never done it with bleach. I have a lot to learn.
Oh, the bleach is to make sure that any bacteria on the seed coat is wiped out. It’s probably not necessary. It’s just that when the seed is cut, the embryo is exposed, so we want to be super-cleanly, I guess. I don’t get that part, but whatever, huh. Yes, we dogs don’t understand the idea of wasting good food, especially what you might call “well-aged, air-cured, found comestibles”.
And then when you’ve eaten all the good parts, you can scent yourself with the rest.
Oh, totally. Like, my Uncle Pooka (he wasn’t really my uncle but that’s how we say things around here), there was this one time, when he was supposed to go to the doctor’s for just a checkup, and right before he went, he rolled in fresh raccoon poop, and was so proud of it, he made everyone in the doctor’s office smell it. That does sound like a day filled like complete and total excellence.
Hi this is Diva. Could we please have less about walks and more about naps? Oh, and the girl who lives with me wanted me to say that she loves the deal table.
Hi, this is Diva. Could we have less about walks and more about naps, please? Also, the girl I live with wants me to mention that she loves the deal table.
Hi; I think I agree. A post featuring nothing but naps. However, I am extremely busy right now because the back yard is swarming with rodents. No times for naps just now.
The guy I live with says he might post pictures of the deal tables he made (minus the retorts and beakers and test tubes) to hold the pots of asclepiads he also grows (aka carrion flowers). He says when they flower they’ll smell terrible, and so I can hardly wait.
Ooh ooh, Mani, you’d love Yosemite — scat to roll in! And right now the snowy patches look much like your yard, with squirrels too. Place photos side by side and you couldn’t tell which is your yard, which Yosemite.
Tell the guy you live with the iris-seed-intervention table makes it look as if in retirement he’s picking up some side money working for a certain cartel.
I’m continually one post behind in processing your world, Mani. I love the photo documenting of your walks. I do believe the post back one prepared me for Yosemite, put me in the right frame.
Such a looong nose you have, Mani.
Thanks; I like the idea that the place I live might be confused with, oh ……some place I’ve never heard of. I guess I just like all ideas that don’t have anything to do with shots or things like that. But I should add that poop, you know like of other creatures, is indeed excellent to roll in. Best right before you are expected to appear in public, like say if you have to go get shots or something. I imagine that humans would be better off if they rolled in stuff from time to time, like before they went to “the store” or something like that. (I know about “the store” because the guy I live with sometimes says he’s going there, but he never rolls in anything before he goes. Oh, now he says maybe he’ll start doing that.) The guy I live with did think that was funny, taking a picture of all the stuff involved cutting iris seeds. About my walks, the guy I live with only sometimes brings the camera, and this morning he didn’t bring it, and said he could have gotten a really good picture of a red-tailed hawk. I find things on my walks, you know. Things we don’t really talk about, but are pretty interesting to me.