Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the not-really-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 “Helping In The Garden”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
Well. The guy I live with is, I guess you might say, exasperated. He says this is “the worst winter in living memory”, with snow on the ground for fifty-five days now. The snow was almost gone a few days ago, and then this happened.
Of course I think it’s beyond excellent, but the guy I live with, who, you may not know, is not hugely coordinated like I am, slips on the ice all the time, and moans and groans on my walks, and says that there are supposed to be snowdrops and crocuses in flower now, and that the world is obviously coming to an end, and all of that kind of stuff.
There are some agaves germinating in the laundry room downstairs. These were sown just a few days ago. The guy I live with goes down and looks at them, and says things to them, and then comes back upstairs and says he doesn’t know why he even bothers, because this is such a horrible climate, and nothing ever grows, and things are just completely awful.
Things are not so awful for me. A little while ago, the guy I live with gave me a slice of a thing which I understand is called a napple, and I really super like them. This is what they look like.
napple. honeycrisp.
I had one called a piñata which was unbelievably good, but this one was good too.
There are also these weird things on the kitchen table. They’re kind of scary, actually. I don’t know the name of this one. Definitely not a napple. 
So, that’s pretty much it. “Nothing again nothing”, the guy I live with said today. The guy I live with majored in English literature in college, for a while, which he said was “extremely useful in later life”.
Since there’s almost nothing going on here, except a great deal of complaining, and some shoveling, and then more complaining, how about some more pictures of me?
me
me again
me once more
“one more, and that’s the last”
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
winter must have gotten geographically confused this year because it sounds like you’re having an Iowa winter. I’m glad you’re enjoying it, Mani, but for the sake of TGYLW, I hope it returns to Colorado normal soon.
Thanks; he would like “normal” in almost all instances. He says we purebred border collies can be kind of odd, and so everything else needs to be as normal as possible.
Botany departments should really partner up with the Humanities since all of the latter’s students seem to end up going into horticulture.
Possibly true. When bad things happen to the garden, which I guess is all the time, according to him, he does cry out, “Oh, the humanities!”
his sense of humor is in tact, at least!
So far, huh. Though not nearly as advanced as mine.
You may gently suggest, Mani, to the guy you live with that he get used to changing times and the new normal. Especially when the downstairs laundry room contains such wonders. The guy really is great at sprouting seed. Are you allowed downstairs yet? We had a rain which was really a wind, and now there is nothing but sun in sight for days and days. Now, that’s really worth complaining about. Excellent photos of you, Mani. Is that a camera reflection on your forehead in the characteristic portrait or have you perhaps been beatified?
Thanks; well, the guy I live with does not like the new normal. The old normal was two weeks of sixty degrees in January, with everyone freaking out about something called “winter water”. It’s just been cold here for almost two months, and, well, who really cares what he thinks, anyway? Yes, I do go downstairs, and upstairs, to sleep on the bed, of course. I sleep in my upstairs fort at night, just to feel safe. There are a lot of seeds germinated here, for sure, but very few of the plants go into the garden. Most are given away. (He’s kind of weird, if you didn’t know.) The reason my forehead is bedizened is because of snow. I frequently bring snow into the house.
Speaking of seeds, in a previous post you spoke of Dasylirion wheeleri and I thought it looked sharp. I just visited the Tucson Botanical Garden and saw a giant one and it was frighteningly sharp. And huge. I would not want one but there were astonishingly pretty things there too. Has TGYLW been to that garden? By the way, there was no snow even though it was very cold at times.
No, the guy I live with says he had never been there, though some years ago he said he was thinking of moving there, but didn’t, because purebred border collies hate, and I mean super extra totally hate, hot weather, though I, being young, don’t mind it so much. He found a few places, trailers mostly, out in the middle of nowhere, but decided against it, for possibly obvious reasons. He says he might go next year, though, just to look, and bask in warm weather. It hasn’t been warm here for about two years. The thing about dasylirions here, and this is funny, I think, is that while they’re hardy, bunnies eat them right to the ground, because there’s this like pineapple thing at the heart of them, and the bunnies really like that. He says he’s going to plant more, in the back yard, and that I have a job to do.
Well Mani, maybe the guy you live with needs to move to the Mendocino Coast, it’s never hot there, it doesn’t snow and it’s frost free. Of course it’s never warm there either.
There would probably be a lot of complaining there, too. There’s always something to complain about. The guy I live with was really upset just a while ago when I slipped on the ice on the ramp (you know, the ramp leading from the kitchen, that’s been featured in posts before). I’m okay. I wanted to chase something that the guy I live with said is called a mouse. They’re kind of interesting, and really fast. He said to look at the mouse movies on the blog, because we haven’t had so many here in the last year.
By any chance, is that a Sambo lemon?
Sumo tangerine.
I believe the New York Times food section (Wednesday) had an article on exotic citrus fruits, most of them in the clementine family. I think, Mani, the guy you live with would like the weather where these fruit grow.
The guy I live with says he grew up in a place where they grew oranges. In fact there is a county named after the fruit. Also in fact, he almost moved (with his parents and sister) to a city named after the Roman goddess of fruit; a place so far, far away that the guy I live with wondered if he would have to learn another language or something. A place called Pomona. (The guy I live with’s dad had just finished rehabilitation with the VA and was looking for a job, but found one in Denver, instead.)