Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the, oh, I guess, fairly normal-sized purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you up-to-date on the latest news from our garden. You may remember me from such posts as “The Blizzard”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
It’s been spring, and then not spring, and then spring, and then not, and last Saturday it poured rain and thundered. I discovered I don’t like thunder, but I have a fort to hide in, and so that part was okay. The guy I live with said there was even a tornado, and was kind of freaked out about it, complaining about tornadoes and stuff, even though it was two hundred miles (322 km) east of here. He said that was “too close”.
Now the garden looks pretty green, he says, but he also says that’s mostly from weeds. 
That’s my favorite toy, a few feet behind me. It’s called a “squeaker mat”, but it’s squeakerless now.
You can see by the bucket here that some weeding was being done. I lay in the grass and watched. That bright red is from Tulipa butkovii, which you would have read about if you had the book Buried Treasures. 
The red here is from Tulipa linifolia. 
This next one is sort of looking the other way. Same tulip. We have a collection of empty flower pots. That’s just some of them. When I was littler I liked to grab a flower pot and run around the yard with it. The guy I live with chased me all over the place. Eventually I lost interest and he got the flower pot back.
Those are daphnes flowering at the base of the alpine spruce. 
Well, so, anyway, other things are going on. He posted a picture of the flock of Fritillaria pallidiflora on Facebook, and people liked it, and maybe you will too.This is it here. The bulbs sowed themselves. 
And, I guess the white-flowered perennial sweet pea (Lathryus latifolius) might grow in our garden some day. The guy I live with whined online about not having ‘White Pearl’, which was a favorite of Gertrude Jekyll’s, and so someone sent him seed, and he soaked them like you would sweet peas, and look what happened.
And something is going on in the “way back”. I’m not entirely sure what, but something. I watched him dig this just the other day. Yes, the fence is still slanty, and the birdbath plinth, I think that’s what it’s called, or maybe just stand, is still there even though the bath itself broke into several pieces a few winters ago. The guy I live with says it looks “greenly Grecian”, but I don’t know what that means. 
On the other side of the fence, where it looks much less slanty, “the enclosure” looks pretty good, except for a few dandelions. Here I am inspecting it.I don’t do weeding, if you wanted to know. 
I guess that’s it. I’ve decided that I like gardening quite a bit, especially since I don’t have to do anything but watch.
I’ll leave you with another picture of me, and my squeaker mat and a few other toys. 
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Mani, today as I was traveling home from visiting my father, I was behind an SUV with “The Geese Police” and a phone number on the back of it. Then I saw the smaller print: Working Border Collies. I couldn’t see any dogs inside the vehicle, but I had fun imagining excellent border collies chasing geese around. After reading this blog entry, I have even more fun thinking about dogs weeding. I would definitely call the number of “The Weed Police.”
I have a cobalt blue plinth (or, as I call it, base) in my garden. Sometimes I dress it up with flower-shaped blue solar lights and a swirly blue gazing globe. Because you can never have too much blue in your garden, if you ask me.
Indeed, the guy I live with says that we purebred border collies can make a living chasing geese off golf courses and other places where geese need chasing off of, but that that means actual work, instead of just lying around, and so I might not like it, unless it could be completely on my own terms, like if I drew up a contract.
The pale green, according to the guy I live with, is kind of weird, almost decadent even, in the sense of the poetry of Verlaine, about which I know nothing but will go along with it, and I guess the thing will just be there, until one day it isn’t. (Deep, huh?)
Mani – I like the photo of you at the start of this blog. I think it’s the best one of you I’ve seen (but then all the ones of you are good aren’t they?)
I’ve added tulipa butkovii to my list of ‘wants’ – you know, plants you want for the garden. Does TGYLW have one of these? I have Janis Ruksan’s book and met him once at his nursery in Latvia. I have also been to Kazakhstan where it grows but didn’t see it there. I guess that’s because I didn’t cross a river on a wire.
I can understand you not doing any weeding. After all, you can’t supervise AND think AND weed – that would be too much work.
Thanks; it is a pretty good picture, I agree. And no one had a biscuit on top of their head, either. Funny, the guy I live with says he has a list of “white whales”. Plants he’s wanted (note tense), acquired, and tried (note tense). Now the list can be found in various bulb catalogs. (Plus a desire for some additional, you know, funds.) The guy I live with says the tulip is only about 20 cm across when fully open.
T. butkovii for the win! Famous enough to be familiar to us who haven’t read ‘Buried Treasures’ or been to Kazakhstan. And what Is going on, exactly, in the way back? The plot thickens….
What I think might be going on out in back, though I can’t be completely sure, is that the guy I live with is super unhappy about the buffalo grass back there, and might dig it up and replace it with regular grass. Even though he replaced the regular grass with buffalo grass. I know, huh. The buffalo grass would be moved to other places, and not thrown away or anything.
Fritillaria pallidiflora, gorgeous! And I look forward to photos of the white-flowered perennial sweetpea when it finally does its thing. Anything that interested Gertrude Jekyll interests me. Oh, and, Mani, what good dirt you have, judging by the dug-up bit, much better dirt than found in these parts (specifically, my part). Now, down at San Diego Floral Association library, it’s culling time, which means looking at *every* book for publication date and condition. As Chief Culler, I noticed in “Penstamons”‘ Author photo a handsome young dog looking very dignified. “Columbines” shows a dog slightly older, still handsome and dignified. (Haven’t reached the “High and Dry” shelf yet.) Slipper, perhaps, as my husband suggests, or Chess much younger than I knew him? Your coloring and marking distinguishes you, dear dog. You possess your own unique excellence. And you have influence — when I saw your squeaker mat, I ran out to get one. Petey and especially Shredder love to drag it around. Being less young and ruthless than you, however, the mat still possess its squeaker, as I learn to my heart’s cost each time I step on it in the middle of a dark night.
Uh huh. Squeaker mats are extremely excellent. Mine has a head (it had eyes but those had to, you know, go) about the size of a softball; delightful to knock into things. Penstemons has Pooka; Flurry wouldn’t stand still for his picture. Same with Columbines; Slipper wouldn’t stand still, so that’s Chess. There aren’t any of us on H&D, for some unknown reason except maybe not standing still again. We purebred border collies like to be on the move, you understand. The dirt in the back half of the garden is very gritty; sounds sandy when dug into. It’s decomposed sandstone from the Fountain Formation. (Red Rocks, Roxborough Park, Garden of the Gods.) That’s why pictures of the garden often look vaguely red or pink, accordingly to the guy I live with. The front half of the garden, and the front yard, have the native soil overlayed with this horrible clay gunk trucked in from somewhere else. Digging in it is like digging in frozen ice cream.