Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the 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 and environs. (I always wanted to say that.) You may remember me from such posts as “The Hair Cut”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. I like lying on the bed, on an autumn afternoon, a lot. 
You may indeed wonder about the title of today’s post. Pretty funny, huh. Well, yesterday, the guy I live with and I went on our evening walk, and I saw something in the field that I thought was very interesting. (Needless to say, the guy I live with forgot to bring his camera, so you’ll just have to envision it.) He said it was called a “crawdad” and it had really large claws (about three inches, or seven and a half centimeters, long, beautiful blue-green things), pretty much pointed right at my nose. He said I would have looked extremely stupid being dragged off to the vet’s with a gigantic crawdad pinching my nose, so he picked it up and put it back in the canal, where it came from. I guess some kids had caught it a couple of days before and it was just sitting there waiting for someone to put it back into water, or to pinch my nose if I got too close. Whew, huh.
Quite a bit has been happening here, mostly to the leaves which were on the trees a while ago, but have since been blown down onto the ground. The guy I live with says that’s why some people call this time of year “fall”. I didn’t know that. He says that most people also associate this time of year with rain and things like that, but it’s been super dry here, and sunny, too, which is different.
You might be able to see the changes in these garden pictures. Oh, some of the fences are gone, too. 
some of the crocuses and cyclamen
That’s me, there, if you weren’t sure. We can crop the picture and zoom in, some, just to show it really is me. 
You can also see the calibrachoas flowering in the pot behind me. He forgot to take a picture of them so this will have to do.
the sumac
the path by the shed. the hose is going into “the enclosure”. a little farther down, the path forks, one going right (north), to the “way back”, and the other goes past the trough patio, and then left (south) to the “employees only” section.
this is one of the shortcuts Slipper made, a long time ago.
Okay, so those were garden pictures. I hope you enjoyed them. I do like being out in the garden when the guy I live with is working out there. Or even when he’s just standing there, pretending to work.
But the giant crawdad wasn’t the only scary thing that happened this week. Not by any means. And since scary seems to be kind of a seasonal thing, you know, I have two movies for you. These were filmed late at night, and I must admit that the barking in the first one is me. What you don’t get to see, because it was too hard to take pictures, are the glowing eyes we saw a little before the movies were made. That’s right, eyes glowing in the dark. (Those aren’t the eyes in the movies; those are just lights.)
Pretty scary, huh.
I’ll leave you with that, and another picture of me in one of my favorite places.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Coyotes are spooky. Went backpacking and camped higher up in tree cover instead of lower down next to a meadowy area. That night I stayed up and listened to coyotes howl it up in the meadow. Didn’t get much sleep.
Indeed, coyotes can be scary.
Toby got nipped on the nose by a crawdad down at the boat ramp in Blue Mesa. He stuck his entire head underwater looking for it. I’ve never seen a dog do that.
Well, crawdads are interesting. And, some say, edible. (Ick.)
Some say, crayfish, crawfish, mud bugs, or yabbies.
Indeed. We call them crawdads. Or “nose pinchers”.
“Environs” ..: I see that you also know French dear Mani and I am really delighted!
Oui, je suis le border collie exceptionelle.
Oh, that first picture. Would debonair be the word? Yes I think so. Would it be tedious to ask for an identification of the three conifers in the second picture? I think I know what the blue fluffy one on the right is but would like to know for sure. I am getting more interested in conifers since they are immune to verticillium wilt. Thank you. I played the movie at top volume but the dogs are on to my tricks, I guess. I was hoping for some answering howls.
Yes, debonair is a good word… The conifers. The one on the left was purchased as Pinus pumila, but it’s obviously not that, or maybe a giant one. The middle is Abies lasiocarpa var. arizonica ‘Compacta’; there were two, but one died years ago. The one on the right is Picea pungens ‘Fastigiata’. You can see the branch on the left has been bent down by snow and needs to be wired up, or something. Conifers are really great but here they get spoiled by wet, heavy snow. Kind of a lot, these days. If they aren’t wrapped for the winter then bad things happen. There used to be two really good mail-order nurseries for dwarf conifers, Coenosium and Porterhowse, but they’re both gone now. Laporte, here in Colorado, sells a number of Jerry Morris’s dwarf conifers (there’s a post showing a visit to his nursery when that was still open), and there are probably other places as well. The guy I live with is an incredibly fickle gardener and will get enthusiastic about something and then lose interest. The interest in large conifers waned considerably after so many ridiculous snows in spring. I might do a post talking about all the things he’s been interested in and then lost interest (he still likes dwarf conifers), but it might be embarrassing.
Ooh, ooh, Mani, do the post!
Ha ha; probably not hugely likely, since the guy I live with tends to be more modest than I am. However, I might point out that if you have the energy to look at posts from, say, 2012, you will see an endless variety of plants which are no longer in our garden. They either died or were given away.
I’m glad I didn’t identify the one on the right because I was wrong. No surprise. Vote number 2 for the post about losing interest. Embarrassing posts make the rest of us feel better!
Well, the guy I live with says that if he confessed to the amount of money spent on now-dead plants, readers might think he was well-to-do, which is hardly the case. But I might work on it, anyway.
You are a handsome dog, that’s for sure, and one endowed with bountiful personality, Mani, perhaps enhanced by living in such excellent environs. Yes, I think so. I do appreciate rangy pics of the garden as they make nice augmentation for the floral portraits I’m treated to in some other facier spot. Your garden looks like the definition of “autumn.” I’m sorry to hear those atmospheric conifers are so ill-used by a burden of snow. I confess that I too turned the volume up on the coyote howls hoping to evoke response from Petey and Shredder. The sound resulted in them traipsing to the side porch to bark at the walled garden. They have no clue of proper response, especially that of a purebred border collie. Another confession: Scrolling down to your last photo, I really want to reach right through the screen and give you a big smacker on that adorable nose. You look like you could use a little roust.
Thanks; I do like smooches. I get a lot of them, if you didn’t know. But even more are better. The back yard does feel pretty autumnal; the guy I live with says that autumn is generally associated with rain, but not here. Instead, super-dryness. I hear constant complaints about the lack of rain; like I can do anything about that.