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 with the latest news from our garden. You may remember me from such posts as “Still Not Much Happening”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
I spend kind of a lot of time on the bed these days. There’s not much gardening going on right now, and it’s supposed to get really cold tomorrow night.
The guy I live with said it would probably be best to let the last, sad post sit on the blog for a while, as a matter of respect, and he was probably right.
You can see how bleak it is here. The heater for the birdbath has been set up.
There was still some blue sky before the sun went down this evening.
On my walk this evening I saw ducks in the neighbors’ yard. They were gobbling up bird seed. Purebred border collies like bird seed, too. 
One of the ducks was on the other side of the fence, and we walked toward it. I think you can see him in this picture, if you look super-closely. The creek is on the right; it makes a turn to the east before it goes into the culvert under the canal. I’m not sure why there’s no grass here. 
We turned left, which is west, at the fence, and the duck was still walking.
I decided I needed to get what the guy I live with said was “too close”, and it flew over the fence to join its friends.
Very little has been happening here. The guy I live with has taken some pictures with the other camera, and the macro lens, and posted them on Facebook, but he says with the compression algorithm they have, that the pictures might look better here. Oh, they do look better here. This is Ceanothus greggii. 
And this is Shepherdia rotundifolia.
The irises are coming along, too. These are the roots, which sometimes decide to grow up into the air, instead of down into the perlite. Dumb irises, huh. The roots have to be pushed very gently down into the perlit. But the irises are doing well. Iris lineolata in front. 
One other thing. This is kind of sentimental, but the guy I live with says this can be a somewhat sentimental time of year, and so he said why not mention it. He was looking for something in the upstairs closet and found this. It has some water stains, and is very brittle.
This is a chromolithograph print made by Cecil Aldin. It says “The breakfast at the Three Pigeons” in small print. I guess, like what they say on “The Roadshow”, which you may recall me watching with interest, “condition is a problem”.
It’s what’s on the other side that matters. 
This was given to the guy I live with’s great uncle Jim, who died in 1957, and whom he never met, but heard a lot about when he was little. He went back to Newport, Rhode Island, that year, or the year after, and saw the house that his Uncle Jim had built himself (he was a master carpenter), entirely out of oak.
I’m kind of digressing. We purebred border collies tend to do that, when we’re not ultra-focused on something important. The guy I live with says that tomorrow night it will get down to eight below zero (-22.2C), so we’ll probably not go on our walk tomorrow evening. Last time it snowed I got ice in my paws, which wasn’t much fun at all, though the guy I live with is a paw-deicing expert.
I guess it’s time to sign off now. 
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
I saw my first juncos today, which made me happy. Plugging in my bird bath heater blew a circuit, which did not make me happy.
We have juncos here, too. It turns out, and I didn’t know this, that the birdbath is a really important thing. There was a time when all sorts of fancy electrical work was planned, to put an outlet, ground-fault interrupter-type, close to the birdbath, but it was only a plan. We also have a catbird. Maybe more than one. And a towhee. The guy I live with gets super-frustrated when he gets ready to take bird pictures, because the birds always fly away. He says that it might help if I didn’t race outside trying to scare them away, but I can’t help myself.
Dear Mani I wish you, and the GYLW, a good Christmas!
Thanks. The same to you!
Love all the pictures! They do look better than on Facebook, but please keep posting them in both places. I also love it when there are a pair of ears at the bottom of the photo! ❤ Lee
Thanks, will do. I tried to be subtle in that one picture.
Subtle? Not your strong suit, Mani. Plus, your ears are too much “at attention” to go unnoticed.
I scrolled today through the flower photos on the sad news post. I’ve noticed this phenomenon before: the photos on this site seem to achieve more clarity and color after I’ve first looked at them. I figure it’s a quality of the photos because it can’t be my eyes. Facebook, fah! The new camera photos look better on this site, of course, border collie hosted. Oh, Fox Hunt Breakfasts were jolly affairs, with plenty of ale and meat products and camaraderie, sort of like holidays dinners now. Of the hunt itself, nor more will be said. Although I do read a garden writer, Robin Lane Fox, who, despite his name, despises foxes as pests in his garden and rues the day their hunting was banned. In your characteristic pose, Mani, the lavender pillowslip brings out your coloring, especially your brown eyes.
Yes, I too can diverge and ramble.
Well, say semi-subtle, then. WordPress does seem to do better justice to photographs; most of the blog pictures are taken with a Canon Powershot. Turns out that the print, which isn’t worth a lot, can be cleaned up, some; the guy I live with is giving it to his sister. I guess we have foxes here, but I’ve never seen one. Maybe I will, on one of my walks. Not tonight, though. It’s three below zero right now (-19C). Very non-warm.