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 the latest news from our garden, and, of course to wish everyone a very happy New Year. You may remember me from such posts as “An Almost Antlerless Day”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
This is me doing a bit of convalescing, since early this morning I broke a toenail and bled all over the place. The guy I live with wasn’t sure what to do, because he wasn’t completely awake, and had forgotten that Chess, the purebred border collie who lived here before me, bled all over the living room carpet when the guy I live with tried to clip his toenails.
I seem to be okay now, but I don’t get to go on walks today, just in case. I did let him look at my toe, to be sure, but I wasn’t hugely happy about it. I spent the morning upstairs. Those are the railings on the stair, in front of me. I’m not imprisoned, if you were worried. 
As usual, practically nothing is happening here (besides my broken toenail). There is one pathetic snowdrop trying to flower.
The guy I live with says that all the early flowering snowdrops are going into the bulb frame this next spring, where they can get properly watered, and then covered, if necessary, when it snows. All of the other early ones are under snow on the north side of the house, which I hear is a dumb place to have them.
One kind of weird thing: this catalog came yesterday and the guy I live with got all excited about growing some vegetables.
He’s ordered from Hudson just about forever, but mostly things like California poppies, which you can get in bulk.
If you’re worried that he’s losing his mind, wanting to grow vegetables in a garden this dry, well, I wondered the same thing, until I found out that they won’t be grown here, but in his friend’s garden. Whew, huh. Heirloom corn and squash and stuff like that. There’s an irrigation system in place, (and little children to enjoy the vegetables and watch them grow) and so everything will be fine.
Oh, and speaking of seeds, some of the irises have leaves now.
It’s sunny here, as you can tell, but not incredibly warm. It was nice yesterday, and I stood outside to have my picture taken. The snow isn’t melting as fast as someone here would like, and it’s supposed to get cold again next week. I knew that because of all the moaning and groaning.
Now that my toe is better, this afternoon, I thought we should walk around the garden at the year’s end, and look at stuff.
This is looking southwest, toward the shed, and is about the first thing you see (besides me) when you come into the garden. 
The old-time steel garden fence you see at right, in the picture below, is to keep me from romping in the sand pile. The guy I live with says there are “fancy plants” growing there. Most of the cages you see here and there are to keep rabbits from eating crocus leaves. 
You can see the poles for owls, here. A couple of them are leaning more than they should, but it was really windy a few days ago.
A part of the fence around “the enclosure” was blown down. More repairs to make. I guess the wood rots here, because this part of the garden is watered regularly. There was a yellow-jacket nest in the mouth of the big metal chicken this summer. The grate you see is for a fire pit, but that’s not used any more. 
Back toward the house. You can see my toe is much better now. 
That’s about it for today. I do have one picture of me taken from the front yard, looking at the little garden under the living room window. More of that old-time steel garden fencing there. And with that, I’ll wish you Happy New Year again.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Happy New Year to you Mani! You certainly made our 2016 brighter. Otherwise it was one of the more dismal years on record, at least for us. But the time of rebirth is coming and we will give it another try. Eleven more minutes of daylight each week until June!!!
Thanks. The guy I live with says that longer days make things a lot better. We shall see. I guess my toe is fine now, too. The guy I live with put “styptic pencil” on his shopping list.
When no other solution is available, dip the toe in a mix of cornstarch and baking soda or just plain cornstarch and don’t wipe off.
Need to have cornstarch in the house. Important safety tip.
… “a yellow-jacket nest in the mouth of the big metal chicken this summer” and we didn’t see a photograph? Such high excitement goes unmemorialized? Hmph. I’m going right over to J.L. Hudson, Seedsman, to cheer up myself. Thank you for providing one source of happiness for the new year. If we could come up with a chapeau symbolizing the new year and we could persuade you, Mani, to wear it while you posed characteristically and were photographed, I would cheer up a whole lot. Oh, wait. A cone hat and the kind of whistle that unfurls when blown into, are they around? I’ll pause now while the guy you live with goes in search. And, meanwhile, I wish you HAPPY NEW YEAR! and may we all go into it armed with styptic pencils. I’m glad your toe is healing.
Thanks; the guy I live with said all the licking I did to my paw helped a lot. I tend to be quite fastidious about my personal self, anyway. You need to get the paper Hudson catalog, for lots of interesting reading. But no cone hats around here. Oh, and the nest in the big metal chicken? It didn’t get its picture taken because the photographer around here didn’t want to draw attention to it. Because of the stinging properties.
Glad your toe is better. I enjoyed seeing the bookshelves. The garden looks interesting as always. Thanks for the tip on the seed catalog. Happy new year!
Thanks. The guy I live with was kind of obsessed with me, today, because of the large amount of blood that was on the kitchen floor, early this morning, but things turned out okay. He even called the emergency vet, for advice. The books in the bookshelves mostly belonged to the lady of the house (who built the bookshelves); all the décor there was hers, the rubber stamps, the gamelan, everything, except for “Boot & Shoe”, which the guy I live with put there because he thought it belonged. Originally it was, like, a spare bedroom, but eventually the guy I live with started sleeping up there, because the window faces east, which is completely excellent, and it’s become my favorite place to be, except for tonight, because of firecrackers, so my kitchen fort is the best place to be, right now.
Mani,
Is the Fouquiera splendens in the “cactus bed” by the front door alive (which can be hard to discern, I know)? I enlarged the photo and it looks like there are dessicated leaves of recent vintage attached to some of the canes. How many winters has it/did it survive?
Also, is the green shoot right by the water spigot in the same picture Caesalpinia gilliesii?
I guess both plants get some thermal buffering from the house wall, which looks like it gets some direct sunlight?
Hope the toe is all better now.
Thanks; the toe is excellent now.
The ocotillo was probably dead when purchased. Those are dried bindweed leaves ….
That is a caesalpinia; there’s another on the south side of the south.
I agree with all your other admirers, Mani; you were a happy glow in an otherwise puke-fest of a year. Many Merci’s, Mani.
J L Hudson is still alive?! As a devout non-gardener, I was delighted to find his opinions out there in the interwebs re: “non-native” species. Using just a vocabulary of seeds and such, the guy is a real philosopher of life. . . come to think, rather like a certain pure bred border collie I know.
Glad the tootsie is better. Long may you wander and ponder the world.
Thanks; my toe is much better and I got to go on a walk this morning. It was almost noon, really. We had to stay up last night, because of firecrackers going off. A guy can’t do important business in the garden when there are all these loud explosions. Hudson is still very much around; the seed catalog and the owners, anyway (who aren’t Hudson).
Happy new year to you as well and hope the toe is back to normal in a day or two.
I’m not sure I’m crazy about all the snow but I do like the sound of longer days and more sunshine. It’ll just take a month or so for that to sink in and the tide to turn, but I’m all for it!
Thanks; snow and cold weather are really overrated, don’t you think? Lots of sunshine, though, is not.