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 news from our garden and house. You may remember me from such posts as “Helping In The Garden”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. Showing off my retractable ears, of course.
I know I haven’t posted for a couple of weeks. The guy I live with thought we might do a post Wednesday before last, about Chess, who’s now been gone for over two years, but he decided to let that go. It seemed too sad. Then the guy I live with spent a whole day getting the airbag replaced on our car. That was something he’d been fretting about for a very long time. He said there wasn’t much of anything like getting something super major like that over with. Taxes are done, too, I hear.
The guy I live with has also become addicted to “Q.I.”, a TV show he watches on the “Acorn channel”. He laughs a lot, which I guess is a good thing. But he watches a lot of TV now.
So some stuff was happening. This is what part of the back yard looked like, last Monday.
The yellow snowdrop ‘Primrose Warburg’ was about to open. 
And then this happened. 
The guy I live with had things to say about this. Of course. The garden, and everything we were doing, came to a complete standstill. It wasn’t very cold, but there was a lot of wind, and so our walks weren’t very pleasant. That was last Thursday.
But at least some of the snow has disappeared. You can see there are some crocuses flowering. There flower pots are covering some eremurus which may have come up “too early”. The holes in the pots are covered with duct tape. 
And the little irises are “coming along quite nicely”. These aren’t our irises; they’re going to Denver Botanic Gardens when they grow up. 
One thing which I especially enjoy at this time of year is how, because the garden slopes away from the house, down to the “way back”, if the snow starts melting along the edges of the two paths that go out there, a whole lot of water trickles down the paths and forms a big sea of mud out in back. And then I can run through it.
Mud is excellent, if you didn’t know. It’s especially fun to track onto the carpet afterwards.
But today, because of all the stuff I tracked into the house, the guy I live with brought something up from the laundry room which I didn’t like at all. It made a horrific noise when it was turned on. 
After the incredible racket was over, the guy I live with said that, years ago, the lady of the house was using this little vacuum cleaner on these very stairs, and Flurry, the first purebred border collie who lived here, pulled the bag off the vacuum cleaner while it was running. The bag was full, too. Until it was pulled off.
So now I know what to do when I see that awful thing again.
I guess that’s all I have for today. Not much of a post, I know. I’ll leave you with a picture of me lying in one of my favorite places, beneath the living room window. 
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Ha ha, QI. Ever feel like you need subtitles? Maybe Acorn provides them. We have some kind of shared content on Plex. There are no subtitles. What happened to the yellow snowdrop? Chess. He lives on forever in our memories.
Thanks. It did seem like we should say something about Chess, then the guy I live with decided we wouldn’t. Not for any hugely deep reasons. The yellow snowdrop is under the snow on the north side of the house, now, waiting. QI does comes with subtitles, which are on, because they haven’t been turned off. Funny, huh?
I just watched a trailer of Q.I. Very funny!. I joined Acorn awhile back mainly watching Agatha Christie movies. I love the last picture of you Mani. You carry on a grand tradition of purebred Border Collies.
Thanks. Carrying on the proud tradition is very important here. The guy I live with got an Acorn subscription and has watched all the “Jack Irish” movies a few times, “Mr. & Mrs. Murder” about fifty times an episode (it’s one of his favorite things)—it was on constantly, for months—and now Q.I. Over and over and over again.
Dear Chess. It is always good to be reminded of that sweet DoG. And Donna got it exactly right: Mani tracks in mud in the footsteps of some very grand pure bred border collies, indeed.
Thanks; the guy I live with says I’m a worthy successor to Chess.
Oh, dear Chess, I was remembering him this week, such a sweet, knowing personality. You, Mani, are one fine successor, robustly mischievous and with velociraptor energy to burn. Your weather seems energetic too, turning one way, then swiftly another. I hope the yellow snowdrop ‘Primrose Warburg’ did not meet a cruel fate, victim of that psychotic to-ing and fro-ing. Yay for the iris poking from their pots! That is one lucky recipient, that Denver botanic place. Does the guy you live with now speak with Brit accent? Finally, the next time you get a jones to play in the muddymuddymud, you might point out to the guy that retracting ears look mighty like angel wings.
Thanks; I like the idea of angel wings, though of course I use them expressively. Snowdrops, it turns out, are completely immune to the weather here, which is a very endearing trait. As is the fact that they flower now. The guy I live with likes doing fiddly things like germinating iris seeds, which can only be done in the winter, so it works out perfectly. He also talks about Chess a lot. And Slipper, too, who died three hundred and sixty-four days after the lady of the house died. All three of them went here, at home. So in a sense we feel comforted by that. And the guy I live with says I lie in the same places that both Slipper and Chess liked to lie in, which is kind of weird, but nice at the same time, if you know what I mean. He also says I might like to have a tiny friend. I’m not sure what that means, but I have an idea.
Ooooh. A tiny friend! Fortunate Mani.
Well, maybe a tiny friend….