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 my adventures. You may remember me from such posts as “Where’s The Muskrat?”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. It was thundering, and I needed some cuddling.
I got it, of course.
It was super gloomy today, like it has been for weeks, here. The next picture shows how gloomy. (That’s a bird, not a bat, in the picture.) The guy I live with says it’s because of all the subtropical moisture, coming from the Sierra Madre Occidental in Mexico. Lots of people around us are getting rain, and by that I mean a lot of rain, but we aren’t. Or if it rains here, it does for just a few minutes. 
Today, it thundered and thundered, and on the weather radar site it looked like a big storm with lots of rain was headed right toward us, but it veered away, like it mostly always does.
It did rain a little. 
One thing that happened was night before last, when Norm the coyote started yelling out in the field. We were able to get a very short film showing how loud Norm was. This film starts out really loudly, so get ready. Norm was being an extreme loudmouth. That’s me, out by the back fence, telling Norm to pipe down.
Then later that night there was another black-and-white striped kitty out in the corner of the yard, in the Employees Only section. The guy I live with made me come in. I ignored him for a long time but eventually I decided he was serious about it. He was pretty angry with me because I didn’t come right away, and I had to get a bath in the tub, with shampoo and everything. That wasn’t as awful as I thought it might be. I didn’t get sprayed as badly as I could have been, but I also got a lecture.
I had to hear stories of the other purebred border collies who’ve lived here, and were sprayed, sometimes right in the face, and how unpleasant that was for everyone, except I guess for the striped kitties, who got away to spray again another night. There was this one time when two of the purebred border collies were sprayed, and no one knew it until they got into the bed, and then the guy I live with had to go to work the next day, and everyone said they could tell what had happened the minute he walked in the door, at work. The door was over a hundred feet away from his desk, but everyone could tell.
Then yesterday we were taking a nap when all of a sudden there was this loud fluttering noise, a kind of papery fluttering, by the sink. It was a huge dragonfly. The guy I live with caught it with the net, and put it outside. He said not to try to catch it. I watched it fly away.
We had a long film to post here; it took forever to upload. But when it was played back it kept stopping. Neither of us knew what to do. So it was deleted. Another attempt will be made later.
There’s only been a little bit of gardening here, lately, because we’ve been taking naps in the afternoon.
We did go on our evening walk, after the thunder stopped and I had my dinner. You can see that the field has been mowed, and is kind of green. When we had the big rain week before last the creek flooded. I really don’t like that black flag thing, in the left middle of the picture, by the creek, but no one has done anything about it. It’s a piece of landscape fabric, I think, but it’s moderately alarming for it to be just hanging there. We purebred border collies definitely do not enjoy seeing things which are there for no good reason.
On the left of this picture you can see a bunch of branches and twigs which mark the edge of where it flooded, so it was a lot of flooding. Behind the light green bush at center left is the Employees Only section of our garden.
The creek is dry now. It almost never has water in it, except when it rains a lot, and then floods. It comes from the foothills a few miles away.
We walked along the canal road, the way we almost always do. I wanted to go into the canal, but the guy I live with said he’d have to go in, too, so we didn’t. He says there are big crawdads in there which could pinch my toes. 
It started to rain again and I thought we should stand under the willow that hangs over the canal road. It’s kind of scary, but not totally scary, if you know what I mean. The guy I live with likes to take pictures of this tree.
The creek goes under the canal right about where the rust-colored stems of curly dock are.
It stopped raining, and eventually we went home. It’s been a pretty good couple of days, I must say. 
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
It is very interesting to me, reading these communications from a certain location. If you’d owner has children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews…..any of all that, I imagine them liking this too. Obviously one cannot avoid you, a canine from being there and having a sort of window on things. My human father liked catching and releasing, liked however eating caught crawdads, and my Border collie Bruno (Breemo) got sprayed by black and white stripes kitties too and jumped into bed too. So in Idaho where there are Stinker gas stations, every creature in a car thinks about that! In Idaho we had immense thunder and lightning storms, like even the day we went up to lookout as the peaks are all called, searching for Douglasia idahoensis. The topless jeep about to be lightning struck constantly.
The guy I live with does have grandnieces; no children. We don’t get very many visitors here, though. There was the tour back in June, when I was angelic and showed everyone around, but other than that, not many visitors. I did get to go to Guanella Pass last summer and that was great.
I am curious…how could you tell it was Norm? Is his cry distinctive in some way? Well it’s a little late but I wanted to complement you highly on the noir photo. I think it is worthy of a permanent spot on the wall. I have to say, after suffering through a 111 degree day and several others almost as hot I envy the rain (such as it is) and the cloud cover. We always want what the other guy has, don’t we?
Thanks; I felt quite noirish when the picture was taken. I’d feel pretty uncomfortable with an 111 degree day, but the constant cloud cover can feel oppressive. Some places in Colorado, along the Front Range, have received astonishing amounts of rain in the last five weeks, or less. The guy I live with said one place got 10 inches of rain in July alone. That’s more than we get all year. If you add in the snow we still don’t get much more than that. The guy I live with has Seasonal Affective Disorder….. I figured it was Norm because it was so loud. I mostly just see him, and not Celeste, because I guess they only go out together early in the morning.
What an adventure story! Yes, a good couple of days for you, Mani. Norm sounds like he was feeling heartfelt about something, and you sound exactly like you were warning him off. When I played the film, Dog Petey barked back at you and sounded pretty precisely exactly like you. Strange, huh, because Petey is not black and white, purebred or a Border Collie. When he came to us, his name was Scruffy, if that gives you an idea. He does not like fireworks the same way you do not like thunder. This time of year, we get about as much thunder as you get rain. I would like to hear more rain splattering if you would care to release another film. Cuddling is excellent for cuddled and cuddler, by the way.
Yes, I completely agree about the cuddling. The guy I live with does feel that since he’s a single parent I don’t get enough cuddling (except when his friend visits), and that Day Care makes up for it. You may recall that one of Chess’s nicknames was Captain Cuddles. Cuddles are important, especially when the day is sort of “off”, but also at any time. It’s raining right now. What some people call “a three-inch rain”; three inches between raindrops. That would not make a very interesting film.