Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the purebred border collie, two going on three, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you up to date on the latest news from our garden. You may remember me from such posts as “Before The Deep Freeze”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. Yes, endlessly waiting for a biscuit. Maybe you can tell by looking at my post title that it’s dry here. The guy I live with said that people think of Denver as being snowy in the winter, but it’s often like this, too. It was sixty-one degrees Fahrenheit here today (which is sixteen degrees Celsius), and dry.

Incidentally, the guy I live with said that there are two Fahrenheit temperatures which, when reversed, are Celsius. 61°F equals 16°C; 82°F equals 28°C. Or vice versa. The stuff you learn here. (He also says that writing out the numbers is the preferred way of doing it if you have a picky editor.)

Okay then. Back to me, now, for a bit. Last night on our walk I sort of freaked out about something that the guy I live with couldn’t see at all. But it was there. After he took the picture he had to walk up to it to see what it was. See if you can see it. I didn’t think so. We purebred border collies have excellent night vision. It’s that white spot almost in the center; a plastic grocery bag flapping in the wind. The guy I live with said they’d banned those bags in some states but that here they haven’t, and they catch in branches and flap all winter. A bit scary.

Today we walked on, and looked at, the bluegrass growing in the field behind the houses, taken today. I guess the grass got there by seeding itself, but look how green it is, in December. It never gets watered, of course, and is in quite a bit of shade. But it is kind of strange to see the grass so happy and green when not only is it super dry, but it hasn’t rained or snowed very much at all since the beginning of spring. I like this picture of the back yard, looking northwest; you can see the apartment buildings which are beyond the canal road we walk on. The guy I live with says that usually he would have been all against them building apartments there, where before there was an empty field (at one time with horses in it), and where walks were taken (and where Pooka got sprayed by a skunk), but there were also dirt bikes there, day after day, racing all around, and the noise so was annoying that having apartment houses built there came as a relief. The guy I live with says that he also likes seeing Christmas decorations on some of the balconies.

The branches of the Russian hawthorn, Crataegus ambigua, always look kind of different, especially when lit by the afternoon sun. It’s a really twisty tree. (Partly because it’s been pruned that way.)Coming home from our evening walk, the guy I live with stopped and looked over at the foothills. The big tree on the left is the cottonwood behind our house. He often stops and stands here, looking, for quite some time. Since I make him stop and wait for me as I investigate important stuff, I guess it’s okay.

You probably can’t see the ducks in this picture, but they’re there, flying over the trees in the middle of the picture. They fly to the southeast, maybe to the big reservoir (Chatfield) to the south of us.There are hundreds and hundreds of ducks, flying in the twilight. Some of them fly together; some fly alone. I kind of wanted to do something else, but we had to watch the ducks, instead. 

The guy I live with finally stopped taking pictures, and we went home. It was pretty exhausting, let me tell you.

I’ll leave you now, with another picture of me, also in a characteristic pose. It might look uncomfortable but it isn’t.

Until next time, then.