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. You may remember me from such posts as “Stuff And Nonsense”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. I guess you can see what happened here. And I think I could use some dark glasses. Kind of bright out. The weather was pretty scary. Lots of thunder (in March….), rain, graupel, soft hail bigger than peas, snow, and then these huge snowflakes, which the guy I live with said were really clusters of snowflakes, as wide as my paws. Which are not really big paws, but they were big snowflakes. He didn’t get any pictures of them because we were out walking and it was really wet and he worried that the camera might get soaked so he didn’t bring it.

Notice how it starts snowing harder right after the thunder. I left my pine cone out on the flagstone but it was too wet to bring in.

Some flowers didn’t get wrecked by the cold and snow. People around here always go crazy when it snows at this time of the year, talking about how wonderful all the “moisture” is (they mean water) and in fact we did get about three-quarters of an inch (1.9 cm) of water, though we didn’t really need it, and fortunately there doesn’t seem to have been a lot of damage to the plants.

This is the regular species Iris reticulata which has been in the garden for a quarter of a century.  It’s strongly scented of violets. Maybe the picture should show it purpler. The guy I live with said he’s always had trouble keeping Colchicum bulbocodium (which used to be called Bulbocodium vernum), but these seem to be doing okay. Though they are not hugely impressive; just kind of cute. These crocuses are called Crocus kosaninii ‘April View’.The guy I live with said he planted these several years ago, and thought they had died because nothing happened and he didn’t see any crocuses, but maybe the corms he planted were too small to flower and they built themselves up and are now able to flower. This happens sometimes.

Really, though, the biggest news here is that there’s water running in the canal again.I was pretty sure I saw a muskrat right by the edge of the canal, but the guy I live with said maybe not. Only one of us is the real expert in muskrat detection. I stuck my whole nose in a pretty big hole right by the edge of the canal even after the guy I live with said not to; he said the muskrat could have grabbed me by the nose and pulled me into its lair.

With all the talk of being held captive in The Lair of the Muskrat I began to think that the guy I live with was just making all of this up. The hole right next to the canal was pretty big, though.

The canal banks are pretty steep right here. The guy I live with said my shadow looked like a Rodent of Unusual Size. I didn’t get that; he said he would explain some time, but anyway we went down to the part of the canal where it curves off away from the road, and there’s this what you might call other road, less well-traveled, and the canal banks are much less steep.Of course I had to try some wading. I only went wading for about half a second. The water was really cold. I couldn’t believe how cold it was but I wanted to seem all tough and nonchalant so I stood there by the bank trying to seem pensive, like a poet lying on a riverbank, thinking up a poem about spring.

I bet not too many poets got their paws frozen thinking up spring poems by riverbanks, but maybe they weren’t as tough and resilient as I am. I’ll leave you with a pretty delightfully riparian picture of me (if you ignore how cold the water was). 

Until next time, then.