Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today just to show some pictures and maybe talk a bit. You may remember me from such posts as “The Finished Project”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
I really like this chair. Not as much as the couch, but pretty close. The guy I live with said that other purebred border collies who’ve lived in this house have liked that chair, too. There must be something about it, besides being old and creaky.
Not much has been happening here. Well, that’s not totally true, since it snowed and then the snow melted, and some actual work was done in the garden. Hard to believe, I know.
A whole bunch of things were cut down, raked up, put in that trash can, and then the can was carried over to the compost pile. I’m not sure if you can see the difference here at all, though.
The plastic on the frames was lifted off, a little, today, so that snowdrops and stuff could get some extra sun.
It was a little gloomy today.
But there are snowdrops up in the frames. And the cyclamen are doing pretty well, in the upstairs bedroom. (It was built as a bedroom but hasn’t been used as one.)
It’s kind of surprising to me, still, how things change from day to day, here. One day there’s ice in the canal, with patterns and stuff,
and then the next, someone has walked down the bed of the canal.
Today there was a hawk.
There have been owls every evening now. The guy I live with posted a picture of the pair of them, sleeping, on Facebook. 
This was after a pretty cold night; the owls seem to like to sleep together then, but mostly they sleep apart, and then sit in separate trees in the evenings. 
You can see how large the talons are in this picture. Pretty scary. We’re not sure what’s wrong with this one’s left eye.
I guess I need to be on the lookout for owls. This time, one flew right over us, totally silent, and not very high off the ground.
The sunset this evening was pretty great, so I have a bunch of sunset pictures.
We always see geese and ducks flying across the sunset; the guy I live with says that they fly from smaller lakes to the big reservoirs southeast of us. 
Pretty neat, huh? (We purebred border collies use words like “neat”, if you didn’t know.)
Well, that’s really it for today. Not a huge whole of a lot. The weather has been pretty nice, and so the guy I live with has been in a good mood, considering the season and all.
I’ll leave you with a not-very-in-focus but super atmospheric picture of me, on my evening walk yesterday. 
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Maybe the owl is just winking provocatively at you Mani. ;—)
Hope it doesn’t affect his hunting.
Again, beautiful sunset pics.
Thanks. The guy I live with says that maybe the owl got attacked by a magpie or blue jay. That happens, sometime. But it seems to be able to hunt, anyway. And stare at me, which it was doing in those last couple of pictures. (I tried not to look too edible.)
I bet the owl is staring in wonder at your fierceness, not planning to eat you. Amazing sunset.
ceci
That must be it. My ultra-fierceness is so obvious, even in all my characteristic poses.
This is a good time of the year for sunsets, for sure.
The impression of a permanently closed eye might be just part of the owl’s repertoire of expressions. My brother-in-law, general manager of a pro sports team, has a version very like it that he claims to use on agents who feed him what turns out to be bogus information…
It could be, though it’s always that eye. We’ve seen magpies and blue jays attack the owls. (If this reply has weird characters, it’s something we can’t figure out how to fix.)
Love your characteristic pose! Regards from one comfy chair sitter to another.
Thanks. It is pretty comfortable. And very creaky. The rattan is tropical, and has dried out a lot over the years. The guy I live with can hear me when I get up, so I canât sneak up on him or anything.
Mew mew mew THE chair lookss purrty comfycozy to mee Mani!! Mee lovess THE chair here…it was ‘angel’ Unkell Siddhartha’ss an hee leeved it fore mee!
An yore yard DOES look cleaner! Yore lucky you cuud do sum cleen upss. Our snow iss meltin butt still too cold to garden….wee not wurry till Spring….
As fore THE Owlss they sure are HUGE an those talons are pretty scarey! Hope THE Owl’ss eye iss not herted. An mee thinkss Owl just wanted to meow to you close-upss.
Yore rite ’bout how thingss change so quiklee. Life iss like that fore sure!
Yore sunset photoess are deelitefull…..stunnin even!
Have fun on yore walk mee frend…..
***purrsss*** BellaDharma
It is a super cozy chair. Like the whole house, really.
The owls are pretty scary, but they just stare at me.
It turns out that those clouds, the ones that have the swirly parts, are called Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds. The guy I live with learned that just yesterday.
Mee-yow wow!! Wee just looked upss Kelvin-Helmholtz cloudss an they all so called ‘Billow’ cloudss…..wee just leerned sumthin mew (new) too Mani! Furry kewl cloudss no matter what they are called!
An mee reeleeved THE Owlss are just starin at you! *whispurrss* “Mee iss scaredy-cat of Owlss…”
An yore place sounds like my place….cozycomfy an warm an inn-vitin! 😉
The guy I live with says that learning experiences are sometimes just fine. Other times, not so great. It is important to be cozy, though.
Yore guy is furry wise Mani!! There are so many lessonss to leern inn Life….Beein care full ’round Owlss iss a guud thing to know rite?
An beein cozy iss FURRY impawtent to su 4 leggedss…
An yore food soundss yummy…mee LOVESS Salmon too!!!!
Salmon is really good. Funny, we havenât seen the owls in a few days now. Maybe they moved somewhere else. That does happen. Then they come back.
Mew mew mew maybee THE Owlss are playin HideanSeek with you Mani???
I don’t know, but it’s really cold here right now.
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BBBRRRR same here Mani….wee apposta get a Colorado Low storm startin tomorrow…wee reddy! Mee thinkss wee are!!! EEKKK!
We were supposed to have 90 mile-per-hour winds today, but nothing happened. There was a breeze for a while. Next week might be fairly nice.
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Well, well, Mani, life seems to be on the upswing, with much that is spiffy going on.Those dreamy sunsets with birds awing probably help, and flourishing plants. Seems to me that the area surrounding the owl’s closed eye is swollen more than a little. Hm. Work is done in your garden the way it is done in ours, all ending at the compost heap. That chair is great and you in it is delightful, making for a room I’d like to spend time in.
Thanks. Things are not too bad around here, especially since it’s been nice, and not freezingly snowy.
I don’t know about the owl, except that he’s (it’s a he) scary. (The one on the right, in the pictures with the two owls, is the she owl. So people have said.)
The chair is over eighty years old. That’s something. The guy I live with has only sat in it a couple of times. People used to come over, a lot, he said, before his wife died, and then a lot less after that, which he understands, but sometimes he would sit in that chair when there were people in the living room.
The table next to me is also old; green Italian marble, from his other grandparents. There would be a tree on top of it every Christmas. The stand was duct-taped to the table, because the first year the tree was up, Mister Pipo, a cat who lived here (I know, pretty gross to think about), climbed the tree and broke some ornaments. The guy I live with’s wife was really into ornaments and decorating.
Every so often I knock the little incense burner off the table when I’m guarding the house with ferocious barking and deadly demeanor, and then I get a mini-lecture because there’s all this powder on the floor. Whatever, right?
Whatever, exactly right. Upon further review, this post is top of the toppiest notch, varied, and all things wonderful. Thanks, Mani.
Thank you. It was a pretty nice day yesterday. And I learned something about clouds; they have names.
Today started out okay, weather-wise; the guy I live with went to visit his friend, and when he came back, it was ….raining. No, really. Not like pouring or anything, but raining. It does that maybe once every five or ten years. It will change to snow tonight, but not be a lot of snow, so they say.
Owls always look angry.
They often do, don’t they?
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