the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to present a short interlude; a cautionary tale, if you will. You may remember me from such posts as “The Caterpillars”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. I was waiting, ever so patiently, to go on my evening walk.
Well, I’m not really sure what to say about any of this, so I’ll just submit it for your approval, and leave it at that.

It’s been cold here. Not anywhere near as cold as it can get here, but still cold. Snow and ice and boots and stuff. Cold like that. Below freezing. Nice during the day, though.

The guy I live with has been thinking about the furnace. Specifically, the furnace filter. You know, the one you change every so often.
The filter hadn’t been changed in a while, but the guy I live with was unable to define what “a while” meant.
I know he’s been down in the crawlspace since I came to live here, but I don’t recall any talk of filters.

As you may know, if you’ve been reading the blog for a while, there was a yellowjacket nest in the crawlspace, and so the guy I live with was, well let’s just say ultra-hesitant about going down into the crawlspace while the yellowjackets were still flying around.
But he was still thinking about the filter.

Also as everyone knows, there’s this thing called Covid going around (the guy I live with’s whole family has it now; they’re more or less okay, since everyone was vaccinated), but the guy I live with is hesitant, not ultra-hesitant but still cautious, about going out.
Especially to hardware stores, where few people wear masks for some reason.
You get furnace filters at hardware stores. (Also at the grocery store, I guess.)

So the guy I live with did some of his usual thinking, and ordered a box of filters online.
They came the other day.

And then yesterday, or the day before (I forget now), the guy I live with got his screwdriver (part of a set that’s over seventy-five years old, not that that has anything to do with the story), took that downstairs, with the box of filters, removed the tape from the crawlspace door (the tape was there in case yellowjackets tried to get into the house, which they did anyway, but apparently only to come inside and die), opened the door, turned on the light, and this is what he saw.
A brand new filter.
I’m sure there’s a lesson to be learned here, but I’m not doing any teaching.

The old filter was removed, and a new one was installed. It took hardly any time at all.
This is what the old filter looked like:
No wonder the house smelled dusty when the heat was turned on.
The filter had probably been installed when his wife was still here; she’s been gone almost thirteen years now.
I think there’s another lesson here, too.

He also looked at the yellowjacket nest, and decided not to remove it until later, when he had more energy and willpower. It was abandoned, for sure.

I’m sure the guy I live with feels good about having done all of this, and checking off something on his long list of things to worry about.

I hope you enjoyed this little interlude, though I suppose it’s not necessary for you to feel like you need to write any of this down for future reference. There’s a funny story about the light upstairs…though maybe I’ve already told that one, or perhaps Chess, the purebred border collie who lived here before me, told that story. It might be hidden in one of the over one thousand posts on this blog. You never know.

I’ll leave you with a picture of me, watching over the guy I live with, when he was lying on the bed after putting drops in his ear.

Until next time, then.

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here to bring you up to date on what’s been happening here, which is really not much at all. You may remember me from such posts as “A Wintry Mix”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. You may be able to see that it was snowing today.It wasn’t very cold; above freezing, actually, but the snow means that the snowdrops and other flowers will be put on hold for another couple of weeks.
It’s always snowed here in winter, but the snow usually melted “back in the old days”. In the last several years, it hasn’t. The snow just stays on the ground.
And the paths in the garden get pretty icy. The guy I live with says it’s “hot paws racing out to bark at squirrels”, which is probably accurate.
You might not be able to see just how icy this path is, under the snow.
But you can definitely see how icy the flagstone is. This sort of thing doesn’t happen here all that often.It’s slippery, for sure. The guy I live with keeps telling me to be careful, and I saw how cautious he was when he went out to fill the bird feeders.

One of the feeders is under the arbor, on one side of it, really, and just today the guy I live with looked up, and saw this:
He just stood there for a while, looking at it, then took the picture you see. He said he wasn’t sure if he’d ever noticed that little lantern before. He probably had, but it came as a surprise anyway.

I know he’s been down in the dumps, lately. He’s been having trouble with his ear, and went to the doctor yesterday. He got some antibiotic drops; when he lies on the bed with the drops in his ear, I lie next to him, because I can tell how unhappy he is.
He’s going to have to go to an “audiologist”, which I thought meant he was going to go shopping for a new hi-fi, but that’s not it at all.

It’s not really that, though, just part of it. He’s been missing his wife, a lot, lately. Some people might say unkind things about that, the way they do, especially after all these years have passed, but that’s how things are. Something must have triggered it.
He hasn’t been able to see his friend for a while, though they talk on the phone quite a bit. He hurt his back shoveling the neighbors’ walks and driveways, and then this ear thing started last week. So there’s been a lot of staying at home, which suits me just fine.
If you ask me, which people don’t usually do, it’s because of being under the weather, which he hasn’t been, much, for years, and so it reminds him of the times when things like this happened and his wife was here.

But he does have me. And that’s a big deal, for him. Even though he’s been telling me I’m a “bed hog” in the last few days. Can you believe it? A bed hog.
I didn’t think there were all that many rules here, but it turns out that I’m expected to sleep parallel to the length of the bed, and not across it.
My excuse is that there are so many toys on the bed I can only fit one way, but the guy I live with just moves the toys and says there’s plenty of room “over here”.
And also (this part I understand), if I sleep right next to him, it’s toastier, and I get the full benefit of being able to sleep at least partly under the nice wool blanket the guy I live with got to make the bedroom even cozier. I can also see the TV better, when “Q.I.” is on. (It stands for “quite interesting”, if you didn’t know, and I can hear the guy I live with laughing, even though he watches the same episodes over and over again.)
He also says that even though I’ve never seen a sheep, I have an affinity with them, and so, by extension, with a blanket made of wool.

Well, so, anyway, I do have some plant news. Look at the seedlings of the buffalo gourd now.
Obviously some transplanting will be necessary pretty soon.
I don’t know why some of the seedlings are yellow, though maybe it’s a nitrogen deficiency.
(The seedlings in the rearmost pot are Amsonia tomentosa.)

Our walks have been pretty nice. I haven’t had to wear my boots because it hasn’t been so cold.
The willows, like you can see in the first picture and in this one, are quite photogenic at this time of year.
I’ll leave you with a blurry picture of me, on my walk just this evening.

Until next time, then.