the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to tell you about our very scary day yesterday. You may remember me from such wind-related posts as “A Windy Interlude”, among at least a few others.

Here I am in a characteristically unsuspecting pose, on the previous evening.The guy I live with said it was supposed to be windy the next day, and he was kind of worried, because even though it used to be really windy here in the last century, it hadn’t been very windy in this century, to the point where he was “creeped out” about the lack of wind here.
They said there would be winds maybe in excess of a hundred miles per hour (161 kph). That’s pretty windy, if you didn’t know.

Actually he was nervous indeed. I know he’s been that way ever since his wife died, and there are always people who try to tell him how to feel, but in general he just lives with this, and is aware that he’s nervous or worried. He often seems calm to me, though.

The day started out perfectly fine and ordinary, and then the wind came up. I got scared. There was one time when we were both outside, checking on something, and the wind blew so hard I got scared and couldn’t figure out how to get back inside, because we went out through the garage, but finally the guy I live with led me safely back into the house.

We even have a movie. The guy I live with took this when “it wasn’t so windy”; that was because he could stand up outside, which he couldn’t, at times.

The only thing that happened here was that part of “the enclosure” fence blew down, but that was because the top and bottom rails had rotted, from all the watering that little garden receives. He was planning to replace that fence anyway.
There were some trees blown down, and fences, too, elsewhere in our neighborhood.

The guy I live with even went out when it was really windy to tie down part of the patio cover, and then, during spells when the wind subsided, he filled the thistle feeders for the goldfinches, who clung to the feeders, eating thistle seed, except when the wind gusted and they hid in the shrubbery. (“Hiding in the shrubbery” sounds like an English mystery, or even Monty Python, I know.)

So that was our day. The wind stopped about three in the afternoon.
Naturally, the wind dried out everything, so the snow we got last week didn’t mean much of anything.
I’ll leave you with a picture of me investigating a downed branch on the dry-as-dust canal road.

Until next time, then.

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to talk about the snow, and the planets. You may remember me from such posts as “And So It Snowed”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose, even though I’m walking, coming back from checking out the snow.
The snow fell early yesterday morning; when I woke up there it was, on the ground. Neither of us could believe it. Only about an inch (2.5cm) fell, but maybe it will melt into the ground instead of evaporating, the way is often does. That’s called sublimation, if you needed to know.
The wrought iron furniture there is pretty ancient, but not as ancient as that big pot, which the guy I live with’s grandparents called an olla, though maybe that’s not really correct. It’s been outside for oh, about ninety years, fifty of those years here in Colorado, where some of the clay did flake off from the cold, but it’s still intact. His grandfather used to toss garden clippings in it, and empty it later.
There’s nothing in it now.
You can also see where Slipper, a purebred border collie who lived here before me, chewed the wooden railing, right by the lower of the two birdbaths. He was kind of naughty; he must have thought he was a giant rodent.

In the evening I did some more exploring. You can barely see me wandering around in the garden, making sure everything is okay. You might not believe all the things that need to be looked at.
Later that evening, after the sun went completely down (the guy I live with explained to me that it’s our planet that turns, not the sun, which totally creeped me out, even though he’s explained that to me before), we went on our walk. It was about thirteen degrees outside. That’s -10.5 Celsius. Not really cold, for us, but it was windy, and that made the walk not as fun as it usually is.

Almost at the end of the walk the guy I live with told me to wait, and he took a picture of three other planets (besides the one I was on at the time).
That’s Venus at the lower right, then, very faintly, Saturn, and then brighter, Jupiter.
He said that Jupiter was 493 million miles away, and Saturn was almost twice as far away, 978 million miles distant from us.
We went on a really long walk this morning, because I felt like it, but I don’t think we walked that far.

He also explained that no one lives on these planets; there are no cities, or houses, or music, or gardens. No beds with sheets from Pottery Barn and wool blankets for me to lie on, and no TV to watch “Q.I.” late at night, before we go to sleep.
So it really sounded like we both made a good choice to appear on this particular planet.

Anyway, that’s all I have for today. It snowed, we saw planets, and not much else happened.
I’ll leave you with a picture of me settled in on the couch, as ancient as the olla, but much creakier and cozier.

Until next time, then.