the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to bring you up to date on what’s been happening in the last several days. You may remember me from such posts as “Up The Creek”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. I guess you can see how hectic it’s been around here lately.

It was cold, then it wasn’t, then it was, and now it isn’t. That pretty much sums up things around here.

The guy I live with had his last radiation yesterday. That was thirty-nine in all. He has to have follow-up appointments in a few months. The hormone therapy is still going, will be peaking in a few weeks, then slowly things will return to normal, though of course things won’t ever be all that normal here again.

The guy I live with said that for a while now he’s been happier than he has been in a long time, and I can tell. He is just going with the flow and not thinking too much about the future. We had a pretty good day today, working in the garden.

Here I am helping. You know, watching out for stuff. 

There are bunches of things in flower now. He used the phone to take pictures of these color forms of Corydalis solida. The focus could have been better. He says the corydalis all had labels once, but that a certain puppy stole all the labels because it seemed like a fun thing to do.

Most of these were selected by nursery people in Latvia and Lithuania, but now they don’t ship here. You can get some color forms from Odyssey Bulbs, though. These corydalis (the guy I live with won’t let me call them “corydalises”) are very easy to grow in sort of a woodland setting.

We kind of have this policy of not showing dead things, except for dead plants, of which there are always a lot, but we kept wondering when water in the canal would start to flow again. It seemed like it was really late in the year for it to start. One day we looked down into the canal bed and there was this huge dead crawdad.

I went down to look at things, but not at the crawdad. It might only have been playing dead and pinched me on the nose. The guy I live with said there were some others lying in the dirt, pretty pathetically, but I prefer to err on the side of caution.

Then just a couple of days ago the water started flowing. It felt good just to walk by it.

I went in, but the water was really cold. I mean really cold. So I jumped back out again. The guy I live with would have said I was a wimp, but he knows better. He know just how fierce I can be.

Well, I guess that’s all I have for today. I know this post was a bit rambling, but I hope you liked it despite that.

Until next time, then.

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, back after a longish absence. You may remember me from such posts as “The Haunted Toaster”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.

Things, you know, like just things, have been pretty hectic around here lately, what with a letter to the estate attorney with a bank statement being stolen from our mail box, to more snow, to a mysterious gigantic black RV parked down the street, to a weird late-night phone call.

Not to mention that I now get to have the run of the house when the guy I live with leaves the house, which is pretty good, since I get to show off my fierce and deadly house-guarding prowess. The guy I live with said that Chess, the purebred border collie who lived here before me, was like “a total marshmallow”, but when someone walked up to the door, he transformed into the epitome of ferociousness and chomp-your-pants deadliness.

So that’s just excellent.

Anyway, the guy I live with went to the bank today, and the bank account number got changed, so that was a relief, and the mysterious RV (which he said looked like something out of “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”, but sprayed-painted black) disappeared, so it wasn’t like the government checking up on how he was coping with all the melt-proof snow, which melted anyway, and now it’s warmed up enough that it isn’t freezing at night, and things are flowering. There are even snowdrops in flower, in April. That should be included in the weird stuff that’s been happening.

Oh, and the phone call. The guy I live with has been getting dozens of spam phone calls a day on his cell phone, but the other night the land line phone beside the bed upstairs rang, which it hardly ever does, and someone asked if he was the author of High and Dry. The guy I live with said it was midnight, which it was, and the person hung up. What a really bizarre thing. “It’s midnight” wasn’t an answer to the question, but we had just tucked ourselves into bed, and so it was a good enough answer.

Why someone would ask about a book that’s been out of print for ten years is something he didn’t know. He has certainly moved on from that.

In fact a new bulb frame is being constructed, out of “found lumber”. Wood that was lying around the yard and in the garage. Some of the wood is a bit warped but that doesn’t matter.

It snowed about a week ago and I got to look at ducks, on my walk.

The guy I live with said they were waiting for water to start flowing in the canal, but that hasn’t happened yet. I forget when this does happen, but it will be soon.

Speaking of water, it rained day before yesterday. The guy I live with said that three drops fell on the windshield as he drove home from being radiated. I guess three drops counts as rain.

And I had to check this out.

The guy I live with said this was called a hydrant. I thought the name of the manufacturer was pretty apropos.

It would be cool to have a hydrant in the back yard. Imagine the watering fun I could have.

Anyway, here are a couple of garden shots. Three, really. Not all of the pictures are in total focus, but the guy I live with says that makes them “artistic”. It’s a fine line, if you ask me.

There are kind of a lot of puschkinias in flower. But you see the pot there? I’m not sure I’ve ever talked about it before. It’s called an olla, and is really old. Say ninety years old. The guy I live with’s grampa had it in his garden in Los Angeles, and even though it’s flaked a bit from cold weather here, it’s still intact.

There’s a tiny little fritillary flowering, probably Fritillaria crassifolia. 

And the equally tiny Hyacinthella glabrescens, which is super blue. This flower is about an inch tall.

Well, that’s it for now. I’m sure more stuff will be happening later. I am fine not going to Day Care, because I get extra cuddles, two extra walks, and more food.
And I get to guard the house in true purebred border collie fashion.

Until next time, then.