the miserable gardener

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 the latest news, which really isn’t all that much. You may remember me from such posts as “Biscuit Time”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.

I know I haven’t posted for a while, but as the guy I live with would say, this winter has been endless. Not only endless, but endlessly endless. It got down to six below zero last Sunday night (that’s -22C), with snow, and it’s supposed to snow again this week.
Temperatures have been below normal here since the middle of November; the guy I live with has not been able to work in the garden for a third of a year. He has other things to do, so he’s not as put out as you might imagine. But this winter does seem extremely endless.

Yesterday was nice, though; the sun was out, and it was pretty warm. Today was okay, too. We can tell if it’s going to snow because the weather gets nice for a day or two, and then it snows. The ice along the paths is really thick.  The guy I live with sprinkles sand on the ice, and I guess the sand heats up in the sun, and helps melt the ice. I know that sounds kind of weird.

Today I found a couple of warm spots to lie in. The flagstone was really warm. 

This is just about the warmest spot in the garden. In fact the bulb frame heats up so much that the plastic has to be removed to let out the hot air.

Some crocuses finally started flowering. Everything is late this year because it’s been so cold for so long. If you look at the post I mentioned, “Biscuit Time”, you will see how late things are now. This is kind of an overexposed picture of Crocus chrysanthus ‘Snowbunting’, with a visitor.

Crocus stridii.

Crocus sieberi from Amfiklia, Greece.

My walks have been pretty good, except for last weekend when it was really, really cold. We still walked then but I got ice in my paws and the guy I live with thought he was going to get frostbite. He didn’t.

There are still voles to look for. I haven’t found any yet, but it’s fun to look.

We haven’t seen the owls in a while. The guy I live with said that the female is sitting on a nest somewhere, or that there are even baby owls now. I hope they stayed warm last weekend. We can hear them hooting, and there are pellets everywhere.

The owls regurgitate stuff they can’t digest, so the pellets are full of really gross things. The guy I live with said they say not to touch the pellets because there can be all sorts of bacteria and viruses in them, from rodents, and that the only way to bring one safely into the house is to put it in the microwave first. “Then you throw away the microwave”, the guy I live with said.
So we leave the pellets alone.

This afternoon we walked under this kind of gnarly willow. 

Someone had made a home in it. It’s too small for an owl, but maybe a woodpecker.

And that’s really all I have for today. At least we remembered to set our clocks forward.

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 celebrate an anniversary. You may remember me from such occasion-related posts as “A Short, Sentimental Post”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.

I guess you can probably see that it snowed again. “It snowed again” has been a recurrent phrase for a long time now.

Well, today is kind of a big day. Today marks four years since I came to this house, to live with the guy I live with, and I must say they have been four excellent years indeed. There have been some sad moments, and some agitated ones, but mostly things here have been pretty calm and really great.

So today I thought instead of just showing stuff that interests the guy I live with, I would show some different pictures, and well as a couple of usual ones, just so weirdness doesn’t creep in. Neither of us likes weirdness.

I’ll show one picture of the garden, today, with the frames open, since it was pretty warm out, even though it doesn’t look like it, much.

The rest of the pictures are things on my walks, from the last couple of days; in particular, a very brisk walk we took yesterday. Some of the pictures have me in them. Those are the best, of course. And not all of them are in color, in case you began to worry.

A dead elm tree. There are a lot of them around here.

Ice patterns in the creek.

Snow patterns on a windy day.

Patterns left by melting snow falling from trees.

More patterns and wind-sculpted shapes.

Me at the sluice. The guy I live with said there was an iron wheel handle, but it disappeared some years ago. The sluice was for an old farm house which has been gone even longer than the handle.

That’s really all I have for today. Just pictures, and four years of excellence, living here.

Until next time, then.