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 all about how I got into trouble, and also about some other things. You may remember me from such posts as “Selling Insurance”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. You may notice a slight addition to the garden. It was constructed a couple of days ago.

Not really a huge amount of stuff has happened since I last posted. I explored the drainage culvert on the other side of the field yesterday evening. It was pretty scary, if you want to know the truth. Water drains from the street above it, down through the culvert, and into the field. Just into it, with no ditch leading to the creek.

“Either that”, said the guy I live with, “or it’s a tunnel of mystery“. Like a portal to another dimension, or something.The guy I live with made ma po tofu for dinner last night and wouldn’t let me have any. He said it was very hot. Back in the old days, the guy I live with’s wife would have baked a cake for Beethoven’s birthday, which was yesterday. There was just tofu here, though. He said the tofu was really good, but the whole thing was another one of those metaphors.

It is super dry here. Some of the garden soil is just dust.It’s usually dry under the arbor, though of course not when it rains or snows. The arbor has things written on it. Another mystery. You can see that the squirrels have been chewing away at the wood. There was a big hawk eating something out in the cottonwood. I watched, but I didn’t want to know what it was. The guy I live with said it was probably a tuna sandwich, with potato chips on the side. Or better yet, a pastrami sandwich with cream cheese on light rye, with a side of potato salad and maybe some pickled green tomatoes. The guy I live with worked in the bulb frames, for a while, today. I kept guard.A crocus was in flower in the big frame, which is the one you see here. This is Crocus hadriaticus ‘Celia’.  I’m not sure why this picture is so small.

There were some snowdrops in flower in the Snowdrop Frame.And, yes, I know it’s hard to believe, but I got into trouble today. The guy I live with was pretty ticked off. I think you can tell what happened just by looking at the title of today’s post. It could have been that I was paying as much attention as I might.
I didn’t really get yelled at, just lectured in what I thought was an excessively loud voice. Not that there was anyone around to hear. It probably didn’t help that I started to drink the bird bath water after that.

So the bird bath had to be all washed out, and then when new water was poured in, everything was fine again. It’s a very popular spot. You can probably imagine what we saw on our walk this evening. But you don’t even have to imagine.So that was my day. It was pretty good except for that one part.

I’ll leave you with a picture of me guarding the Madonna lilies (Lilium candidum, the green things there), while the guy I live with was fiddling around in the Snowdrop Frame, which is just out of view on the right.

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 the latest news of our modern lifestyle. You may remember me from such posts as “For Whom The Bedclothes”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. Asleep, actually, after a hard day playing, at Day Care.The guy I live with went to the doctor yesterday for a consultation about treatment. I know that the guy I live with worries about being separated from me, like I do from him, but he explained to the doctor that he was perfectly willing to let the doctor guide his decision about treatment. I guess that will start pretty soon. He wanted to take a couple of days off, away from this stuff, before starting anything.

There isn’t much going on in the garden right now, but the guy I live with was driving in Denver with his friend and he had to pull over and take pictures of the pyracanthas in a yard he drove by. He said he’d never seen anything like this before. There were several large shrubs totally covered with berries. We have a pyracantha here, but it doesn’t do that, for sure. It only gets some berries, because it doesn’t get the water that those obviously did. He said maybe we should get a sprinkler system installed. That might be fun.

And it turns out the cyclamen aren’t as dead as the guy I live with thought they were. They just needed some water. He moved them under the lights because the stems were elongating. This doesn’t really matter very much. There are some snowdrops flowering outside, in the frame, but we didn’t get any pictures of those, so you’ll just have to imagine them.

Aside from chasing squirrels and lying out in the garden, my life at this time of year mostly centers around naps and long walks. And breakfast and dinner, of course. Not to mention biscuits and other treats.

On my morning walk today we saw a hawk flying around.After a little while it swooped down, grabbed something, and flew away. I didn’t ask the guy I live with what that something could have been. He said maybe a wad of Kleenex.

It’s been unbelievably dry here, but also sunny, so there are things to look at when we walk in the evening. The guy I live with spends a lot of time gazing in this direction. I thought it was toward Los Angeles, but he said no, it was Santa Monica, which was founded, or sort of co-founded, by one of his relatives (as he learned after his mom died), and so he suggested to his sister and his cousin that the three of them might lay claim to the city. He said maybe there should be like a triumphal entry, complete with trumpets, banners, and effelants. I think you can see the moon here, right at the top of the tree.Another moon picture: It’s not easy to see, but it’s there. (Whew, huh.)

The main thing, I mean besides the other thing, is the owls. We hear them hooting every evening, and late into the night. The guy I live with said he never gets tired of seeing the owls, or hearing them hooting. The hooting can be scary.

He took these pictures while the two owls were trying to sleep. I think the first one is the female, and the second, larger one is the male.

So that’s really it for this evening. Not much going on except hawks, moons, and owls. “At least”, the guy I live with said, “it isn’t cold.”

And we still sit on the couch together. Sometimes he reads to me. 

Until next time, then.