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 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.

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to bring you the latest news from our garden and its environs (I get to use that word a lot these days), as well as some other news. You may remember me from such posts as “Before The Deep Freeze”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. It was a two-Lamb-Chop day. Everyone should have at least two, if you ask me.

It’s been mostly sunny here, which is a nice change.Sometimes there are things that need to be surveyed, or just checked out. We see owls on my evening walk, almost every evening now.Sometimes in the tops of trees (talk about being able to survey stuff),and sometimes right across the street, like tonight. The guy I live with mostly just feeds the birds, since it’s been too chilly for much of anything to be happening in the garden. The other day, when it was cloudy and sort of cold, the birds waited for the feeders to be filled. If you look closely, in the cottonwood, behind and on the right, there was another, much larger bird who was not interested in the bird feeders at all. At least directly. Snowdrops are peeking their heads up, but not terribly eager to try anything like flowering, when it’s been so chilly. This is ‘Potter’s Prelude’, which would have flowered a few weeks ago if it hadn’t been so cold and dry here.There are some snowdrops flowering in the frame, too.

On the day I went to Day Care, the guy I live with and his friend went to Denver Botanic Gardens, and then to lunch. When they walked back to the car they saw this apple tree with apples still on it. The guy I live with said he’d never seen an apple tree with apples still on it this late in the year, but obviously it was possible. Still, it seemed mysterious, but then, he doesn’t know anything about apple trees except that they get apples, and, here in Denver, fireblight. It was definitely something unexpected. Sometimes we walk fairly late in the evening, just after the sun has set. 

The guy I live with sometimes sit on the couch with me, of an evening, and every once in a while he reads aloud to me. Right now it’s A Wizard of Earthsea, which has some scary parts, but when I’m all cozy lying on the couch it isn’t too terribly scary. Some of the cyclamen that were growing upstairs have died. The guy I live with was irked, but he has been very distracted lately. I think I should tell you why.

If you’ve been reading our blog for any length of time, you may have noticed two things about it. The first is that I obviously have an extremely good life, thanks at least in part to the guy I live with. He says some people say that we purebred border collies “need something to do”, but that’s not true if we live with people who are at home most of the time, like the guy I live with is. I do mostly what you see me doing, plus a few other things, which I sometimes get yelled at for doing, and sometimes not. We like our low-key lifestyle.

The other thing is that I occasionally talk about subjects which some people might consider to be serious.

If you were a purebred border collie, like me, and went on walks twice a day, you would become accustomed to seeing certain things, like owls in the evening, or hearing the sound of water running in the canal in the summertime, but if you turned a corner and there was a real-life effelant just standing there, that would be something unexpected, too. That’s how the guy I live with explained it to me. Like an effelant just standing there, when you expected a patch of grass, or a trail leading off to the right.

This is what has happened. The guy I live with has not been sick for a single day since he retired from the phone company back in May of 2007, but lately he’s been leaving me here and going off to see doctors. He’s been diagnosed with prostate cancer. A thing so totally unexpected that the guy I live with often wonders if it’s real. But it is.

Since I tend to get worried sometimes, the way we purebred border collies do, he told me that the doctor said this “wasn’t a death sentence”, but I understand that we may be in for a not-very-easy time for a while, now. So I get extra cuddles, and read to, on the couch, in the evenings.

And I still go on my walks, as usual. Sometimes in the dark, sometimes in the light. Sometimes in both. 

Until next time, then.