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, as well as talk about some serious stuff, the way I sometimes do. You may remember me from such posts as “An Unexpected Thing”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. I usually sleep in this direction, rather than the other way. 
I love my couch, as maybe you can tell. I’ve already told the story of the couch, more than once, but I really do love it. All the purebred border collies who have lived here have loved the couch.
Sometimes the guy I live with hogs the couch, but he never makes me get off so he can hog it. He sometimes takes a nap there, and I guess back when there was Opera Day here, he would lie on the couch while an opera was playing on the CD player, and Chess, the purebred border collie who lived here before me, would sleep under the living room window, which is also a nice place to sleep.
It rained, and then it snowed. I know this is May, and so does the guy I live with, but snow happens here. It doesn’t make that much difference, really. It melted, and then it was gone. 
Things are pretty green here. Green for us; maybe not so green for gardeners elsewhere. 
The rare tulip, Tulipa butkovii, still looks good. This picture was taken with the phone, as the sun was going down.
The water in the canal suddenly stopped flowing (we’re not sure why), and so now the canal looks like this. Not very bucolic. 
So things here have been kind of different here lately. I mean, they’ve been very different for quite a while, but now they’re different from that, even. Things have settled down, as far as the first different part, especially for me not being left alone for a couple of hours every weekday, but in the past few weeks things have been going on here which usually don’t go on here. I wouldn’t say it was totally weird, just different. Maybe pretty weird. I have to think about it.
It started when a bottle of soy nail polish remover came in the mail. I really wondered about that. Then a couple of days later, there was a bottle of nail polish, which also came in the mail.
Then the guy I live with painted a couple of his fingernails. I had never seen that before. He removed the nail polish and gave the bottle to a neighbor.
He said the color was wrong and I thought that would be that. But no, another bottle arrived, and he painted his fingernails, then removed the polish, and said that would be that. The color was wrong again. Some people said he could go to a store and look at nail polish, but he said no to that.
By now you are probably wondering what this was all about. Well, so was I. He kept showing me the fingers on his hands, four on one hand and three on the other. Those were the ones that would have painted nails.
He even called his niece to see if it was okay if he showed up at her wedding, which will be soon, just to see if it was okay if he showed up wearing nail polish. She said it was.
He said he also asked a number of other women if they thought this idea was okay, and they all said yes.
Of course if this had happened years ago everyone would have totally freaked out. Totally freaking out about infinitesimally minor details was the way of things, as well as continual criticism and advice. (The guy I live with said those two things were pretty much the same.) But now he could do it.
It wasn’t until a couple of weeks after this idea had entered his mind that he looked at his hands and said “Four plus three equals seven.” That’s the state of the prostate cancer on what’s called the Gleason Scale, 4+3=7, which told the doctors the cancer needed to be treated.
Well so no nail polish. I was a bit relieved. The guy I live with is done with the radiation treatments and goes back in July for a blood test.
Meanwhile since this was all done he decided to take yet another picture of himself and post it on Facebook. At first it was going to be a picture of him with dark-red-painted fingernails, so I was really relieved when that didn’t happen, though it took him like 600 tries to get the picture right. (One reason for so many tries is that he had covered up the focus lamp with tape, because the light was so bright, and so about 550 of the pictures weren’t even remotely in focus.) He used a timer and walked over to the front door like a hundred times for six pictures at each little session.
This is him. 
He said he couldn’t smile more because his lips were chapped. I don’t get chapped lips.
And that was that. No more trying to figure out why the pictures weren’t any good, or trying to figure out what to do with his hands. Which don’t have polish on some of the fingernails.
Now back to gardening stuff. I’m sure you’ll be happy about that.
The goldfinches are happy too. I don’t know why the shed always comes out blue in these pictures because it’s green, but the goldfinches kind of go with it. 
We found the owls a few houses down, in a back yard, on a walk when we went down the coyote path. 
The guy I live with and his friend went to the plant sale at Denver Botanic Gardens. He didn’t come back with an enormous number of plants. Maybe about ten. But he and his friend had a good time together, like they always do.
And because it rained and snowed, there was a lot of water in the creek, so I got to explore the sand bar. It was pretty interesting. Sandy, too. 
Well I guess that’s all. The snow didn’t wreck anything, no one around here has painted nails, no more trips to radiation (for now), though there is one more tax appointment (number eight), so things are pretty much the way they always are, which I like.
Until next time, then.
The snow mostly melted the next day and nothing really happened. It didn’t even freeze.
Robins are collecting nesting material, too. You might not be able to see the robin I’m looking at here, because all these pictures were taken with the phone, and they won’t enlarge the way regular pictures do. It’s right out there in front of the pots.
There are hummingbirds everywhere. You might not be able to see this, either. (I’m not sure why we’re posting pictures of things no one can see.)
Oh. A couple of things. Today is the ninth anniversary of the death of Slipper, a purebred border collie who lived here with Chess, and so I thought I should take a moment to acknowledge that. He died on the back patio, here, with Chess and the guy I live with right there with him.
Of course, the guy I live with, whose mind is obviously not functioning properly, agreed to have the garden on tour next month. I’m not sure who’s going to do all the weeding. 
That really is all I have for now. It just started to rain again, so Ill have to wait a bit before I can go on my walk. It will probably be a damp walk anyway.
