the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the not-totally-small purebred border collie, filling in for the extremely gloomy guy I live with, and here to tell you what’s going on right now, which is hardly anything not gloom-related. You may remember me from such gloom-related posts as “Nothing Again Nothing”, among at least a few others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. If I look bored, that’s because I am.This is what our back yard looks like this morning. The guy I live with said we had what was called a blizzard. The guy I live with said he wanted to move to some place where it never, ever snowed, but I know we’re not going to do that. It’s hard to walk in that much snow. The snow is up to my shoulders. I cleared a path for myself, anyway, by leaping and stuff.

There are a lot of broken branches. Day Care was canceled yesterday, and today too, so I have to sit around here and listen to the guy I live with talk about snow, giving up gardening altogether, and things like that.

Yesterday, while the guy I live with was on the phone, the patio cover broke.

The guy I live with wouldn’t let me go outside until he got all the snow off the patio cover, which involved him putting up a ladder, and raking snow off, and saying a lot of things. It was blizzarding the whole time, too. He made temporary repairs, but says it will have to be rebuilt, or removed, or something.

So that’s what’s going on right now. The guy I live with says it’s supposed to do the same thing this weekend. He’s not looking forward to it. He does say there are seeds to be fiddled with, which is strange since he also talks about giving up gardening.

This is what I did most of yesterday. That red-and-green thing is the toy I got from Secret Santa, at Day Care.

Until next time, then.

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the actually fairly normal-sized purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you the latest and windiest news from our garden. You may remember me from such speed-related posts such as “A Velociraptor’s Day”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.I’m kind of upstairs on the bed because today is super windy and I’m not used to that. There are scary noises. And stuff blowing around.

It’s only been freezing here a couple of nights in the last month or so, and hasn’t rained or snowed, but I guess it might later this week. There will be plenty of mud to track in, I imagine.

I got another Star Student award at Day Care last week, and got to see Norm again, just the other day, and he was a lot closer this time. I dragged the guy I live with all the way down the creek path, totally forgetting the Star Student stuff I learned, but Norm was on the other side, looking over his shoulder from time to time, being of course intimidated by the guy I live with’s tough demeanor, and my even tougher one.

While I was being a star student, the guy I live with and his friend visited the crevice garden at the Apex Recreation Center in Wheat Ridge. He had heard of it and seen pictures, but now he’s all jealous and everything because he wants the back yard to be nothing but a giant crevice garden, except with places for me to race around the garden.

The crevices are filled with permeable soil so all the water goes right to the plant roots. It does need more plants, and the guy I live with has some, to plant there. 

I think a few years ago the guy I live with thought about building one of these by himself. I know what it would have looked like, and so does he, which is why he didn’t build one.

In the shade garden, which isn’t very big, the snowdrops are almost done, and there are lots of crocuses, Crocus tommasinianus, starting to flower. They’ve been seeding around for some years now. Here are just some of them. And the guy I live with’s favorite shrub, Viburnum farreri, is flowering. He says this is pretty late; it can start in December, but remember we had the snow and ice on the ground for weeks, and the complaining, and all that, so it’s flowering now instead.

I guess this is a crummy picture because the guy I live with doesn’t know how to use the macro function on the point-and-shoot, but I think you get the idea. He says the flowers are scented of heliotrope, whatever that is. Let’s see; what else? Oh, there are lots of other crocuses flowering.

Crocus dalmaticus Petrovac

Otherwise the garden is kind of dry and brown. I hear that’s okay. Most people would prefer it greener, but the guy I live with just says “Whatever”.And he put up an anti-me fence in the way back. I do admit I was getting carried away, racing into this garden, which is in pretty bad shape.

What’s even worse, and talk about a boatload of complaining, if not whining, is the state of the back lawn. You can see all the little green bits which are coming back. You may remember that he took out the green lawn and put in buffalograss, and now he’s talking about putting back the green lawn. Yes, I know. I guess that’s pretty much it. If there’s more, I’ve forgotten it, or the wind blew it away, just like that. 

Until next time, then.