the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the somewhat small, though not totally tiny, purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you the latest news from our garden. You may remember me from such posts as “A Velociraptor’s Day”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. The lighting is kind of weird, as you can see.The guy I live with, who has been complaining about the ice for weeks on end (I admit I’ve slipped on it too, but only slightly, since I’m super-coordinated), says this has been a very boring winter, though the people on TV say we’re in for, and I quote, a “big warm-up”.

Mostly he’s been been sitting around, moping, and complaining about the ice. “The ice!”, he says. It’s true that the paths are thick with ice, and places on my walk are pretty, if not extremely, icy. So he hasn’t been doing much of anything.

You may wonder to what stage I have progressed since I got “Most Improved” at Day Care week before last, and, while I admit this may seem immodest, I did pretty well last week, too.It’s burdensome being excellent, but the guy I live with says I can wear that burden lightly.

I play with him, some, too.And sometimes put my ears back to pretend I’m a completely different dog. ( I was moving really fast here.)Other than that, hardly anything is happening. The guy I live with got some seeds in the mail, and at first he thought he’d gotten a bag of oats.

Dasylirion wheeleri seed.

And there are seedlings to look at. These are stomatiums. You know, “squishies”. 

Some agave seedlings.

Agave toumeyana var. bella.

Oh, and there’s one kind of peculiar thing going on here. The guy I live with was going to make some more troughs, but instead of fooling around with cement, perlite, and peat moss, he decided to make boxes instead of troughs. This is the first one.I know, right? Boxes. The garden might look ridiculous with a bunch of boxes in it, but the guy I live with is determined to start a trend. He says the trough isn’t finished yet. I thought that what with people hearing there were boxes strewn all over the garden, let alone that they have to take out Velociraptor Insurance before visiting, we might have a very quiet summer here.

Oh, if you’re wondering what the wooden plank, or whatever, going across the patio is, it’s a thing that covers the electrical cord for the bird bath heater.  There’s usually a lot of sawing and nailing and things like that during the winter. Construction stuff, you might say. And of lot of just sitting around. This sometimes involves thinking, but not often.

I guess, now that you’ve been brought up to date, I should let you go.

Until next time, then.

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the slightly small, though not totally tiny, purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you up to date on the very latest news from our frozen garden. You may remember me from such posts as “Still Not Much Happening”, among so many other very-little-happening-type posts.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.Here I am wondering why there always has to be a “characteristic pose”. “Because there just does” isn’t really an answer.Well, anyway, it’s been cold here. The guy I live with, who, as you can imagine, does a great deal of complaining, says there’s been snow on the ground for thirty-nine days now, and he even complained to the neighbor on my walk (the neighbor agreed, and said three days was more like what we were used to), but I pretty much like it. That’s me in the foreground, there, if you didn’t know. I’m surveying my domain. I admit the icy paths can be treacherous. This one got gravel sprinkled on it.Most of the complaining takes place on my walks, with a lot of moaning and groaning, and the occasional expletive, coming from the other end of the leash.

The guy I live with says there’s nothing to do. But here is the latest batch of irises; seed started on the first of December.And he has some reading material. He got this book from the Alpine Garden Society, and he likes it. The book, I mean. And the Alpine Garden Society, too, of course. The iris in the upper left hand corner is Iris hermona, from Mount Hermon, and that’s the kind of iris he’s growing from seed. Not that species, but that kind. Ultra rare, he says. And then there’s this book, which he says is also good, even though I’m not really neurotic, just uniquely focused. His friend gave him that book. “Every dog should know how to sit. He should not lie on the floor sleeping all of the time.” I’m not sure I agree. I think that if the guy I live with had his way, he would lie around doing nothing most of the time, and delegate all work to “associates”, who of course would do the work out of sheer love for him, rather than vulgarly expect to be paid.

I’ve met the guy I live with’s friend, by the way, and I really like her a lot. I think she likes me too, since I am, not to be immodest or anything, quite likable. (I notice he is a lot happier these days, too.)

I do of course have a dark side, which is truly terrible to behold. Today I spent some time velociraptoring the guy I live with. He doesn’t mind it much. You can see that I move with lightning speed, or even faster. The guy I live with might just be standing around doing nothing, as usual, sort of all la-de-da, and, then, quite suddenly, there will be this slight rustle in the tall grass, and here I come out of nowhere, flying through the air, teeth glinting in the moonlight, and ready to chomp.I say that if people come to visit the garden they will have to buy Velociraptor Insurance. Check made out to me, please.

I guess that’s it. The guy I live with says that there are enough pictures of me in this post that I could easily leave you with a picture of something else other than me, and though I thought that would be much less interesting, I’ll show this picture of the garden at sunset, totally pretending that I’m not in this one too.

Until next time, then.