Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the fairly small, yet not totally miniature, 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 “Weirdly Lit”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
Pretty cute, I know.
Not much has been happening here, because it snowed the other day.
snow, the other day
The sun came out and melted most of it, though. As you can see. 
There are still a few crocuses in flower. The guy I live with says you can get saffron from these, too.
Crocus hadriaticus ‘Purple Heart’
And super-weird stuff going on downstairs in the laundry room.
seedlings of Stomatium meyeri
Oh, and Pinus mugo ‘Carsten’s Wintergold’ is starting to turn golden.
Squirrels have made nests for the winter.
Since not much gardening is going on, besides the usual tidying up, I like my walks best of all. The sun is going down earlier and earlier, and so today’s walk was really at dusk. The guy I live with took the camera, hoping to see an owl, but there weren’t any. He says if he doesn’t bring the camera, there will be owls. That must be one of those rules of life things.
The water in the canal has been shut off, from higher up near the mountains, I guess, but there are still ducks in the canal. 
They go the other way when they see me coming.
going the other way
The farthest east part of our walk takes us this way. You’ve seen this before, but maybe not at this angle. Still some snow on the path, and a lot of mud. Mud is excellent, if you didn’t know. 
I had to check to see just how much water was left in the canal, at the sluice. Not very much.
There used to be a farmhouse north of where I’m standing, and that’s what the sluice was for. There used to be an old iron wheel to the right of where I’m standing, to let out the water, but it’s gone now.
We walked a slightly different way tonight, and then turned around. Those are wild plums, Prunus americana. The guy I live with says the plums make a good jelly.
We take a turn off the canal road and go around a sort of loop, then go back up to the canal road. On the way up, you can see where the creek goes under the canal, with the water glinting in the distance, almost in the middle of the picture. The canal road is over to the left, but it’s hard to see.
I think these willows are kind of scary. And you can see the water from the creek, down below. 
It was getting pretty dark, and cold, by the time we headed down the creek path, which goes to the south. Fortunately I’ve blazed a new path, which sort of follows the one that Chess, the purebred border collie who lived here before me, started.
There’s still a bunch of water in the creek so we had to turn around where the path was flooded. Really, I wanted to slog through it, because paws are made for slogging, but the guy I live with didn’t want to have anything to do with slogging. It was getting really dark by then anyway. Another scary willow there. That tree you see off in the distance is sort of where the path ends, and we turn around, when there isn’t slogging to do. The area in the foreground is soaked. 
Well, that was my walk tonight. It was pretty good, even though we didn’t see any owls. I saw one the other night on our walk, and it was a lot scarier than any willow. It even hooted at me. I didn’t care for being hooted at, much.
And, anyway, at the end of my walk, the couch is always there for me.
Until next time, then.
It snowed the other day, about four inches, and some of it is still here. Here I am in the “old rock garden” with a stuffed toy. I like this one being stuffed, for some reason. Don’t ask me why. It’s a purebred border collie thing. 
the miserable gardener 