the miserable gardener

lavender and ice cubes

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the tiny, well, semi-tiny, purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you up to date on the latest news from our garden, since we’ve been gone for a while, and also to talk about some other interesting things. You may remember me from such up-to-date and interesting posts as “Damp And Delighted” and “The Oven Dog”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristically horticultural pose. You may notice that rather large patch of bare dirt in the lower left, there. That was supposed to be grass, but, according to the guy I live with, “it just isn’t”. He says it might be, next year. Or not.

That’s an oriole feeder with half an orange hanging in the tree.

You can also see that I have a new hedgehog, which the guy I live with bought for me at Whole Foods, because he went to the nursery today and bought some lavendersand felt fairly guilty about leaving me home alone. I now have something like three hedgehogs. Two of them were waiting for me when I showed up here. Hedgehogs are really excellent as stuffed toys, let me tell you.

He says the lavenders are going here, but I kind of doubt it, because this is where I like to romp. You can also see that pile of gravel and sandy loam in the first picture. He says I can romp and there can be lavenders, too. That I really doubt. Anyway, a couple of, like, super major things happened since we last talked. The guy I live with had a birthday, and now he’s 64, like The Beatles’ song, but since his companion is no longer here to feed him and stuff, he kind of moped all day, even though he has me. I forget what we did that day. Oh, I was at Day Care, and didn’t get as good a report card as the time before because the people there claimed I spend “too much time in the pool”. You would have too.

The most major thing was that the last plastic ice cube tray broke and the guy I live with went out and bought two new trays and they weren’t the same as the last ones and the ice cubes were of a different shape and he didn’t know if he could deal with it and I had to hear about it for a few days but now I think he’s calmed down a little. I got an ice cube yesterday and it was good.

Not much else has been happening.

I guess I should show a flower picture, because this blog is supposedly about gardening, and not totally about me, so here’s one. This is Acanthus balcanicus.I don’t know what else there is. Probably something, but no one wrote anything down, so I guess that’s it.

Until next time, then.

hazy and jungly

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the not-as-tiny-as-earlier purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you the latest news about our garden, and of course about me. You may remember me from such posts as “Passing The Time”, among quite a few others now.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. As maybe you can tell, the guy I live with is telling me to sit still, which I don’t really like to do, since there’s stuff to be done. You can also see how long my legs have gotten, and now I can stand up and swipe stuff off the cutting board. But anyway, since the last time we met, when you might have noticed that it was sunny, it’s been dark and raining and thundering pretty much constantly. I went to Day Care yesterday and it rained for most of the day. They have a roof, so that was okay. I like the rain, though.

The guy I live with doesn’t make fun of my radar ears, because he had another border collie with radar ears, as you can see here.

That was my Uncle Pooka, whom I never knew. He always looked worried about something. The guy I live with said it was the mustache that made him look that way.

Oh, and if you aren’t on Facebook, the guy I live with posted some pictures there of my new neighbors. They’re pretty interesting.

All the rain, or possibly I should say the fact that it only dried out for a day or so in the last month, means that it’s gotten really jungly here, according to the guy I live with, who also says it’s hazy because of fires “up north”.

He took some pictures to show just how jungly it is here. But first, maybe I should explain why everything looks so pink. This is why. Red Rocks is not very far away.

Anyway, back to the jungle. That’s Yucca rupicola flowering there.

That’s Yucca pallida at the end of the path. A picture of the north path didn’t get taken like it should have, because there you would see that this year there isn’t any path at all, just jungliness.

The “way back” is super-extra jungly.You need a guide to find your way through. So that’s why I haven’t done much posting. It’s been raining, and all hazy and jungly here. The internet was out for a while, too. We mostly take naps, and I listen to the guy I live with complain about the darkness. I’ve discovered that things go easier if ignore him.