the coney dog

Posted on June 16, 2015 by paridevita

Greetings and salutations everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the long-suffering 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 “In The Doghouse”, among an increasingly large number of others.

Here I am in a highly uncharacteristic pose. I’m back from the Bad Place, and I have this thing around me. We’re not going to discuss why this happened, but it did, and I’m not very happy about it. I had “a procedure”. The guy I live with isn’t really happy, either, and so I guess that makes it slightly better. He says he doesn’t like seeing me having to wear this stupid cone. 15061608If you think I don’t look so pathetic, try this picture. 15061607The guy I live with did say that he wanted me as a friend for the rest of my life, and how super important I was to him, so I wouldn’t run away and bad things would happen, but the cone isn’t very nice at all. I think I also look like an idiot.

I don’t get to go on walks or to day care until the first of July, which I guess is about four thousand days from now, so the guy I live with better be extra nice to me from now on. It’s supposed to get hot and dry (“finally”) in the next couple of days, and I know I won’t like that, so we’ll just see how nice he is to me then.

Meanwhile, I suppose it’s true that things go on even when I’m not here, and so I have some pictures. I’m mostly interested in me, and my stupid cone, but I’ll show the pictures anyway.

The guy I live with says that the goldfinches are back. I think this is what he means.15061606There’s lots of stuff in flower now, though of course it’s hard to appreciate it all when you have a cone on your head. The flowers are the horned poppy (Glaucium flavum), Gilia (or Ipomopsis) aggregata, the red, and snow-in-summer. 15061601The buddleia (Buddleia alternifolia ‘Argentea’) is doing pretty well. You can smell it all over the garden, even if you have a cone on your head. 15061602The other thing that’s smelling up the garden is the big rose, Rosa kokanica. It fell over the path that I walk on, and the guy I live with had to prop it up, which is good, because, you know, I have a stupid cone on my head, and might run into things. 15061604

 

15061611The guy I live with said he mowed the back lawn while I was away today. It’s not a very big lawn, but it’s good enough for me, and it’s private. That’s right, I have a “private lawn”. (And a cone stuck on my head, of course.)15061605There are some cactuses flowering. I’m not sure why I’m even saying this, because here are some pictures of cactuses in flower, so I guess you could tell without me saying anything, but when you have a cone on your head, you don’t think so clearly. You know what gets cactuses to flower? Rain, that’s what. And it’s been raining here almost constantly. 15061609

 

15061610Believe it or not, in that last cactus flower picture, those aren’t weeds around it, but a skullcap. Scutellaria angustifolia. It has blue-purple flowers, and then disappears for the summer.

I guess that’s all. I mean unless you want me to go on more about the cone on my head. The guy I live with says maybe not to, so I guess I’ll let you go. Pathetically, of course. 15061603

 

Until next time, then.

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a two-nap day

Posted on June 12, 2015 by paridevita

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the tiny, yet not really totally tiny, purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you a bit of news about the garden. You may remember me from such posts as “Damp And Delighted”, among an increasingly large (like me) number of others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. I rarely sit still, if you couldn’t tell. 15061201You may have noticed that I haven’t been posting so much, and there’s a perfectly good reason for that.

It’s been raining so much that the guy I live with has been extra super-mopey, instead of his usual just mopeyness, and in fact I haven’t enjoyed the rain all that much either. I found this thing which was all slimy and the guy I live with said it was called a “slug” and did not belong in the house, and I thought about it for a minute and decided he was right. He sometimes is, you know.

This is what the sky looked like a couple of nights ago. Pretty gloomy, huh. Possibly even ominous. The guy I live with was actually trying to get some pictures of bats, but, as he said, “They fly, you know”. skySo anyway, this morning it was raining, and that’s when the movie was filmed. It rained and rained, and I stayed inside, partly because I could, since we didn’t have anything on our otherwise busy schedule.

And then all of a sudden, the rain stopped and the sun came out. I got to go on my walk, even though it was pretty soggy. The creek was full right up to the top of its banks, and made a terrific noise as it rushed through the culvert under the canal.

The sun stayed out, which was surprising. It was out all the rest of the day. So the guy I live with took some pictures. Not as many as he could have, of course.

You might think we have a lot of Allium cristophii, but, really, this is only a few of them. The iron pig, which the guy I live with says is really a javelina, isn’t very scary. alliumAnd then there was the “Oregon sunshine”, Eriophyllum lanatum ‘Takilma Gold’, which was so bright I almost had to wear dark glasses when I walked by it. takil1There are a bunch of other plants flowering, but I guess you’ll just have to imagine them, because the guy I live with said it was a “two-nap day”, which I guess it was. I like it when he decides to nap on the couch, because I’ve discovered that it’s fun to nap at the same time that he does.  He said it was okay if I slept on the couch too, but I like to stretch out on the floor.

For me, though, two naps really aren’t enough. I like more than that, and so I’ll let you go now, and get busy with another nap.15061502

 

Until next time, then.

 

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