the miserable gardener

the star student

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the tiny, but less-tiny-than-yesterday, purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you the latest news about me and my (sorry, our) garden. You may remember me from such posts as “Bunnies And Flies”, among so many others.

Here I am in a characteristically relaxed pose.We’ve been doing hardly anything in the last few days, because it’s been raining. Not raining like it was before, but raining and thundering. The guy I live with said that’s all it did all last summer, but I don’t know what summer is, so that doesn’t mean much to me. He complains a lot anyway.

There have been a lot of flies to chase, and that’s really fun. If you haven’t tried it, maybe you should. The guy I live with doesn’t like it when I chase really big flies, which he says are “bumblebees”, but they’re fun to chase too. Here I am doing exactly that.I know that, technically, I’m not supposed to be in the rock garden, but I was the star student at Puppy Day Care yesterday, so I must be doing something right, and the guy I live with must just be full of something. See? We quite occasionally have disagreements about stuff, but the guy I live with doesn’t have any stars, and I don’t know why he goes on so. He insists that my giraffe is an “upstairs giraffe”, like it belongs in my upstairs fort at bedtime, but I think it also likes to go out in the rain, and get all soaking.

upstairs giraffe

In between hunting flies, we sometimes play tug-of-chew-toy. I’m better at it than he is.

That’s really all that’s going on. Sometimes the guy I live with does go out and work in the garden, during the brief periods when it either isn’t raining or he isn’t taking a nap, but mostly he just sits at the kitchen table and stares out into space. I do that sometimes, too.

I’ll let you go now, but before I do, I have a couple of movies for you. You might find them a bit avant garde, but these were taken at night, of course, and the eerie flickering is the wind chimes, which you can also hear. They’re pretty good if you embiggen them, too.

This one was taken from an ever-so-slightly different angle, as you can see when the wind chimes flicker. The guy I live with is so artistic, isn’t he?

Until next time, then.

of orioles and rain

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the ever-growing, yet still tiny and cuddly, purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you some news from our very dark and stormy garden. You may remember me from such posts as “Damp And Delighted”, among an increasingly large number of others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. This may be a bit too intellectual a pose, for some. It’s entirely true that some purebred border collies can have radar ears. I mean if you didn’t already know that. Here’s my great-uncle Pooka, and you can clearly see his radar ears. I never knew him. He always looked concerned about something. Anyway, yesterday was pretty gloomy. It rained. That’s basically all it’s been doing for, like, ever. But after it stopped regular raining, without thunder and stuff, just rain, a couple of days ago, the rain now pours down, from thunderstorms. We had a few of those yesterday. With some hail.

Today we saw the sun, and the guy I live with said it made him feel pretty good, on such an otherwise melancholy day, and so obviously the end was near. It turned out that it wasn’t the end, really. It was just the sun, putting in a brief appearance, just to remind us that it still exists.

He remembered to fill the oriole feeder with grape jelly, after the rain had washed it out yesterday, and guess what happened after he did that?

A male and a female Bullock’s oriole.

The feeder has holes and a tray for sugar syrup, but bees get trapped in there, so that’s empty, unless it rains. There could be a half an orange skewered on the holder deal, but there isn’t. We don’t have any oranges. The guy I live with says he could make a list before he goes to the store, and would go there and get everything but oranges.

I think it goes without saying that no gardening has been done here in about a month. Maybe a bit of this or that, but nothing serious. This is why.

There are some things flowering, despite the weather. This is Ixiolirion tataricum. And if you were wondering how the irises were doing, I guess not too badly.I did have a bit of time this morning to patrol for squirrels, and do some other stuff, but, basically, it’s just been raining and raining. And then it rains some more. I guess I’ll leave you with that.