Greetings and salutations everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the less-than-completely-tiny purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you the latest news from our garden before it snows again. You may remember me from such posts as “In The Doghouse”, among at least a few others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. Oh, and by the way, you may also notice that some of the book bindings behind me are chewed. That definitely wasn’t me who did that, because they were like that when I got here. It was some other purebred border collie. 
Here I am playing with my new Lamb Chop. I like my new Lamb Chop a lot, as you can tell. 
It was all gloomy and stuff today and the guy I live with did some gardening, which I helped with, a little bit. It’s supposed to snow over the next couple of days, and we could get like a foot (30 cm) of snow, and so work had to be done today. Really, not very much work was done, so it must not have been all that important. A couple of irises were flowering and here’s one of them. You can tell by its name that it’s kind of an unusual iris. The standards are a little floppy because the wind was blowing.
Iris paradoxa
The guy I live with decided that the pots which were on the patio should be moved out onto the flagstone, and I agreed, partly because the potting soil that was in them had been there for a few years, and needed to be replaced, or at least so I thought, and I began work on them as soon as the guy I live with wasn’t looking. I wanted to surprise him with all the work I’d done. I was a little disappointed that he wasn’t as surprised as I thought he would be. He said later that almost all of the purebred border collies who have lived here thought potting soil was excellent, and that this behavior of mine was typical.
The work took a little longer than I thought it would.
The guy I live with explained to me these pots were fairly expensive, so, not to break any, and in fact the price of the big one is still written on the side, which isn’t terribly classy, but we don’t concern ourselves with things like that, too much.
Later in the afternoon the guy I live with put a harness on me and tried to persuade me to go on something called “a walk”, but it was scary, though I did go across the street to say Hi to the neighbor kids, who liked me a lot, which I thought showed very good taste. I’d met them before. Then he took me out into the field, or the entrance to it, really, but it was even scarier, and I wanted to go home, so we went home.
The only thing that was scarier was when we went out in the dark last night, and I got all the way to the back fence, with the guy I live with, and then I heard a noise somewhere in the corner of the yard, and decided it was time to go back inside.
Anyway, that was my day. It was a pretty good one, as I think you can tell. And you can see here that I have a new collar, and a rabies tag. I don’t really like the tag, but the guy I live with says that’s tough, which is kind of mean, if you ask me. 
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 