Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, indeed, once again it is I, Mani the tiny, yet getting huger by the hour, purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to tell you all about my life the past few days. You may remember me from such posts as “A Misty Day”, among at least a few others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
According to the guy I live with, who’s been pretty unreasonable lately, I’ve been naughty, and am “in the doghouse”. I don’t know what that means, since I already have a house, and I’m in it a lot, like right now in that picture, as you can see.
I even have a look that shows how innocent I am. I mean, if you didn’t believe it already.
I’m sure you’ll agree that a garden full of plastic labels can be pretty unattractive, and all those metal cages, I mean, really. So I’ve been removing them, in a fairly orderly fashion, and giving the guy I live with a bit of exercise, chasing me around the garden to make me spit them out, which he needed anyway. He says that there was a border collie who lived here many years ago who removed labels, and was terribly punished for it, in some particularly horrible, medieval way, but he didn’t say exactly how horrible and medieval. (I know they didn’t have videos back then, but they did have day-long lectures, and so….)
Anyway, the garden is turning greener. There are still some labels visible. I haven’t gotten to those yet. 
Parts of the garden need to be guarded, against, well, against things. 
Including the species tulips, which as you can see are pretty bright, but still need a bit if guarding, just in case. (The green thing in the upper left is a cactus that the guy I live with stepped on, by mistake of course. Because no one was guarding it.)
Tulipa armena
The wind came up a little, yesterday evening, and it was pretty scary. The guy I live with said it was “just the wind”, and explained that things that move do so because of the wind. I wasn’t really convinced, and had to spend some time in the kitchen, being super-aware of stuff.
And since the downstairs has now been opened, so I can go down and explore, there are some issues over which stuffed animals I get to grab, and which ones I don’t. I guess that one Christmas, the guy I live with bought one of these, I think they’re called “Snuggly Bear”, for his friend who’s no longer here, and she bought one for him at the same time, so they’ve been sitting at the head of the bed ever since, and of course I grabbed one, and the guy I live with didn’t say anything, but just put it back where it was. 
I swiped the little moose that the guy I live with brought home from Canada, as a present, and he took that away from me, too.
I’m not even allowed to think about Norris (but I do anyway), who sits on a shelf in the linen closet, which has no doors on it, so I can see him looking down at me. Looking down at me kind of pompously, if you ask me, like, “I’m up here and you aren’t”, that sort of thing. Of course right now he’s looking straight ahead, because he’s so special he had to have his picture taken, looking all haughty and untouchable. 
Well, so what. One day I’ll be huge, and just be standing around pretending to be doing nothing, and then I’ll leap up and grab Norris and carry him out to the garden, where he’ll get all dirty, and the guy I live with will have to go out and rescue him, and that’ll be a lot of fun. Or maybe, just maybe, I’ll get to sleep with him, all soft and serious-looking, next to me, when I’m big enough to sleep in the real bed.
In the mean time, I’ve been able to get some shoes from downstairs, because that’s allowed, and those are a lot of fun to chew on. The guy I live with says they’re better than chewing on him, and, while I’m not totally sure that’s true, the shoes are pretty enjoyable, especially out in the garden. I’ll leave you with a picture of me doing just that. 
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 