the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the very small purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to tell you all about my day, and to talk about some garden news as well. You may remember me from such posts as “The Infernal Machine”, and maybe a few others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. The guy I live with mentioned that this was the second Friday the thirteenth in a row, and that maybe all Fridays from now on will be the thirteenth, and, purely by coincidence, we have thirteen pictures today, hence the title of my post.

True, there are extra pictures of me, like this onebut we really didn’t add any to come up with thirteen, it just happened that way. Extra pictures of me are delightful, as I’m sure you will agree.

I had a pretty good day today. Shortly after these first two pictures were taken, I started looking all angelic

angelic

and then I sprang into action.You can probably see how excellent the day started, just by this.

The guy I live with is pretty fun to play with, since he says I’m pretty much exactly like all the other border collies who have lived here, which is a compliment, of course, and it was really funny yesterday when I chomped on his rear end and nothing happened except that he said “Ow”,  but being outside is very good, and we spent a lot of time out in the garden today. It rained a little last night, and so there was some mud, and that made it even better. I got to look around a lot. Here’s a picture of me investigating things.The plastic thing, which I thought was pretty scary when I first saw it, is a cage to protect bulb flowers, so they can get their pictures taken.

We have bulbs in flower. A lot of them, actually.

Crocus ancyrensis ‘Golden Bunch’

Colchicum hungaricum ‘Valentine’

Crocus biflorus subsp. adamii

A mystery crocus appeared behind this one; similar, but with no stripes. The guy I live with thought about propagating it and calling it “Stripeless”, which is really original.

mystery crocus

There are a whole lot of cyclamen, too. These are Cyclamen coum. 

While the guy I live with was wandering around looking for things to take pictures of, I found something to chew. The guy I live with said it was a piece of a pine cone. Maybe I should ask for pine cones for breakfast. They’re good.Funny thing: the guy I live with says I lose all sense of hearing when I’m outside, like if he calls my name or politely suggests that I not do something, but when he opens the bag of Newman’s Own treats, I can hear that from the farthest part of the yard.

So, see? A pretty interesting and worthwhile day. The guy I live with tried to take a nap on the couch this afternoon, and I jumped up on him, pretending I wanted to take a nap too, but instead I started chomping on him, which is a lot of fun. We played tug-of-chew-toy some, later.

I guess that’s all. I keep finding new places to curl up and take naps, and so I have to go look for a new one right now, so I’ll say goodbye for now.

Until next time, then.

Greetings and salutations everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to tell you all about my day. I have one obligatory plant picture for you, too. You may remember me from such posts as “The Couch–An Interlude”, among at least a few others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. I had a pretty good day, even though I was left alone for a little while. I stayed in my fort. When the guy I live with came home, I was very happy. I had lunch, and we went outside to look at things. He got all excited by this plant, which I can see, because it’s blue, and about the right size for me.

Hyacinthella glabrescens

Then I started to think about things. This is me looking thoughtful. I forget what it was I was thinking about. It was interesting, though. After a while, the guy I live with sat on the couch, hoping to “get a cute picture” of me. He had the camera with him, of course.

Now, what you may not know about tiny border collies like me is that we like attacking stuff. Like, pretty much everything. And we move very fast, as the pictures will show.

I stuck my tongue out at the camera. Then I got closer.I grabbed the strap. The guy I live with reminded me that the camera “cost more” than I did, which I thought was fairly below the belt, if you know what I mean. The guy I live with thought this was “only moderately funny”, and it didn’t take long for me to realize he was right. There were a lot more interesting things to attack. 

This was the best one. That was pretty enjoyable, believe me.

Then I spent some time looking out the upstairs bedroom window, and snacking on the tecoma next to me. He put a cage around the tecoma a couple of days ago. Like that would stop me. The guy I live with yelled at me and moved the tecoma into the spare bedroom.

So, since I was upstairs, I found something else to do.You should have heard what he said. He went up the stairs, into the bathroom, and started rolling up the paper, but guess who was faster? If this hasn’t been an excellent day, then I don’t know what excellent means. And of course I do. 

Until next time, then.