Hello everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the tiny purebred border collie, here to tell you all about my very interesting, and slightly scary, day. You may remember me from such posts as “My New Friend”, where I introduced myself.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. Notice I have an outfit now. The guy I live with bought me a collar, but then decided to let me wear the one that the previous purebred border collie wore when he was little. “For a sense of continuity”, he said. I think I look very elegant indeed. 
How about another characteristic pose, to make things even more interesting?
There isn’t any gardening going on, so I can talk about myself a whole lot. (This will be the best post so far, of course.) You see, the weather is “way too icky for gardening”
and so the guy I live with has mostly concentrated on me, which is excellent.
He did drag out a machine today, one which I understand has terrified purebred border collies here for many, many years. (Although I was told that this was a newer one, because the guy I live with broke the earlier one and had to buy a new one to make his companion happy, after she got upset at him for breaking the earlier one. The new one cost a lot of money and is, supposedly, “not to be attacked”.) It made a whole bunch of noise as it was pushed across the floor. And then after a few minutes, it got pushed across the floor again, and some soapy stuff flew all over the place, and the carpet got all wet. It was pretty scary. I didn’t run or anything like that; I just stood there and waited for it to stop. Eventually, it did.
After all that was done, we went outside. You can see why there isn’t any gardening going on. That’s me there, surveying my domain. 
I checked out the rock garden. I don’t know why there’s no snow under the spruce (left) and the fir (right). The guy I live with says some plants do produce heat, so maybe that’s it. 
I went into the shed, which I went into yesterday, too, but I found something there that I “wasn’t supposed to have”, a piece of flower pot. I had to surrender it. The guy I live with explained why we don’t run with pieces of flower pot in our mouth, and he said he would make sure there weren’t any more in the shed.
After that, though, I found a stick. I might make a whole post some day about how fun it is to find a stick. I think there are lots of sticks in the back yard.
There really isn’t much of anything to compare with finding a stick. The guy I live with doesn’t seem to get all that excited when he finds a stick, and so I wonder if there’s something wrong with him. He likes me, so probably not.
So that’s been my day. I thought I would leave you with my discovery last night, that I’m going to be very good at hiding from the guy I live with, or, as he put it, “trying not to be seen”. I’m almost invisible here.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 