the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you the latest news from our very white garden. You may remember me from such white-oriented posts as “The White Stuff” and “A Snow Day”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic, slightly snow-bedizened pose.I bet you can tell, just from the title of today’s post, not to mention from my picture above, that it’s snowing here. It’s been snowing all day long. This is really the only time that we have day-long precipitation, when it snows. Once in a very long while it rains all day here, but that’s pretty rare indeed.

The guy I live with says that now that the big pinyon is gone (which he still feels kind of weird about cutting down), it looks like the shed has a smokestack, but that’s a feeder full of thistle seed. The shed is pretty cozy, with a dirt floor, but I’m glad I can stay inside when it’s cold. The evergreen you see to the right of the shed is a pinyon, by the way. I’m doing much better. I thought I should say that. Apparently I just had an episode that freaked out the guy I live with a whole lot. We went for walks in the snow today, but I could tell that he was glad it wasn’t an hour-long walk like some have been.

I did want to show what has happened to the pie pumpkin that was left out on the patio table. We both knew this would happen. The The guy I live with stuck his head out of the sliding glass door (after opening it, of course), and told the squirrel not to make a mess. Like that did any good.I don’t know if I’ve talked about this wrought-iron furniture before. It was the guy I live with’s grandmother’s, and was originally white, then got painted green, and then black, and gradually the paint peeled away, showing all three colors, and my mommy said to leave it that way, that it gave it some class. That’s her stuff on the table. The guy I live with sows seed on the table, with the pots in a dishpan full of water, even in weather like this. Sometimes he starts a fire in the charcoal grill, to warm his hands, or (more likely) just to be different, but usually the seeds are sown outside, so as not to make a mess in the house, and then the pots are put on the shelves on the patio, unless there’s no snow, and then they can be put into the seed frames.

And incidentally, my mommy would save the seeds from the pie pumpkins, and roast them in the oven, and then salt them. They were really good. I know.

I’m not sure what the guy I live with is going to do if this turns out to be a long winter, with snow on the ground for months. He says he’s going to “think a lot”, which makes me a little uneasy. Most of the gardening takes the form of seed sowing and things like that. Sometimes he reads about gardening. But I’m feeling much better, and I guess that’s the most important thing. The cold weather makes my coat extremely soft.

I guess that’s it for today. 

Until next time, then.

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you the latest news from our garden. I might talk about myself a little, too. You may remember me from such posts as “A Rare Visitor” and “Caught On Film”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.The guy I live with said I should look cheerier, even though I’m kind of under the weather with the usual digestive thing, inflammatory something, and the guy I live with is worried that I might not last much longer. He worries about me a lot, which I understand completely. He talked to the doctor’s office briefly, and that made him feel a little better, until he started freaking out again. Nothing has happened to me all day long, but he doesn’t seem to be able to grasp that.

I had a nice dinner of 93 percent lean ground beef, rice soaked in chicken stock (low salt), and custom-steamed pumpkin and some Greek yogurt for dessert.  How’s this for cheery?If you’re wondering about the piece of blue tape on the pantry door behind me, well, it’s to keep it closed (doesn’t work) until the guy I live with fixes the latch that holds the door shut. He has so many things to think about that he says he might need another brain. Like when people get an extra hard drive for their computers, I guess.

Oh, and about the ground beef. Someone told him that it was bad for me, but the guy I live with looked it up and the ASPCA website says senior dogs, which I’m one of, should have protein to help build muscle mass and stuff. He listens to other people way more than he should. Or maybe it isn’t that, it’s just that he remembers everything. Or something.

Anyway, as you may know, it got very cold here, very suddenly. It was okay for walking in, though. No gardening happened, for sure.

The guy I live with says we are below average for this time of year. I think he should speak for himself.

celsius on the left

It warmed up some today, and so the guy I live with put up the rest of the bird feeders and filled them with seed. Then he realized that a couple of them were in the wrong place.Hardly anything else happened today. He saw a red-breasted nuthatch but didn’t take its picture, and tried to take a picture of the downy woodpecker, but that didn’t come out, and there was a magpie on the suet feeder, but a flicker chased it away.

Eventually the sun started to go down.The things hanging down from the honey locust are chains that hold bird feeders. Every so often the guy I live with hits his head on one of the feeders; that’s pretty funny.

Speaking of the sun, get this: the guy I live with told me that we live on this gigantic round ball called “Earth”, and that it’s constantly turning, and that the sun is stationary. I started to get scared but the guy I live with said not to worry. I know about my back yard, and the front, and the sidewalks, and the field I go out into for my walks, and riding to the doctor’s, and also a place we went once where a plain cheeseburger for me came in through the car window somehow, and he said that, really, if we focus on that part, we don’t need to worry about the rest so much.

I guess I can sleep tonight. The guy I live with said he would tuck extra covers over me if I started to worry about being this tiny black-and-white speck on this huge turning ball.

I guess that’s it. I think I could talk about myself for hours, but the guy I live with says this is probably enough, for today. 

Until next time, then.