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.
the miserable gardener 