the miserable gardener

hardly anything at all

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to bring you the latest news from our garden, which is mostly about the weather. You may remember me from such posts as “Tiny Little Flowers” and “Turned Up Missing”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. Our tiny little world didn’t come to an end today like the guy I live with said it might, what with all the predictions and everything, though he says we could still have thunderstorms tonight. Since I take goofballs and sleep on soft Pottery Barn sheets with the fan blowing cool air over my nose, I don’t pay so much attention to night-time storms as I used to. The weather people say that night-time storms in Denver are “rare”, which the guy I live with says means “happen all the time”.

Anyway, he was preparing for the End, partly by finishing up the cactus seedling transplant work, and partly by walking around by behaving like someone who’s preparing for the End. Fortunately there wasn’t a “supercell” storm or tornado intent on wiping us out. “Not yet, anyway”, he said optimistically.

Something almost as bad happened yesterday. The guy I live with was upstairs for some reason, and he heard this funny noise that sounded like an underground utility locator. He knows about such things. He looked out the window, and there was a guy below the Arizona cypress, locating. There was yellow location paint sprayed on the ground.

The guy I live with, since he used to do work like that, walked out into the front yard and asked the guy why locations were being marked in his front yard, which also happens to be a garden.

“Have to replace the gas line”, said the guy doing the locating.

The guy I live with told the locator that the gas line needed to be replaced next door, and showed him where the gas company had drilled holes in the driveway next door, probing for a gas leak. It was even marked and stuff; the guy I live with had talked to the gas people, because he has a tendency to chat with utility workers, having been one himself, long before I was born.

So, if we’d been on vacation, say in Seattle to get some sun, we would have come back and the front yard would have been dug up, by a backhoe. Whew, huh.

“The moral of this story”, the guy I live with said, “is never to leave the house.” Or at least be aware of one or two things going on, I might say.

Other than that, not much happened, except for one thing. Our garden is almost entirely dependent on the weather, and the guy I live with says in a year or so this will be to the point where almost nothing is ever watered. I have a movie about it for you, which you might enjoy, especially if you happen to live in a place where this doesn’t often happen (really, like here, but not this year), and then I’ll sign off. I’m still waiting for my vet to call to see what’s going to happen, but I’m being very patient and calm, as usual.

Until next time, then.

questions you never asked

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 today to answer just a few of the many questions you never asked. You may remember me from such enlightening posts as “Eliminating The Impossible” and “Words Of Wisdom”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. This won’t be a really long post, if you were worried. I hope you’ll find it both informative and entertaining. The first question you may have, and one I certainly kept asking until I found the answer, is “Why are there all these pine cone pieces all over the place?” I keep stepping on them, and it’s kind of annoying.

pine cone pieces

The answer to this one can be found by looking up into the pine tree. I kept looking down, but the guy I live with showed me how to find the answer.Let’s see. Oh, here’s another one. “Are the cactus that the guy you live with is transplanting really as small as he says, or is he just being a whiner, as usual?”How about this one? “What’s the guy you live with reading that’s gardening-related, if anything?”

He’s reading this, which he says is “utterly delightful”. He didn’t even know the book existed, and for someone who thought he had all of this author’s books, that was pretty amazing. “Do you have a favorite garden seat?”

I do. My mommy bought this old park bench, or bus-station bench, and she used to put towels on it so I could sit on it with her. Sometimes my buddy Slipper would try to hog the bench, which made it really crowded. I don’t sit on it any more, but it’s still there, and sometimes the guy I live with sits on it, and thinks. Here’s one I bet you never thought of. “How many trowels does the guy you live with own?”Isn’t this interesting? Okay, here’s one I actually did wonder about, and maybe you have too. “Do mice ever get thirsty?”I guess I’ve come to the end of my post. I can’t think of anything else, and I can tell you for sure that the guy I live with can’t, either.