Hello 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. You may remember me from such riveting posts as “As Above, So Below” and “One Thing Follows Another”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a slightly ridiculous pose. I don’t know why I looked like that, but I did. 
It’s been really, really hot, though the guy I live with says I’m exaggerating, that it hasn’t been that hot, it’s just that I’m a purebred border collie, and we don’t like hot weather.
Here I am being hot again. Squinting in the sun, too. 
I’m really ready for winter, with no heat or thunder, but the guy I live with says I have to endure the next few months, and that it might even get hotter. Over eighty degrees, even. (That’s about 27C.)
Today the guy I live with said he had to go get his hair cut, and he was beginning to look like a dandelion gone to seed, so he left me alone for a while. I just sat in the house and baked. The curtains were closed, which made it cooler, but not that much cooler. He says I could have gone down into the laundry room and slept on the cool concrete floor, but that sounded like too much trouble, and I can’t guard the house from down there.
Then he went to Timberline. Instead of coming back home. He’d called early in the morning to see if the cactus were in bloom, and they weren’t, completely, yet, but he went anyway. I don’t know why he goes to nurseries if there isn’t a good reason to, but he does.
Some of the opuntias had started to bloom. The guy I live with says that this is just about the most impressive floral display in the state. The opuntias have plenty of room to spread out, are in total full sun, and treated with loving kindness. 
This one might be called ‘Mandarin Orange’ (not the pink one). There’s a label, but he forgot to look at it. 
He says he’ll go back in a few days with “the big camera” and take more pictures, while I fry at home, of course. Though, the forecast for this weekend is for cooler weather, which I like, except not at this time of year.
Back at home, we have cactus, too. Here’s Echinocereus coccineus, one that the guy I live with grew from seed. (The cage is for seedling calochortus, in case you were wondering.) A few raindrops on the flower. 
And the obligatory picture of Asphodeline damascena. It blooms in the afternoon, and always does this three- or four-story thing. Self sown, too. There’s been a colony of these ever since I can remember.
The reason why it looks so empty over on the left, there, is “because it just is”, which I guess is an okay reason. There was a mugho pine there which was getting too big for its britches (I guess pines have britches, though I didn’t know that), and it was removed, leaving a big empty space. There’s an oak in a cage at the extreme left. You can see the fancy hook thing he makes for the cages, so no one can sneak under them. There are oaks in cages all over the garden. And of course the lawn oaks. Caged oaks aren’t a metaphor, though you might think that they are, since we do the metaphor thing all the time, but in this case it’s because rodents, in particular squirrels, can smell the remains of the acorn still there, slightly underground, and go digging for it. Like they don’t have anything else to eat here.
Oh, oh, I almost forgot. Remember I showed a picture of the robin sitting on the nest, in the Abies lasiocarpa? Well, there was a reason to sit on the nest.
It was a little difficult to take this picture since the nest is up high. 
Baby robins. I can hear them cheeping sometimes.
I guess that’s all. It’s been raining and thundering for at least half an hour now, and I’m really tired of it. The guy I live with tried to explain that if it gets a lot hotter, like the way he prefers it, then I don’t have to worry so much about thunder and rain, and, uh, the other thing, but I just want winter to be here. I do admit that sleeping on my soft Pottery Barn sheets at night, with fan blowing blowing cool air all over me, is pretty good, but winter is much nicer.
I’ll just wait out the rest of spring and summer.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 