words of wisdom

Posted on February 13, 2014 by paridevita

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. You may remember me from such posts as “What On Earth…” and “I Don’t Get It”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. Looking quite serious. 14021301Some things happened in the last couple of days, but mostly they involved the guy I live with complaining about the lack of sun, and the cold. One terrifying thing happened. A squirrel walked into my living room. I had to hide in the upstairs closet. The guy I live with yelled at the squirrel and it ran back outside. It took me a while to come out of the closet, though. “Some guard dog”, the guy I live with said, but I’m retired, and besides, squirrels in my living room are scary.

Now the weather has turned nice; sunny, windy, and about 60 degrees (not quite 16C), and so the guy I live with is doing what he does at this time of year.14021306He said, and this is where the words of wisdom come in, that winter is too long, and too cold. I live with a very deep thinker indeed.

He made a fancy cage for some seeds he sowed directly into the new sand pile today. Seeds of the dwarf sand verbena, Abronia nana, to be precise. I think the cage makes the entire sand pile come alive. You know, like, artistically and stuff.14021305Well, speaking of long cold winters, this past winter….and, yes, we know it’s not over by a long shot….has been the coldest here since 1991, which was before I was born, so I just have to take the guy I live with’s word for it.

So, why, he asked me just a little while ago, is Sedum booleanum still “very much alive”? One of the stems, at the top, is broken, but otherwise things are fine. 14021304The guy I live with looked this one up, which he can do just sitting at the laptop, and it was described in 1995, coming from Nuevo León, growing on gypsum hillsides at 1340 meters, which even I know isn’t that high.

“How come this is hardy?” he asked me, and when I didn’t answer, he then said “If this is hardy, why isn’t everything else that grows around it also hardy?” I know the answer to that question, and it’s “Because it doesn’t work that way”, which I admit is pretty deep, and also vaguely mysterious. Why doesn’t it?

“It just doesn’t”, is his standard answer.

Okay, well, there isn’t much else to say. Titanopsis calcarea is blooming again. The guy I live with often gets excited by one flower on a plant. He says that if it didn’t get so cold here the plant would have blooming all this time, meaning since the last time I showed a picture of it. 14021302That’s really about it. I hope the sun and wind will melt all the slush in the garden pretty soon.

Oh, the snowdrops. Must mention the snowdrops. I’ll show those, then let you go.14021303

 

Until next time, then.

 

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another gray day

Posted on February 10, 2014 by paridevita

Hello everyone; it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to show you how to make a post out of practically nothing at all. You may remember me from such similar posts as “A Post About Nothing” and “Another Post About Nothing”, as well as many, many posts which were actually about something.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.14021008Here I am in another characteristic pose. I don’t get paid by the picture; I had two, that’s all. This one with the averted gaze of royalty, again. The guy I live with says I need my toenails cut, but he’s going to wait until my annual checkup in April and have it done there, since I bled all over the carpet when he did it and he felt bad, and not just for the carpet.

14021011Oh, and someone’s birthday is coming up in less than a month now. He didn’t know when it was, if you can believe that, until my last checkup. My mommy knew, of course.

This morning everything was covered with rime. Or hoar-frost. There doesn’t seem to be much difference, but whatever, it’s rare here.

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14021005The guy I live with painted the kitchen cabinets, a little. In the afternoon, which it still is but I mean earlier, he missed what he said was “an excellent black-and-white  opportunity” for a picture. There were these crows, or ravens maybe (he couldn’t see the beaks), pecking away at something in the street (I know what it was, but never mind), and some magpies were there too (half the size of the crows or ravens), and a black-and-white cat walked down the street to see what they were doing. The birds flew away.

14021012The cat couldn’t have done anything to these birds.

That reminds me that not only were there cats here before there were purebred border collies, but my mommy, who didn’t especially care for cats until she met the guy I live with, painted their pictures. This was back when she stayed at home and did things like draw and make fancy dinners and stuff. These were done in acrylics, which is what she used before she started drawing plants and bugs and things. 14021009This was the guy I live with’s first cat. He got him as a Christmas present, I think. His name was Mister Pipo (pee-po), and here he is taking a nap on the comforter.14021010

 

This seems like an awful lot of attention to be paid to a couple of smelly cats. But the guy I live with said to show them, so I did. He says that the purple paw prints were actually made by the cat. Well, whatever; it sounds gross to me.

That’s all I have for today. I did say at the beginning that I didn’t really have much of anything interesting to post, didn’t I? The sun is finally coming out and maybe tomorrow there will be some gardening-related activity.

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Until next time, then.

 

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