the miserable gardener

gray and gloomy

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, indeed, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to entertain and delight you. You may remember me from such entertaining and delightful posts as “A Change Of Pace” and “Invasion Of The Pods”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. Hoping for a biscuit, of course. (I got one.)Today was really gray and gloomy, a disappointment after yesterday’s nice weather. The humidity was ninety-six percent, and it was all cloudy and chilly and everything, and occasionally a lone snowflake would drift through the air. My walks were good, though there was a lot of frozen slush which, you know, can be hard on the paws, and a lot of ice. I and the guy I live with both fell down on the ice today, not at the same time, but we’re both okay.

You can see how gray and gloomy it was. My mommy bought that green star. Every so often it stays upright. Even so, the noise from the redwing blackbirds was pretty amazing. They’re starting that trilling song they have, which tells us that spring isn’t too far around the corner. The tree in the movie here is almost three hundred feet away.

The guy I live with filled some seed pots, and even started a fire, with real firewood, in the chiminea, to stay warm out on the patio, but he didn’t get very far with his project. He kept losing his pencil. He says that a pencil is the only thing to use on labels in this climate, because the sun bleaches out everything else. I wonder if some people know what a pencil is, in these computer days. This is a pencil.

It has to be sharpened with something called a pencil sharpener. There’s one out in the garage, which is why it’s so dusty.

pencil sharpener

Oh, well, now that I’ve started on this, here’s an extremely prehistoric writing instrument. It’s called a typewriter. I know it kind of looks like computer, in a way, but it’s not one. The guy I live with says this was made in 1937. They didn’t even have TV then. I wonder what people did back in those days. It was purchased at, or possibly repaired by, the Wilshire Typewriter Company (DUnkirk 2-3584) in Los Angeles, probably right before the guy I live with’s grandfather was stationed overseas, in the Philippines. He was an Army doctor.

When his grandfather was stationed in Yuma, Arizona, about 1938, before going overseas, a dog came up and licked the paint off the side of the box. My buddy Slipper used to lick paint off things, and there’s the story of my uncle Pooka, who licked all the buttermilk off the troughs after the guy I live with painted them with it to try to get moss to grow.

I’m not so much the kind of purebred border collie who licks things like paint or buttermilk; I tried buttermilk once and I thought it was icky. My buddy Slipper liked it, of course.

I know this doesn’t have anything to do with gardening, but it was a really boring day for the guy I live with. He felt sorry even for me, and gave me a cow ear to chew on. I know it sounds gross, but it wasn’t.

This is our living room, with me chewing in it. The rattan furniture, which is think is called “bahooka” or something like that, was purchased in the Philippines in 1939. It’s really creaky, like I’ve said before. My mommy did the arranging in the living room, and that’s her picture up on the shelf. Those are all her books, mostly. When the guy I live with painted the living room, he took everything down and put it back exactly the way it was. I’m kind of rambling, aren’t I? The guy I live with says that okay; that’s what you do when you’re retired. Oh, wait, wait, there is something gardening related left to say.

The guy I live with got an email from Garden Talk which said they were having a sale, and so he ordered a couple more of these propagators, which he says are excellent. He puts heavy-duty aluminum foil in the bottom, to line the tray, because the tray comes with drainage holes. He’s ordered from Garden Talk, or Nicke’s, for, like, ever. Okay, now I think I’ve covered everything that I had to say today. I guess I’ll let you go now. May all your cow ears be chewy.

Until next time, then.

more stuff gets done

Hello everyone; it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to bring you the latest news from our garden on this soggy and slushy day. You may remember me from such fascinating posts as “Little Red Elephants” and “Baffled Again”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. The guy I live with has been reading about the czars of Russia and decided my picture should be taken with gaze averted, just like a czar or something. Come to think of it, I do rather look like royalty. Snow-eating royalty, to boot. I could probably just stop right here, now that the post is all totally excellent, but the guy I live with insists on trying to be interesting, so here goes.

It was a pretty nice day. Hard to believe it was so cold just a few days ago.It was melting so much that the guy I live with’s feet got wet, and he had to change shoes and socks, then those got wet, and on and on. He has about fifty pairs of socks just because of that.

He sowed a whole bunch of seed today. It was too drippy on the patio to do it there, so he sowed the seed indoors, after filling the pots outside. There was an offer of help, as usual, but he dismissed it.He also moved all the pots in the garage refrigerator back out to the shelves on the patio, and covered them with a double layer of plastic. This is especially attractive.

When the plastic flaps in the wind, it’s pretty scary, but you can see how he takes care of that in the next picture, if you look closely, and the picture also shows the seed pots nestled on the shelves. He thinks “nestled” sounds more positive than “sitting”. He’s sown seed this way for almost a quarter century now. When something starts to happen in one of the pots, the pot gets moved out into a frame on the trough patio to be in more or less full sun. The pots are in plastic trays that can be filled with water; drying out is the biggest danger, he says.

If nothing happens, he flings the contents of the pot out into the garden, accompanied by a colorful phrase or two, and then a couple of years later wonders what plant it is that has appeared in the garden “as if by magic”.

I say the biggest danger here is that some rodent might discover that this is warmer than practically everywhere else and chew its way through the plastic, but the guy I live with says that probably won’t happen. I’m not going to be involved, that’s for sure. The water jug, which is what that is, is to keep pots from falling over. In theory, anyway.

He got all his seed from the Scottish Rock Garden Club and the Czech seed collectors a couple of days ago, and so there’s more sowing to be done. It gives him something to do, besides constantly going down into the laundry room and looking at the “zillion” cactus seedlings. I think he’s exaggerating the number, but I think there really are a lot, now. You know those people who say really weird things and you just think “Huh”? Well, when people ask the guy I live with what he’s going to do with all the cactus and other plants, he just says “Huh?”, like they’d asked the weirdest question in the world. “What sort of thing is that to ask a gardener? What am I going to do with all the plants?” Well, most of them will probably die when he forgets to water them on a hot day, but I don’t say things like that to him.

I guess that’s all. Wait, no, I got to see Norm the coyote pretty close up yesterday morning, and that was really cool, though the guy I live with didn’t have his camera, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. We didn’t say anything to each other, though. Just looked at each other.

Now that really is all. I’ll show another picture of me, again in a characteristic pose, and one of my personal favorites, to make the post all excellent again.

Until next time, then.

the miserable gardener

gray and gloomy

more stuff gets done

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