the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations everyone; it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to tell you all about my day in the garden. You may remember me from such captivating posts as “A Beautiful Day” and “One Things Follows Another”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in another characteristically horticultural pose. It wasn’t very cold today. Above freezing for sure. I’m kind of balanced on this pile of snow. When the guy I live with came up to me, I fell right over. I do that sometimes. (I got up again.)There’s so little going on here, we’d have to do stuff for at least a week to make up for it. I mean almost less than nothing. The guy I live with said you could make a post with less than nothing to say, so here goes.

I spy with my little eye.Don’t see anything? Right below the Cylindropuntia echinocarpa that’s leaning up against the window there. No? Let’s move in a whole lot closer.If you were a bunny and scary things were circling overhead, looking for someone just like you, you’d know where to hide.

Speaking of scary, the French scare cats are on patrol. On ne passe pas, oui? The cages are for irises. Not just any irises, either.

And then, let’s see. Oh, the new seed frame, in the snow. Very fascinating. There are some pots of grass seed there. Rice grass, Oryzopsis hymenoides, or Achnatherum or whatever. Rice grass benefits from a cold treatment, and so there it is, cold. Since nothing is happening, and minutes tick by like hours, the guy I live with goes down and checks the baby cactus about three or four times a day. I’d say that doesn’t make them grow any faster, but he’d come right back with something like making a lot of crying and moaning sounds doesn’t make dinner time come any faster. Still, with my dinner time we are talking about something that’s actually important. The baby cactus are still growing without him having to look at them constantly.Here are some older ones, which are sort of more in focus, too.

He read somewhere that someone who grows a lot of cactus uses Osmocote, and so that’s what you see there. I bet if he read that someone used maple syrup he’d try that too.

So that’s it. A whole post, really about nothing. I’ll end this with another picture of me, to kind of give the post some zest, or something. All in all, a pretty good day. (Oh, and the picture of me is suitable for framing.)

Until next time, then.

Hello everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to tell you all about my day. You may remember me from such cutting-edge and dazzling posts like “Watering–The Movie”, in which I played the lead.

Here I am in a characteristically horticultural pose. You can sort of see what my mommy called my “devil horns” which are one of the many unique features I possess. I’m really an angel, though, if you didn’t know. I came out into the back yard to see what the guy I live with was doing, but he wasn’t doing anything. He was just out there. Sometime he is. You know, not doing anything, just out there. That’s probably why his socks get wet all the time, and why he complains about it constantly. My paws get wet, but then they dry off. I wasn’t doing anything, either, and in the picture I’m not doing anything, just looking at stuff. So, I thought, why not do a post about nothing?

I mentioned books last time and this one is kind of interesting. I know this is a post about nothing but I’m going to show this anyway. It was the guy I live with’s grandfather’s, who liked to garden (he would weed on his hands and knees when well into his 90s), and after he died, the guy I live with found this book of his. He forgets where it was, because it was all chewed and stuff. It might have been in his mom’s garage, just lying around doing nothing. It’s an Everyman book and has the date 1916 written in it. 

Well, I guess that’s not entirely nothing, but fairly close to it.

People who remember my mommy and the guy I live with together sometimes wonder how he makes it through each day, especially in the winter, when you can’t do much gardening. He has me, of course, and a computer. (I bet you guessed both of those things.) He’s also quite content doing nothing. Yesterday, though, he read about the Himalayas a lot. They sound pretty high to me. He doesn’t think he’ll be climbing mountains any time soon, though.

Today he spent a lot of time reading about volcanoes, while I took a nap. You would be surprised, he said after I woke up, at how many volcanoes there are. He says not to worry about the “supervolcano” in Yellowstone that could possibly erupt and blow up half the world. I guess I won’t, then. I’m sure there are plenty of people who do, so they can worry for me. 

He also says to notice how effectively the new sand pile blends in with the rest of the yard. You can see that it does. I’m not in this picture. My afternoon walk was excellent. That’s me, looking at something, as the sun slips behind the mountains. (It doesn’t really do that; I was just being sort of poetic.)I guess I’ll go now. This is me walking off into the sunset, like in a cowboy movie or something, but really, my walk goes all the way past the big tree in the center background and then we turn around and come back. 

Until next time, then.