Greetings and salutations everyone; yes, it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to bring you the most fascinating and up-to-date news from our garden. You may remember me from such informative and humorous posts as “Halloween” and “The Seed Whisperer”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic, wishing-I-had-a-biscuit-instead-of-having-to-pose-for-my-picture pose. 
I got a biscuit, of course.
Well, so, I was wondering how you go about making a post when you have absolutely nothing to say, and who better to ask than the guy I live with? He certainly knows how to talk when he has nothing interesting to say. So I asked him, and here’s my post. Maybe you will agree that it’s utterly fascinating.
The guy I live with did test the bucket he got for Christmas, and said that it works. “It holds stuff”, he said, in his usual philosophical manner. And, if you recall the business with soaking iris seeds, well, he did eventually remove the arils (the little white collar things) on the seeds, using a dental pick, when the seed coats had softened, and now they’re in the “stratification box” which he really does have one of. It’s in the refrigerator, kind of close to the Brie.
The seeds are in damp perlite. This technique is supposed to break down the germination inhibitor so that the seeds will sprout. Otherwise, the guy I live with says he might have to wait twenty years, and he doesn’t feel like doing that. He’s not very patient, I think. 
He says the seeds will come out of the box after a couple of weeks and then sit in a dark place for a few days. We’ll see what happens, huh.
The guy I live with has been doing things. He made the insert for the trough mold, for instance. He says it still needs handles so I won’t show it until it does. I mean, until it has handles. And today he spent a lot of time making a cardboard box for some “LPs”, which is what he says they had before they had compact disks, since the boxes he had were all too big. So he cut up a bunch of boxes to help modify an existing one, and spent a whole lot of time looking for the end of the packing tape on the roll, with his fingernail, over and over again, but finally got the box finished.
Well, that’s not very interesting, is it? What was interesting, and maybe you might think so, too, is that when he went down into the crawl space to get this box, so he could modify it, he found one of my mommy’s bug drawings, one he’d never seen before (or at least doesn’t remember seeing), which she signed and everything, way back in 1983.
Those are my toys on the floor, if you didn’t know what they were. Anyway, this painting was done in acrylic, before my mommy started using watercolors. She liked bugs a lot. The guy I live with is not so much a fan of them.
That would be all I have except that the guy I live with insisted on making some “artistic” pictures of the garden tonight, and having me post them. You can tell that it snowed night before last. I’m not sure how artistic these pictures really are. 
I might even go so far as to say these are kind of dumb, but who am I to judge? As I keep saying, the guy I live with is kind of a nut, as so you have to take that into consideration.
Well, that was our day today. I did get ice in my paws on our walks, but when I did, I just stopped, and the guy I live with knew it was time for de-icing. It didn’t take very long because he’s really good at it. I got some Brie, too. That was good.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 