Hello everyone; once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to bring you up to date on the latest news from our garden. You may remember me from such brilliant posts as “This And That” and “The Happy Elephant”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose, surveying my domain. If you were wondering how to go about surveying your domain, this is how it’s done. 
Hardly anything has happened since the last time I posted, except that it snowed a couple of times, and the guy I live with changed the water in the salt shakers, just like he said he was going to. It was really boring watching him do that.
I really only have a bunch of pictures to show you. These are ones the guy I live with thinks are interesting, or important, or something. He talked about Shepherdia rotundifolia a while ago, and decided to show a picture of it, knowing full well that the consequences could be fatal.
The second one could probably have been more in focus, I think. Anyway, here are some more pictures.
A dwarf limber pine (Pinus flexilis) growing in a trough. An unnamed selection made by Jerry Morris. 
Picea pungens ‘J. James’, also from Jerry. 
This next one was supposed to be a weeping form of the Nootka cypress, which botanists are now calling Cupressus nootkatensis (the guy I live with says that there is more information on all the name changes this poor plant has suffered here), or maybe it wasn’t weeping, just little, but it’s over twenty years old. 
Pinus mugo ‘Carsten’s Wintergold’. The guy I live with says he likes conifers that turn golden in winter so much he might buy a bunch more, so there will be something to look at. 
And here’s a self-sown Mahonia repens covered with frost. This was taken last Sunday. We don’t often have frost here because of the low humidity, but it was really humid last weekend. 89 percent. 
Mahonia aquifolium, also self-sown, with caramel-colored leaves. (They may look dead and dry, but they aren’t.)
That’s all I have for today. The guy I live with did cut down some stuff, and thought about sowing some seed, but never got past just thinking about it.
Oh, wait. Here’s a picture of the sunset over our house, when we came back from our walk.
He did go out to the back fence to take another picture (after I got my biscuit, of course), and this is what the sunset looked like from there.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 