Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to delight and amuse you with true tales from our garden. You may remember me from such amazing and spectacular posts as “My Garden In Spring” and “Mister Always Right”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
It was a pretty nice day today, as perhaps you can tell.
Believe it or not, this is typical weather for this time of year. Some people here freak out because it isn’t cold and snowing, like it “should” be, but we think those people are weirdos and we just ignore them and go about our very important business.
The guy I live with thought maybe the titanopsis would burst into bloom. According to him, “they almost did”.
These are in the front garden, right below the living room window. When the guy I live with went out there to take this picture, he also decided to spend some time looking for the source of the “awful smell” which has been lingering in the front yard for several days. I noticed it, and didn’t care much, but the guy I live with said it smelled like something had died.
He claimed that the smell was so bad, and so pervasive, that some plants in the back yard were even trying to climb out of their troughs to get away from it.
Saxifraga caucasica
Draba cappadocica …or some other draba
saxifrage with label buried too far into the soil to find
Saxifraga grisebachii
Well, ha ha. The guy I live with got out the rake and starting raking very carefully, half not wanting to find anything, you know, how you would when it might be something really gross. Though, as a dog, I can’t really relate to the idea of something being gross; I prefer the term “interesting”.
He didn’t find anything. He even lit some incense out in front to “destinkify” the front yard while he was working. It didn’t help much.
Then, the guy I live with looked very intently at the flowering kale in the pots on the driveway; he even bent down to sniff it. This is the result.
He never ceases to amaze me. I mean, what powers of deduction. Even though we purebred border collies are herding dogs, if he had asked me where the “awful smell” was coming from I could have showed him on the very first day.
I guess I could end this post right here, but I don’t really feel like it. I have some pictures of the garden taken from a border collie’s point of view. A purebred border collie, of course.
“Like that would make a difference”, the guy I live with said. Well, it might, you know. The white part in the left corner is me.
See? It doesn’t look too much different, just, I don’t know, lower, maybe. And the trees and shrubs look higher, of course.
Oh, and some more deduction. The squirrel discovered it could push the feeder lid open far enough that it would stay open. I think it isn’t supposed to do that, but it did. You can see they’ve been chewing on it, a lot, and the guy I live with has been replacing the parts with metal.
I suppose that eventually the whole feeder will be metal. “Even the sunflower seed will be metal”, said the guy I live with, but I think he was just trying to sound tough to the squirrels, who pay almost no attention to him at all.
I guess that’s it. You can probably tell we had a very interesting and fulfilling day, as usual.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 