a long walk

Posted on November 11, 2013 by paridevita

Hello everyone; it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, a guy who likes long walks in the park, plenty of cuddles, and an endless supply of food, here to tell you about the latest news in the garden. You may remember me from such posts as “No Snow Today” and “The Rainy Season”, among so many, many others. We’re approaching 450 posts since the guy I live with started this just last April. That’s a lot of talking.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. Unfocused as usual. I’m wondering why I’m not getting a biscuit after our long walk this morning. (I got one, in case you started to worry.)

111121This morning we went on a very long walk, in search of the late-blooming rabbitbrush. No one seems to believe the guy I live with that there is such a thing. My mommy didn’t believe half the stuff he told her, and he said she was believing about five times more than she should, but then, she liked him a lot. And it’s true, we could have just walked next door, but that would have taken all the fun out of it for me, and, if you didn’t know, things pretty much are all about me. Or at least they should be.

Here I am walking along the Turkey Creek Canyon Canal. Our house is to the south (right) of this. I’m walking toward the east. Well, I would be, wouldn’t I? 111103

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111105Some time around now, the water gets shut off. It’s still flowing, as you can see. There are fish and crawdads in it. Not in this picture, though. 111104This is the sluice, where we turn around. There was a farm house here at one time; they used the water. 111106This is me again. Now we’re walking down the path that the coyotes, Norm and Celeste, started, but which I made much better for walking, by walking on it a lot. Now we’re headed to the southwest. The path follows the creek, which is on the left, between me and the cottonwood. There’s no water in it now. Anyway, I’m headed toward the willows in the distance there. 111107Into the willows. 111110

111109Out of the willows, and now under the big willow. It’s kind of creepy. A very quiet place. 111111The end of the path, and more big willows. The reason you don’t see me is that I’ve already turned around. 111112Time for a sniffing detour.111113Here’s our house. The blue one. You can see all the drays in the trees. If you look really closely, you can see the late-blooming rabbitbrush. 111114Maybe you can see it better now.111117Looking into our garden. You can see the new sand pile. 111118

 

111116A sniffing detour in the long grass on the way home. This was a really great walk. 111115Back in front, and the late-blooming rabbitbrush next door. I guess we call this Ericameria nauseosa, which isn’t a very promising name. I think this was the one they planned to extract rubber from during the Second World War, hence the other name, “rubber rabbitbrush”. The guy I live with doesn’t know why these bloom so late, because the older one in our front yard blooms at the regular rabbitbrush time. Like September. 111119

111120Well, that’s really it for today. Oh, well, one more thing. This is pretty ridiculous if you ask me. I think the guy I live with is way too lenient with rodents. That’s my fort on the left. I don’t ring the bell to go out like my grandpa Flurry did, because the back door is almost always open. We came pretty close to having a house guest, here. 111122Until next time, then.

 

 

 

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a rare visitor

Posted on November 10, 2013 by paridevita

Greetings everyone; believe it or not, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to bring you the latest and greatest news from the garden, and, today, be the subject of some rather ridiculous pictures. You may remember me from such posts as “Something Completely Different” and “Life With A Nut”, among so many others.

Here I am in a thoroughly uncharacteristic pose. It looks like I just ate a lemon, but I didn’t.111004And here I am again; another ridiculous picture.111005I don’t eat lemons, and I really don’t know why I’m subjected to such humiliations, but the guy I live with blames me for not standing still for my picture. I’m a border collie, as if he didn’t know, and we don’t like standing still when there’s work to do.

We had a rare visitor today. The guy I live with said that the visitor, who happened to be colored just like me, also would not sit still. Like he has control over the universe or something, which, of course, he doesn’t, and he knows that as well or better than lots of people.111007

111006We sometimes do see magpies but not that often. We saw them on our walk, when someone had left a couple of bones (the kind you get at the grocery store for dogs, but apparently not dogs like me, even though I’d like to gnaw on one right now, especially if it had a couple of pounds of roast beef attached to it) out in the field, and there were magpies and even a raven or two pecking away at them. They flew away when they saw me coming.

The guy I live with said that when he moved to Colorado, in 1961 (yes, they did have years way back then), there was a bounty of twenty-five cents on magpies. He never understood the reason and thought he had moved to another planet.

It was a really beautiful day today, good enough for both long walks and long naps. Aside from eating (though the Brie is all gone now), I think that’s about what a day should be, and not much else. Some gardening went on, namely in the form of raking, a little watering, and what the guy I live with claimed was a great deal of “serious thought” about the garden. I think that happened while he was taking a nap.

It’s been freezing just a little at night, and there are still quite a few plants in bloom, especially the Sphaeralcea ‘Desert Sunset’ which he took pictures of here, and the big blue stemmed rabbit brush whose name he doesn’t really want to know because most botanists disagree about the names of rabbit brushes, so he just calls it the big blue stemmed rabbit brush, but then he has to say the one that’s in flower, not the one that’s not.

Maybe I should explain. There is a rabbit brush called the big blue stemmed rabbit brush because it has blue stems. Light blue stems. It blooms along with regular green stemmed rabbit brush, and by this time of year has been done flowering for a while. The other big blue stemmed rabbit brush starts in October, and finishes blooming the first or second week of December, pretty much regardless of the weather. There would be a picture of it here if the guy I live with had taken one, but he didn’t, so there isn’t.

He bought six plants of this for about a dollar each at a native plant nursery sale some years ago, planted four next door and two here. He doesn’t know why they bloom so late, but they do, and the guy I live with says that anything that blooms this late and doesn’t need a huge amount of water definitely belongs in his garden.

There are crocus too. Here is Crocus cartwrightianus ‘Michel’.

111001aCrocus pallasii subsp. turcicus.111002And a couple of Crocus speciosus. It looks like this’ll be one of those years when it blooms over a long period, rather than all of them blooming at once. The guy I live with insists that a lot were “done in by rodents”, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he accidentally sliced through them with a trowel planting other things.111003I know I tend to ramble, but that’s what we purebred border collies do. I say I’ll get more focused about the time that the guy I live with does.

That’s really all I have for today. Until next time, then.

 

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