the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to tell you all about my day. You may remember me from such posts as “Windy And Warm” and “Weeding Day”, among so many others.

Here I am looking slightly resentful after a very rough day, in which I almost died, according to the guy I live with. I really didn’t, but that’s what he thought was happening. It was kind of stupid, really, and he made up for all this foolishness by giving me some Brie later on. I like Brie a lot. It all started yesterday. The guy I live with says things always start yesterday, but I think he’s just being pretentious. Things start today for me. Except this time. So, last night I was forced to get all harnessed up and go for a ride to the Bad Place in the dark where I got stuck with a needle for no reason I could see. The guy I live with said they had to test my blood eleven hours after my morning pill, to see if the dose was okay, and that’s why we went so late, but I didn’t like it at all. I did like the ride there, though. I was too traumatized to enjoy the ride going home.

The blood test turned out fine, so I was okay, thanks for asking, and then, of all things, the guy I live with decided it was time to clip my toenails, and he got way too far into the quick, and I bled and bled. He used a styptic pencil, that didn’t work (maybe because he didn’t know how to draw with it), applied pressure, and I still bled. Eventually it stopped, but of course not before the guy I live with had come to the conclusion that I was going to bleed to death, which I didn’t do. The bleeding started again on our walk; the guy I live with said he could see red spots on the cottonwood leaves strewn along the path and he said he felt like a tracker, which I didn’t think was uproariously funny, since he wasn’t the one with a toenail cut way too close to the quick.

Even with all this commotion, there was some gardening. The guy I live with noticed that Gentiana verna was blooming, which he said, in his erudite vocabulary, was “totally weird”, which it might be, but I got stuck with a needle last night and so I don’t care.There are better pictures of the gentian here but blooming at the “right” time of the year. (“Verna means spring”, he says.)

And here is Crocus speciosus. And another picture of Crocus cartwrightianus ‘Halloween’.And then, to balance out all this talk about being cut to the quick and stuck with a needle, here are some garden pictures. The pictures could be better, I think. The garden will look more or less like this for the next couple of months, unless it snows, and then it’ll be all white.

The guy I live with raked some leaves onto the new sand pile in order “to create an impression of unity with the existing garden”. I have to listen to things like this, and get stuck with needles too. The pickets on the new fence do kind of lean to the right because when he was putting up the fence, the guy I live with was being jabbed with branches and twigs (not nearly as bad as being stuck with needles, I might add), but he says you don’t notice it as much in real life. I’m not entirely sure that he knows what “real life” is. Oh, and you can see that the Havahart trap, which isn’t set but is just there “as a warning of what could be” is on its side, because Earl (the squirrel) was climbing up on it trying to get at the bird feeder hanging “completely out of reach of any squirrel”, which it turns out it wasn’t. That’s why the feeder is empty.

And finally, here I am trying to figure out what plant this is. I do this by smell, of course. I know it wasn’t a cyclamen, which you can see a bunch of near me, but I finally decided it was Centaurea montana. I was right, of course. He says that’s a weed here. There are also some tiny maple seedlings visible to my left, which are weeds too. And of course the inevitable locust pod. The guy I live with went to the health food store today to get some more freshly ground peanut butter which he puts out in the garage (not all of it, just some) so the mice will spend time eating peanut butter there instead of getting caught in the Tin Cat in the kitchen, which is absolutely terrifying, and makes for a sleepless night for the guy I live with, who had to take the Tin Cat out into the garage night before last because it was “full of mice” (there were two), one of which, when they were released, ran over his bare foot (“it tickled”), so hopefully I’ll have a better night tonight. I do appreciate that. The guy I live with doesn’t know how the mice get into the house, since my mommy totally mouseproofed the kitchen several years ago, but, if I hadn’t been stuck with needles and then almost bled to death after having my toenails clipped, I might point out that leaving the back door open all day long might have something to do with mice getting into the house.

I think that’s about all. If I’ve forgotten something, or said something I already said, well, it was a rough day, and I can’t help it.

Until next time, then.