the miserable gardener

a rough day

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.

no snow today

Hello everyone.

Yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to delight and amaze you, as only a purebred border collie, whose parents were working dogs, can possibly do.

You may remember me from such posts as “Serious Talk About Lawns” and “Going To California” among so many, many others. As you can see, I talk almost as much as the guy I live with does. The difference is that what I say is interesting.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.

Okay, well, there’s the focusing issue again, but with three whole pictures of me, I can hardly complain too much. The sun was shining into the kitchen which is why things look the way they do.

Today was the day it was supposed to snow. It was predicted to start around ten last night, and even though I slept really well, as usual, I insisted on getting up at 5:30 this morning to go out and play in the snow I hoped had fallen, and then drag the guy I live with through the snow before the sun came up. He whines a lot when we do that. It was almost like waiting for Santa Claus, which I and my buddy Slipper used to do on Christmas Eve. We’d listen for the sound of reindeer hooves on the roof, and had a hard time sleeping, doing all that listening. My grandpa Flurry was the big listener, though; he would listen for this, and listen for that, and even though we don’t have a chimney in the house, I’m sure if Santa had showed up my grandpa Flurry would have nipped him.

It didn’t snow at all. Not even one flake. It never looked like it was going to snow, which made the guy I live with wonder why the TV people he watched got all excited about this storm that was about to descend on the city, since nothing happened. He says the TV people never get excited when nothing is about to happen, which is strange, because we both like days where nothing happens.

Like today. The guy I live with had to take a nap at about nine in the morning, which he said makes for an excellent start to the day, but you don’t get much gardening done if you’re napping. He did manage to drag himself outside and cut down some dead stuff, and took one whole picture, this time of Crocus cartwrightianus ‘Halloween’.

So, one flower picture, to three of me. Not a bad ratio.

I was disappointed that it didn’t snow today. It would have melted by tomorrow, but winter, which the guy I live with says is coming fairly soon, is my favorite season. Except for the opera. The guy I live with insists on listening to operas during the winter. All that shrieking. A lot of times he even does it when we take our afternoon nap, which is good for me since I’m asleep when all this racket is going on. Sometimes there isn’t opera but other music, which is occasionally tolerable.

He finds it difficult to read when there’s music on, and so sometimes instead he reads, and then takes a nap afterwards. There isn’t room for both of us on the couch, so I sleep under the living room window, just in case I have to get up and bark like crazy when people come to the door. That’s one of my jobs around here. It doesn’t pay anything. It’s its own reward.

Oh, the reading. You know how he sometimes quotes Henry Mitchell

who was one of the first garden writers he came across whose writing he truly enjoyed, well, he isn’t reading this now, but I’ll show you something weird, or maybe just serendipitous.

What he has been reading, and very slowly (but not moving his lips or anything), is this.

Landscape as in land scape (just like the dust jacket photograph), not something done around a house, and planted trees, as well. A landscape gardening book, in other words. “Quite delightful” says the guy I live with, who knows delightful when he sees it, since he lives with me, after all.

There’s something else about this book that’s interesting, too.

The guy I live with says it’s sad that libraries are getting rid of their books, for reasons unknown to him, but maybe this one is in good hands for now.

I think that’s all for tonight. There really isn’t much going on, which is typical for this time of year. I mean there’s stuff blooming, which he could have taken pictures of but didn’t (too much napping), and there’s work to be done (but not by me), but things have slowed down a lot. They never come to a complete stop, unless tons of snow falls, but even then, the guy I live with is looking at seed trays and sowing seeds and writing labels and things like that. It’s really boring for me when he does that, but he likes sowing seed. Anything that makes him happy must be good.

Until next time, then.

the miserable gardener

a rough day

no snow today

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