Hello everyone; yes, it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, yet again. You may remember me from such posts as “After The Equinox” and “Leafage And Branchage”, among so many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. That is, wondering why the guy I live with is trying to take my picture instead of giving me the biscuit I so desperately need. And of course instead of focusing.
Yesterday, this appeared on the driveway after our morning walk.
It was almost dejà vu all over again. The difference was that this was sand. The guy I live with spent all day moving sand, which he said was extremely boring, but not nearly as boring as it was being me, stuck inside the house, instead of herding the wheelbarrow around the garden. The guy I live with said it would hurt if one of my paws were run over by a wheelbarrow full of sand. I knew that wouldn’t happen, and I was sad. I even howled a little, which I learned from my buddy Slipper. In fact, my buddy Slipper really knew how to pour it on; when he was sick, and the guy I live with had to leave the house for what he insisted was “a very good reason”, my buddy Slipper would say, in his saddest voice, that it was okay if he got left but he was really sick and might not be here when the guy I live with came home, but it was okay to go ahead and leave him if he was willing to take that horrible chance.
The sand went into, or onto, “the new rock garden”. He’s calling it that now instead of “the pile of gravel” because he says that’s more evocative. I’m sure he’s right.
It looks way too high to me. He claims it will settle during the winter, and, horror of horrors, he won’t be planting anything in it until this time next year. In other words, he has to wait.
There are few things in life that are worse than having to wait. I wait a lot. I prefer instant gratification, like most normal creatures. But the guy I live with says it’ll be worth the wait, because patience is a virtue, etc.
He says the sand and gravel will change color over the winter. And that he has to dig a little compost into it.
You can sort of see how high it is with me standing there. I’m not especially huge, if you didn’t know.
The guy I live with said he has to think very carefully about what he will plant there, since he piled the gravel there to grow more of the kinds of plants he wanted to grow, and can’t give in to temptation in the mean time. I don’t know how he’s going to manage that. “Giving in to temptation”, he claims, “is the essence of gardening.”
Well, whatever. The pile of gravel, in truth, isn’t so weird as it might seem like it is, because there’s a raised bed on the other side of the path, and in fact the whole back yard, except the “way back” is a bunch of raised beds. Digging in the soil in the flat part of the garden is exactly like trying to spoon out frozen ice cream. (The soil in the “way back” is much, much better; it’s the natural soil here.)
Right at the bottom of this picture is a small plant of Daphne arbuscula, in flower even as I type.
And. for the sake of nostalgia, here I am when I was much younger, sitting on the park bench.
What else? There’s not much going on, or, maybe there is but no pictures have been taken of it, except these funny little fungus things that popped up in the lawn.
They came from the bagged compost the guy I live with strewed all over the areas he seeded. I think they’re spooky.
I guess that’s all. Oh, there’s a really silly picture of me that I might as well share. These pictures get taken because the guy I live with spends a lot of time sitting on the ground with his camera, waiting for something to happen, and I come out to see what he’s doing, and I like getting really close to him, and he thinks it’s funny to take my picture when I’m right in front of him.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 