Greetings and salutations everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here both to inform you and delight you. You may remember me from such posts as “The Rainy Season” and “Dogs”, among others.
Here I am walking down the path through what the guy I live with says is a lawn. He promised to replace the pea gravel with wood mulch but when he did that, it all washed down the path when it rained. I’m still waiting for him to figure out what to do about this. That’s a garden bag in the back; it’s not like an ornament or anything. I’m the real ornament, of course.
I’m supposed to show a picture of Crocus speciosus, so I will. He keeps insisting that there are supposed to be “hundreds” of these in the garden. Here’s one, anyway.
Aside from setting another fence post and planting some bulbs (he asked me how it was possible to fit the name Allium pseudoserawschanicum onto a four-inch plastic label, and I didn’t know), the main activity today was raking up pods. I just watched, of course. If you look closely, you can see a bunch of pods still on the ground.
After the pods were all raked up, more fell, and he looked at them and said, well, he said what you would expect a person to say when he just raked up all these pods and then more fell.
“The leaves be green
The nuts be brown
They hang so high
They will not come down.”
That’s not what he said though. That’s a really old song that was set to music by William Byrd. (Nothing to do with the rock group.) There are still pods hanging in the tree. I think they’re making him slightly crazy. The pods don’t compost, and the beans, the ones the squirrels don’t eat, make little trees all over the garden. The guy I live with does not want little trees all over the garden. He says there are too many pods. Too many pods. Pods everywhere. Too many little trees. He read that there was a high wind warning for tonight, and said “Oh really?” I could almost hear his mind working. “High wind warning …..pods ……pods……”
Of course what will happen is that all the leaves will blow away, and the pods will still hang there, until the squirrels drop them all over the garden. Then he’ll have to rake them up. But even with the pods raked up, he says, “the beans remain”. So there will be more little trees.
This time, he did not lie on the park bench and look up into the tree when the squirrels were up there. I guess he learned something, for once.
The trouble with the little trees is that the guy I live with often doesn’t notice them until they’re really big. I know this sounds improbable, but there was a seedling ash tree in the garden which he did not notice until it was twenty feet tall. I can’t explain this. The tree is still there, too. I can’t explain that, either.
Well ….that’s the news from the garden today. Not much going on, that doesn’t have something to do with pods, that is.
Oh. Here’s a picture of me in my absolutely favorite pose.
Okay, so this was mostly about nothing. Two pictures of me, that was pretty good anyway.
And some bats my mommy bought. They can’t fly away because they’re made of iron. 
Now that really is all. I don’t know what we’re doing tomorrow. Maybe something to do with pods.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 