Hello everyone; once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, whose brain has been so wracked today that he needs a long period of rest. You may remember me from such posts as “Memory and Desire” and “My Garden in Spring”, among many, many others. Here I am in a characteristic pose, just waiting for my opportunity at the laptop so I can make fun of the guy I live with. He’s a regular Leonardo da Vinci, let me tell you.
Today the UPS man brought him some plants. This is nothing new, believe me. Here they are.
The box on the left is from Mountain Valley Growers, and the plants on the right are salvias from Flowers by the Sea. The guy I live with knew what to do with the plants on the right; they’re in pots, and he can figure them out. The stems are kind of twisty because of their trip to him in a box, but they’re such nice plants they’ll recover quickly with the cool nights here.
Look how beautifully these plants are packed. Not to mention grown. Lots of thymes and stuff. He spent about an hour trying to figure out how to get the plants out. I know, spent a lot of thyme, right? Leonardo at work.
After studying this situation, he thought that what you do is just cut the tape and lift the plants out that way, so he cut the tape and discovered the plants don’t really lift out. He was stymied. I was inside busy guarding the house, but if I had been out on the patio I might have pointed out the pretty obvious holes which were probably put there for a purpose.
Then it dawned on him.
The holes are for dita, Leonardo; fingers. You put your fingers into the holes and lift out the little trays. Che genio, eh? What a genius.
I could have reminded him of the time the alternator went out on the truck he and my mommy used to own, and Leonardo decided to replace it himself, which isn’t too difficult (so he says), but he spent all day trying to get the new one back in place, and my mommy sat downstairs so she couldn’t hear what he claimed were “car repair expletives”, necessary to help get the (expletive) alternator back in, and this went on for hours until my mommy came out into the garage, snatched the alternator from Leonardo’s dita, took a C clamp and pressed in the little deals which were preventing him from properly fitting the alternator in place, handed it back to him, and walked back inside. The alternator slipped right into place.
Of course, I could have told him leggere le istruzioni, read the instructions, but Leonardo has no use for such things, and didn’t even know there were any. There were.
That took up most of the day. It’s amazing how little gets done when he spends so much time thinking.
I’ll say addio now; until next time.
the miserable gardener 