the miserable gardener

Yes, it’s me again, Chess the purebred border collie, whose parents came from sturdy working stock. You may remember me from all the amazingly excellent posts I’ve provided for this otherwise kind of dreary blog. The posts that aren’t about me are kind of boring. So here I am being interesting.

The guy I live with brought a camera on our walk today, but we didn’t see a great blue heron. Here I am walking down the canal road.

And here I am again. The sluice was for an old farm house. In the old days this was woods that the guy I live with says were pretty scary late at night, but the first two border collies who lived in our house loved to walk through the woods. Now it’s what you see here. We’re walking toward the east.

This is the Turkey Creek Canyon Canal. There are ducks in it, sometimes. And there must be fish, because of the heron.

This is me walking back, heading west.

Here I am heading in a southwesterly direction, along the creek which is right by the cottonwood. It really looks green here because of all the smooth brome. The guy I live with says this is the most aggressive grass imaginable, choking out everything. It’s an introduced grass but isn’t considered a noxious weed, which he thinks is really funny.

He also says that the county comes by and mows the grass right next to the fences and everyone wonders why there are so many weeds. Where the smooth brome is allowed to grow, there are almost no weeds, and where it’s mowed, there are nothing but weeds. The guy I live with often wonders out loud what people are thinking, but then he catches himself saying that, and we continue on our walk.

The black fence thing is where they put in a new sewer line, and then hydroseeded a whole bunch of guess what kind of grass, and then a bunch of kids on dirtbikes and ATVs wiped it all out within a week or two. So now there are just weeds.

The path goes past the willows visible in the distance, and the tree, though sometimes I get really tired barking at everyone and exploring and so we turn back before we get to the end of the path.

Heading home now. Look how green it is. Our house is to the right of me. I bet the guy I live with thinks most of the grass will creep into his yard by the end of summer.

We just started going on walks last year. The guy I live with and my mommy went on walks by themselves, because Slipper and I were in really good shape, playing with each other. So they went by themselves. They used to hold hands on their walks, even after almost 27 years of being married. I thought that was sweet.

Here’s an old Polaroid picture of my mommy. She’s tickling a dog’s tummy. She was really good at spoiling dogs. The picture was in really bad shape; this was probably taken in late May because they met in May. That was in 1982, long before I was born. It was love at first sight, and the guy I live with says this picture still takes his breath away.

The guy I live with won’t let me use the DSLR and so we have to settle for some pictures he took with the Power Shot in the garden today. I know I titled this post “Pictures of Me” and here come some pictures that aren’t of me, but you can guess which ones I think are interesting. He said that showing me on my walk would let him complain about smooth brome in a subtle way. It wasn’t that subtle if you ask me.

Little Iris reichenbachii. The guy I live with says he thinks of Sherlock Holmes every time he thinks of this iris. Duh.

Lamium garganicum.

Some tulips. First ‘Prinses Irene’.

Then ‘Couleur Cardinal’. These two are his favorites, and ‘Prinses’ was a sport from ‘Couleur’. These are “triumph” tulips which is why they survived all the cold in April and are blooming now.

Tulipa batalinii among sagebrush. The species tulips weren’t affected by the cold. They seed around a lot, too.

I guess that’s all for today. I hope you enjoyed watching me go on my walk.