the miserable gardener

it happened again

It happened again. Yes, it’s me, Chess the border collie, whom you may remember from such insightful posts as “Left Alone” and “The Day in Pictures”. Here I am standing in front of the refrigerator, with a banana in the way, trying to be noticed.

That was how the day started, me feeling agreeable, and then he left me to go to a nursery. To buy plants again. See?

In his defense, the guy I live with ordered a couple of screwbean mesquites from Timberline Gardens, and when they came in, he went to get them. They’re right in front in the picture. But somehow this “quick trip to Timberline to get the two screwbeans I ordered” turned into this couple-hour long acquisitive frenzy and I had to stare out the window waiting for him to come home.

He says they had some nice plants of Yucca rostrata from Black Gap in Texas, and he needed some winterfat (I don’t know why he thinks he needs more winterfat….that’s funny, isn’t it?), and a bunch of Eriogonum wrightii, and a Yucca faxoniana x rostrata, and the bitterbrush which is in bloom right in the car.

The guy I live with said that he was told that Mary Ann Heacock, whom he talked about on this blog a while back, had said that the screwbean was the hardiest mesquite, so if she said it, that’s good enough for the guy I live with, but all the other stuff he got doesn’t have anything to do with screwbeans.

What it does have something to do with is the fact that he’s completely redoing the back yard and giving away lots of plants that need watering, mostly to neighbors. This does give him something to do, besides watching TV, but it means I won’t get to play in the sprinkler as much as I used to.

It’s thundering now, again, so I don’t feel like going outside. The orioles have returned, and I guess they’re not afraid of thunder. If this picture were in focus, we might be able to tell.

At least the guy I live with had the presence of mind to have some grape jelly on hand for the oriole feeder.

Well, so, anyway, the weather cleared, and the guy I live with, who likes to think of himself as Archimedes of Colorado, decided to move a trough, and (I quote) “show everyone how it’s done.”

This method of moving troughs was actually my mommy’s idea. The duct tape was his. Believe it or not.

So the trough gets slid onto the dolly. (I’m not sure the guy I live with would approve of the phrase “gets slid”, but who’s writing this post?) The dolly is the same height as a trough on cinder blocks, so it slides quite easily. Watching him do this is even easier. Then it’s moved, slowly, to its new location. The corner at the lower right was broken a long time ago, and he plans to fix it …..eventually.

The guy I live with says it’s important to remove the rocks, because they add weight. That’s Archimedes talking, of course.

Here comes the hard part.

The trough will be lifted onto the fire bricks. It’s also crucial to remember to distribute the weight of the trough evenly over the bricks. Otherwise this happens.

Archimedes was slightly perturbed.

Now Archimedes is going to hand it over to Mister Fixit. That’s what my mommy called the guy I live with, and it’s why she insisted on doing most of the repairs around the house. Not plumbing or electrical, but regular stuff. He moved the troughs. What happened here happened a lot of the time, but don’t tell anyone.

The guy I live with says this can be fixed, “no problem”. It’ll be fun to see what happens.

left alone

Hello again, it’s me, Chess the border collie. You may remember me from posts like “The Day in Pictures” and “A Scary Day”, and all the rest of the excellent posts I’ve provided, in order to give this blog a little interest. Here I am looking extremely sad.

The guy I live with left me alone in the house for hours today while he “worked” at the Mother’s Day plant sale at Denver Botanic Gardens. I just stared out the window waiting for him to come home, and cuddle me, because it’s been thundering and raining, and thunder is scary. I don’t like waiting very much. I like thunder even less.

I say “working” because of course he spent most of the time not working, and buying plants instead. He forgot to bring the camera to the plant sale, which is typical. His excuse is that he had to set the alarm and wake up early. He sets the alarm once a year.

It was a really nice day today, too, at least in the morning. On our walk we saw lots of night crawlers on the sidewalk, and the guy I live with picked them up and put them into the dirt or grass. I think they’re kind of icky, and thinking about millions of night crawlers under me while I’m on my walk, or out in the garden, is pretty creepy. The guy I live with says that Colorado has no native earthworms, and that night crawlers are a different species from regular earthworms, which doesn’t mean anything to me, but I do know that the back lawn is really bumpy and when it rains the night crawlers all come out and slither in the grass. It gives me the willies.

It thundered almost all day yesterday and I had a rough day. I remember last summer I heard thunder every single day except for six days from May until October, and we went through a lot of Rescue Remedy. The guy I live with plays music by Boulez really loudly on the CD player, but that doesn’t help as much as he thinks it does.

He brought back some plants. Big surprise, huh.

You can see that he bought some cactus. Like we need more. “But wait”, he explained, “these are silver-spined forms of Cylindropuntia imbricata“. That makes it all better of course. It was funny when he tried to pick up one and it attached itself to his hand in a way that made him say words that he doesn’t usually say.

Supposedly, this silver-spined form could be variety argentea, which comes from the Big Bend in Texas, and the difference between this, besides the silver business, and the regular variety is the length of the tubercles. The guy I live with says he’s going to do some measuring tomorrow.

I won’t be helping.

the miserable gardener

it happened again

left alone

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