the day in pictures

It’s me again, Chess the purebred border collie. You may remember me from posts like the one before this, which was called “A Scary Day”. If not, you’ve been missing quite a lot. I think the guy I live with should have started the blog with me doing all the talking, so it would have been much more interesting.

Here I am inspecting the plants on the cart. The guy I live with says he needs another cart, which of course means more plants. Most of these are indoor plants that will spend the summer outside, but the real reason they’re outside now is that it’s been raining, which is why I look a little damp.

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On our walk this morning it started to hail. We had to run back home, at which point of course the hail stopped, and it started to rain. We got soaking wet anyway.

Nothing much happened after that, though I should point out that the guy I live with gave me a new treat which disagreed with my digestion, so I had to go out in the rain several times today. He says he’s sorry, but then, he isn’t the one who has to go out in the rain.

I did get to hear that the word “sorry” doesn’t come from “sorrow” but from “sore”, which would have been interesting if I cared, but I guess he was just trying to make things better for me. That’s probably why, when we went on our afternoon walk, he tried to put an old red poncho on me that one of the earlier border collies wore in the rain, but I’m wider than any of them, being a three quarter sized border collie, so, even though I made noises like I was being strangled, the guy I live with didn’t notice it until he realized that it wasn’t raining much and I didn’t need the poncho. It was nice to be able to breathe again, that’s for sure.

He even did some weeding when it wasn’t raining. I understand that weeds are easier to pull when the soil is moist, which is why he did it. There are a lot of weeds.

He also said he’s going to move two or three troughs, out to the trough patio in back. Each trough weighs a couple of hundred pounds, and I’m not going to help like he says I could. I’m not a draft horse, just an advisor. He says he’ll show everyone how it’s done, but maybe not tomorrow, because he’s “working” (in other words, buying tons of plants) at the Mother’s Day plant sale at DBG on Friday, so he needs to be in shape for that, not flat on his back with pulled muscles and stuff.

The guy I live with said to post these pictures. I think he needs to read the instructions when it comes to focusing, but what can you do. The first is his little “forest” of Fritillaria pallidiflora. He grew the first few bulbs from seed (the ones in back), and the rest have sown themselves. In other words he can’t take credit for much of this.

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And here is Phlox pulvinata, a blue form.

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So that’s it. The day in pictures. Three pictures. I hope the guy I live with likes the smell of wet dog, because there’s a lot of it around the house now.

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a scary day

Hi again. It’s me, the dog, Chess. You may remember me from such posts as “Dear County Assessor” and “May Day”. They were truly excellent, as I am a purebred border collie who knows excellence when he sees it. This post is going to start out like it’s not about me, so in other words not so interesting, but then it will be about me, and get a lot more interesting, because we made a movie.

I’m supposed to post this picture of Allium cardiostemon because the guy I live with said to. That’s hardly a good reason if you ask me, but here it is. It isn’t even blooming yet.

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So anyway, the guy I live with spent most of the day planting things, some in the side yard where I couldn’t see him working unless I got up and walked outside and stared through the gate, which seemed like a lot of trouble to me.

He planted and planted. The reason he can do this is because he digs up plants and puts new ones in their place. If you ask me, this is silly. But as I’ve said before, the guy I live with is kind of a nut, and when he says that he’s entered his declining years I can believe it.

He was talking about watering tomorrow, which is the day he can water, since the plants he put in are dryland plants and not annuals or vegetables, and can only be watered on certain days, which I think is called irony. We were contemplating this irony when the day got really, really scary, and that’s why there’s a movie.

Now, the guy I live with, though he cuddles me a lot during times like this, and gives me Rescue Remedy, which helps, also says that I could have been sold to a family who herded sheep out in the middle of nowhere some place in eastern Colorado and might only have a lean-to with straw to lie in when it thundered, and what would I do then? Of course the answer is that I could tell when the guy I live with and my mommy showed up at the farm where I lived, that they would take me to a nice home where I could sleep in a bed and get cuddled when it thundered. He says I was lucky, and I guess so.

After it stopped raining I went out to eat some dirt. The guy I live with says purebred border collies shouldn’t be eating dirt, and he’s right; it’s potting soil, which is different. He took this really out-of-focus picture to try to embarrass me, but it’s not going to work, since I’m not the one who can’t focus. He says I look like a dirt-eating maniac but I prefer the term casual geophagist.

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That was my day. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, hopefully without thundering, and I can hardly wait to go on my walks and track lots of mud in the house.

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