the miserable gardener

no one cares but me

Hi, it’s me, Chess, the dog, again. You may remember me from such popular posts as “dogs”, “still no lightbulb”, and “making a list”. Those are the best posts. I took a picture of myself to show how I’m doing, which is fine.

Well, the reason it’s me posting and not the guy I live with is that I’m a border collie, and I know a little bit about obsessive behavior. The guy I live with is really a complete nut, not just kind of one like I said before. So what if he has spring fever, this is no way to act.

He went out earlier–it’s a really nice day–and decided he was going to dig up this cactus and move it. The one with all the white spines. There are two of them, one right next to the other. I think this is going to hurt, a lot.

There definitely is something wrong with him. I’m not going to help, either.

The other thing is that he thinks he’s an Englishman now. He keeps talking about snowdrops and sent off money to get more, even though they almost all look alike. He says they’re all different and the differences are subtle, and “no one cares but me”, but I’m a lot closer to the ground and I say they’re all the same, and I don’t see the point of this at all. He says they’re all the rage in England; I don’t see why they have to be the rage here. He also says that one snowdrop bulb sold for $1,150 for England, so he says his collection “might be worth something someday”.

He already has some snowdrops. See?

Here’s something the guy I live with thinks is really funny. It’s not, but since he has spring fever I’ll show it anyway. Remember how I said one snowdrop sold for all that money, well, he says he found one in his garden that’s going to make him a fortune and we’ll move to California where it hardly ever thunders except in the movies. I don’t think that’s really true.

I better go now.

the whiner’s reward

I complained enough about the weather and now it’s nice outside. Obviously, whining works. A cynic might remark that eventually the weather would turn pleasant even without all the whining, but I prefer to see it the other way.

There are snowdrops showing white in the garden now, but not so much as to be worth photographing. I did take one picture that can serve as a sort of “state of the garden” image for now. I brought this on myself by feeding the birds, so there is no cause for complaint. That’s me creating the shadow on this very sunny, warm day.

I did a walk around the garden today, which I keep telling myself not to do, and I count four plants definitely dead. Completely and totally dead. So dead they’ll never come back. This is four, out of a number planted last year. A large number, planted without hope of survival. I also peeked under the burlap-wrapped cages, too.

Some plants are probably dead, some look alive but might be dead, and at least two ought to be dead.

More of Cindy’s digital photographs. As I enter my declining years, my erstwhile flawless memory is failing. Some of the photographs were marked “plant”, which I found quite helpful.

Berkheya purpurea.

Centaurea …oh, it’s the one with silver leaves that spreads all over the place.

Crocus minimus, I think. She took hundreds of pictures of this, fascinated by the feathering, I suppose.

Leuzea conifera.

Ipomopsis thurberi.

Trough with Gentiana verna before the gardener, previously (and accurately) described as a “clumsy half wit”, pulled out most of it.

One of the creatures that occasionally visits the garden. I could tell a really funny story about the time the garden was on tour and a pair of underwear was triumphantly flung onto the rock garden after being shown to everyone, but I don’t think I will.