Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, on this very noisy afternoon. You may remember me from such posts as “A Little Excitement”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
It’s super noisy out in front; they’re repaving our street and there’s a steamroller rolling the new asphalt.
I’ve seen a steamroller before. The guy I live with said that they don’t use steam any more but that people can’t help themselves in calling them steamrollers.
He learned just today that Buffalo Springfield was the name of a steamroller company (using actual steam) in the twentieth century.
Speaking of water vapor, I saw fog for the first time a couple of morning ago.
We don’t have that here a lot.
Also speaking of water, the guy I live with said we’ve had about the normal amount of rain for the last month, and we can certainly tell.
This is Salvia ‘Ultraviolet’ again.
And Salvia greggii:
This is Agastache aurantiaca:
The plants he put in earlier this year were having a rough time, because he had covered the top of the root balls with organic matter, which he said, upon reflection, was an extremely dumb thing to do, for plants which are triggered to flower by rain, as these are.
You know how people are constantly saying to mulch with organic matter to conserve soil moisture, well, the guy I live with said the soil has to be moist in the first place. In a region like ours, where it doesn’t rain all day and all night, but just like for a couple of hours, organic matter impedes infiltration, to sound technical.
Rock is the answer, just like in real life where these plants grow. The rocks let the rain infiltrate down to the soil.
So one thing he did was add more rocks to the little area where the agastaches were growing, to kind of mimic reality.
Because he likes some empty areas, or what I guess they call “negative space”, he spread some rocks in one of the other spaces, too.
He realizes this could be a very unpopular view, but he says “Whatever”.
This area has eremurus in early summer.
Anyway, as I said, the rain has helped a lot of things along.
Here’s new growth on Penstemon pseudospectabilis:
New growth is especially important for plants that overwinter with it, like some penstemons, salvias, and agastaches, even if it gets cold later.
The guy I live with said they’re kind of hinting at the possibility of some snow next week, though it’s not going to freeze. I like snow.
There are crocuses in flower, but I’ve shown those many times before.
And a couple of autumn-flowering snowdrops. This is Galanthus bursanus, which was in flower at the end of August, last year. There are a bunch more just poking out of the pile of leaves. In this case, the leaves are fine (though there might be too many); this species doesn’t seem to need rain to flower, but, instead, cooler soil temperatures. The guy I live with said that the relatively late flowering this year could be due to abnormally high temperatures in September. He doesn’t really know.
And, just up, an autumn-flowering form of Galanthus cilicicus.
The guy I live with said he’s lost interest in collecting snowdrops, with all the markings and names and sometimes weirdly-shaped flowers, but he still likes these, and they do fine in our dry climate.
That’s all I have for today. The steamroller has done its work; the house isn’t shaking any more, and now we have a nice smooth patch of asphalt on our side of the street. (The steamroller will be back next week, for the other side of the street.)
I’ll leave you with a morning picture of me. You can see how green the grass is now.
Until next time, then.
