the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here today to talk about pink asparagus. You may remember me from such posts as “Opera Day”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
I forget what I was looking at.
That red on the right is from old leaves of Berberis, or Mahonia, repens.

So it’s hot again. Way too hot for May. A lot of the bulbs didn’t flower last month because it was way too hot for April.
There really isn’t much of any humidity so it would probably feel a lot less hot to people who experience humidity when it gets hot.
It’s still too hot, though.

Before I get to the main topic of today’s post, I should mention that there was another incident here several days ago.
The guy I live with stabbed himself with a kitchen knife. I mean really stabbed himself.
It was scary; there was a lot of bleeding.
Fortunately, after the last incident, the emergency room doctor told him to buy some clotting gauze, since I can’t help with these things, and that quickly took care of the problem. After he read the intructions, of course.

Anyway, the main thing. For years, there’s been talk around here about how to get Hesperaloe parviflora to flower. I mean if the plant isn’t irrigated, which is the usual thing, often by drip irrigation. Then they can flower like crazy.
But without that, there can be years with no flowers at all.
The guy I live with noticed that in years when we had rain or snow at a certain time, there would be flowers, and he now maintains that that certain time is the first two weeks in April. We got about a tenth of an inch of rain on the first of April and apparently that was sufficient for this to happen.
They look like pink asparagus, don’t they?
Hesperaloes are in the family Asparagaceae so that makes sense.

This particular plant was flattened by a backhoe when we had the sewer drain replaced. I think you can tell how tough it is.
There are two new plants behind it, by the yellow flag that indicates the location of the old gas line.
(That empty area on the right is a sign that the guy I live with is planning something.)

And that’s all I have for today. The guy I live with said that “they” are talking about storms next week. If so, I hope they’re not too scary.

Until next time, then.

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here today to bring you a weather update.
You may remember me from such posts as “Practically Nothing”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
It’s easy to see what happened here last night. We received 0.99 inches (2.5cm) of water from snow.
I hardly need to say that this is totally excellent, and, for now, as they guy I live with said, we’re out of the endless loop of dry weather and wind.
(The title of my post indicates that this won’t last; it’s supposed to be 87 degrees F –30.5C–next week.)

Earlier this week, I had to go to the doctor’s for a flu booster shot. We purebred border collies can get the flu just like humans do.
I saw a goat.
I’d never seen a goat, though I knew there was something behind that fence.
The guy I live with had to drag me back to the car. I wanted to look at the goat more.

Then a couple of days ago the guy I live with posted pictures on Facebook of Papilio multicaudata, the western two-tailed swallowtail, visiting Fendlera rupicola.
Here they are.
All sorts of flying things visit the fendlera. (We have other plants of this in the garden but they aren’t old enough to flower. It can take quite a while for that to happen.)

We also have mice in the house again. The guy I live with assigned me the new job of Mouse Trap Inspector, because I can see the mice better than he can. He baits the traps with pieces of sour cream and onion potato chips.
This is before the guy I live with let the mouse go, out into the garden.
So that’s our news for today. Even though we’re going back to the endless loop next week, they say we may have an active monsoon season this year, and a wetter than usual summer. That would be nice.

Until next time, then.