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 bring you our latest news. You may remember me from such posts as “The Yellow Pigs”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
Here I am in another characteristic pose.
You can see how green it is here. It rained about a hundred drops today. The guy I live with said it might have been 101 drops.

There were garden tours last Saturday, but the guy I live with said the last garden he visited on Saturday the 23rd of May, seventeen years ago, his life changed forever the next day.
He did okay yesterday, on the anniversary of his wife’s death, though I knew he was sad.

The guy I live with has been posting pictures of native shrubs that need no supplemental irrigation on Facebook because of all this talk about what to do with the current watering restrictions here in Denver.
This is Alloberberis haematocarpa.
It used to be a mahonia, then a berberis, now it’s an alloberberis. I think it probably doesn’t care. It has juicy, red, supposedly edible fruit later in the year.

The guy I live with took about a hundred pictures of Acanthus hirsutus and wasn’t really happy with any of them, but I think this one is excellent.
And he took a picture of Echium russicum since the plants are coming into flower now. This seeds around a bit.
And a picture looking down the path on the north side of the garden. You can see a hose snaking down the path, but the hose isn’t even hooked up to the faucet.
The guy I live with has been pretty irritable lately. I can tell. There’s a “disgusting” smell all over our front and back yards, and in every room in our house. It’s coming from one of those “home fragrances” next door, even when no one is at home there.
He’s complained about this before, and wonders why everything has to have some sort of “fragrance”.
I forget if I said that the guy I live with bought one of those plastic fences to protect the snowdrops when the new gas meter was installed and even the fence was scented.

Out of curiosity, the guy I live with bought some “No. 4711 echt kölnisch Wasser”, the original cologne. He said no one would notice it on him, and that’s how it should be.
He also said he may be turning into a cranky old man but there’s no reason for people and things to reek.
(He said to put in all this stuff about fragrance. I have a better nose and I notice it too, but don’t complain so much.)

Anyway, after all that, it’s time to talk about the melons.
He got these from Native Seeds/SEARCH and got 100 percent germination. He got four kinds, and has given away a dozen pots already.
He thought maybe some melons from the Southwest might do better here, but really he has no experience at all growing melons. Believe it or not.
He said that not many things are as exciting to gardeners as seeing vines trailing on the ground; he tried several times to grow the native, non-edible Cucurbita foetidissima, but the plants always failed for some reason. That plant makes a spectacular vine, covering the ground.
The guy I live with said if we have a really hot summer maybe these melons will produce fruit. He also said I would get to try some. Purebred border collies like melons; the guy I live with’s wife wanted to call our house Melon Collie Manor.
So I guess we’ll see.

Back to some greenery for a moment. This is the path in the green belt behind our house (you can’t see our house, which is about halfway down the path). The creek is on the right.
This is the path to the canal road, though we’re coming from the canal road, so in this case it’s the path home. Funny how that changes. I almost always get to decide which way to walk, and this is the usual way, the one that I like the best.
Sometimes there are voles along the canal bank, and I like to check out where they live.
The grass, to the right of where I’m standing looking at things, mostly died last year or the year before, but it does get walked on a lot. I think all these little plants are lamb’s quarters, Chenopodium album,which is a native plant. (When the guy I live with mentioned lambs I got all interested for a moment).
The canal is on the left, here, if you couldn’t tell.
That’s all I have for today. Kind of a lot, maybe.

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 talk about the sudden change. You may remember me from such posts as “The Old Man And The Sea Kale”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
This is me, “illegally” drinking water from the bird bath. It’s really only illegal if the water hasn’t been changed, and it was just changed, after the bird bath was cleaned, so it’s really okay even though the guy I live with reminds me there’s also fresh, filtered water in my bowl in the kitchen.

Speaking of water, this happened yesterday.

You can see that things that changed here, fairly suddenly.
That’s really all I have for this post. It’s a very big deal, of course, and more rain is in the forecast.
“Almost like the good old days”, according to the guy I live with.
There’s water in the creek, as you can see.

Until next time, then.