Hello everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, Chess the weather-traumatized border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you the latest news from our garden. You may remember me from such posts as “Guess The Weather” and “It Raineth Every Day”, among so many, many other weather-related posts.
Here I am in a characteristically traumatized pose. I was sure I was going to be hit by lightning today, but as you can see, I wasn’t. 
This what my back yard looked like around one in the afternoon, yesterday. It thundered for hours yesterday. 
What it looked like at the same time, today.
And right before my dinner time. It thundered for hours again today. 
I was fairly bummed out, as the guy I live with says they used to say in a time called “the Sixties”. 
The guy I live with, though, went out into the garden, “to fearlessly take pictures”. Ever since he read that the split infinitive was a made-up rule, he splits them left and right. He said the blog could use some flower pictures, for once. “To easily give it more class.”
He bought a bunch of oreganos from a mail-order nursery in California a couple of years ago and either lost the labels or buried them with the plants. I know, hard to believe.
This one (below) has a label. “Lizzie’s Hybrid No.2”. 
Here’s Salvia ‘Maraschino’, a hybrid between Salvia microphylla and S. grahamii. The guy I live with says that S. grahamii (and S. lemmonii) are now considered to be S. microphylla, so this is a hybrid with itself, I guess. It likes a lot of water at this time of year, and might be better in one of the sand piles. (This was supposed to be in focus…..)
A salvia which was labeled ‘Dark Dancer’, but it isn’t. It’s been here for ages. (Flower of Achnatherum scribneri, grass, on the left.)
An agastache of the A. cana type. 
Coronado Red, again. Also not hugely in focus. I should learn how to take pictures, I think, because my eyesight is certainly better than you-know-who’s. 
Salvia blepharochlaena.
Incarvillea olgae. This is a tall one, but could use more water….
The first of the Cyclamen hederifolium.
The sphaeralceas in the way back. The flag is to remind the guy I live with to water something he just planted. Oh, I know, Asclepias latifolia. 
The big orange one, again, that he now thinks might not be Sphaeralcea incana, though it looks mighty like it. 
Muhlenbergia dubia and Sphaeralcea munroana. 
Okay, that’s all the flowers. The guy I live with says it might be nicer if it rained instead of just thundered for hours, but you can’t have everything. Eventually the clouds headed east “where they belong” (so farmers can get the rain, he says), and I got to go on my afternoon walk. (The guy I live with said that was a metaphor. I’m tired of metaphors.) Look how green the weeds are. 
I guess that’s all for today. 
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
ah, Chess, you are so handsome and make such a great addition to the garden. I love the photos and have grown many of these myself with mixed results. So nice to see them flourishing in your lovely garden. Take care as the thunder comes our way once again.
Thanks; I guess I have to agree. A number of the plants are growing happily in the sand piles, where just the slightest bit of rain goes to the roots. If they were in clay or anything else they’d need gallons of water. What neither of us understands is the weather service’s definition of “slight”. As in “slight chance of thunderstorms”. Why not just be realistic and say “one hundred percent chance”? Or, better yet, “time for purebred border collies to snuggle into their forts”.
I bet the guy you live with got all those Oreganos from Digging Dog..that’s where I usually get mine. I think I am an ornamental Oregano collector. I don’t have to mail order them though,I can drive there in 3 hours and stay on the coast for the weekend. There is not much thunder or lightening there , especially this time of year. Maybe the guy you live with needs a road trip-Mendocino County is very dog friendly.I’m sure pure-bred border collies are especially welcome.
Indeed, they came from Digging Dog. And maybe also Mountain Valley Growers. The oreganos have been very happy here, this summer.
Yes, I’ll tell the guy I live with we need to move to Mendocino County next week. He’s only been in Northern California one time.
When he was a kid, he saw the L.A. Dodgers (you know, Don Drysdale, Sandy Koufax, Duke Snider) play against the Pittsburgh Pirates (Roberto Clemente, etc.) He forgets who won.
The Dodgers won, I feel certain of it.This was unfortunately not the case this past weekend.
Could have been 06-28-59 (no Clemente on the Pirates for that game), and, if so, they did win.
Yay! Red flowers! Yay! Orange flowers! Yay! oreganos! (I have Dittany of Crete in my rock garden). Boo! Thunder!
I agree, yay all that, because it makes the guy I live reasonably happy, which might lead to more biscuits for me. Thunder is totally scary. I learned that from my late buddy Slipper, who used to get really low to the ground, and walk very slowly and purposefully into the house.
No thunder here, Chess, but the SEALs are practicing with a new BUDs class, and the sound of assault rifle fire is magnified as it comes across the water of the bay. Bet you wouldn’t like that noise either, especially at 3 am. Those photos are lovely, the sphaeralceas pretty and adorable. I do like pictures of flowers, the guy you live with was right to take them. The oregano is inspiring. I shall pay heavy attention to that section when I root around Pearson’s Herb Garden next week. We have from that nursery a fragrant Roman oregano which is terrific in tomato sauce, even better if you remember to fish the sprigs out before eating. I’ll pick up some fine Muhlenbergia from Las Pilitas too. You have a wonderful place to walk, Chess. I’m sure that’s why you look so happy and content in the last photo. Or perhaps the guy gave out with more biscuits?
No, I think the sound of gunfire would be disturbing. Firecrackers are bad enough. The sphaeralceas that are in the “way back”, and in the middle of what used to be my lawn, are ones called Desert Sunrise, though the guy I live with doesn’t think it’s Sphaerlacea ambigua, but rather S. fendleri. They spread like nobody’s business. So does S. munroana. The only one that doesn’t seem to is S. caespitosa, which mostly just dies. The guy I live with often objects to the new way I like to walk, because that’s where people in the apartments to the north walk their dogs, but then, he doesn’t understand the importance of sniffing detours. He says walking is more important than constant detours. I don’t go down the creek path any more, and now it’s totally overgrown, because the new way is so interesting. See, places to walk where everyone else has walked are much more interesting than places where only I walk.