Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the getting-bigger-every-day purebred 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 “Why Birds Are Thirsty” among at least a few others.
Here I am in a rather cautious, yet sophisticated, pose. I don’t know why my ears were way back, but they were. 
I was left at home today, for much longer than the guy I live with said I would be left, but he said the checkout line was long, and so I guess that was okay. He went to the Mother’s Day plant sale at Denver Botanic Gardens. This is the first year he didn’t volunteer in a very, very long time. He has sciatica, he says, and besides, I have to have my lunch at a certain time, you know.
He got some plants. He didn’t get nearly as many as in last years because, as he tells it, he was much too gentlemanly to wrest a shopping cart away from old ladies who had found one at the front entrance, but he did rent a much smaller cart, so that he could carry the cardboard box he brought for plants, because it was raining, and “You know what happens to cardboard in the rain”. I don’t, but I wondered why he didn’t take one of the wooden flats that are here, since he said he would do that last night. He also said he might buy a Flexible Flyer wagon, but the sight of a guy in his sixties with sciatica, shuffling along with a little red wagon, might create the wrong impression, and so he didn’t get the Flyer, but he might get one next year, and not care what people think, because sciatica does go away eventually, and, he says anyway, so does caring about what other people think.
not very many plants
Then he came home. That was probably the best part. I had my lunch, and it was good, as usual. I sang my lunch song and did my lunch dance before I was served, and the guy I live with thought that was cute. I am fairly cute. It gets me out of a lot of trouble.
Then it started to thunder. The guy I live with said it sounded like it was coming from South Park, which is a real place (and a TV show), over the mountains to the southwest of here, and not too much later after that it started to rain here. A lot.
It rained for a little bit, and then the sun came out. We haven’t seen the sun much in the last week, but this is what it looked like.
I did some other things after that. There was a squirrel in the pine tree, for example. 
Even though the day isn’t done, and there’s plenty of stuff for me to do and get yelled at for doing it, I’ll let you go now, with a picture of me in the chair, about to take a nap. Naps are excellent. 
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Sure enjoyed your post today, Mani. Thank you! That’s all.
Thank you. I should say that after the rain and all, I dug in one of the pots and got all muddy and got yelled at (again), so I’m having a good time.
Is it possible we may soon see a video of the lunch song and dance? I know mealtimes are heavy with urgency, but maybe if the camera was ready nearby? Not to be demanding or anything, but you know, we are fans. That rain was so lovely we could almost smell the freshness instead of the dry dust and car exhaust we often smell here. Looking forward to having those purchases on display with I.D. Mani, leave them alone.
Thanks; the labels have been removed already, because of, you know, temptation. I’m not so sure I can do a song and dance if I’m being filmed. We’ll see. The plants were some silver saxifrages for an empty trough, some penstemons for another trough, a few plants of “Oregon sunshine”, the selection made by Cistus Nursery, and a couple of lewisias. It’s raining again. Really raining. The guy I live with says that it’s supposed to snow tomorrow night. I can hardly wait.
I am on board with the above poster Barb K. Mani,we must have a song and dance video.
Uh huh. I’m suddenly feeling very shy about that. Maybe we can do a “Me playing in the snow” video on Sunday morning…..
It’s raining here, it’s raining here! so I may watch the rain-and-thunder video with light heart. Mostly your heart seems to be light, Mani. Even while observing squirrels in trees. Love the haul of plants. Love me some saxifrage — lovely examples in a garden right outside the Balboa Park Club (built as the Arizona Building in 1935), the one truly drought-tolerant garden in the park. Our group is putting on a Flower Show this weekend, as we do every hundred years, and you should see our special, not-judged heritage rose display. Scrumptious, even past peak bloom time. So, Mani, tell the guy you live with outside and back of the club is an old cacti and succulent garden put in in 1935 to honor Kate Sessions. When we came to town in the middish 70s the garden was forgotten and neglected and the infrastructure past crumbling. Somehow in the intervening years unofficial renovation and renewal has happened. You know, guerrilla gardening, the kind your guy doesn’t have to resort to because he has the manor. Oh, my, Mani, sophisticated as you are, you would have a fine time running around there now, and probably so would the guy. Of course, not the Denver Botanical Garden, but pretty great.
Oh, well, see, show a couple of movies and it starts to rain in other places. It’s really raining now, at 8:33 a.m. The guy I live with says “just like in the old days”. I don’t like this weather very much. The guy I live with says there are, or were, some gigantic agaves in Balboa Park.
The thunder doesn’t rankle?
Also, as I was unable to comment on “Damp and Delighted”: The garden photos are especially lovely. 🙂
Oh, thanks. Comments get turned off automatically after a period of days. That’s to keep down the spam. I really don’t know why people bother sending us emails about Rolex watches and things like that. The guy I live with doesn’t wear a watch, and I wouldn’t need one. My lunch time and dinner time are set as alarms on the phone the guy I live with carries, and that’s all we need to know. The forecast, by the way, is “one hundred percent chance of heavy rain” today, and they’ve backed off on the snow business, at least a little, for tonight.
It doesn’t. We haven’t said anything about it, and there aren’t any other purebred border collies in the house to tell me what to think or how to behave. The guy I live with says that’s both good and not so good. I don’t understand that, but maybe I will when I get bigger.
That’s a really satisfying rain. Looking more like a dog than a puppy now, Mani!
Thanks; I am getting quite huge. It rained and rained and rained, and then it snowed. Now it’s nice again.
Herbertia lahue ssp., whatever is blooming here today, Has naturalized in several mowed areas.
I think the original
seed came from Argentina, not Texas. Label, long lost. Can y’all grow this kinda stuff up at 1700m?.
Cheerio,
M
Don’t think so. Pretty much, no, I think.