Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the tiny purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you up to date with all the latest news about me, and our garden. You may remember me from such posts as “The Star Student”, among so many others.
Here I am in a characteristically horticultural pose.
You can see how hard I work in the garden. It’s been hot, and I haven’t felt like doing much.
My cone came off on Tuesday, and that was pretty great. I got to go to Day Care yesterday, and that was even better. They have swimming at Day Care.
Today we did some weeding, and some other stuff; I forget what. Some things are in flower here, like Cylindropuntia imbricata.
Lavatera thuringiaca is out in the “way back”. 
There’s other stuff, too. Salvia sclarea var. turkestanica, and the feverfew that the guy I live with dislikes so much. It seeds everywhere. The wood is because there’s supposed to be a fence here, but no one has done any work on it. 
The ‘way back” is really overgrown, and my private lawn is being encroached on. The white here is from Tanacetum niveum. 
Later, I went on my walk, and that was excellent.
In one place, the weeds were so high I couldn’t even see over them, and neither could the guy I live with, but we did see an actual native plant, Penstemon virgatus var. asa-grayi, which you can see here, if you look hard enough. There’s a ladybug, too. 
The canal is full. The guy I live with says it’s really a ditch, but he calls it a canal, since that sounds better. He says it has fish and crawdads in it. I don’t know what those things are. The creek goes under the canal, through a culvert, about where the tree is at the upper middle right (near the flowering poison hemlocks). 
The creek has water in it, too. There’s a place where you can walk right up to it; that is, there aren’t any banks. 
I guess that’s it for today. As you can see, things are pretty much back to normal. 
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
That is an interesting horticultural pose Mani. Good to see you enjoying the outside life again and your walks. Day care sounds excellent, I wish they had it where I live, lucky you.
Thanks; I thought the pose was full of character. Puppy Day Care is really fun; they have a person there who watches over us, and a trainer, and, as I say, swimming.
Oh, are you wearing a 4th of July bandana? So much better than the cone. Will we be looking to you for fashion advice too? I expect so, since you look very jaunty. Hot there, huh? Not as hot as S. Oregon, the hot spot of the nation. What is the fluffy grey plant behind you on the path in the first picture? By the blue pots. Is it an Artemisia? It’s very pretty. Did you dip your toes in the creek? The water looks very clear. Well you look very happy in your freedom regained, and why wouldn’t you?
Thanks; yes, I agree, a bandana is better than a cone, and I got that at Day Care. The guy I live with says it’s not as hot as I think it is, and he says that southern Oregon sounds mighty nice about now. There would probably be less talk of severe weather there than here, talk which the guy I live with says gets very tiresome indeed. I didn’t go into the creek because there might have been quicksand. Or, no, the guy I live with said it was too humid there and he was going crazy. That is an artemisia, called, um, oh, something. It spreads everywhere. Silver Frost maybe.
Mani, TGYLW was raised in SoCal … he’s been acclimated to warm weather for longer than a certain tiny but embiggening pure bred broader collie has been alive. You, however, are of the frosty wind-swept hills of the Highlands (and I mean frosty windswept SUMMER hills) so of course you rightly feel every iota of the rising mercury. Look around for a lawn sprinkler and/or use and then sit next to it and put on your sad puppy face. I guarantee, the result will almost be better than Brie.
It’s only 79F (26C) and 44 percent humidity right now, so it’s not too bad. Right now I have an upset tummy. The guy I live with, who is an expert on such things, got me some medicine, and says I shouldn’t eat rabbit poop. But it’s tasty, and whose fault was it that the Chief Bunny Chaser had a bucket on his head for two weeks?
I was thinking about you today, Mani. Glad to see that you are now coneless. That cone looked awfully cumbersome. I enjoyed your pictures today. Beautiful flowers!
Thanks; yes, the cone was really unpleasant. Especially when you compare it with getting a bandana and swimming.
Oh, Mani, in the second to final photo you look just about to make the acquaintance of crawdads. That would be interesting, but maybe not so excellent. I like your artemisia. It’s a civilized height to fit into a garden. Ours is native to our sand patch and is too tall and sprawls. Today I read about one feature of the plant I’m not eager to test: artemisia rubbed on one’s skin discourages mosquito bites. Feverfew is supposed to work this way too. I join the guy you live with in his dislike of the ubiquitous not-cutely-double feverfew, although in your garden it does look picturesque. Somehow not in mine. Good to hear you swim these days, a sure sign you are all healed up. Westways magazine each month hides a drawing of a golden California poppy somewhere in its pages, the cause of much hunting fun for its readers. Well, Mani, I found the ladybug!
The guy I live with says that crawdads pinch, which doesn’t sound so terrific. The artemisia pictured does spread “something fierce”, but it’s fairly attractive. The feverfew has seeded everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. In the ladybug picture there is another native plant, Grindelia squarrosa, gumweed, in the lower right, but everything else is tumbleweeds. Before everything was bulldozed, so I hear, there were more penstemons, and other stuff too.
Yay the cone is off!! I just went to an event where Mike Kintgen lectured and showed slides of “Garden Gems from the World’s Dry Regions”. He spoke of your snowstorm in May and hail in June. Did it really break the Chihuly glass at DBG or was he being funny?
I don’t know about the glass; most of it was gone this year, but maybe what was left got broken. Gardeners who have had bad hail wondered at the Chihuly exhibit at DBG last year; seemed awfully risky. It snowed here in May, like it has every May but one since the turn of the century, but hardly at all, and it was all gone by the end of the day. So it was really “their snowstorm”. The cone is off, and I get to go on walks and everything, though the guy I live with says maybe not, this evening, because of explosions. He says it’s “rednecks with illegal fireworks annoying everyone else”.
We have those, too, the rednecks. Our town banned fireworks this year because it is so dry. It has been blissful, even though there are some stupid scofflaws, like someone who roved around setting off fireworks from two to three am last night. The rest of the Peninsula is a chaotic free for all of unrestricted personal fireworks use. I only know of three local friends of mine who actually like it that way.
Purebred border collies, as a rule, do not care for fireworks. I understand that the garden here was set on fire one year, long before I was born. Had the guy I live with complained about it, several peoples’ lives would have been wrecked (felony to cause fires), but I’m sure the people who did that didn’t even consider the consequences.
Oh, I thought the rednecks all lived by us now. I can’t believe they didn’t ban fireworks here this year. Last year someone blew off his own hand and another burned his house down with them. I hope the glass made it through.
No, there are a lot of them here. A big fire was started here several years ago on Green Mountain (visible from our back yard in winter, and almost always brown), almost reached houses. Don’t know about the glass. I just came back from my evening walk and it was pretty quiet. I get to go on the extension leash now, and that’s pretty good.
BTW, the first use of “redneck” referred to the Scottish Covenanters of the 17th century, a Presbytarian independence movement from the border area where Mani’s breed was developed.
I bet they didn’t have firecrackers. Everybody wanted to be free of the awful English king. Or queen.
Delightful photos, from beginning to end! BTW: I always thought that the term “redneck” came from the coal miners who wore the red kerchiefs to identify as union members or sympathizers. Surprised to read it goes back to 17th century.
Thanks. Well, the guy I live with uses it to denote people who shoot off fireworks, or drive ATVs through the field where we walk. Both activities are illegal. Their necks might not actually be red; purebred border collies can’t see red. There is another word for them, but I’m too polite to use it. Incidentally, the Wikipedia entry mentioned a reference to people living in Fayetteville, North Carolina, which is where the guy I live with was born, a very long time ago. Almost before people had TV, if you can believe that.
I have a word which I have sometimes been coarse enough to use for these types. Their vehicles which are loud and often have spotlights on top have a name, too. They are often coated with mud from their owners’ wetland-destroying activities.
The guy I live with might say something like “people who think they have individual rights that supersede other peoples’ rights” or something equally pompous like that. It’s raining here, again, so all activity like that is curtailed. In theory.
Heh. Born in Fayettville, NC…a “Tar Heel”.
“Born on the banks of the Cape Fear River” to his biographers.
“Entitlement.” Rampant around here too, but expresses itself differently on this island. Out in the back country, you, Mani, the guy you live with and Barb K would recognize those expressions. I grew up in the back country. I, decades later, still shudder. Every now and then, the thought creeps in: is such a shudder itself entitlement? Nah.
The guy I live with thinks it’s some sort of psychological thing. Like that the world revolves around them. Which can hardy be true, because of course it revolves around me.