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 to bring you up to date on the latest news from our garden. You may remember me from such posts as “The Awful Truth”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
The reason I’m looking so noble here is that I got a new toy. Not only does it squeak, and is for chewing on, it can be floated in my pool, for times when I’m in there, like you saw in the last post.
Here I am with my new toy. The guy I live with’s friend bought that for me. 
This is me again. 
What a good start to a post, don’t you think?
It was a lot less roasting hot today, which was good for everyone. A few plants came in the mail, and the guy I live with snipped off the flower stalks and soaked the plants in a dish pan. “The way you do”, he said. These are Salvia ringens. 
You can see the bonsai shears which were used to snip off the flower stalks. The guy I live with said the plants needed to spend energy growing roots rather than producing flowers. The cork is to go on the tips of the shears so that no one we know stabs himself accidentally. 
And the plants came with this tag.
The guy I live with just snickered and said the plants will have to be watered almost every day until cold weather sets in. And that if, in fact, he didn’t water the plants a lot they would die. The soil here is almost never moist, except in the spring, when the snow is melting.
I guess there were some of these salvias planted last year, but I was a puppy and something happened to the plants, and I think we shouldn’t go into that right now.
We also now have a tomato plant. No, the world isn’t ending, not yet anyway, but having a tomato plant seemed like something we should do. 
You may also notice that there are some calibrachoas in the blue pot. Again, the world isn’t coming to an end. “One does want a hint of color”, the guy I live with said, and I guess I would agree.
The rest of the garden is still pretty gray and dry. We’ve had less than an inch (2.5 cm) of rain since the eighteenth of May, which is kind of a long time ago.
This is the yard on the south side of the house. There is Shepherdia rotundifolia, Salvia greggii, the mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa), and on the right, Solidago ‘Wichita Mountains’ (which is probably really just S. speciosa). We’re thinking of staining the fence blue, too. 
The buffalo grass lawn in the “way back” is looking pretty good, too. It got mowed, and then watered. We haven’t seen any owls sitting on the “owl posts” (that’s what those are, on the right), which is just as well, since I might freak out if I saw one. You see the path that leads to the part of the garden in sun, back there?
It leads to the “trough patio”. Right now the patio has two seed frames on it, which you can see, but they’re going to be moved some time this year, and so more troughs can be put there, or the area can just be left open. 
Heading back to the house, this is the path through the “lawn”. I admit it is fun to run through. And you can probably see why we can get away with having dirt paths. 
I guess that’s all. Oh, I had a cough last week, but it’s all better now. I had to have antibiotics for a week, and the guy I live with bought me some peanut-butter-flavored Pill Pockets, but I spit out the pills, and so instead he hid the pills in something called “Brie”, which I thought was extremely excellent. The guy I live with said he had “been down that road before”, which must mean something. 
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
That IS a great toy. It almost looks like a baby’s teething toy, not that you are a Salvia destroying baby any more. I’m sorry you were sick. At least you are too far north for Valley Fever which makes dogs cough and cough. That patio is an area we haven’t seen before. Nice little stacked wall. It could be kind of a secret garden. It’s fun to follow a path and find something like that. What kind of tomatoes? Do you like tomatoes?
It is a pretty nice toy. I got a cough when I went on vacation, I guess, but it’s all better now. I kind of wonder if I shouldn’t get another one, because of the Brie I got. No, just kidding. The tomato is a “Black Krim” but we don’t know if we’ll get tomatoes, because cold air comes down the creek every night. Still, we have a tomato. The patio has a story. Okay, I’ll tell it. The lady of the house kept talking about a “patio” and eventually a bunch of flagstone was ordered. And eventually it was moved into the back corner and eventually she built the patio. After she died, the guy I live with said he thought he should try to finish it, but had no idea what the plants were, and so tried to do his best, but discovered, to his horror (he says), the flagstones were level in all directions, and he couldn’t do that, make everything as level as level can be, so the patio was left pretty much in an unfinished state.
“The tomato is a “Black Krim” but we don’t know if we’ll get tomatoes, because cold air comes”.
Blk Krim doesn’t set fruit well with coolth.
Celebrity or a Mountain series (hybs), or one of the heirloom Russian varieties would probably be more productive. Sweet 100 or it’s cvs would also work if you want to deal with an indeterminate.
It looks like an excellent toy, Mani. Miguel, one of the dogs I live with would love it. Today is his birthday — he’s one.
We bought a new house (new to us) on an acre of land, and I was wanting to plant some serviceberry trees/shrubs there. Today I went to the nursery and found serviceberry trees in the 75% off section. I bought all 4 of them ($10 each) and felt like I’d won the lottery. They pretty much filled up the back of my car. I will drive them almost 3 hours to the new place tomorrow.
The dogs I live with like being able to run around on our acre plus the neighbors’ yards. All the neighbors have cats, and there is a horse named Storm in back of us — a cause for much barking.
Anything that’s cause for barking is excellent, if you ask me. Happy Birthday to Miguel. The guy I live with’s birthday is today too, but he was one back in 1952. “Did they have purebred border collies way back then?” I asked him. He says they did.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE GUY YOU LIVE WITH!
He says thanks.
Hi Guys,
Lovely to see Salvia ringens being grown and sold to gardeners particularly given the plethora of hybrids on offer from this genus. Such a wonderful blue and just the right right balance between flowers and foliage.
I have seen them growing gloriously in northern Greece in rock stacks alongside Lake Verginia. We had scrambled up to take a closer look but stopped short by an old man calling from the road telling us to look of for snakes, which, he informed us, there were many. We struck up a conversation and it turned out he had worked in Sydney, Australia for many years before returning to his ancestral village. The land around there is used for cherry growing and the harvest had just begun. When we asked him where we could buy some he told us to “pick them from the trees”.
Mani, your new toy looks interesting. It reminds me of the new fangled squid jigs used in my part of the world. I wonder how it would have gone in Lake verginia. Apparently there were big fish in there but knowing my luck I’d probably caught a snake!
Cheers, Marcus from Down Under
What a nice story. The guy I live with says he’s going to give the salvias extra care to help them get going. People grow them here, so hardiness isn’t a problem. The problem is that the plants in the trade almost never produce seed. That’s something to work on. I have issues with snakes. The guy I live with says that if I lived Down Under I would have even more issues with snakes, but the ones here are, fortunately, harmless. Except scary.
I have never seen this Salvia in Australia except for the few I have grown from Mojmir Pavelka’s collection near Mt Vermion (which isn’t far away). Old seed but good germination. Wonder why no seed is produced by the trade plants? Surely they are not all the same clone?
It’s quite likely that these were cloned (by cuttings), but supposedly a form which produces seed has emerged….somewhere.
Oh, Mani, never there was a cuter pic of Dog With Toy than in your post’s last shot. What a splendid friend the guy you live with has, who knows that a luminous green chewy, floaty thing is just the right gift for a righteous Border Collie who may have had something to do with the disappearance of last year’s salvia order when he was, you know, a puppy. I took several looks at you considering the tomato plant before I could decide you were contemplating, not coveting. I’m sure that’s the case as the scent of tomato plants can be off-putting. Aaand, we’re back to the gardening world, peering into corners and past sunlit spots to highlight plants and troughs and patios and dirt runs. Great fun, great garden.
Thanks; yes, the green toy is quite excellent, and does, in fact, float. We’re not so sure about getting tomatoes but it’s the gesture, you know. However …if the plant gets tomato worms on it, that will be very scary.