Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the roastingly hot purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you the latest broiling news from our garden. You may remember me from such heat-related posts as
“Not Only Roasting, But Gloomy”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
I kind of got in trouble last night. A big sphinx moth flew into the house (an Achemon sphinx, the ones that come from copper-colored caterpillars), and the guy I live with spent quite some time trying to catch it with the net. He finally caught it, let it go, out on the patio, and it flew right back into the kitchen. So the guy I live with chased the moth with the net again, caught it, let it back outside, and I grabbed it and ate it.
He was really angry with me. I thought his head was going to explode. Especially since there was another incident earlier in the evening, when his friend was here for dinner, and, well, I’m not allowed to talk about it.
I am a dog, after all.
Speaking of being a dog, we purebred border collies do not like hot weather. Right now it’s ninety degrees Fahrenheit (thirty-two Celsius), with thirteen percent humidity. The guy I live with says the weather will be hot for a while. So here I am, roasting.
I have the pool, but I don’t go in it. The guy I live with says I should, but I don’t. Unless it gets filled with water, and then I go in, when the hose is running. This picture sort of makes it look like I have the pool in my mouth, but of course I don’t. 
When I go on my walks I can see the ducks in the neighbors’ yard. There have been ducks there for years. I don’t know why ducks don’t land in the pool here. The neighbors have a pool and the ducks like that. 
Things are changing on my walks. They mowed along the canal road. The grass is already dry and prickly. 
In the field, though, the grass is getting higher. 
There are two tracks here because a truck drove through here the other day. It was driven by someone who was authorized to drive through here, so we didn’t worry. But it was hard to tell which track was the one made by Norm and Celeste, the coyotes. It turned out to be the one I’m on in the picture.
Back at home, things are getting even more jungly, but it’s also so dry that some plants are beginning to suffer a little. I’ll only show the non-suffering plants. I’m also supposed to show pictures of the garden.
This is the path on the north side. You can see all the way to the “way back”. 
The mockorange (Philadelphus lewisii) is scenting the garden. This garden, on the south side of the house, is blazingly hot. 
The rose ‘Darlow’s Enigma’ has burst into flower. 
Now for a bunch of cactus flowers. 
These are flowers of hybrid echinocereus which the guy I live with got at Timberline Gardens the year before it closed. 
These next ones really are this color. I can’t see red, but the guy I live with assures me it’s this color.
A pink-flowered sphaeralcea appeared in the garden, too. Maybe pink-purple. 
And the gaillardias are beginning to flower. The guy I live with said he always had a hard time keeping them in the garden (I wasn’t sure if he meant they ran away, or what), but now they’re growing very well here. Seed was sown directly into the heavy clay in the middle of the lawn. I’ve already explained how the native soil isn’t clay, and this stuff gets rock-hard in the summer. Rain never gets it very wet. 
I guess that’s it for today. I’ll leave you with a picture of me lying on the patio rug in an “Egyptian” pose. You can see that I’ve been enjoying a pine cone or two. I especially like to do this after the sun goes down, and it’s cool on the patio, while the house is still hot. 
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
I can only imagine what you did when your guy’s friend was over!
Gorgeous garden photos, overviews and closeups.
Thanks. The guy I live with said I didn’t really hurt the thing I caught, just scared it a lot.
PS. THanks for all the photos of Slipper a few posts back. The first one of him and Puppy Chess made me leak some tears.
You’re welcome. That was an awfully sweet picture, wasn’t it? The guy I live with said that Slipper used to collect things, and take them to his sort of museum, under the table downstairs. Flurry was really too old to play with him, but when Chess came, Slipper stopped collecting things and played with Chess all day long.
Mani, we don’t want our dogs to adhere to the “nature, red in tooth and claw” school of thought. At least, most of us don’t. Does the guy you live with water the Philadelphus? I used to have some out in the country but the ones growing by a creek looked a lot better. I brought cuttings when I moved. Such a wonderful plant. Gosh your garden looks so great I wish I could have been on the tour.
Indeed, the guy I live with prefers to think of me as a gentle, thoughtful individual (yet fierce and deadly when people come to the front door). There are three of Lewis’s mock-oranges here; two on the north side of the house (one doesn’t get enough sun and needs to be moved). The one on the south side is growing in awful soil which is very difficult to wet deeply. It does get watered maybe once a summer. The ones on the north side get watered more, because that’s where the snowdrops grow. There are some other mock-oranges here, too. P. microphyllus, the native one, and P. madrensis, from northern Mexico. Oh, and a regular mock-orange, also on the north side of the house. It’s funny, because the guy I live with grew up thinking that “mock-orange” meant a pittosporum, because that’s what was planted in his grandfather’s garden in Los Angeles. And his grandfather’s brother (whom the guy I live with never met), who lived in Rhode Island, called members of the genus Philadelphus “syringa” (which is really lilac), and I guess there’s a town in Idaho called that, because of Lewis’s mock-orange …..
And Choisya. They call that mock orange too. I have the microphyllus too but find the smell a little overpowering.
We can’t grow choisyas here. Or at least, the guy I live with said he’s never tried. Thought about it, of course.
Not much of a break between snow and 90 is there? Still the cactus look excellent and I wish we had a mock orange (with fragrance) around here.
Thanks. The guy I live with says there is a third alternative: “unrelenting summer gloom”, which to me, being a purebred border collie and all, is quite excellent.