Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here to bring you up to date on what’s been going on with me and the guy I live with. You may remember me from such posts as “The Upended Breakfast”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. I don’t think you can see how hot I am. I’m being stoic. 
It’s been really, really, really hot. I mean super hot. We haven’t been doing much of anything because it’s been so hot. Last night at eleven o’clock it was over eighty degrees in the house.
On my evening walk last night the sun was blood-red, according to the guy I live with, who didn’t get a picture of it because he said he thought his eyes were going. He had to ask some people who were walking two black Labrador puppies if the sun was really that red, and they said it was. There was a fire somewhere which was turning the sun that color.
And then later, at Tinkle Time, I went out and came upon a striped kitty in the “way back”, where it shouldn’t have been. I barked a lot and didn’t come when I was called, and the guy I live with got really angry with me. I finally did come in, and he lectured me for quite some time. He thought I might have been sprayed, but I wasn’t. The guy I live with explained striped kitties to me again but I still didn’t quite get it.
Obviously I couldn’t go out again, because of the striped kitty, so we went on another walk at quarter after one in the morning. By that time it had cooled off some.
Today he thought he found the place where the striped kitty snuck into our yard and fixed that. The fence is pretty old and some of the pickets have been broken. Some have even been chewed through by creatures trying to get into our yard.
The garden has been really dry. The photographs don’t really show it, but it has been dry. Some plants have curled up and died.
The pool was put back and filled with water. Even if I don’t lie in it, which I guess I ought to, he says it makes things look “summery”. To me that means extremely hot.
Looking across what the guy I live with calls “the lawn”. It isn’t a lawn. It is pretty fun to run around the paths and look for things in the grasses. 
The Enclosure, with the medium Big Metal Chicken. The Enclosure is watered about once a week. 
A peek into the Employees Only section. It looks kind of autumnal because the pea shrubs, Caragana arborescens, are shedding their leaves due to the prolonged drought. The shrubs can become completely leafless in some years. That path goes on for almost another fifteen feet. The guy I live with hardly ever goes back there; he says that gardens should have places where you hardly ever go, like the disused wing of a manor house. 
The path leading to my Private Lawn. You can see that the grass has dried up to nothing, and the Egyptian onions have mostly gone dormant. There are apples all over the place. I don’t eat apples like the other purebred border collies who live here did. They aren’t ripe, for one thing. 
My Private Lawn. It’s Cody buffalo grass, which was just mowed and watered. That spot by the solar lamp has always been bare; nothing grows there because of the lilacs. Maybe some kind of native grass would do well there, but nothing else ever has. 
Looking back toward the house. The solar lamp hanging there had its solar panels wrecked by being left outside for years, so it doesn’t work, but it hangs there anyway. It was a really nice lamp. 
And another view from farther up the path on the north side of the garden. Looking across the “old rock garden”. 
That’s it for the garden pictures.
The guy I live with has always liked having lots of birds in the garden, and just yesterday he “rejellified” the oriole feeder and an oriole showed up just a little while later. But the biggest thing is what’s happening at the thistle feeder. The guy I live with says the thistle is being eaten at the rate of about an inch a day.
You can see robins stealing grape jelly from the oriole feeder, but also goldfinches at the thistle feeder. They eat and eat and eat. The guy I live with says they probably can’t find much food outside of the garden because it’s been so dry. The thistle feeder was filled just a few days ago.
He learned a while ago that the thistle seed needs to be fresh. Thistle seed was in the feeder for several months and no one showed up. Then he went to the bird seed store, bought new fresh seed, and the goldfinches went through a whole ten-pound bag in about a month. The old seed was tossed into the garden because other creatures aren’t as picky.
Today we hardly did anything. We didn’t get to bed until two in the morning, so hardly doing anything today seemed like the logical course of action. I had breakfast, went on my morning walk, the guy I live with thought about things and moped a bit, then we took a nap. The kitchen phone rang and the guy I live with wasn’t sure what to do. He answered the phone but couldn’t understand what the person wanted. It was so hot that understanding people was pretty difficult.
Then it looked like it might rain but instead it just got dark. Dark and extremely hot. We went on my evening walk and it started to sprinkle, so I thought it best to go back home. And then it rained. It rained for about half an hour. Not a downpour or anything, just rain. There was some thunder, too, so I had to hide.
The main thing, though, was that it finally cooled off to the point where I didn’t think I wasn’t going to roast away to nothing. Like if you left a turkey in the oven for ten hours. Instead it was delightfully cool.
The guy I live with said that eventually it will cool off, to the point where he wishes it would be warm again, but I can hardly wait.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
There is a striped kitty here who teases Rhody because he wants to play, but when Rhody gets a bit too rough with him, he sprays Rhody. I get angry because I think that the striped kitty should not tease Rhody like that unless he wants to play like Rhody plays. If he does not want to play rough, he should not tease Rhody. Anyway, you might find this to be amusing. https://tonytomeo.com/2018/03/04/pepe/
Yeah. I know the guy I live with has Havahart traps, but they’re not set. And won’t be set for striped kitties.
Stripped kitties really are not all that bad if you do not try to play with them. I know it is very difficult to ignore them, especially when they tease you like they do. If you let them, they eat snails and grubs and such.
We read what you wrote, and the guy I live with said to say we don’t have snails here, but then I had to go out on the patio, because there was something there that totally mystified me. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was moving very slowly. I looked at it a lot. The guy I live with said it was a snail and he picked it up and moved it to somewhere else. It must have come from a nursery pot, because this isn’t the climate for big snails.
The big brown snails that naturalized here came all the way from France. It must have taken them a very long time to get here. Perhaps they came faster by car, like a Model A or a Model T, or maybe a Chrysler K Car. I have heard that brown snails can make an S Car go.
The guy I live with said that was a really old joke.
but you are not old enough to remember it.
The guy I live with is into old jokes. Come to think of it, he could be one himself.
Oh, that joke is not funny.
It pretty much is.
Do not quit your day job.
Ha ha.
Oh, I did not realize how silly it was to say that. Quitting your kind of job is not an option.
No. I don’t get paid, either. Paid in money, anyway.
You know what money is? Your people are not supposed to know of such things. Otherwise, they might want some of it.
I hear the guy I live with got me in exchange for some.
That does not sound right. Money is used to purchase possessions.
Well and also purebred border collies bred from working parents, with papers. The guy I live with says I was totally worth it. Like all the other purebred border collies who lived here.
Oh, I certainly did not intend to imply that you are not worth the expenditure. I merely meant that it is not easy to think of border collies as a commodity. If you knew what money is, do you think that you would have exchanged any of it for the guy you live with? Perhaps that is the advantage of not knowing. You need not be bothered about such nonsense.
The guy I live with said he was priceless.
Of course he did. It is just as well that you have no concept of money, because you would not have had enough for such a purchase anyway.
No. I’d be in debt, for sure.
Well, then you could sell him on EBay, perhaps for a profit.
Uh huh.
but of course, that is nothing you need to be concerned with.
It might but me a new place where they don’t have thunderstorms.
A great picture of you being ‘stoic’ there Mani. It’s hot here in the UK (84 degress) – probably not as hot as where you are, but hot for here. It’s our hottest summer since 1976 (which is famous here for being super hot). And we have had no rain either, just 0.1 inches since the beginning of June. Hope it cools down for you soon (and for me!)
Well, it’s cooled down today, that’s for sure. We started hearing thunder, so the guy I live with looked at the radar site, and there are severe thunderstorm warnings. He just wanted rain.
You will pardon me of course, Mani, if I say your complaints fall on deaf ears here. No matter how glamorous that last photo. It’s over 100 every day here, and our beautiful valley is filled with smoke for the 4th summer in a row. I imagine our striped kitties are moping along with everyone else. I am inspired by TGYLW to try watering less, but I doubt I have the strength to withstand a wilt, let alone an actual death by drought. I admire his fortitude and resolve.
The guy I live with is still going to complain, no matter what. Maybe you can hear that sound from where you are. It’s the sound of him banging his head on the table. It cooled off nicely today. They said we might get some rain. Instead, what we have is severe thunderstorm warnings. Again. This is like the sixth or seventh time this summer. The guy I live with only complains about the heat, not about the drought. At least with drought we don’t get bad thunderstorms.
We have both drought AND thunderstorms! Dry thunderstorms! But you are right, a severe thunderstorm is a scary thing. Hope it passes you by.
Thanks; they did lift the warning though I still hear thunder and the guy I live with said something was heading our way. He got me some Rescue Remedy (for dogs). It’s raining a little now. There were tornado warnings around Colorado Springs and Pueblo, which I think are pretty far away. Not the sort of weather the guy I live with used to associate with living here, but the weather has changed.
Ugh! Tornado watch near you today. Many of us are having a bad weather contest. No prize for the winner, that’s for sure.
Well, there’s nothing here right now. Yesterday the weather was northwest to southeast, which is odd. Today, west to east, which is “normal”. The guy I live with said that the forecast was for some storms, but that can change and something bad can suddenly be headed our way. I know because of what he says when he discovers that. But anyway, “some storms” are predicted to occur in an area which is larger than 20,000 square miles. (The Kansas and Nebraska state lines are over 200 miles east of here.)
Oh, my dear dog, I feel your roast as we have heat of the oppressive sort here too. I’m happy the pool is back in accustomed spot because I should like to see pics requiring the caption, “Purebred Border Collie lounges in the water.” For the bewailing, the garden looks fine, just a bit crisped around the edges. The birdies take to it, evidently, and/or the reliable supply of food. You really DO have a personal lawn. It shows quite well when watered and mowed. I hope you hear no thunder, although you look so charming and cute when stoic.
Thanks, though I heard a lot of thunder just now. A lot of thunder. And it rained. The guy I live with said he thinks we got about three-quarters of an inch in about fifteen minutes. The street flooded, the way it always does. (The storm drain across the street is way too small.) So it’s either roasting hot here or I’m terrorized by thunder. The guy I live with said he’s ready for autumn now. I only lounge in the pool at Day Care, with my friends. I don’t know why. But it’s nice to have the pool here, just in case. The guy I live with rescues bees and things that fall into the pool and can’t get out. If you’ve ever seen the Sherlock Holmes (with Jeremy Brett) where Reginald Musgrave tells the butler Brunton, “But this is my private lawn”, that’s where the term comes from.
I thought about Manderly when you mentioned the manor house wing that is never visited.The dreadful Mrs Danvers in the classic film (and book) ‘Rebecca’ . Maxim DeWinter advised his new bride to avoid that wing at all costs. I can’t remember if it was the east wing or the west wing-which is a bit disturbing since I have probably read the book at least 10 times and seen the film as often.Maybe the guy you live with has seen this movie. I grew up in LA and we took movies seriously.I enjoyed the photo of the birds at the feeder.
Thanks. The guy I live really likes the goldfinches. And I think they like him. He’s seen ‘Rebecca’ more than once. With Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. There are rooms in this pretty small house which are rarely visited, like the downstairs bedroom, but in the last few weeks I’ve been so roastingly hot that the guy I live with said we would take naps down there, because it’s so much cooler, and so we did.