Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here to talk about this and that and other things. You may remember me from such posts as “A Hint Of Rain” and “Lavender And Ice Cubes”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. I was being bothered by flying things.
I really dislike having things fly around me, and land on me, and then start crawling all over me. The guy I live with said I was lucky not to live in a warmer climate, where extremely large flying things might land on me, or even bite me. I think these things were gnats.
Not much is happening around here. The guy I live with said someone is coming to look at the roof next week and that we’ll almost certainly get a new one. He wasn’t going to get one and then realized (he can be slow sometimes) that if he didn’t, he would constantly worry about the roof until we did eventually get a new one.
Because, of course, he was worried about the roof before this summer. Then we had the two hailstorms and I guess that was the deciding factor. Otherwise he would just sit and worry. He worries a lot, as I’ve said before, and he probably didn’t need this extra, and very major, thing.
Well, so, anyway, some things are actually happening here. Little things, but still things. The cyclamen (Cyclamen hederifolium) began to flower after they were watered a few days ago.
You can see that there was some sun in the garden this morning, when the pictures were taken.
A highly illegal entrance-way was also discovered. The guy I live with said “Someone has been digging under the fence.” I couldn’t help but admire his powers of observation. 
There was sun on my walk this morning. You may have heard that I hurt my leg, my left hind leg, and that I was seriously limping, but it got better. I had to have what I thought was an excessively large amount of “quiet time” for a few days. The guy I live with called my doctor to see if I could go to Day Care this week, and the thought was I should stay home, and “play it safe”, but the whole time he was talking on the phone I was chasing squirrels in the garden, and he felt very weird about me not going, and his inability to make decisions, but he said what I felt about things was more important than him trying to make decisions, and that me chasing squirrels and running up and down and back and forth was a good sign, so he called again the next day, and it was decided that I could go to Day Care, which I did. My leg is fine now. 
Yesterday, and also this morning, the water in the canal was mysteriously low (and at normal height, or depth, in the evening). There were very interesting things to see in the water.
The guy I live with said these were pretty big trout, and there were a lot of them.
We didn’t look to see if there were any giant crawdads, but we did see the muskrat, paddling happily down the shallow water. The guy I live with didn’t have his camera ready. Naturally.
Around about noon the sky turned the way it has almost every day since maybe May. It was extremely dark for the rest of the day and was accompanied by a considerable amount of complaining.
When this picture was taken it was ninety degrees Fahrenheit (a little over thirty-two Celsius), sixteen percent humidity, and not a breath of air moving. He said he thought he might go completely crazy.
If there aren’t storms, then there is no wind, for days on end. Denver used to be a famously windy place, but not any more. The air just sits there. The guy I live with said it’s probably the same air every single day and that if we breathed too much it might not have much oxygen after a while. There aren’t a lot of leaves on many of the plants to help with the oxygen.
You can see the pathetic eggplant plant is flowering, but we don’t have much hope for eggplants. The guy I live with said it was only for ornament anyway, because eggplant, except for the green Thai eggplants, isn’t eaten here very much. At least the eggplant plant wasn’t in a place where its leaves got totally shredded, like what happened to the tomato plants. 
Some watering has been done, but not nearly enough. It rained today; about a hundred drops. Several years ago the guy I live with planted some Salvia darcyi in the front bed, under the upstairs bedroom window, in the only part of the front yard that’s ever watered, and they get watered fairly often (like once every two weeks), because they need water in order to flower. The important thing here isn’t the flowers, really, because the plants become a bit unattractive in the later stage of flowering, but the visitors. Maybe you can see the visitor, here, sitting on one of the wire cages set there to keep rabbits from eating everything. 
I guess that’s all for today. I’ll leave you with a picture of me in repose, after a long day of being me. 
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Trout that used to live in the Guadalupe River were famously toxic with Mercury. People used to eat them a long time ago before they really knew much about such toxicity. I never heard of anyone having any problems with it. We do not eat them anyway. We would not eat the crawdads either. They might taste like thermometers.
The water comes straight from the mountains, but still, you never know.
Your mountains are not as toxic. Almaden is the second largest mercury deposit in the World, and was a mining town that was named after Almaden in Spain, which was the largest mercury deposit in the World.
Ah, that explains it.
Cheered to hear your leg has healed up, and that you can rejoin your friends at day care!
That *is* a gloomy sky, and mystifying about the lack of wind. This time of year is oppressively still here, but we’re a humid climate — and in a week or two the dry air of fall will move in and make us forget about August. Hope something like that will happen for you; it cuts way down on gnats.
Lovely cyclamen! Fall is on its way…
Thanks; it must just have been a muscle thing. The guy I live with gets those all the time. It’s 84 degrees F right now, 17% humidity. Some thunder in the west, up in the mountains. Not a breath of air moving, again.
I also hate it when flying insects hover and land on me. Flies are the worst offenders. But what can we do, Mani? We share the outdoors with them and maybe they see us as an opportunity to explore and have some fun. Sort of like you and snakes. Irresistible!
I didn’t know that cyclamen bloomed in August. They’re nice.
Glad that you’ll be getting a new roof. One less thing to worry about, especially during winter storms.
The guy I live with said that a couple of years after he moved into this house there was like a plague of grasshoppers. He would walk through the young garden and grasshoppers would jump on him. He’d be walking around covered with grasshoppers and their juice. Cyclamen purpurascens flowers in summer. The ones in flower now are C. hederifolium. Then there are species for winter and sometimes spring. (March, here.)
Yea, I can only imagine how exhausting it must be to be you! You do keep busy, what with day care, squirrels, snakes, cats, balloons, and all.
I dislike eggplants as food, but plant them because the plants, flowers, and fruit are gorgeous. Mine got eaten my earwigs this year, I had thousands. Literally…
It is indeed exhausting being me. And look who I have to live with …. I hear that battered and deep-fried eggplant is really good.
David Lebovitz recently posted a splendiferous recipe for eggplant with yogurt and saffron dip. We ate it with pita bread two nights in a row for dinner. But we had to BUY our eggplant, the only lovely blue flowers around here are from borage. I understand cyclamen-blossoming season is much appreciated where you live, Mani, so happy to hear it’s arrived. The guy you live with’s reasoning is the same that often prods me into action: do it, stop worrying. Petey and especially Shredder are having much fun currently with the hvac guy. You will find roofers just excellent playmates, I’m sure. Love every photo of you I can get, Mani — give us more, more, more. Yes, those fish are huge and the hummer cute, but you are adorable.
Thanks; I agree I’m pretty adorable. If we do get a new roof (the roof person is coming out next week), I’m sure I’ll enjoy barking at people on the roof. I don’t know about eggplant. The guy I live with said that eggplant plants get the same caterpillars as tomato plants do, but we didn’t see any at all this summer. Of saffron, we have oodles. There have been cyclamen flowering here for over a month but not in a photogenic way. (Cyclamen fatrense.)
Ugh that gloom. That’s how it’s been here for the last few days ever since it cooled off. I think it helps keep the mosquitos active all day.
At least you have trout though! I would have never considered trout to be a canal fish, but if it is mountain water I guess it makes sense they could live in it, regardless of how they got there. I’m guessing it was probably a nice stream before the houses were built and it was tamed?
Hmmm. Did the two of you figure out if the fence digging was done by someone on the inside or out? Highly illegal either way.
It’s really a ditch. An irrigation ditch. “Canal” sounds a lot more bucolic, though. “Trout stream” would be even better. The water comes from Bear Creek, which has its source in Summit Lake on Mount Evans. The digging was done by bunnies, naturally, trying to get in. I had to engage in hot pursuit. Bunnies are pretty fast. The guy I live with says we might see the sun later this month.
Sampson, the doberman, here. We had a thing called “surgery” and then a thing called “rehab” during which my people kept me at home for an interminable amount of time. Thank goodness that is over. We have started walking again in a park with lots of woods and I have rediscovered bunnies. They are much more interesting than squirrels. We also have cyclamen. Well, one flower, anyway. There are asters, sunflowers and zinnias all over the garden. The lady I live with freaked out because I have been eating zinnias. She looked it up online and decided I wasn’t going to keel over from zinnias, but she still gets loud if she catches me. Whatever. If you see a zinnia, try it. It’s like fancy grass.
Oh, I’m sorry you had to go through that. The guy I live with said that Pooka had to do that, once, and it wasn’t very pleasant for him, but it was the reason why walks were started here, about 1993, which is an extremely long time ago from the perspective of a purebred border collie. We don’t have many flowers here, because of the hail, but there are some. The guy I live with says not to try them. I’m more interested in squirrels, and bunnies, and black-and-white striped kitties.