Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here again for another fascinating post. You may remember me from such posts as “Beyond Super Roasting”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. The carpet is strewn with pieces of pine cone. I like to chew on pine cones, but you knew that already.
It’s raining right now, and I mean really raining, but today was so hot even the guy I live with complained some.
Earlier it looked like this. Hot.
The guy I live with got some cactus in the mail yesterday. Mostly chollas, he said. There were some he wanted. These will be grown well away from yours truly, I hasten to add.
This one looked scary even before he opened the bag.
It was a form of Cylindropuntia davisii. Like, ultra scary.
After it’s rooted it will live in a pot in the front yard. It takes a few weeks for the joints to root, once the ends have callused. The ends were already callused when they came in the mail.
The other day, the guy I live with left me at home to go see his friend. They went to lunch, and to a couple of small nurseries near where she lives. They’re both very nice nurseries; they had a good time, despite the fact that it was hot and he was having hot flashes.
This is Southwest Gardens:
The guy I live with is just as happy going to nurseries with his friend as he was with his wife. And just as comfortable sitting in her living room as he is here (though there’s a cat at her house, ick) Like other people, he’s had a lot of shocks in his life, but this was one of the biggest.
Obviously they don’t live together, and that’s probably the secret of success. The big deal, and I think this is a super big deal, is that they can share “life events” together. The guy I live with has had kind of a lot of those life events lately, and she was there for him on the occasions when he was told he couldn’t drive to the urology center. 
This is Young’s nursery:
That’s a ‘Forest Pansy’ redbud, with the purple leaves. The guy I live with told his friend they should get it for her garden, so maybe they will, later. Her garden is way different from his and he wants to plant stuff like rhododendrons in her garden. There were some here at one time but he gave them away, because visitors spent most of the time looking at them instead of the rest of the garden.
I know I still haven’t told the story of how the guy I live with and his friend met, but I will, pretty soon.
The guy I live with is happy he got the cactus, and the plants at the nurseries, because he said he wasn’t going to buy any plants this year, and after a while he began to feel all weird about that decision. It wasn’t like buying snowdrops, money-wise, for sure. (I’m not supposed to talk about that, I think.)
One kind of sad thing: he said his mind keeps starting this thought that his mom might give him some money on his birthday, because she always did. Instead of sweaters that were too small. She didn’t last year, but she was going downhill and the guy I live with understood. He also keeps thinking he should call her, and misses hearing her voice on the phone, even though sometimes the conversations were peculiar. He was already used to someone constantly in his life suddenly not being there, but that didn’t make it any better. His birthday is this Monday; he’ll be sixty-eight. I’m not sure how old that is in dog years.
So, back to today. It was hot. The guy I live with worked out in the garden even though he was perspiring and there were times when I thought he might pass out, but he was also drinking a lot of water and all sticky from sunscreen. It was a good thing we didn’t have a dust storm; he would have been covered.
Then he started looking for something in the garage, which he never found. He told me that was a metaphor. I’m not so into them as he is. Metaphors, I mean.
But he did come across this:
This is called an album, and it has a record in it.Some people call it an LP, because when they were first introduced, in the late forties, they played longer than 78s, which were the records before that, and which rotated at 78 r.p.m, on something called a “turntable”, so people called them “long-playing records”. or LPs. They rotated at 33 1/3 r.p.m. Slower, so a longer playing time. And they didn’t break if you dropped them.
The guy I live with looked at it, and then said something I can’t repeat. This record is over fifty years old and the guy I live with just realized the title was a pun: rubber sole. Like what’s on the bottom of his shoes. (Though not really, these days.)
Well, that was agonizing.
After all the hot gardening, a lot of which never actually got done because he spent so much time in the kitchen just sitting here, he watched an online tutorial about cameras and decided to try to take some pictures using aperture priority. These pictures, then, were taken with the DSLR. They are way more in focus than they appear here, for some reason.
And all of a sudden we had a visitor. Of course the camera was set up wrong.
But this one wasn’t bad, for a set-up-wrong camera:
Well that really is it for today. It was super hot, then it rained and got all cool, but also thundery. I guess you have to take the bad with the good. I learn a lot of platitudes from you-know-who.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Happy birthday to TGYLW. One of the dogs I live with, Miggy, also has a birthday Monday. His fourth.
He says thanks, and happy birthday to Miggy too. The guy I live with will be about four, too, emotionally, as his friend will attest when they go to Young’s to look at tadpoles for her pond. She has a pond. And grandsons. So the guy I live with, who still knows what it was like to be a little boy, is all like “Get tadpoles, get tadpoles!” and stares into the tanks at the fish and tadpoles. It’s a happy place with clean tanks and bubbling water.
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Wishing the guy you live with the happiest of birthdays. I rarely leave a comment here, but do want to say that I LOVE reading your tales from the garden and seeing the great photos. Reading your stories (for about five years now) always adds a bit of delight to my days, and I never tire of them. Thank you for that!
Diane in Fort Worth
Thanks. I guess I might have to learn how to work the camera now because the guy I live with will be so old he won’t be able to do anything but shake his cane in the direction of the picture he wants. Just yesterday he said something about his birthday being the tenth one without his wife (there are a lot of tenth anniversaries this year); that stopped him for a second, and then he went on talking about whatever it was he was talking about. He talks a lot, but usually forgets to say the stuff he wanted to, which I’m supposed to remember, for the blog, and that’s why it’s been going on for so long. Over nine hundred posts, if you can believe that.
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I love the image of you sacked out in the super roasting heat, with your small fuzzy companion (Lamb Chop?) in the same position.
Happy birthday to TGYLW! And congrats to him on the hummingbird pics, and those alarming mail order spiky plants.
The guy I live with says thanks. Birthdays don’t mean all that much now, but he does have a friend with whom to celebrate (hers is in a couple of days), and that means everything. Oh, that’s Nedgehog, my hedgehog. There are several of them here, and they all have the same name, which, if you ask me, is a bit peculiar. Nedgehog the hedgehog. They belonged to Chess, the purebred border collie who lived here before me.
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I too tried to figure out the guy you live with’s dog-years age, and then my brain started to hurt. Please tell him congratulations and to celebrate a happy birthday. And he needs some of his very own tadpoles. That is one wicked cactus, Mani, and you are right to avoid. I love the ghostlike appearance of the garden’s artemesia when the camera goes all DSLR aperture priority. Resting in the heat, Mani, you appear as near to boneless as a purebred border collie can appear, I think. I further think all dogs look adorbs when sleeping, and especially you. You have a gift.
Thanks. I am very good at sleeping. I have an advanced degree, in fact. And, of course, a mentor. I guess there will be more working with the camera, maybe even with the instructions handy. Oh, he says thanks for the birthday wishes., too It’s okay to be 68. (Not quite yet…) It isn’t much different from being 58 or 38 or 18, really. Except for the general creakiness.
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I bet those pine cone bits are sharp when stepped on with bare feet! Perhaps as a birthday surprise you could refrain from cone chomping for a day.
Tadpoles would be a wonderful pond addition; I had no idea one could buy them.
Happy birthday!
ceci
The guy I live with says thanks. He and his friend went over to his sister and her husband’s house and they all went out to lunch.
There used to be a pool here. No pump or filter. It began to smell. All gone now; filled in.
The guy I live with likes to run the vacuum cleaner a lot. I have to go outside when that happens.
Happy Birthday to the guy you live with! Today would have been my Mother’s 96th birthday. She loved lemon meringue pie, I hope the two of you can celebrate with a treat you love today.
Thank you for the pictures and information on the small nurseries. They look like places I would love to visit.
The guy I live with says thanks. I got left at home while he and his friend went out to lunch, with his sister and her husband.
He had something called a cheeseburger. He hasn’t had one of those in a very long time. (He’s been trying to give up eating meat. It hasn’t worked very well.)
His friend brought him a chantilly cream birthday cake. They both had a piece here, and now he has a whole bunch of cake left. He said he wasn’t sure what to do with it. I’m not totally sure I believe that.
Meow meow mee thinkss yore *heet* has come to Catnada Mani! Iss too *hot*! Pleese send rain….
So mee meowed to LadyMeow ’bout ages an shee told mee 1 dog yeer iss 7 Hu’man yeerss. Mee tried to do THE math butt mee got lost aftur 40….mee not sure…maybe 68 iss just 68 fore Hu’manss, mew mew mew….
An yore Guy’ss frend who has a cat iss OKay! Wee are frendss an mee iss a cat….a notty cat. Mee door dashed outside yesterday….(Not mee best idea!) Once cott an inn-side LadyMeow had a seizure. Not a good scene at all….
An yore Guy’ss “Rubbur Soul” El Pee cuud bee werth what LadyMeow callss ‘big buckss’!
Funny name fore a band rite Mani?
All yore gardens look so lush an full…..our wee garden iss pitty full compared to yore place!
***purrsss*** BellaDharma
A real seizure? Like epilepsy? The guy I live with knows about that. His father had it. I can tell you stories, because both Slipper and Chess did, too.
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Mee-yow Mani a reel seizure known as Dissociative Seizuress. They are a ree-sponse to ‘fight or flight’ onlee LadyMoew ‘freezes san seizess’ It lookss like THE other Eppylepsy an iss scarey! Poor Chess an Slipper…they had seizuress too? An yore ‘guy’ss’ PawPaw?? EEKKK! Yore ‘guy’ iss an xpert on them!
Chess had a couple. Slipper would only have them the minute he walked into the vet’s office. I don’t understand that because I like it there. The guy I live with’s father was wounded in the Korean War and had seizures lasting a long time. He didn’t even know his father had them until the family moved here; his mom protected him from things like that when he was a kid in Los Angeles.
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Mew mew mw Mani yore rite…runnin out an scarin LadyMeow was not nice! An then seein her have a seezure knowin it was MEE fault fore stressin her out…mee still feelss badlee!
An you know LadyMeow keeped her seezuress a secret fore 20 yeerss till 2017 an now sum peepull are scared of her. **sighsss** An wee sorry ’bout yore ‘guy’ss’ PawPaw an his seezuress! 😦
Seizures can be scary if you’re not used to them. When the guy I live with’s father died, in 1999, he and his sister had the same thought at the same time, to get rid of the phenobarbital. Their father took massive amounts of it; prescribed by the V.A. Chess got phenobarbital for a while, but it made him stumble on his walks, so he started taking zonisamide. He only had two seizures. At one time poor Chess was taking 28 pills a day, but he lived for a few months after he started taking all those pills, and was pretty happy living here, until the day he died. Slipper got Xanax, which at the time, the guy I live with had a lot of. The vet said it was okay, since it was the minimum dose anyway. Slipper just got nervous going to the doctor.
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LadyMeow had asked Docktur fore Xanax butt was ree-fused. THE Neurologist said Zoloft wuud bee THE best meddycin. LadyMeow has onlee had 7 seezuress this yeer so shee an Docktur dee-cided shee not need to go on meddycin. Shee takes enuff other medss!
The guy I live with takes a lot, too. He inherited high blood pressure, but it’s been under control for a while now. The meds don’t bother him. Seizures can be alarming for people who aren’t used to them, can’t they? The guy I live with said that Chess, the purebred border collie who lived here before me, had one (he only had two) out in the garden, and the guy I live with didn’t know what was going on, so stuck his hand into Chess’s mouth to keep him from biting his tongue, but he got badly bitten, so the two of them went to Chess’s doctor with the guy I live with just covered in blood; his own. He was more concerned about Chess.
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Sorry; this email program is weird. The guy I live with says it starts out at 7 dog years to 1 human and then gets less as we get older. Sneaking out is not a good idea. I did it once. The guy I live with totally flipped out. And the LP was done by a band called “The Beatles”. He can remember when their music first started playing on the radio. A long, long time ago.
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An mee iss not goin to sneek out again….well mee try to bee a guud kitty girl….mee had not dun this inn THE 10 monthss mee has bin here…it was “THE CALL Of THE Wild” Mani, mew mew mew…Mee got “CALL Of THE UPSS SET LADYMEOW!’ inn-stead! 😉
Well, good. That’s a very bad idea.
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Southwest Gardens sounds familiar, as if they sold me some of my Yuccas by mail order. It was so long ago I can not remember.
I can not remember Rubber Soul either. It is older than I am, and although it was likely still popular by the time I got here, I was too young to remember.
That is unfortunate about the cat. Rhody dislikes cats too. He thinks they are scary.
Cats are scary. And kind of smelly. The guy I live with likes them. I don’t know why. It probably wasn’t SW Gardens because the nursery is really small. The guy I live with used to order from the Cactus Shop in Phoenix; good prices and huge plants, but they don’t have that large an inventory of hardy things any more.
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Rhody is terrified of kittens, but is not quite as scared of the adult kitty who sometimes meows outside here. I told Bill (prior to Rhody) that Los Gatos (our town) is named after dogs, but I do not think he believe me.
The Cactus Shop in Phoenix does not sound familiar, although, there used to be a retail nursery near Stockton with that name.
Cats are pretty scary. Not nearly as scary as tiny humans, though. There’s one of those across the street. A little over a year old, I hear. She keeps wanting to come up to me and touch me with her tiny fingers.
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Oh, those are the worst! Unlike cats, they wear their litterboxes attached to their butts, and often need them replaced when they get full!
So I hear. They seem pretty scary. The guy I live with has to remind me that the first thing he did, on my first day here, was take me around the neighborhood and let little kids hold me. I guess it didn’t sink it with me.
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Oh my, that would be scary! They have cooties too!
That is a really big deal, what you wrote about going to nurseries with your friend.
It took me years to realize that both Rubber Soul and Revolver record titles are puns. That’s not a type of humor that I easily grasp. I felt kind of dumb when I finally figured it out.
The guy I live with said he felt really dumb when he realized that a “pancake” was a cake made in a pan.
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You tell beautiful stories
Thanks.
It’s too hot to play outside back East. Weekend time suck for youse fond of botanical illustration: “This site is a complete reproduction and restoration of Elizabeth Twining’s celebrated catalog of botanical illustrations from 1868, Illustrations of the Natural Orders of Plants enhanced with interactive illustrations, descriptions, and posters” https://www.c82.net/twining/
Pretty cool indeed. Unlike today.