Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to bring you up to date on what’s been happening around here, even though it isn’t very much at all. You may remember me from such posts as “The Haunted Toaster”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. Looking at something.
It’s frightfully dry here, or so the guy I live with says. “They” keep saying it might rain, but nothing has happened. This has been going on for over a month. The guy I live with gets all excited about rain, and then there’s nothing but disappointment.
He says that’s a metaphor. He says that all the time. This is a metaphor, that’s a metaphor, on and on.
At least the cottonwood out in the field is pretty.
You can see right into the field, now that the lilacs have been mostly cut down.
A bunch of bulbs arrived last week. They were late, but I guess a lot of things are late, this year.
He had forgotten how many bulbs he’d ordered. There were a lot. Way more than he said he had room for, so there was all this wandering around with bags of bulbs and a trowel, then wandering some more, then deciding on a place, then realizing there were already bulbs there, then looking for another place.
Eventually all the bulbs were planted, but it seemed like an ordeal to me. I just watched.
Even though it’s been so dry, this has been a really good year for the autumn-flowering crocuses. The guy I live with thought he might have lost some of them, until one day, there they were.
The thing is, what with every day being the same, no rain, the guy I live with has become sort of disoriented, though not as much as I was when Daylight Savings Time ended. Talk about an ordeal; I had to wait an extra hour for my dinner. It was horrible, all that waiting, but I survived.
Anyway, the guy I live with looked at the “memories” thing on Facebook, and on our blog, at posts from the same time in years past, and the crocuses were in flower then, so it wasn’t that the crocuses had disappeared, he just couldn’t figure out where he was, calendar-wise.
There were a bunch of Crocus speciosus in flower a while ago. Maybe you can see them here.
There are, or were, hundreds of these crocuses in the garden. Only a few are still flowering.
This species has a reputation for flopping over, but they didn’t do that here, maybe because it’s been so dry.
The saffron crocus, Crocus sativus, is also in flower.
You can see some of the orange styles, which are saffron. The guy I live with picked the saffron and gave it to his neighbor.
The key to keeping this species, and others that have overwintering leaves, is to put cages made from hardware cloth around the crocuses, so that rabbits don’t eat the leaves. The cages get held in place by a kind of spike, made from old tomato cages.
I keep telling the guy I live with that the back yard is free from rabbits, but every now and then one hops by the kitchen door, and I have to chase it out of the garden. Maybe they can fly over the fence. Whatever; it’s good exercise.
We haven’t seen the owls in a while, but occasionally hear them hooting, and every now and then, on my evening walk, I see them silently gliding down the field.
I guess that’s it for today. It has been kind of boring around here, with no rain day after day, but at least most of the grasshoppers are gone, and there are fewer flying, stinging things to bother me.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Goodness, that cottonwood certainly is bright yellow. Foliar color in some climates is comparable to floral color in other climates. For example, the yellow of your cottonwood is as colorful as the blue of jacaranda in Los Angeles. Of course, it jacaranda might be more colorful to you if you can perceive blue but not yellow.
Dogs can see shades of blue and yellow. This has been an exceptional year for autumn color, but it’s exceptionally dry, too.
The guy I live with remembers the jacarandas in Los Angeles.
Oh, so you can see how colorful the cottonwoods are as easily as you can see how colorful jacaranda are (if you ever see them). There are not many jacaranda here, and those that live here are not as happy as those in the Los Angeles Region. They really are as spectacular as you are told they are.
I can see it.
The guy I live with told me a story about when he was a kid, and tried to cook something out in the garden using dried jacanranda leaves. It was a very long time ago.
Wow, that must have been VERY long ago. Since then, jacaranda has evolved to the extent that their leaves are not longer sufficiently combustible to be used as fuel for cooking.
It was a long time ago. Eisenhower was president.
That was probably before you were born!
It was. I’m just a youngster.
Well, obviously, presidents were not always like they are now.
The guy I live with’s grandfather knew Eisenhower quite well. Truman, too.
Oh, I forget these details. Was he also acquainted with any pure bred border collies, or anyone of that degree of importance?
I don’t know.
Great colour on the Cottonwood, a tree I have never seen in person! And the crocus are excellent – and, again, ones I don’t grow here as I don’t think our wet conditions would suit them. We have had plenty of rain here, enough to prevent grass cutting as the mower would cut up the turf – I’ll send some across to you!
We would like some rain. “They” said maybe tonight, but it looks like that won’t happen.
The guy I live with, who isn’t up on trees, really, thinks this is Populus deltoides. Pretty common around here, but an awful tree for gardens. Huge, thrusting roots.
There’s also a tree of P. balsamifera, the balsam poplar, which we can see, and smell, on our walk. The guy I live with thinks maybe the people who owned the land north of us (it was a farm) maybe transplanted one from the mountains.
Whatever the name – I had presumed it was Polulus deltoides – it is very attractive at the moment. Of course, even beautiful trees have their drawbacks. Betula utilis ‘Jacquemontii’ is very popular here but is a curse to garden under as it has widespread shallow roots. We live and learn! More rain here today – a soft day, as we say!
The guy I live with says they have that birch at Denver Botanic Gardens.
We have a birch here; you can see in it the first picture on my post, “More Changes”. It’s the native Betula occidentalis, and it would certainly like more water than it’s been getting. But his wife loved it, so it’s staying put.
He was going to water today, but it was windy again.
The cottonwood is right by the creek, which is almost always dry these days. It’s a phreatophyte. (I had to look that up.)
I had to look that up also!
The stuff you learn, huh. We try to be educational as well as entertaining. I’m the entertaining one, of course.
The atmospheric river did not flow into my area either, but at least we have had SOME rain. That cottonwood is beautiful. Does it make the puffs of cottony stuff all over too? Does it get up your nose? The girls did not have to wait for dinner at all. In a thinking ahead sort of way that is not usual here I gradually moved their dinners later just so I could move them back on Sunday. With the clock. Don’t you wish they would pay more attention to dog clocks?
I really wish the guy I live with would have thought this through. He said his wife was very good at planning this big event, but he just forgot about it. I’m not sure why, since he doesn’t do much of anything else. But his excuse was that it “didn’t seem like November at all” and that I can agree with.
The cottonwood must be a male, because I think only female trees have cotton.
His neighbors had a female cottonwood (they had it cut down some years ago, because it was messing with the sewer drain pipe, which is why you don’t want them in a tiny yard), and one year the garden was on tour, and the whole front garden here was filled with cotton. It really stuck to the cactus and looked ridiculous.
The picture in my mind of the cottony cactus made me laugh. Perhaps not so funny at the time, but that’s garden tours. Not that I’ve ever had one.
It was totally embarrassing, or so I hear. There was a lot of cotton.
Garden tours can be excellent. I know, because I’ve helped with a couple. Leading people around; stuff like that. (I’m very good at herding humans back and forth.)
At ferst mee thott you were lookin up at an Owl Mani….butt they are nor around as much….due you have Sparrowss or Wrenss? They are small birdss an so much fun to watch. Wee feed them bird seedss with sunflower seedss two.
Anywho yore Crowcussess are deelitefull….trulee. Wee cuud visualize you an Guy tryin to plant all THE mew bulbss…that wuud bee xhaustin fore sure!
Wee reeleeved Grassyhopperss an stinin’ buggiess moved along….now to get you sum deecant rain!!
Wee had snow twice butt it is all gone. An it has been nice enuff xcept fore yesterday to sit out inn Condo in Sunshine…wee nevurr had a Autumm this ‘autummy’ beefore!
Wishin you both a lovelee weekend an week to come….
***purrss*** BellaDharma an ((hugss)) BellaSita Mum
Thanks; same to you two. The weather here has been mostly nice, though dry, and in the last few days, windy. They’re not predicting rain or snow anytime soon. Our area is officially in Severe Drought, on the drought map.
We have sparrows and wrens. There were lots of wrens here this summer.
We haven’t seen the owls in a while now.
Wee had more wet snow this morning Mani~~wee thott pf you an Guy…..wish wee cuud send you sim rain or wet stuff! Drought iss not guud!!
Do THE Owlss go sumwhere fore Winter monthss purrhapss?
Nothing here; just dryness.
We haven’t seen the owls for a while. Usually they’re around until at least January. Maybe it’s so dry there aren’t any creatures for them to catch.
I heard them last week, I think, though.
Mee thinkss yore rite Mani! Owlss moved to fin more foodabullss. Our Bunniess have vanished an alot of our Birdss two!! Iss so quiet here….
THE werld iss changin; no doubt ’bout it! 😉
We met a neighbor on our walk this morning who said he’d seen the owls recently, so maybe we go the wrong way on our walks. There are still lots of bunnies.
But things do seem to be changing.
The cottonwood is fantastic and the drought is not. I hope you get rain in time for Thanksgiving, and it seems like you’ll need a couple inches to get back to something normal.
Here we had more downpours last night into morning. It looks like about an inch and a half are in the many buckets I carelessly leave around, and the lawn is again a swamp.
Tomorrow I go to look at autumn snowdrops. Maybe I’ll see a crocus as well and pretend it’s almost as interesting 😉
I don’t think we’ll get any rain this month. They’re saying a “slight chance” of rain and snow next Tuesday, but, here, “slight” means “none”.
The guy I live with looked at the Snowdrop Frame; Galanthus peshmenii is about done, but no sign of anything else.
He always thought it was moisture that caused bulbs to flower in autumn, but it isn’t. It’s soil temperature. He dug up some crocuses that were growing in part of the garden that hasn’t been watered for years, and the crocuses had roots and were about the flower. The soil in the frames has been warm for months. And he waters in there, too.
The guy I live with moved a bunch of named snowdrops to his friend’s garden, where they flower earlier than they do here.