Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to complain about the weather. You may remember me from such spring-related posts as “Sunless Spring”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
I’m getting ready for a day of gardening, if you couldn’t tell.
The weather here has been, in the words of the guy I live with, “nightmarish”, with wind almost every day. Not just breezes, but wind. The forecast this week calls for wind, wind, wind, wind, wind, and more wind.
If you look at my previous posts done in May, you’ll notice the word “rain” over and over again, but not this year.
Despite all this, the guy I live with went with his friend to the plant sale at the botanic gardens. He wasn’t going to buy much, since he’s been pretty discouraged lately, but he is a gardener, so he couldn’t help himself.
Nolinas, hesperaloes, dasylirions, yuccas, and a couple of plants of hardy rosemary.
I have some pictures of plants flowering in the garden here, but I should say beforehand that some of these aren’t quite in focus. The guy I live with blames the wind, of course.
When the wind isn’t blowing, the whole garden is scented with the strong smell of cloves from Ribes aureum.
Mahonia (or Berberis if you insist) fremontii is in bud.
And in the shade garden, there’s Anemone nemorosa ‘Vestal’. He got this from a friend about thirty years ago.
There are a couple other forms of this anemone in the shade garden, too.
The other day we had a visitor, who wanted to look at the purple-leaved Prunus andersonii, because people might want to take cuttings of this to introduce it into the trade.
I guess it has some Prunus × cistena (purple-leaved sand cherry) genes in it.
So that was fun. I got to show our visitor all around the garden.
And something else. Another one of those objects of mystery. We were just walking along the canal road by the old sluice.
I think I mentioned in an earlier post that there used to be an iron wheel that fit into the threads on top of the gate, but apparently someone swiped it. There used to be a farmhouse some distance to the north of the sluice.
(There’s another sluice a little bit to the west of this one, too.)
We came upon the object, or objects, of mystery.
We pondered this for a while, and then went to see if there were any trout in the canal. There weren’t any; maybe it’s too early to see them.
You can see that the water slows a bit at this bend; this is usually where we see trout. And not little trout, either.
That’s how our spring is going, thus far. (I’ve always wanted to say “thus far”.) Lots of wind, no rain, and no trout.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
“the nightmare spring” Nope. Some would sacrifice their eyeteeth for your flower show.
High fire danger almost every day.
Yuccas?! What Yuccas?
Linearifolia.
Oh my! I had a difficult time finding seed for that one!
It’s a nice one. I tinkle on ours all the time; the guy I live with says not to do that.
Does he tinkle on it?
By way of contrast we will have a day indoors as it is expected to rain all day today. We also visited a plant fair yesterday which was extraordinarily busy. With changes to import regulations regarding plants we can no longer order plants online from the UK so, I reckon, people were out yesterday to shop in person. These are regular events here in Ireland – a venue hosts a gathering of plant sellers, charge admission and the gardeners come to spend their money.
We don’t have plant fairs here, but there are plant sales. At the botanic gardens, and the rock garden chapter has a big one, with lots of sellers. I know because I get left at home. No purebred border collies allowed.
The wind takes all the fun out of gardening, though.
The guy I live with talked to his friend in southern Colorado, where the wind is blowing at 80 miles per hour. It’s calm here right now, but today it’s supposed to get windy again.
The list here: Disporum bodinieri, Disporum flavens, Myosotidium hortense – white flowered form, Fuchsia ‘Blacky’, Paeonia ‘Duchess de Nemours’. A modest purchase but all ones we like
The peony would grow here. The disporums, too, with a lot of watering.
I always wonder what the point is in events to which one cannot bring one’s best friend? But actually my best friend would prefer that we all just stay home together except for walks along creeks. The mystery objects look like the kinds of things my kids used to construct when playing in creeks, etc. “Islands” or things to push in with great splashes. They usually got home pretty wet and dirty.
ceci
We figured the objects of mystery were made by kids. The canal attracts a lot of kids, though it isn’t as interesting as the creek behind our house was, when there was water running in it all the time. I guess that was back in the last century. There were snakes, frogs, and all that.
The guy I live with has said I’ve benefited from the pandemic, having him home all the time. And with all this very scary weather we’ve been having, I really feel better when he’s at home.
Going to a plant sale sounds pretty boring to me.
The constant threat of fire and drought is emotionally draining. Our weather finally became wet in April, like it is supposed to be, after an ominously dry February and March. But, I constantly have this background buzz of worry about where our western climate is going to end up and what that means for our regional ecology. The only thing I can do is gradually move towards more drought adapted and fire resistant plants. Speaking if which, do you water your Ribes aurea very much? I was going to ask on your last post, but I always waffle too long on commenting.
The guy I live with totally agrees. Pretty much everyone here was freaked out by the Marshall Fire at the end of last year, but that was fueled by winds gusting up to 115 mph. It is understandable that we get red flag warnings every time it’s windy and very dry, because of that, but I know the guy I live with gets nervous.
Ribes aureum will grow without any irrigation at all. The birds usually get all the ripe currants, which are supposed to make good raisins. There are currant seedlings all over the garden here.