Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today just to make a post for little or no purpose. You may remember me from such similarly-themed posts as “Just Another Post”, among at least a few others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
There was a magpie in the tree. I couldn’t figure out what it was saying, but it was pretty raucous.
We saw a whole flock of magpies on one of my walks, a few days ago. The guy I live with said there used to be magpies here pretty regularly, but not so much any more, so it was kind of cool to see all of them.
Talking about birds, but much littler ones, we’ve been getting a lot of hummingbirds lately. This is a broad-tailed hummingbird, but we’ve also had black-chinned and maybe even a calliope.
The guy I live with changes the sugar water every day, but now we’re running out of sugar.
We don’t have many plants for them right now, though there’s a zauschneria flowering in the front yard, and Salvia darcyi, too, but most of the plants whose flowers attract hummingbirds need more water than they get here, because they’re adapted to flowering when the monsoon comes, in places like southern Arizona and New Mexico, and northern Mexico.
We are getting a little bit of that monsoon rain, but not much in the last several days.
The rain we had was enough to cause this salvia, Salvia greggii ‘Grenadine’, to start flowering. The color here is a little off; it’s more like, well, grenadine.
On our walk the other morning, the guy I live with said that the canal looked really nice, the way it curved and everything, and the light.
The guy I live with said he was “at loose ends” today, which is a phrase I’d never heard before, but I could tell what it meant just by watching him. He couldn’t think of anything interesting to do.
He scrubbed parts of the kitchen floor, pulled some weeds in the garden, read a little, cut a few mats out of my coat, and maybe a few other things, but I could tell he wasn’t having a really great day.
This happens every so often.
The obvious reason for this is that there are days when he really misses his wife, and all the little things they did together, like going for walks at night at this time of year and looking for katydids with a flashlight, or just sitting at home watching The Simpsons. When they first met they would go to the movies a lot, too.
The other reason for this listless behavior is the weather. The guy I live with says it’s oppressive. I would have to agree.
It’s looked like this for days, now. Like rain, but hot (over ninety degrees F every day), and nothing happening. Sometimes it thunders, and I have to go to my Upstairs Fort for a while. And then we get ten drops of rain.
That’s a flicker in the top of the tree. It probably doesn’t care about the weather, and isn’t lonely, even though it’s by itself; just doing the things that flickers do.
The guy I live with said flickers don’t have all the emotional issues and silly ideas that humans do, and that’s why they can sit alone at the tops of trees and be perfectly content.
I don’t have all that stuff, either, though I don’t like thunder or firecrackers, but I do have a Kitchen Fort and an Upstairs Fort for those things, as well as a live-in chef who knows how much I like salmon, so I’m all set.
I also have the ancient couch, in the living room. The guy I live with hogs it in the afternoon, when he takes a nap, sometimes, but I know it’s main purpose is to make me happy, as you can see here.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
You are certainly up late. If it is eleven here, it must be midnight there. You must be planning how to make tomorrow a better day for the guy you live with. Rhody should do that also, but he would rather sleep.
We stay up until midnight every night. The guy I live with worked on the late shify when he worked for the phone company, so got used to that.
And then when Chess, the purebred border collie who lived here before me, got old and sick, the guy I live with would run the fan upstairs for hours so that the bedroom would be nice and cool. Unfortunately, now, there’s someone in this neighborhood who burns wood almost every night, so the fan can’t be on for hours, just right before bedtime.
The Zauchneria is in flower here but no hope of seeing a hummingbird come visit the flowers. We have blue skies with warm breezy days. Lots of birds come to be fed everyday and our fort is empty.
We would be very surprised to hear of hummingbirds in Ireland. Depending on how much rain the mountains and foothills have received, we often have fewer hummingbirds if the rain in the mountains has caused Ipomopsis aggregata to flower up there (very common plant in the mountains).
HURRAH fore THE Magpie an Humminbirdss an Flicker came to vissit youss there! This iss pawsum!
An yore flowerss look purrty deepsite THE lack of rain!
Mani you look so hansum….an mee iss sure THE couch iss REELLY yoress š
Deer Guy mee BellaSita Sistur was at loose endss yesterday two….
Evenin an innto THE nite was so furry sad. Shee cried so much. An wandered from room to room…..mee furry heart was so heavy to see ehr liek this.
Mani mee thinkss all wee can due, iss ‘bee there’ fore our Hu’manss.
This heet an hue-miditee iss makin efurryone eether cranky an emotional here two!
***purrss*** BellaDharma an {{{hugss}}} BellaSita Sistur
Yes, that sometimes happens here, and there doesn’t seem to be much that helps except maybe to get closer to our humans.
It’s not so humid where we live (34C, 15% humidity), but the constant heat is getting to both of us.
BellaSita meowed to mee THE Sun feelss much **hotter** than even 10 yeerss ago. Shee sayss even WITH Sunscreen shee can burn quiklee! Mee does not like humiditee so mee barely goess out inn Summer….it iss too UCKY Mani!
Wee hope it kewlss down an/ or rainss fore youss’!!!!
The guy I live with usually wears sunscreen because of the very high ultraviolet here.
It’s raining right now.
Yesterday must have been a loose ends sort of day, as my ends were loose too. Being alone makes the ends looser, but dogs help.
I’m certain dogs do help.
Fortunately he has no desire to “go out and do stuff” like so many people do, and is perfectly content staying at home with me and our new swamp cooler, but he still gets lonely and couldn’t figure out what to do, yesterday.
They say that happiness can be defined as “being extremely busy with the unimportant”, but he couldn’t think of anything like that even though there are lots of unimportant things to do around here.
You do look happy on the couch! Yes, loose ends. I know what that feels like. The weather too, it’s cooler now, if 97 could be called “cooler,” but it feels cooler than usual in the house. It’s humid though, and that’s draining unless you’re used to it, which I’m not. At least Mickey, my not-pure-bred Border collie, isn’t demanding to go on walks, he’s content to lay under the coffee table for hours and hours on end. I don’t see magpies, but the crows and ravens sure yell at us. One “meows.”
It’s 96 here right now, but not humid. We’re both in the kitchen, where the swamp cooler is (though it can be moved into the living room for naps) and the back door is open.
I sometimes wonder why the guy I live with doesn’t go out into the garden to work, and then I go out onto the patio and realize why.
It’s not too hot on my morning walk, usually about ten a.m., and then my evening walk is around seven p.m., when the street is cool enough for my paw pads. There was a time when we walked at around eleven at night, too.
We have crows and ravens here, too.
Wonderful picture of you using your couch to its utmost. Maybe my favorite picture of you ever. We are finally getting ruby throat hummingbirds, the only kind we see here – they like the zinnias and butterfly bushes in the garden as well as the syrup feeder. Downy woodpeckers love the syrup feeder too, but the hummingbirds chase them away.
I just checked the humidity here – 57%, and its already almost 90 degrees. Not an outside day I’m afraid.
ceci
Thanks; I love my couch, and all the purebred border collies who lived here before me did, too. It’s about 90 years old and very creaky, and the cushions have needed replacing for about forty years. But it’s super comfortable.
It’s 88 here and 25% humidity, which is a lot for us, but this monsoonal stuff, even if it doesn’t rain, has increased the humidity here. Generally, as the temperature rises, the humidity goes down. Not so good for plants, according to the guy I live with. They transpire more.
We have four species of hummingbirds here, but the most common are the broad-tailed and then the black-chinned. The black-chinned will dive-bomb you when you’re out in the garden.
Dog days of summer seem to bring on those restless periods: too hot to do anything outside and sometimes too hot to even be inside. It’s good you are there for the guy you live with to help with some of the lonelier times. We have three hummingbirds squabbling in the garden right now. They arrive when the penstemons are in bloom and hang out until September. Always look forward to them. Hope it cools down a bit.
We’ve had a few hummingbird fights here.
There’s not much in flower in our garden right now, but that’s by design, so the guy I live with doesn’t have to water so much.
It’s nice and cool right now, because it’s raining.