Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to talk mostly about the weather. You may remember me from such posts as “What Happened Last Night”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
You only get one guess as to where the air from the swamp cooler is blowing, in that picture.
It’s been so hot that the guy I live with has hardly done any gardening at all for the last month or so. A lot of plants got planted, which seemed a bit weird to me, but all of them are okay, except for the ones badly bitten by grasshoppers.
Imagine being a plant, and coming from a nursery far away, only to be chewed on by grasshoppers when they arrive here. Sounds like the subject of a horror movie, if you ask me.
One thing that did get done, and believe me it took a lot of effort, was replacement of the squirrel baffle over the suet feeder, so it didn’t look like a giant translucent flying saucer was hovering over our garden.
You can see the new baffle here, right in front of the shed:
Almost invisible. It did get tilted a little, as you’ll see later.
Some seeds arrived in the mail, from Plants of the Southwest. The guy I live with looked at the website, read that mail-order seed sales were stopping this October, and so ordered a bunch.
The guy I live with said that everything in life is subject to change, but this is getting a bit too much for him.
He spends a lot of time looking at record websites (he calls CDs “records” now), and sometimes there’s a CD he thinks he might like to acquire, and then the next minute, it’s out of print and now costs ten times the original price.
One of those “carpe diem” things. Or “carpe C-diem”. (Sorry.)
So many changes. I hear the sighs every day.
Including, for now anyway, a pretty big change.
And then this morning. (That’s a blue jay right at the end.)
It’s so much cooler here now the guy I live with said he was getting twinges of autumn. That made him very sad, but he has gotten through this for all these years now. With, I must add, the excellent company of purebred border collies.
Anyway, we’re enjoying the cooler weather very much, and I’ll leave you with a picture of me walking in the newly-mowed field (yes, again).
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
POTSW ending their mail-order business? But I counted on them for Agastache cana, and the New Mexican accession of Ipomopsis aggregata, and Penstemon alamosensis. It seemed like it was just a couple years ago that there were still seed providers far and wide–Southwestern Native Seeds, Northwestern Native Seeds, Rocky Mountain Rare Plants. All good things pass, indeed.
The guy I live with says maybe to order stuff now, while it’s still available. (He always states the obvious, obviously.)
I went to the SW seed site, but most of the stuff I wanted was already gone. Too bad. I have a seed import permit now due to a seed confiscation experience. Does TGYLW have any offshore favorites for dry garden seeds?
That rain, so envious. It’ll be 105 here tomorrow. You’d hate it.
So, you prefer to cool the back end?
I like having both ends cool. I was actually facing the swamp cooler, which is running now, despite it being so cool. (It’s 65 right now.)
We’re not much help with seed places, these days. The guy I live with used to order from Czech seed collectors, but mostly alpine plants, and then later, larger dryland plants from places like Turkey and the various “stans”, but he no longer does that, and spends money on bulbs instead.
For mediterranean-type plants, you might look at chileflora or Silverhill seeds (South African; the guy I live with used to grow a bunch of stuff from South Africa, but only the summer-rainfall plants, which are mostly hardy here but need lots of summer water; the winter-rainfall ones aren’t hardy here, and there are a lot more of those).
Bulbs might be wisest. Sometimes I feel that maybe there isn’t a lot of time to wait for things to grow. Thanks!
You’re welcome.
The guy I live with says that’s the thing he thinks about: growing plants from seeds that might take years before there are any results. And this year the seed sowing, just of perennials and some annuals (like vegetables) was not hugely successful; probably because of the constant high temperatures and lack of rain (until recently).
But, still, he orders seeds. If we lived in a mediterranean-type climate there would almost certainly be yearly orders to Silverhill and other places like that. (And trips to Las Pilitas in California, which he wants to do anyway, some time in the near future.)
The relief from the hot weather has come on us here in south-east Ireland also and it is a great relief. There has been a great tidying up of the garden, the removal of foliage from plants which died down due to excessive heat and the freedom to actually be outdoors all through the day. Rain was welcomed here also though it was not in huge amounts. Off today for a garden visit.
Endless hot weather affects the desire to go out into the garden much. The guy I live with has done hardly anything outdoors lately, except fill the hummingbird feeders.
Garden visits are popular here, too (the local rock gardening chapter has them every year), though the guy I live with hasn’t done any for a while now. Mostly because of Covid, of course.
Glad you are getting a break from the heat. Envious of your rain. Just the occasional short shower from a too-quickly passing thunderstorm. Met a couple on the weekend who originally came from Denver. Said they moved to Calgary as the climate is similar to Denver’s 30 years ago. They said the summers were just getting too hot in Denver. I have noticed a lot of small mail order seed companies are packing it in which is sad. Love to look for unusual things that might grow here. Enjoy the cooler weather.
I know there are seedlings in the frame out in back, because the guy I live with goes out to water them, but this wasn’t a hugely successful year for such things.
We got about 10 millimeters of rain yesterday, which is sufficient.
Dry weather is fine with us, but not constantly dry for weeks on end.
Only one guess?? Swamp Kewler iss blowin RITE ON YOU Mani!!! Mew mew mew….
HURRAH fore THE rain!!! Youss’ need rain…..wee cuud use a bit two.
Pawss crossed yore kewler weather stickss around. Wee are mid to high 20’ss with Hue-midex of 31-33 C which iss like 88 degreess…it iss not brew-tal *hot* … just sorta sticky an uncomfy!
Cuud you mee-yow…umm woof to guy hee deeserved a brake from gardenin….
An now hee has mew seedss to plant when efurr hee wantss!!!
Love yore walkin thru THE field foto…wee love how you due those fotoss’!
~~~head rubss~~~BellaDharma~~~ an 🙂 BellaSita Mum
Thanks. You can see how green the grass is in the field.
Some parts of Denver got over 5 centimeters of rain the other day. That’s a lot of rain.
We got about 15 millimeters over the weekend.
It’s not supposed to be too hot here for at least a week. I like that. It never gets “sticky” here.
Wee gotted THE ‘Stickiess’ back here Mani an Guy!! Iss guud youss’ got rain butt more wuud have been nice….wee not have much rain eether!!! It seemss sorta weerd…
Butt then this entire Summer has been weerd heer! 😉
More would have been nice, for sure. At least the field is still green.
The guy I live with says things are weird, period.
Understood Mani an Guy…more iss allwayss GUUD when it iss rain out yore way! Our other frendss inn Collyrado reeceeved ALOT of rain….fore like an hour!
It iss *hot* an hue-mid here an wee need rain two….. WEERD inndeed!!
We got a slight bit of rain too! How odd that it happens here shortly after it happens there. There were only a few raindrops, but they were big, and smelled strongly of petrichor.
We get some petrichor after the usual hundred raindrops here. The guy I live with says it’s so strange seeing predictions of rain and having nothing happen.
But last year we got 11 millimeters of rain from the first of August until the last day of the year, the day after that terrible fire up north.
We certainly used to get more rain.
They guy you live with might be old enough to remember much more primitive meteorology. Predictions were made by measurements of temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity and all of that, but without the assistance of computers and satellites. It was less accurate than it is now. Although weather prediction is not completely accurate, I am impressed by its ‘relative’ accuracy.
The guy I live with says it’s mostly just disappointing, anyway. We had a 70 percent chance of rain yesterday, and a 60 percent chance today, and nothing happened. Oh, we got .005 inches yesterday, but that hardly makes any difference at all.