Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to talk about some stuff. You may remember me from such posts as “Under The Arbor”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
As you can see, it was safe for me to go outside today. No thunder, lightning, or rain.
The guy I live with said that the weather forecast today was for baseball-sized hail, but he quickly added that that was probably for way out east, near the Kansas and Nebraska borders. I hear it’s really flat out there. I’ve never been.
All that flatness is the home of Mentzelia decapetala, and I have some more pictures of the flowers, taken at night.
The guy I live with messaged a couple of neighbors to come over and look at the flowers, and they came over, and were very impressed, of course.
The flowers are scented, too.
Another inhabitant of that flatness to the east of us is sleepygrass, Achnatherum robustum, and we have self-sown plants that kind of block the flagstone path into the garden, but the guy I live with says that’s okay. 
It’s kind of funny that these grasses didn’t appear where they were originally sown.
There are a bunch of oreganos in flower now, and the guy I live with tried to get pictures of them, but most of them were “resistant to being photographed”, whatever that means.
This is Origanum ‘Kent Beauty’.
This is one that the guy I live with has forgotten the name of, though I know if he thought about it enough he would remember.
Anyway, the guy I live with said today that he was “in a rut”, and I figured that was because of his almost total lack of motivation lately. It was kind of like a rut within a rut; he hasn’t been all that motivated since the pandemic started, and since I’ve heard the stories about how he worked almost every day for thirty years, sometimes late into the night, or even all night, I guess I can understand that lack of motivation is like the essence of his retirement. But the pandemic made that worse.
So today he said, outloud even, that he was determined to have a good day filled with positive (or at least non-negative) thoughts, and he spent some time straightening out the workbench in the garage, and a couple of hours weeding like crazy.
He put some music on the kitchen hi-fi, something called “Pink Floyd”, which I liked, except for the non-musical parts which I thought were moderately annoying.
I got a brief lecture on the difference between what he called “pre-1970 Pink Floyd” and the later stuff, and maybe I’ll get to hear the earlier stuff some time.
And he decided that rather than letting seedlings languish in the seed frame, and then die from lack of watering, like what usually happens, he was going to do something, so like for instance, the seedlings in this pot of Ipomopsis aggregata seedlings were going to be repotted before being planted out in a month or so.
This is going to involve a lot of finicky work but the guy I live with said these will be very important for hummingbirds next year.
This will be done within the next few days because it needs to be done soon.
He said that one thing he’s always liked to think of was having a bunch of these ipomopsis in the garden, like you would see driving into the foothills just west of us. He’s tried growing these from seeds for some years now, and nothing has happened. Hopefully, we’ll be “hummingbird-ready” next year.
I think that’s all I have for today. I might have missed something; you never can tell.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
That was a good day’s work! You’re good to keep him on his toes!
It’s a lot of fun to see him work, while I do my management at a distance.
I think the pandemic caused a lot of us to get into a ‘rut’. Sometimes you just gotta give yourself a kick and get going. Sounds like you both had a very productive day. Easy to start seeds and then kind of let them languish. The garden will be full of hummingbirds zipping every which way to feed on the Ipomopsis. We grow lots of different plants to attract the hummingbirds too. Such cool little birds.
The guy I live with said that for some reason a lot of wild-collected ipomopsis seeds haven’t been viable in recent years, but this packet definitely had viable seeds. He could plant those little seedlings into the garden now, but would probably lose most of them, so repotting and then planting out next month might be a better idea.
There used to be a large colony of Ipomopsis rubra here but they all died out. The guy I live with said they’re not nearly as drought-tolerant as I. aggregata. Showier, though, maybe.
I of course benefit from him staying home a lot, but he did realize how little he’s done since the pandemic. It doesn’t take much for him not to do anything.
Mew mew mew Mani you give THE bestest Gardenin reeportss mee frend!
Wee love THE flowerss of Nite Time; they are purrty!
An THE Oregano plantss an flowerss are gorgeeuss!! BellaSita wantss to find Oregano plants to plant inn our garden as deck-oration!!!!
An wee hope THE Hummin Bird flowerss take t=root an grow fore next yeer!!
HURRAH that no rain or Fundar or Lighnin or hail there.
May wee say you look furry hansum Mani inn both fotoss’!!
~~~head rubss~~~ BellaDharma~~~ an (((huggiess))) BellaSita Mum
Thanks. I guess there were more oreganos in the garden but some of them died last winter.
Maybe some don’t live here very long, but ‘Kent Beauty’ has been here for a quarter century.
The plan is to transplant the ipomopsis into peat pots, let the plants grow more, and then plant the peat pots in the garden. I guess we’ll see if that works.
Wee reelly want to find Oregano an plant it….when shuud wee plant Mani? Inn Autumm or inn Spring? Maybee Aunty Sheila cuud take BellaSita to Nursery place…
Mee will let BellaSita nose THE name!
BellaSita xplaned Peet Potss to mee. Soundss like a wunderfull idea! Wee hope it werkss fore Guy! 😉
I’m not sure which varieties would be hardy for you. Maybe Greek oregano, Origanum vulgare.
The guy I live with did some transplanting today but he said it wasn’t all that much fun. Tiny little plants with long roots.
Thanx fore THE innfo Mani an Guy! Wee keep that inn mind! 🙂 🙂
You’re welcome.
Oh, I do not remember the name either. The guy you live with grows some unusual species. I am unfamiliar with most of them.
The guy I live with said he thinks the one with no name is called ‘Bristol Cross’.
Oh, it is!, . . . but that is not what I was thinking. Oops. Perhaps you should not tell the guy you live with.