Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to bring you the latest news, which I have to admit isn’t much. You may remember from such posts as the similarly-themed “A Jar Of Ants”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
It’s been pretty hot here lately, so not much has been done in the garden.
But I have to tell you my little story.
A couple of days ago, we were out in the “way back”, and when I went to look out in the field (that’s why there’s nothing growing here; it’s one of my lookout points) I saw something under this lilac.
There was a rattling sound, and I jumped back about three feet. The guy I live with of course totally freaked out, thinking it was a rattlesnake, even though there was only a short bit of rattling.
He started to clear out a bunch of plants to the left of this lilac, and then he saw the snake.
It was a western yellow-bellied racer (Coluber constrictor, “the farmer’s friend”). A very large snake. So he looked online and sure enough, racers do rattle their tails in dry leaves, sort of to fake out purebred border collies who don’t much like snakes.
I’m glad I didn’t see the snake in all its hugeness.
So that was pretty exciting.
He’s been watering, some, with the new sprinkler. The garden doesn’t really need it, but there are all these cow-pen daisies that look pretty pathetic without water. They grew really tall when it rained a lot, and then when it stopped raining, they wilted.
He admits there might be too many of these in the garden. They’re annuals with very shallow root systems, and seeded all over the place last year.
The only part of the garden that gets regular watering (about once a week), besides the little shade garden on the north side of the house, is the garden in “the enclosure”.
The aster ‘Vasterival’ and its purple companion (on the right) have been flowering for a little while now.
The guy I live with thinks this is a pretty sad little garden, though people who see it don’t have any sense of that sadness, which he says is the way things are.
His wife designed this, and he’s slowly replacing the fence she built, because it started to fall apart.
Maybe when it gets cooler, like it’s supposed to next week, more work will get done.
The only other thing that happened was that he got some autumn-flowering crocuses in the mail. He just wanted more, like Johnny Rocco in the movie “Key Largo”.
The corms were soaked for an hour or so, in their bags, just to help them grow roots as quickly as possible. The corms need roots in order to form new corms for next year.
All 120 crocus corms were planted in a couple of hours. It’s surprising how quickly he does this.
I think that’s all I have for today. We’re hoping to get some rain next week, which will be nice.
I’ll leave you with a twilight picture of me on the canal road, with a view of the sinkhole.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Do all autumn flowering crocus bloom in autumn? A crocus that is supposed to be saffron blooms in spring with other crocus. I am told that, if it blooms in spring, that it can not be saffron. It certainly looks and tastes like saffron, but it has never bloomed on time.
The guy I live with says the saffron crocus, Crocus sativus, only flowers in autumn. It’s probably a something-ploid of other crocuses that yield saffron, like C. cartwrightianus and C. pallasii, among others, and all autumn-flowering. But those species don’t yield excellent saffron.
Well, that is what makes it odd. Whether or not it is real saffron, it should bloom on time, rather than in spring. I do not mind. It is pretty.
You can see what they look like in my post “A Little Excitement”.
I can not find it. I only get ‘More Excitement’.
Coming on a snake would frighten the life out of me!
They can be pretty scary, believe me.
Yore Guy werkss so hard on yore Gardenss an hee iss furry amazin!! Like a Flower Warrior! Wee hope THE Crocussess grow well.
AN EEEEKKKKK!!!! about THE snake!! **shuddurss** Mee iss terryfied of snakess an spydurss Mani…..
BellaSita
Guud Greef…mee was not finished….sorry Mani…mee paw hit wrong button! Yore Selfie at foot of THE stairss iss so sweet! An yore Twilite foto iss furry atmosspherick!! Still nothin dun ’bout THE sinkhole? Pleese bee carefull Mani an Guy….
***nose bopss*** BellaDharma an 🙂 BellaSita Mum
Thanks. They’re probably not going to do anything with the sinkhole until the water in the canal is shut up. The people who came here said the county was getting involved, but they have a backlog of stuff to do after the tons of rain we got in spring.
I sometimes see baby snakes, garter snakes, smaller than a pencil, where the canal comes out of the concrete culvert (not the same culvert as the one for the creek); maybe they’re sunning themselves.
Wee hope THE County an who efurr sort THE Sinkhole out beefore it getss werser…..
An Snakess due like to sun themselfss…they like flat rockss to lie on an enjoy THE warmth Mani 😉
They do.
We got a lot of rain day before yesterday, so the water level in the canal is lower, and there’s no water flowing into the sinkhole. The guy I live with says it’s an old muskrat nest on the canal bank that’s causing the leak.
You look pretty chill for having been startled by such a big snake. Snakes are cool but perhaps not so close. I think the garden looks perfect at this time of year. It’s blousy, wild and messy just what garden should look like in the Fall. My favourite time of year. Did you help dig the holes for the crocus? Team work makes everything faster.
Thanks. We purebred border collies don’t dig, as a rule. We just look at stuff and chase it or try to herd it.
The guy I live with always says the garden could use more color in the autumn, but the trouble with that is that most of the plants, like New York asters, would have to be irrigated.
It’s the guy I live with’s favorite time of year, too, though there are some anniversaries coming up that make him very sad. Though he doesn’t always know what day it is unless he looks at his computer or phone.