Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to bring you up to date on the new from around here. You may remember me from such posts as “The Terrors Of Spring”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
I’ll talk about the wheelbarrow in a bit.
A couple of interesting things happened while we were away. There’s another sinkhole, though not as big as the one last summer (the guy I live with called the appropriate people), and the water in the canal was shut off after all the rain we got.
And then, I got to see the water start flowing again. That was very interesting indeed.
As I said in an earlier post, the guy I live with decided not to remove all the lilacs because it would be way too much work and there would nothing to replace them with, and, anyway, the lilacs are having a good year.
This is ‘Pocahontas’.
This is ‘Miss Ellen Willmott’.
This is ‘Assessipi’.
And, finally, ‘Victor Lemoine’, a heavily-scented double.
So those are the lilacs, not counting ‘Annabel’ which I already showed pictures of, and not counting the common purple one, of which we have several. The guy I live with bought those for $6.25 each about thirty years ago.
One of our neighbors came over and the guy I live with cut a bunch of lilac flowers for his wife.
The main thing going on her is the wind. I am, too. Super windy, chilly, with no rain. The guy I live with said that in some parts of Europe there are winds that can drive people nuts, and now we understand that.
We were awakened at 3:16 (precisely) two mornings ago by the wind. Very annoying.
One of the fake hornet’s nests blew away but the guy I live with retrieved it. They make a very strange sound rocking back and forth in the wind.
Speaking of annoying things, remember how I said the guy I live with was digging out this aster-thing which was infuriating him? It’s back.
He said the roots must go down to the center of the earth.
I blush to think of the language I’ve been hearing, when it comes to digging out this plant. It’s coming up everywhere.
There are already issues with smooth brome (the grass that’s in the field behind our house) and bindweed, so this aster thing is just too much.
Since I’m on the subject of things being dug out, the reason that the wheelbarrow is out in the garden is because the guy I live with is digging out the path where the wheelbarrow is.
He moved it out of the way so I wouldn’t run into it at night.
All kinds of things have seeded into that path, where the bag and kneeling pad are, and he got tired of looking at it. The path will be gravel, like most of the other paths here.
The yellow leaves on the yucca need to be removed, too, because he said they’re unsightly.
(The white in the background is an arabis, if you wanted to know.)
Except for the wind, though, all of this is good, as far as I’m concerned, because I can sit out in the garden and watch him work, which is one of my favorite things to do.
He can’t work as much as he used to be able to, but it’s surprising how much he can get accomplished. He does miss his helper, his wife, at this time of year, especially. She loved to weed, but may not have enjoyed pulling out that aster thing.
So that’s our news.
I’ll leave you with a picture of me checking out the smooth brome growing on the side of the canal road. The grass really is everywhere around here. You can see that the other side of the road was sprayed, and I’m supposed to stay away from that side. I mostly do.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
The names of those lilac sound familiar. Are they all (except for the ‘common’ sort) French hybrids?
The guy I live with says he thinks ‘Pocahontas’ and ‘Assessepi’ are Canadian, but he’s too lazy to look them up.
I guess it’s really spelled ‘Anabel’ and he doesn’t know where that one originated. It’s a hyacinthiflora type like he thinks the other two non-French ones are.
” ‘Pocahontas’ and ‘Assessepi’ are Canadian, but he’s too lazy to look them up.”
Makes sense. Their was/is a wonderful collection at the botanical garden in Montreal, CANADA. Do Denverites grow the “Korean/MissKim” Lilacs (Syringa pubescens subsp. Patula)? No Lilacs here in the Coastal Plain of NC.
The guy I live with says yes,’Miss Kim’ is pretty common here, or it used to be, anyway.
Yes, for all three. (I did not know either, but looked it up.)
The guy I live with says maybe they’re hard to find here, now, but he doesn’t really know.
They are uncommon here, but only because they are unpopular. Most who enjoy them are from climates with cooler winters. They may be more popular there than here, . . . which could still be uncommon.
The guy I live with said they’re very popular in cold-winter climates, like in the north, Russia, and so on.
Julie Andrews wanted them for a home in Malibu, which was sort of awkward for the region. I do not remember what cultivars they were, or where they came from, but they supposedly perform reasonably well there, although I doubt that they are as happy as they would be in Scotland.
That seems to be a typical thing, wanting plants not suited to the climate.
It is unusual to see so much greenery in your garden! Rain helps!
Rain does help. And wind hinders. Most of the greenery is from bulb foliage or native grasses.
The gut I live with said the decision to use native grasses does make the garden look brown in the winter, but that’s basically how it looks here anyway. I mean out in nature and stuff.
Lilacs: as a child we got to visit the Cedar Hill Nursery/estate (Long Island, NY) of renowned lilac hybridizer T.A. Havemeyer with it’s many thousands of specimens. Havemeyer worked closely with Lemoine and his plants provided the backbone of the lilac collections at the NY and Brooklyn Botanic gardens. I think it is gone now.
The guy I live with said that name is familiar.
Some of the lilacs here came from Heard Gardens in Iowa maybe; own-root lilacs.
Mee-yow so many purrty Lilacss Mani an Guy! THE Asterss sound reelentless….wee have reelentless Wild Violetss heer…jumped THE wee garden edging an all over THE lawn by THE hedge!! BellaSita just standss out on lawn an laffss. Once they go to seed,, shee can pull them out an drop seedss efurrywhere….Youss’ have ANOTHER sinkhole???? EEEKKK! Glad that Guy called THE rite peeple….sinkholess are scary! Mani yore lookin pawsum purr usual.
~~~head rubss~~~BellaDharma~~~ an (((hugss))) BellaSita Mum
Thanks. It’s just a little sinkhole, but bad enough that little kids could hurt themselves falling into it.
There’s a little tiny violet here that’s a weed; the guy I live with doesn’t know what it is.
Sink holess are scary fore sure! Cudd that flower bee a wild Violet? They spred quiklee Mani an end up efurrywhere!
The guy I live with said it could be, but it’s a little tiny thing.
Furry myseereuss Mani an Guy 😉
It really is.