Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to explain our long absence. You may remember me from such posts as “My Summer Vacation”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
We’ve been away for a while. There hasn’t been much to talk about, except how hot it is.
Yesterday it was 96 degrees F (35.5C) with about 13 percent humidity.
It’s been really dry, too. Our part of Colorado is listed as “abnormally dry”; we’re received 106 millimeters of rain since May 1.
The guy I live with said there’s no point in measuring in inches.
He bought some plants online, repotted them and put them in a nice shady place, and most of them are dead now. He grumbled something about “a waste of money”, but he said wasting money is the essence of gardening, and you can quote him on that, though he says a lot of gardeners don’t have much of a sense of humor.
He got some other plants from a local nursery, and here are two of them. This is Penstemon barbatus.
All ready for the hummingbirds. (I know this isn’t a great picture.)
The days of him growing tons of penstemons are over, but he thought he’d try these again.
People are always asking him to identify penstemons, but he gave all his penstemon literature away, and it does kind of remind him of when his wife was still living, and that’s kind of hard for him, even though people don’t know that, of course.
We’ve had both broad-tailed hummingbirds (Selasphorus platycercus) and black-chinned hummingbirds (Archilochus alexandri) in the garden, so far.
I’m shedding. The guy I live with said “shedding like crazy”, and maybe he’s right.
A long time ago, his wife built a little platform with nesting material for birds, and included dog hair. Most people say it’s okay, but some people say not to do that, because dog hair can have chemicals in it, from flea and tick repellents. Well not mine. I have a collar coated with natural stuff.
But anyway, we don’t have a place to put nesting material these days. The guy I live with said there was probably tons of dog hair just floating around the garden.
The desert willow, Chilopsis linearis, has begun to flower. He says if you want to read the quote by Peattie about the desert willow, look up the post “The Red One”. It was written before purebred border collies took over the blog and made it much more interesting.
This plant, which is pretty big (it’s thirty-five years old), has had its ups and downs in the last ten years, but now seems fully recovered.
There are hundreds and hundred of buds on it now.
Today the weather forecast said we had a “forty percent chance of severe thunderstorms”; the guy I live with envisioned all the buds being knocked off, and then came to his senses and realized that when rain is predicted here, it doesn’t mean for us.
Rain is predicted for the next five days, but he told me that’s for other people. I guess he’s resigned to the lack of rain now.
So that’s what I have for today. If you know anyone who needs some dog hair, just let us know.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Mani, thank you for this most amusing update. I concur that the rain forecasts are meaningless.
In my part of Denver (which is in a “moderate drought”) we have had 162 mm of rain since May 1. I planted four Ipomoea leptophylla seeds and feel fortunate that one has shown itself and is now a 6” tall plant. The others were never heard from again.
Coincidentally, I just received the guy you live with’s Penstemons book. I was fascinated when my Grand Mesas bloomed spectacularly this year, then promptly dried up. Now I understand.
As for what to do with all your fur, “Knit Clothes” is the AKC’s number one suggestion (of seven).
Thanks; I think leaving it our for the birds would be okay. My flea and tick collar came from Only Natural Pet in Boulder.
It was “supoosed” to rain yesterday; all we got was scary thunder and about a hundred drops.
The guy I live with says this still isn’t as bad as 2002, when we got one inch of precipitation in eleven months, and then four inches in September of that year.
He says you can nick the ipomoea seed, soak it in warm water overnight, then put the seed in a wet paper towel or coffee filter, put that in a baggie (with the top just folded over), and the seeds will germinate the next day or the day after.
Then you can plant them and water them like crazy.
but your absence remains unexplained. That is okay of course.
Do you happen to know if the desert willows that I saw in Arizona are cultivars that bloom with that nice purplish color? I mean, are those that are commonly available from nurseries actually a cultivar or cultivars? Because they are the only sort that I ever see, I thought that they were normal, but they are not like yours.
Rhody sheds a lot also. I suspect that, because he is the only canine person here, he wants me to build him another to be his friend with all that fur.
The guy I live with says there are desert willow cultivars, like ‘Lucretia Hamilton’, that are really redd0sh-purple.
He ordered a bunch of different colors from High Country Gardens last year but every single plant died. He should have repotted them and grown them in the upstairs bedroom for the winter.
Yes, that is the color. I looked up ‘Lucretia Hamilton’. It was the only sort that I saw, even in a landscape of native species. I suppose that cultivars are classified as their particular species. Chitalpa used to be popular here, and is supposedly resilient to extremes of weather because of its relation to Chilopsis, but also because of its relation to Chilopsis, it is susceptible to rot if irrigated just a bit too much.
Here in most gardens they’re watered a lot. They do go by streams and stuff, according to the guy I live with.
Hey, Mani,
We have tons of spare dog hair where we are, but never thought to offer it to birds for nesting. Y’all may have wasted money on gardening, but we’ve been wasting loose dog hair. Thanks for the tip.
If you look online, most of the warnings for dog hair as nesting material are about flea and tick medicine. I just wear a citronella collar.
Your forecast (doesn’t apply to us) is the same in my NW Denver neighborhood. I think there was 12-16 drops the past couple of days. Sigh. On the bright side, there are ‘only’ 87 days until autumn officially arrives. Till then we’re grateful for AC. Your desert willow is quite gorgeous, Mani-thank you for sharing its beauty.
You’re welcome. The desert willow is covered with buds probably because of that severe thunderstorm, with hail, that we had at the end of April.
The guy I live with says he doesn’t even know why they bother predicting rain. The NOAA site is really for all of northeastern Colorado, which is a huge area, though he does look at their radar sometimes.
Weather dot com is more customized for our area (and not like Julesburg or Limon), and they’re a lot more pessimistic, so the guy I live with doesn’t get his hopes up too much.
The Irish forecast goes, “If you can’t see the hill, it’s raining and if you can see the hill, it’s going to rain!”
That sounds really nice, actually.
Oh, alcohol can enhance even Bingo!
So I hear.
Mee-yow yore Selfie at end of bloggie iss so ADOORBSS Mani!!! What a furabuluss smile you have 🙂
FISHCAKESS! Wee hoped youss’ wuud get sum more rain there. Seereuslee wee are gettin rain EFURRY day! Wee ‘soggy’! Yore flowerss look so purrty. Guy does an amazin job…..pleese let him nose that OKay?
~~~head rubss~~~BellaDharma~~~ an {{hugss}} BellaSita Mum
Thanks. It’s been really dry here since the first of May, and it’s getting tiresome. I can tell by all the complaining.
An it has been far two WET heer Mani an Guy!! If mee cuud send you RAIN, mee wuud!!!!! 😉
Thanks. I think it may not rain here for the rest of the year.
Mani, dear dog, *SUCH* the canine smile! Lifts my spirits. We just kenneled the doggos. Scandinavia and Heritage Roses call! And rose friends. John says they went into Spring Creek with lawn and swimming pool with smiles. Same price, we could have bought airline seats. Do you dogsit, Mani?
Oh, how I’ve lusted after desert willow. Bought one, turns out trusted OG (1928) nursery sold me probably an acacia, and yuck. I admire your desert willow, On return, the hunt is on.
As for weather, here in darling Coronado, we receive daily reports for Coffeyville, Kansas. Infuriating that we have been co-opted with no workarounds, but our genius tech says it’s a two-minute fix.
Thanks. I don’t dogsit, though.
The guy I live with says that sometimes when he looks at the weather site it brings up a place in Bihar, India.
He’s also killed a lot of desert willows; they’re very sensitive when small. He’s killed a few big ones, too, because the roots were so tightly bound in the pot they had no chance of going down into the ground, which is where he says they need to go. He also got one where all the roots fell off when he took the plant out of the pot. He said that was a bad sign.
(I know this makes him sound like a hitman.)
However, he also says that desert willows are extremely easy to grow from seeds.A nursery person said once you can just spit on them and they germinate. The guy I live with uses water.
The only issue is the tendency of seedlings to “damp off”, but other than that, it’s pretty rewarding.
He transplanted a tiny plant once. The plant was about ten inches tall; the root was about four feet long.
“Wow” to all that!
The guy I live with looked, and Las Pilitas has them in stock.
I’ve been killing lots of plants this year too. Finally got a pot of Ipomopsis aggregata to germinate, planted them out, watered them in, fenced them off, and four days later they are all fried. Aconitum columbianum – devoured by something within two days. I could go on, but it gets depressing, especially at today’s plant prices.
Your Chilopsis thread with tonytomeo has me wishing that there was more seed propagation of this species. The diversity in flower color and patterning that you’ve shown here and on FB is exciting to see. We see a lot of it growing along arroyos down in Mexico. Very versatile species.
At first, I thought your fur was a toupee. Another potential use if the birds turn their beaks up in disdain at the thought of lining their nests with it. Birds can be snobby jerks sometimes.
By the way, the Yucca schottii that TMYLW gave to me last summer made it through winter. I have it in a rather protected spot on a hot slope underneath some Dougfir. Trying to remember to water it so that it bulks up a little this summer.
It’s pretty discouraging to lose plants you paid money for; the guy I live with said he didn’t know it was going to be over 90 degrees for weeks on end with almost no rain. We get rain at this time of year.
There was a Yucca schottii here, a pretty big one, but it got weevils. Same thing happened with about a dozen big agaves, and a Joshua tree. No way was he going to drench the plants with some poison.
Desert willows are easier from seed than radishes. They’ve evolved to have their seeds germinate almost instantly along those arroyos, and send their roots down very deeply right away. Though as we said, damping off is an issue with seedlings.
If the guy I live with didn’t have serious motivational issues, he might consider a drive down to nurseries in Arizona to stock up on desert willows and any other woody plants that are hardy here.
The guy I live with has been thinking about dog hair as toupees, or maybe fake beards for disguises. Maybe an online store will be in the works.