Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to talk about my least favorite day of the year. You may remember me from such posts as “Behind The Grape Vine”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
Maybe you can see the hairs on my hindquarters being blown by the portable swamp cooler.
I didn’t really know this morning what day it is today.
So I wanted to explain, with the title of this post, that we’ve received forty millimeters of rain since May 1, not the 106 mentioned in the last post. (The guy I live with changed that to show the correct amount.) 106 millimeters is over four inches, which would be our normal amount of rain.
In other words, things are pretty dry here.
Meanwhile, the guy I live with went to a nearby nursery and bought some shrubs for the “way back” border. He knows how hot and dry it is, but he said he “had a plan”.
Even though it looks like clay if you just glanced at it, the soil in this border doesn’t hold water very well at all, so he used an old-time “water breaker”, which the guy I live with and his wife used to call “the microphone”.
He dug holes, loosed the roots on the shrubs’ rootballs, and used the water breaker to fill the holes with water, three times.
Then he planted the shrubs, poured coarse sand around the rootballs, watered again, and backfilled the planting hole, making sure that the soil-less mix around the rootballs was covered by at least a little soil (otherwise the peat moss in the mix would dry out instantly).
I hear this is a variant of the “super genius” method; hopefully the sand around the rootballs will help roots grow into the sand, and then into the native soil.
One shrub he planted was the fernbush, Chamaebatiaria milliefolium. We have others in the garden, but this is one the guy I live with especially likes, because of the scent of its leaves, which is like labdanum.
(Labdanum is a perfume made from the leaves of Cistus ladanifer. Some incense called “amber” smells like this, too.)
And that’s all I have for today. I ate my dinner, and then a while later the guy I live with took me for my evening walk, and the firecrackers started.
I’ll leave you with a picture of me in my Upstairs Fort, with the window air conditioner running. The guy I live with reinstalled it today. He’s pretty sure it won’t fall out of the window.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Chamaebatiaria milliefolium is supposedly native to Monterey County. There is so much in Monterey County that I have never seen. A few species that are native to desert regions happen to also be native there. Although I have seen a few of such species, I have never noticed an ecosystem that resembles a desert ecosystem. Yucca whipplei is likely more like this species in the sense that it can inhabit desert ecosystems, chaparral ecosystems, and perhaps coastal ecosystems.
That seems unlikely. Calflora suggests it doesn’t grow by the coast, which makes sense. More of a high desert shrub.
There are many things that make no sense in Monterey County.
We wouldnât know, of course.
That planting method sounds interesting. I don’t understand the use of the metal gadget you show above.
The water breaker goes on the end of the hose; you turn the water on full blast, and it just bubbles out of all those holes.
So it’s a good way to soak an area instead of standing there with the hose.
The guy I live with rarely uses the water breaker, but it came in handy because completely filling a planting hole with water in that part of the garden, with the soil so dry, would otherwise mean standing there for about half an hour.
The guy I live with said he’s not sure they even make things like this any more.
A good idea!
We’ll see if it works.
” he’s not sure they even make things like this any more.”
Dramm water breakers pretty much do the same thing.
We have a few Dramms. The Dramms make a spray, this old-fashioned thing makes bubbles.
Looks like Gilmour still makes one… Gilmour 315MTL https://www.dripworks.com/gilmour-315mtl-bubbler-sprinkler
That’s the one, or something very similar.
I just saw fernbush in bloom at the Denver Botanical Gardens last week during their Spirit Guide exhibit. What a cool shrub! Hopefully it’ll perform as your Dad expects it, Mani. We are beginning to pray for the July monsoons now as it really has been hot, dry and breezy. The trifecta of garden misery. Have a good weekend and try to stay cool. A pox on all those morons who shot off fireworks until well after midnight last night. What the dog?!
There’s a fernbush in the front garden here but it’s been slowly smothered by a big juniper. There are two more in the North Border; not very big ones.
The guy I live with says this isn’t the worst drought he’s seen here; that was 2002, but it was “saved” by four inches of rain that September.
We didn’t have any fireworks after midnight which was strange, but certainly a relief to me, in every sense of the word.
Just hope there isn’t a repeat performance tonight. My part of town frequently extended the 4th celebrations well beyond the actual day. 2002 was when I moved into my current house-I remember that miserable beginning of a 20 year drought. Sure hope that doesn’t repeat itself.
The guy I live with says he hopes this won’t be a repeat of 2002.
And he also told me to be prepared for more explosions tonight, tomorrow night, the next night, and so on.
I have a fernbush. I love the smell! I only water it maybe once a summer if we get a cloudy day when it might get rain anyway. It used to be much more shapely, but a large tree branch fell on it 2 years ago.
Oh, those people and their fireworks. They seem to gravitate to the ones that make the loudest noise. Why? I will never understand. We had quite a few fires here last night. I listened to the police and fire calls and they were very busy. Well it was 104 yesterday and very dry. Houses and yards went up pretty easily. I say again. Why? Why do they like it and why is it still legal?
113 here tomorrow. The fernbush is the only happy thing.
Fernbushes are very nice. 113 does not sound nice at all.
The guy I live with saw a report of “hundreds” of fires in Denver last night.
“Anything that leaves the ground” here is illegal, but the people who shoot off fireworks don’t seem to care about that at all, or care about anyone else, particularly those of us who walk on four feet.
I did check out my Downstairs Fort last night. It’s an old fort that used to belong to Chess, the purebred border collie who lived here before me. It’s in the studio where it’s very cool, since the downstairs is in the basement.
Mani an Guy wee have had so much rain….wee allmost floatin away! Earwigss efurrywhere! **shuddurss** Wee hope THE gardenin goess well. An HURRAH fore A/Cee rite Mani?
***nose bopss*** BellaDharma an **blowss kissess** BellaSita Mum
We could certainly use some rain. It’s very dry here.
Air conditioning is pretty nice, though.
Wee so hope youss’ get rain soon! Wee have two much; youss’ not have enuff!! CATFISH!
Hardly any at all.
Despite being in the middle of a heatwave (120F on the front porch, 96F in the shade) and having a burn ban in place, the neighbors decided to have a bonfire on the night of the 4th and shoot off fireworks. Not good. If I wasn’t the only neighbor, I’d be tempted to call the sheriff or the fire marshal. I remember I was impressed when you said 106 mm of rain. However, your revision to 40 mm has dampened my enthusiasm, so to speak. Chamaebatiaria millefolium is a fantastic shrub that I admire every time I head to eastern Oregon. I’ve tried growing it here on the western side a few times, but no dice. Too wet in the winter.
The guy I live with is old and got his figures mixed up. Since then, we may have had an extra millimeter of rain.
That temperature is way, way, way too hot, if you ask me, and we purebred border collies truly suffer in hot weather.
It hasn’t been that hot here, lately, but this lack of rain is both tiresome and worrisome.
The guy I live with says it sounds like you have psycho neighbors. We can relate.