Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here to bring you up to date on what’s happened in the last few days. You may remember me from such posts as “The Flannel Bush”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
This is mostly what I do. It’s been hot, though today it wasn’t so hot, just hazy and smoky from fires somewhere.
I sometimes lie there, awake, and watch the hummingbird fights. We don’t have much in flower for them, so it’s mostly the feeder they fight over.
This is the broad-tailed hummingbird, Selasphorus platycercus. This and the black-chinned hummingbird are the most common ones here. The black-chinned ones do a lot of dive-bombing; they fly really high and then down they swoop.
The guy I live with says it’s important to change the sugar water every day when it’s hot. It’s been hot, let me tell you. The guy I live with said next week was going to be really hot, I hope not.
Last Saturday, this happened.
It was a huge relief to the guy I live with. I thought it was scary. We got about two-thirds of an inch (about 17 millimeters) of rain. It’s still super dry here but this was very good.
The garden is infested with grasshoppers and it’s really gross, They’re eating a lot of plants. I learned a new word a couple of days ago: “skeletonized”.
The guy I live with said he’s tired of this awful summer and is ready for some snow.
There are some among us who are enjoying this plague of grasshoppers.
They’re eating every single grasshopper that falls into the water. The guy I live with said they’re going to be the biggest ducks the world ever saw.
There are some ducklings, too, with their mom, but I haven’t seen them for a while. They hide in the grass along the canal when I come by.
It’s true that, as you can see in my first picture, I do present a ferocious and deadly demeanor, so no wonder the ducklings hide.
That’s all I have for today. I’ll leave you with a picture of me inspecting milkweeds along the canal bank.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
These grasshoppers seem to be a dreadful plague on the garden. Lots of damage done?
Massive amounts of damage. The guy I live with is going to have to make more of those cages for the autumn-flowering crocuses, and the colchicums.
It’ll give him something to do in the heat.
He says there used to be a company that produced Nosema locustae, which infects the grasshoppers and greatly reduces their numbers, but the factory burned down a few years ago and it’s being rebuilt.
The guy I live with’s wife used it in the garden, years ago, and it really did work.
A flock of ducks running around the garden would work, too, but, you know….
We visited a garden recently where the owner had large numbers of ducks. These had their own enclosure – for safety and protection from local foxes – but he allowed them to roam the garden when he was out there. They eliminate slugs very effectively.
They also devour grasshoppers, which would be our main interest here, since we don’t have slugs.
The guy I live with said it’s supposed to be 37C next week; even though I never seen a slug, the guy I live with said slugs would fry. (What an image.)
Many would delight in such an image.
No doubt.
The guy I live with says he’d rather have slugs than this infestation. The grasshoppers are eating almost everything.
We, too, got a nice rain the other day—.75” for us. Sure enjoyed watching it, and listening to it.
I have never seen a black-chinned hummer where I am, but we have lots of broad-tails. Right now they have Red Birds in a Tree, Scrophularia macrantha, and a second small flush of Major Wheeler honeysuckle blooms, to feed on.
I am glad you have the canal and its denizens to enjoy in the midst of all this smoke and heat, Mani.
There was so much rain here that a six-foot long 2×4 washed down the street and was stuck in the storm drain.
But it would be nice if we got more, as in our normal amount of summer rain.
The guy I live with said we can also get rufous and calliopes here, but only in favorable years (like when the foothills are drier than here) and when there are a lot more flowers to attract them.
Still, I’m surprised at how many hummingbirds are in the garden right now.
We’re right there with the man you live with, Mani. Snow would be sooo welcome now after this disaster of a summer. ‘Only‘ 59 days until autumn’s official arrival though. Glad you got a ‘spot’ of rain. Only a teensy, tiny shower barely getting the sidewalks wet. Sigh. Some days we feel like Garfield with a cloud over our heads but one that has no rain, just gloom.
The guy I live with says 2002 was worse, and 2003 wasn’t so great either, but the heat makes this summer much less bearable. At least for me, though I wasn’t around in 2002.
He says the one of the most irritating things about this summer is how they predict rain and then nothing happens.
Our garden really isn’t oriented toward summer flowers, but the guy I live with has still had to water to make up for the lack of rain.
You’d think with all the technology and Doppler radar systems, forecasters would do a better job of accurately predicting the weather.
I vaguely recall 2002 (the year I moved into this house); for my recollection 2005 seemed worse. But this summer the heat has been equal parts relentless and the ozone has made it even more unpleasant. Too many people moved to the Mile High and they all seem to drive non-stop. 😬 With the early morning dew temp, it feels muggy even at 5:45 am when we typically head out to avoid the heat. This morning seemed particularly uncomfortable. Once we got home we shut up the house and turned the swamp cooler on. There’ll be no extended walks to the post office or anywhere else today. Stay cool and do like Wilson, Mani…eat a grasshopper or three. We hear they have lots of protein. All I know is they have eaten lots of foliage from around our garden. Bloody buggers!
The heat and ozone are really bad. We purebred border collies loathe hot weather, so it’s a good thing I have my air conditioner in my bedroom.
The guy I live with says the grasshoppers are so bad here quite a bit of the garden is being destroyed.
HURRAH!!!!! You’ss got rain furinallee Mani an Guy!!! Wee hope you get more soon!! Grassyhoppurss are so much fun to chase aren’t they Mani??? Butt they due a reel numburr on plantss…
Wee keep gettin sudden pop-up Funderstormss heer! Wee allwayss think of you hidin inn yore Fort Mani! Mee goess an hidess inn Meowmy’ss bed inn mee blankit! Wee hope it doess not get as *hot* as they meow it will bee!
***nose bopss*** BellaDharma an ((hugss)) BellaSita Mum
Thanks. We did get some rain, but the grasshoppers have become a nightmare. The guy I live with said he wasn’t sure what he was going to do.
Wee looked up natural remediess Mani an wee saw this one an thott wee wuud post it fore Guy: Neem Oil
If you want to give nature an extra hand, neem oil can be an effective natural alternative that deters and slows down the activity of grasshoppers.5 A neem oil solution which can stunt or fully halt grasshopper’s growth can be made using this recipe:
Pour into a spray bottle and use to spray your plants and the garden’s soil.
Mix two quarts of warm water with 1/2 a teaspoon of castile or another mild liquid soap.
While stirring, slowly add 3 teaspoons of pure neem oil to the mixture.
Maybee this wuud werk to deetur THE Grasshopperss!
It mighht, but there are so many the guy I live with says they’re out of control.
Tame ducks sometimes got annoying in the old neighborhood. We lived near a small lake in a park, where people fed the ducks. The ducks sometimes wandered into my home looking for something to eat. I tried training them to look in the oven, but they did not fall for that one. They ate most of the slugs and snails there. A herd of them took over a neighbor’s swimming pool!
The guy I live with said that ducks might be good for the garden. The devastation caused by the thousands and thousands of the grasshoppers in the garden has to be seen to be believed. This is a disaster for our garden.
Even the very large yuccas in the front garden are being defoliated.
Eastern Colorado is experiencing the worst infestation of grasshoppers since the 1930s. Farmers are having a terrible time.
The guy I live with has started talking about giving up gardening, or moving. That’s probably just talk, but you never know.
He can not give up gardening. He put too much into it. That is just talk.
Maybe so. You never know.