Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here today to bring you up to date on what’s been happening here. You may remember me from such posts as “A Scary Visitor”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
I’m being brave after the events of yesterday, which I’ll get to in a minute.
You can see what’s been happening here.
And also this:
The guy I live with decided that the old, wobbly, cracked wooden stepladder might not be what you would call exactly safe, so he bought a new one which he really likes a lot.
For painting, of course.
In other words, there hasn’t been much gardening going on here, except for some picture-taking and weed-whacking.
The guy I live with has a nice battery-operated trimmer, but the smooth brome that invaded the garden again this year grew very tall and he knew the big Echo trimmer was what was needed. (You’ll see me walking through the smooth brome in the field, later.)
He thought about getting a gallon of gas and some two-cycle engine oil, but when he went to the hardware store for some other stuff, he found, to his delight, that he could buy premixed fuel in a small quantity, and he spent quite some time making a lot of noise out in the back yard, while I stayed in the house for safety’s sake.
Yesterday we were both out in the garden and the guy I live with noticed something before I did. That doesn’t usually happen.
I walked over to the guy I live with and stepped on a snake.
Not just any snake, but a bullsnake about four feet long. (That’s about 1.2 meters.)
The snake became enraged and started hissing furiously and pretending it was a rattlesnake by buzzing its tail. They do that.
It coiled up under the big sagebrush and just hissed and hissed at me.
The guy I live with said it was harmless otherwise and wouldn’t try to bite me, but it was really, really angry. I guess I would be too, if someone stepped on me.
A little later the guy I live with saw it slither across the patio and hide behind the shelves on the patio, and when I came out to look it hissed at me again.
He said he was pretty sure this is the same bullsnake I’ve seen every year since I was a puppy, because no one else in the neighborhood has reported seeing a huge snake, and I have every single year.
The guy I live with calls it our “guest” and thinks all the voles that were in our garden are gone now.
Still, it was pretty scary, believe me.
In between all of this, the guy I live with did manage to take some pictures.
Here are some cactus flowers. (He also posted these on Facebook.)
And here are some pictures of Ixiolirion tataricum, which has seeded all over the front part of the back garden.
And here are some pictures of Penstemon palmeri:
That’s all I have for today. It was kind of a lot, really.
And to think the guy I live with wonders why we have so few visitors. Just kidding of course.
I’ll leave you with a picture of me walking through the sea of brome, as promised. You can see how tall it’s grown since my last post.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Even small snakes can be scary when they startle someone.
Those are nice cacti blooms. I would guess that some of them are Echinocereus, but I can not identify their species. Those with familiar floral color have unfamiliar foliar patterns of their spines.
The guy I live with says most of them are probably Echinocereus x roetteri, and then Coryphantha sneedii which has a new name now.
Well, that is a good reason for me to be unable to identify them.
The guy I live with says Echinocereus x roetteri is a natural hybrid between E. coccineus and E. dasyacanthus. He used to have a book on these cacti, growing near Oro Grande, New Mexico, but he gave it away.
I did not want to ask if it is a natural hybrid because I did not want the guy you live with to know that I did not know. He must have assumed that not many are aware of this. I believe that the only Echinocereus here is Echinocereus engelmannii, which is one of the more common sorts. I found it at a construction site west of Phoenix.
The guy I live with said we had Echinocereus engelmannii here for years, and then one day it died.
There’s another one of the fluorescent-flowered cactus open today.
Do they rot very easily if watered? I got two cuttings. One rooted nicely, but the other is just sitting there on the surface. I will plant whatever survives into a hillside situation where there is no irrigation.
Cactus certainly like water, but at the right time and the right soil.
The echinocereus here are flowering because of all the rain we’ve had.And they’re growing in deep gravel, so the rain goes straight to the roots.
There was a study suggesting that cactus in like the Southwest and parts of Mexico, growing in limestone, are triggered into flowering by rain, which changes the pH at the roots.
The guy I live with said opuntias are an exception; they have very shallow roots that spread out over long distances so they can get water quickly, especially in heavy soils.
For now, these particular cuttings are likely getting too much, since they are close to other vegetation that needs more regular irrigation. I would not mind watering them this much by overspray if they were in the ground.
The guy I live with says it’s hard to tell anything about other situations, but echinocereus don’t mind extra water if the soil has plenty of oxygen.
The ones here are mostly growing in pure pea gravel. See the post “What’s The Right Place?”; it shows just how much gravel is in that front bed.
A hissing snake would scare the life out of me!
It was very scary indeed.
The snake was at least 7.5 cm in girth…But if we have any voles left in the garden, it won’t be for long.
Yore so brave Mani! Me wuud have ‘booked it outta there’ when Mistur Bull hissed at mee! Mee iss scared of snakess… All yore flowerss are so purrty! That’ss one guud thing about raain; it bringss out flowerss. THE sea of Brome grass iss beeuteefull….. Guy that iss a fine ladder you bott. Happy paintin’ to you.
***nose bopss*** BellaDharma an {{hugss}} BellaSita Mum
Thanks. I am super brave. Sometimes.
It was a really big snake, probably one that lives in our garden.
It rained for a couple of hours this evening, but I got to go on my walk.
He really likes the new ladder, though it’s boring to watch him paint.
Mee-yow watchin peepss paint iss like watchin paint dry Mani! Mew mew mew…. Mee nervuss of aLL snakess….BEEG oness are terrifyin. Seemss yore Snake iss a purrmanent resident there! Mee purrferss Chipmunkss!
This is a really, really big snake. The guy I live with said not as big as a “python” or an “anaconda”, neither of which I care to encounter, and they give me the shudders.
Mee with you Mani!! No Pythonss or Annie-conda’ss fore mee eether!
Yikes, glad you’re okay, Mani. No one enjoys snake encounters. No one. This has been a good year for cactus blooming. Lovely pics. And the rain…it’s been quite glorious even if it fertilizes everything but especially the weeds, like crazy.
Thanks.
But get this. Last year or the year before the snake decided to live in a burrow right by the back faucet, and when the guy I live with went to turn on the faucet, there was a big snake head, watching him.
It rained for at least two hours this evening. The guy I live with says MSN weather, which is on his laptop, seems to be the most accurate.
It said “rain stopping soon”, and it did, so we went on our walk.
It does make him kind of sad, though, remembering how this kind of weather used to be common every year (and not just in spring). He would get very damp working for the phone company, but his wife was there when he came home.
When I was in school in Pueblo, they used to come up and shed their skins in the window wells, so you always needed to keep an eye for them. Snakes are a good addition for gardens but I will confess, they kinda frighten me out and who wants to get close enough to decide if they are venomous? Until they start eliminating the bumper crop of rotty squirrels, I’ll be as far away as I can.
the rain over these past two weeks has been paradise. Guess the monsoons arrived early.
The guy I live with says you can tell a bullsnake because it has bands of brown and yellow near the rattle-less tail. And by their hugeness.
Snakes are protected by law in Colorado, if you didn’t know. A lot of snakes are called “farmer’s friends”.
The other huge one we have here is the yellow-bellied racer, olive-green on top, and of course yellow on the bottom. The guy I live with says that while bullsnakes are docile (unless you step on them), racers are not. The babies are mottled brick-red and gray, and they will try to bite you. Not venomous though.
(If you look up Coluber constrictor flaviventris you’ll see pictures of the babies, and note the “constrictor” business.)
Yes, we had bull snakes, red and blue racers as well as rattlers. Those racers couldn’t get away from human encounters fast enough. I’m not familiar with the yellow-bellied version but would avoid anything that tried to bite me. Not all that keen on constrictors either, come to think of it. I was not aware of the legal protection of snakes in Colorado but think that’s pretty cool. Thanks for letting me know.
The guy you live with sounds like he has been very ambitious lately, between painting, weed-whacking, and such. I’m surprised you don’t see the bull snake more often if it lives nearby. I had a small rubber boa get in the house somehow a few weeks ago. I’m not sure how. And, last, seeing you part the sea of brome makes me recall walking through fields of brome grass back in Wisconsin. I always had to check for ticks afterwards. Hope you two are doing well.
Thanks; I have to get checked for ticks too, but I do wear a “natura;” flea and tick collar which seems to work.
I’ve seen a bullsnake every year since I was little, in my first summer here, but I don’t see it a lot every year.
Last winter we had an infestation of voles but I haven’t seen any this year. Maybe there’s a connection.
Similar encounter here the other day in the greenhouse. A large Red-bellied Watersnake (Nerodia erythrogaster) surprised me and wound up wrapped around an inground citrus tree. It was thicker than my wrist and probably 4 feet long. They are kind of aggressive and will strike, bite, and emit a foul odor but are not venomous. The usual inhabitants of the greenhouse are Black Rat Snakes (Pantherophis obsoletus). While normally found close to water, the watersnakes are known to travel significant distances over land.
The guy I live with said we have yellow-bellied racers here which can get as large, and they become very cranky if you disturb them, so I hope I never see one.
The differently-colored (mottled brown and gray) babies will definitely try to bite.
We have the The Eastern Black Racer form (Coluber constrictor) but they are rarely seen and are quite skittish. Like Copperheads (Agkistrodon contortrix), newly hatched ones are very quick to strike.
Yes, we hardly ever see green racers here. They’re very furtive.