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 all our news. You may remember me from such posts as “Baked Again”.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
Even with the air conditioner running full blast, I’m not having a good time, as you can see.
It’s hot, and people are shooting off fireworks.
No fun at all.
The guy I live with watered most of the garden yesterday to prevent it from being set on fire by fireworks landing in our yard. That has happened once, but it was before my time.
Fortunately nothing happened, because we haven’t had any rain for ten days.
The guy I live with said it did rain here today. Twice. He said he counted fifty-three drops.
Since I haven’t seen a bear in ten days either, I guess I’ll show you some pictures of plants. The guy I live with said this time of year is strangely melancholy for him, but that the plants make things a bit better.
This is Alcea rugosa. It does seed around a bit, and gets chewn by Japanese beetles (chewn is a word), but the guy I live with still likes it.
You can see that it’s not a small plant.
Right next to it is Lavatera thuringiaca (now Malva thuringiaca).
This also seeds around a bit.
One of the guy I live with’s favorite sights at this time of year is Allium pskemense. You have to walk behind part of the garden to get to this place.
This is a really big allium, if you couldn’t tell.
Then there’s Penstemon richardsonii flowering very happily in a glazed pot that’s cracked at the base, but then, it has been outside in Denver since about 1965.
The penstemon sowed itself in this pot several years ago; the plants in the garden died.
And lots of Ratibida columnifera. The guy I live with likes this very cheery plant.
You’ll notice I’m not in this picture.
There will be lots of seed this year. You just grab the seed head and sprinkle the seed wherever you want plants.
And, finally, Yucca reverchonii is in flower for the first time here.
Maybe you can see how fuzzy the stems are.
I did spend a very pleasant hour napping this afternoon, with the portable swamp cooler blowing nice cool air on me. Aside from breakfast and dinner, and my walks, this was the highlight of my day.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Yucca reverchonii is still rad. Did you just recently post a picture of it, or what it a while ago? Penstemon richardsonii is rad also, even though I do not know that species. Is that echinops behind and to the right of the Allium pskemense?
He did post a picture of the flowering stalk a while ago.
The guy I live with says you can drive down the Columbia River Gorge and see Penstemon richardsonii growing from cracks in the cliffs.
The echinops is ‘Arctic Glow’. It seeds all over the place. The one in the picture is self-sown.
The only species of Penstemon that I ever saw in the wild were either in the Siskiyous or near the Columbia River, downstream from the Columbia River Gorge. I should be more observant. The only bit that I brought back rotted shortly afterward. I do not know what species it was, but I might try again when I go back next March or April.
Does Echinops self sow enough to be an annoyance? I just acquired my first last March.
The guy I live with says it’d be more practical to try to collect seeds in autumn. You can stratify them in the refrigerator for a month or so.
As far as the echinops is concerned, it depends on how you define “annoying”. There’s a regular echinops here that the guy I live with’s wife planted twenty years ago and it’s never seeded around, but ‘Arctic Glow’ certainly does.
Well, I will not be there in autumn. I try to get there at the end of winter so that I can prune apple trees prior to bloom, but seed is likely long gone by that time. Stolons of some species should not be so difficult to grow.
I suppose that if echinops gets annoying, I can deadhead them after bloom, before they toss their seed. This is my first since cut flower crops in 1986, so I do not know what to expect.
The guy I live with said he knows absolutely nothing about growing penstemons–or anything else–from cuttings. He guesses it could be done.
The regular echinops here don’t seed around at all.
Common garden variety penstemon grow easily from cuttings or division of their stolons. Native species are more likely to rot. I am not very familiar with them, but I initially figured that they would be as easy as they look, but they were not. Of course, I did not tend to them very attentively. Perhaps that is the problem.
I do not know what this new Echinops is, whether it is a simple species or fancy cultivar. To me, it looks fancy.
The guy I live with says he doesn’t know about cuttings.
The echinops is for sale online. Just a white-flowered form.
Oh, I am pleased with the echinops that is already here. I do not know what it is, but I do not crave another yet.
Chiquita hates the fireworks. Yesterday, though, we gave her a couple Benadryl instead of the expensive gum gel. It does help, and we meant to give to her later. But she slept through the noise. Hope you and your guy find some quiet repose. 53 drops. That’s something, but probably not enough. Cheers from Portland.
The really loud air conditioner (you can see it was right beside me) was good enough. It was surprising that there weren’t more explosions last night.
The guy I live with said it wasn’t as bad as some previous years, when there was so much smoke in the neighborhood you could hardly see, but that was before they outlawed fireworks that leave the ground.
Oh, the yuccas is outstanding!…but pales in comparison with the cooling breeze from swamp cooler, though I have never seen one of these and have only a vague idea of what it is – a machine for blowing cool air I suppose! Stay cool!
We call them swamp coolers but “evaporative cooler” is the right word, and they only work in dry climates.
Kind of like what some rock gardeners do in Europe; they build walls of tufa and then have water trickling down the back of the wall.
The cooler is filled with water, and a pump circulates it over a pad which is made of something like cardboard (but not really cardboard), and the fan pulls the air from the water trickling on the panels and blows cool air into the room.
The guy I live with said one of our neighbors had a whole-house swamp cooler installed and they really liks it. They can have windows open, unlike with regular air conditioning. Having all the windows closed would drive he guy I live with up the wall.
The guy I live with said he was going to get one for our house, last year, but he got distracted.
Obviously, it works for you!
The guy I live with says they work best in dry climates. 18 percent humidity right now. He says it’ll be 36C on Wednesday so the coolers will be filled up that day, for sure.
I love how that penstemon took up residence in the pot. This fall I will be sowing some P. palmeri and P. parryi seeds.
Penstemon parryi really isn’t hardy here, but the California P. centranthifolius is.
Most of the seedlings that were out in the frame were eaten by mice, which was a first for the guy I live with, but he does have a potful of P. eatonii seedlings. They’re be planted out next month.
He’s never had much luck with sowing seeds directly; I suppose they get dug up and eaten.
Whoops, I thought the P. parryi was a good choice—thanks for the heads up. I plan on putting the seeds in half-buried pots in a soilless mix, in an empty raised bed, with hardware cloth over the whole bed. This may be an exercise in futility.
You’re welcome.
The guy I live with says that a major issue–here–is our hot winter sun, and some penstemons don’t appreciate having their basal leaves fried. They need those leaves to overwinter. Penstemon alamosensis, P. superbus, P. subulatus are examples of penstemons that are hardy here if the winter sun doesn’t burn their basal leaves.
Western Native Seed has a lot of penstemon seeds, and so does Alplains. It doesn’t matter how old the seeds are, either.
Mani, your Dad has some lovely Hollyhocks. I had to eradicate it from my garden as it got a bit restless and showed up in places it shouldn’t have. Those coneflowers are always welcome though and I always welcome them when they show up. I’m glad you guys received 53 drops-you got twice as much as we did. We’ve been going out at 5:45 AM for our walks before the heat sets in. It looks like we’ve entered the Dog Days of Summer now until August 11. With 78 days until the official arrival of autumn, we can’t wait for summer to be over. Stay as cool as you can.
The guy I live with hopes we won’t have another dry summer but he also says we’ve had them in the past. And he remembers 2014, which was Chess’s last summer, when there were thunderstorms every single afternoon.
Alcea rugosa is less susceptible to rust than regular hollyhocks (Alcea rosea) are, but there’s only the only color.
There are, or were, beautiful regular hollyhocks growing in alleys in Englewood; one time the guy I live with and his wife walked down some alleys and collected a bunch of seeds. The plants don’t need much watering at all.
Dear Mani, Maybe you thought this was mundane –after all, bears don’t show up every week — but the thing about a garden is that it is always changing, and I enjoyed seeing what was going on in yours. Those hollyhocks are gorgeous, and the allium, against that amazing backdrop of silvery-bloomed, feathery plants, is ethereal. And that yucca — WOW! There’s a plant with star power!. It has been too hot, though, lately. And dry. Glad you have the respite of the swamp cooler. Maybe you and the guy you live with can just sit on the porch next week and enjoy the sights.
Thanks. It is too hot. We purebred border collies do not like hot weather at all.
The guy I live with says he’s going to start watering more, partly just because he can.
He was really surprised when he saw the yucca was going to flower. We of course have naive yuccas (Yucca glauca) that flower a lot, and there are much, much bigger yuccas in the front garden, but only one has flowered.
HURRAH fore Yucca reverchonii blooming fore ferst tiem!! Bet Guy was so xcited Mani 😉
Wee nose it issn’t a Bear, mew mew mew…
Hu’manss get xcited bye diffyrent thingss then us 4-leggedss! UGH wee had 2 dayss of HI *HEET* an hue-midity an it was UCKY. Today iss cloudy an cool an furry damp…..mee thinkss another nap iss on mee agenda two!!!
***nose bopss*** BellaDharma an {{hugss}} BellaSita Mum
It was pretty exciting.
We got a tiny amount of rain yesterday but the guy I live with said that golfball-sized hail fell in the park just across the highway. Only a mile or two away. That would have spoiled the yucca flowers.
It’s pretty dry here.
Wee reeleeved ouss’ did NOT get Hail. Yore flowerss an THE Yucca are beeuteefull. Wee hope youss’ did sum propurr rain Mani! 53 dropss iss NOT enuff rite?
Thanks. We got about twice that many raindrops today.
WOO HOO!! 106 raindropss! Pawsum Mani!!! Just kiddin’. Wee due wish ou got a propurr rain there!
When had about 11 raindrops today.
Same heer Mani an Guy. A Big storm was apposta hit us butt it veered South so only sum raindropss! Weerd rite?
Yes weird. No raindrops here today.
No rain overnite heer…wee were told it WUUD rain?!?! HUH?
They told us it would rain too. We got almost nothing.
CATFISH!!! Same heer Mani an Guy…now weather peeps are meowin Furiday an Caturday….wee shall see……
They say maybe rain here every day, but we remain dubious.
Awefully difficult to be cool when you wear a fur coat year round. Our two solid black cats sympathize. I love the big prairie plants in the garden. There’s something very relaxing and restful when wandering through. I wish fireworks would become a thing of the past. The fear of fire’s from stray ones is very real plus they cause you and your kin so much anxiety. Glad you made it through once again.
We purebred border collies loathe hot weather, but the swamp coolers make everything nice.
The ratibidas, or Mexican hats, are very cheery plants. We sometimes have the ones with dark red petals, but not this year I guess.
Someone did set the vegetation on the mesa on fire about thirty years ago, with fireworks. People never seem to learn.