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 after a long absence. You may remember me from such posts as “Snowdrops And Sentiment”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
You can see how dry it is now.
It wasn’t all that dry, really, at the first of the month, and we did get a dusting of snow a while back, but it’s been very warm here (anywhere from 65 degrees F to 70) and windy, so everything is kind of crispy.
We had a “fire weather” warning last Tuesday or Wednesday, then a high wind warning, and this week alone we had three “fire weather” warnings.
There are forecasts of rain and snow for next week, but the guy I live with says with things like that the rug has usually been pulled out from under them a day or two before they’re predicted to happen.
This is kind of awful, really. Some rain or snow would be very nice. The guy I live with has been watering the garden, something he never does in the winter, but this winter has been very different.
There are still some snowdrops flowering. Almost everything is a couple of weeks ahead of schedule, with the warm weather.
The guy I live with saw this one just today.
The cyclamen are flowering, as well as crocuses and other things, but we’ve shown pictures of those in the past.
I will show a picture of Iris ‘George’, though, since it’s such an attractive one, flowering in Sedum ‘Turquoise Tails’, which he likes a lot, and with some old yucca leaves on the right, as well as leaves blown in by the almost interminable wind.
Most of these reticulata-type irises fade away after a few years, but this one has been here for quite some time.
The other big deal here is this:
This is a directional boring machine.
The guy I live with was familiar with this stuff from when he worked for the phone company, but the technology is much more advanced now.
The machine bores a hole under the street and under front yards and then the new gas pipe is run through the hole.
A hole, or more correctly, a pit, is dug in the street where the large new gas line was bored a couple of weeks ago, the boring machine is placed next to the pit and does its work . It takes a bit of time.
The noise has been considerable here over the last few weeks.
Now we have a new gas line to our house, like most of our other neighbors do. There was a gas leak in our neighborhood a year or so ago which is why all of it is being replaced.
I’ve met most of the people doing the work and they were all super nice. Maybe because they all know that the guy I live with knows what they’re doing and how they’re doing it so they don’t have to go into long explanations.
After they did the work at our gas meter, they even closed and latched the gate on the east side of the shade garden.
So that’s why we’ve been away. Enduring the wind, and the noise.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
That gas line work is a lot to abide! All the noise and then the general upheaval. I never knew until now how exactly they did that work. Good to get an update from you, Mani.
The iris is lovely. Such a rich color. A lot of growth in my garden too. A clove currant is now leafing out. And I see what may be the emergence of some Mentzelia decapetala seeds I sowed last fall. I can’t be sure since I’ve never grown them before, so I’m relying on the plant tag. Could be a weed!
The mentzelia is a beautiful thing. The guy I live with forgot to collect the seeds on the plant here last year, but it still has tons of seeds in the capsules, which are best opened with a pair of pliers.
I guess there will be more noise tomorrow. And then, hopefully after all this is done, the street will be repaved.
Hang in there!
The guy I live with said to expect more noise tomorrow. They’re done all the houses around us except for our neighbor’s, where there’s all this stuff piled up by the gas meter.
There’s noise from digging the pits–the backhoe is parked across the street right now–and noise from the boring machine, but the worst noise, from boring the main distributing gas line in the line, is over.
The funny thing is the people who have to direct traffic. That must be a very boring job. Like maybe we’ll see one car drive down the street every hour or so.
That machine looks scary.
It is pretty scary, and makes a lot of noise, though not as much noise as the equipment used to bore the main gas line in the middle of the street did.
They dig holes, do work, fill the holes and cover them with asphalt, then dig the holes again, so there are all these asphalt patches all over the street.
The pops of color are a breath of fresh air in a sea of crispy browns. I think those of us who live in the metro need to learn how to do a rain dance. And pray a lot for some moisture. Jefferson County has had a couple of grassland fires, as had Douglas and then there was the 100+ acre blaze in Thornton which shut down I-25 earlier this week. We are so cooked if the moisture remains elusive in March.
The guy I live with says he’s only seen it this dry once, in 64 years of living here, and that was 2002. We got five inches of rain and snow, four of which fell in September. 2003 was almost as bad.
He says there used to be long periods of mist, drizzle, and rain here, but the last time that happened was 1995, when it snowed every day from the first of April into May, and then rained every day until the beginning of June.
One reason why he started growing a lot of bulbs; they spend most of their time safely underground.
Scary – I hope they didn’t damage your garden.
Well, the guy I live with says there’s now a bare patch of dirt in front of the gas meter, though nothing was plantd there, and all the hellebore foliage was trampled, but that hellebores don’t really need those leaves for this year, so nothing bad really happened.
The days of digging trenches in yards is over, though there was a trench dug when the sewer drain was replaced, and that did cause damage.
And the guy I live with suspects that no one will come to get the location flags so he can use those to remind him of things that need to be done in the garden.
Those Borin’ Masheenss are so noisy rite Mani? Butt sorta innterestin….. Wee are sorta stunned youss’ have FIRE warningss….wee have Flood warningss up heer. Wee had 2 more Blizzardss an then a bit of a melt an then more snow. Wee cuud send you a nice FOOT of snow fore moisture!!! Yore flowerss are so purrty. Wee love seeing ‘flower’ fotoss durin our Catnadian Winterss!
***nose bopss*** BellaDharma an {{hugss}} BellaSita Mum
This time of year is our dry season, but this year it’s been super dry. Like 0.025mm in February. And with wind.
We sometimes have wind in the winter, and sometimes don’t.
The guy I live with does not leave the house when there are those fire weather warnings, and also would not leave when people are working in our front yard, because I might get scared. I’m pretty tough, but having people in my front yard is scary.
It’ss so weerd wee been so snowy an icy an wet an youss’ been supurr dry!! It’ss like THE planet iss unbalanced… Guy iss a GRATE Pup-Daddy!!!
He says thanks.
Things have changed now.