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 talk about the endless loop. You may remember me from such posts as “Going With The Flow”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
I was looking at the mail carrier, who brings us mail. I’m feeling fine, by the way.
This has been one of the few springs in which the lilacs didn’t freeze before they could flower. This is ‘Miss Ellen Willmott’.
It’s true that the flowers look fairly hideous when they turn brown. He removes them. There are a lot to remove, this year, but he bought a hedge trimmer which will make it easier.
The guy I live with planted the hedge of lilacs a long time ago and he’s kind of regretted it ever since, because he says these are mostly just “big green things” all year, especially if they don’t flower, and there was a time when he thought he might cut them all down, but he said that sounded like way too much work.
Lilacs will take pretty much total drought in summer, though the drooping leaves are kind of depressing to look at.
These are the male catkins of the cottonwood, Populus deltoides, growing along the canal.
The female catkins are green. So cottonwoods are dioecious; male and female flowers on separate plants. (The guy I live with said the words “male” and “female” don’t share the same etymology, even though it looks like they do.)
When the guy I live with and his wife moved into this house there was a cottonwood in the small front yard, which was completely ridiculous. He cut it down a year or two later.
It’s still very dry here even though we got snow last Friday. We’re 1.46 inches (37mm) below average for the water year which started last October.
The guy I live with said it feels like we’re stuck in an endless loop, weather-wise. We’ve been having the same weather every week for months on end now.
Granted, we’ve had a lot of beautiful days, when everyone else in the country was enduring rain or snow or whatever, but for gardeners, this hasn’t been so great.
Far too hot for this time of year, low humidity, wind with “fire weather” warnings (we have one this coming Wednesday, and I mentioned something like that in my last post), promises of rain or snow which only sometimes materialize, and then we’re back to the same thing, week after week after week.
He said it reminds him of the early work of Philip Glass, or the movie “Groundhog Day”, and not in a good way.
It’s true that he watches the same movie every night, and has the same thing for breakfast every day, just like I do, and I have the same thing for dinner every afternoon (with some extras), so we both like our routines, but this is weather we’re talking about, and you’d think there would be at least some change, aside from the five or so snowfalls we’ve had.
Anyway, what with all of this heat, sameness, dryness, windiness, and so on, there’s talk in our area about how to deal with drought and the watering restrictions that have been imposed.
The guy I live with says he’s not going to do anything differently. Most of the plants in our garden are prepared for this.
This is the clove currant, Ribes aureum. The flowers are scented of cloves, and the shrub doesn’t need any irrigation. (There are some lilac leaves in this picture.)
This is Fendlera rupicola, in bud.
Someone made up a common name for this: “cliff fendlerbush”.
The guy I live with says that name sounds like an Elvis impersonator in a 1970s nightclub.
And this is Berberis (Mahonia) fremontii. The guy I live with had a difficult time getting a good picture of this, as you can see.
There are two shrubs here, about thirty-five years old, and they’ve never been watered. The flowers are scented, sort of like chocolate. The leaves are horribly prickly, though rabbits eat the ones on the lower branches in a snowy winter, when the leaves have turned violet.
We have a lot of plants like that here, thanks to the guy I live with visiting (long-gone) local nurseries that offered such things, back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He was really into western native woody plants back then. There would be more but he killed a lot of them, trying to transplant them, when he should have left them alone.
So that’s my post for today. I suppose there aren’t many blogs where you get to read complaints about day after day of beautiful weather. This could be a first.
The guy I live with said he would rather be complaining about weeks of mist, drizzle, and rain, which he says we used to have at this time of year, back in the last century.
We purebred border collies certainly do like the idea of mist, drizzle, and rain.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
The Elvis impersonator comment was very funny.
I love my clove currants. In my experience they are fast growers. The one that I bought from High Country Gardens a few years ago, which arrived as an 8” stick, is now about 24” tall and a foot wide. Every plant I have added is low-water, so except for the pre-existing spruces on our property, I guess we are as prepared as we can be for water restrictions. We took out the bluegrass some years ago. I am concerned about what the summer heat will be like, though.
The guy I live with says the currants will seed around, because birds love the currants. He read that the currants make very good raisins, but the birds will get them first. There are lots of plants in the garden here, because of the birds.
He used to correspond with the late Jim Borland, whose large front garden was filled with native dryland plants which were grown from seed. That garden was never watered, not even during the severe drought of 2002, and our much smaller front garden was inspired by that.
He said when Jim first visited our garden he was surprised to see so many woody plants that came from Old Farm Nursery in Arvada. Jim and the nursery owner used to go on seed-collecting trips and some of the plants were sold at that nursery.
The thing is, though, with the higher temperatures these days, it will be a challenge to figure out if plants previously left to their own devices will need some supplemental watering.
Mee-yow that Clove Currant iss gorgeeuss Mani!!! Like tubular bellss….all THE plantss an flowerss are so lovelee. Our Snowdropss opened once. Flowerss are gone now. An wee have had so much rain that there iss floodin all over THE place. unt an Unkell have water inn basement… Wee can send you FOG! Wee have had enuff FOG fore a lifetime!!! Nite aftur nite! An even in daytime. An it nevurr seemss to warm up….BLEH! So wee complane an hope wee can switch weather Take guud care Mani an Guy. ***nose bopss*** BellaDharma an ((hugss)) BellaSita Mum
Thanks. We could certainly use some rain, or fog. We have a “fire weather” warning tomorrow, and probably the next day, too.
The snow we had five days ago apparently meant nothing at all.
CATFISH!!! Wee try to send you sum fOG an rain….yore weather iss sure weerd…. It was sunny an warm this mornin heer. Still sunny butt Northwest wind an so so chilly!!!
You’re too correct, Mani…this endless cycle of nice weather. Where the heck is the rain/snow?? Ugh. With the restrictions, I’m not sure I’ll be planting much in the new garden although I picked up a few day lilies and 3 peonies only because I have no self control when I see peonies being offered. I fear they won’t take off. Just hoping the front from the PNW holds some moisture. Try to stay cool (and safe) till it arrives. P.S. Glad to hear you’re fine now, Mani.
Thanks. The guy I live with said he’s uncertain about buying new plants this year, though he probably will anyway. And water them with the two-gallon Haws watering can he bought some years ago. He says carrying two gallons of water is exhausting.
It was a long time ago, but he said this year doesn’t seem worse than 2002, except of course for the weekly bouts of wind, which he says is by far the worst thing.
Have you been ill Mani? I completely agree with you as we do seem to be caught in an endless loop. For us it’s snow. Another huge storm dropped a foot on us overnight. Two gloriously warm and sunny days now and the bulbs have all burst into bloom, but guess what, more snow over the next few days to squash them yet again. I’m trying hard not to complain about the moisture (I’m sympathetic to your plight) but it sure makes it hard to get anything done. As we are on a well only my vegetables get watered (and it’s from collected rain water). The rest do just fine without any other help from me. More people need to get on the right plant right place band wagon.
Okay, I missed a post. Sorry to hear about your tummy troubles Mani. Where on earth are you picking up Clostirdium? A nasty bug for sure. Glad you are on the mend
I get it from time to time, and giardia, as did the other purebred border collies who lived here before me. The guy I live with thinks it’s from eating rabbit poop and other things found on the ground, but my doctor suggested it could just be a “gut imbalance”, so I get Fortiflora on my dinner.
Yes, I had clostridium. Again. My doctor says it’s probably an imbalance in my digestion, or eating rabbit poop, which is pretty tasty. (It’s just recycled grass.) Antibiotics do the trick.
We wouldn’t mind a foot of snow, which would be a typical thing to happen in April here. They say we may have a wetter than normal summer, which would be very nice, and the native dryland plants in the garden here would certainly enjoy that, since it’s their growing season.