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 pink asparagus. You may remember me from such posts as “Opera Day”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
I forget what I was looking at.
That red on the right is from old leaves of Berberis, or Mahonia, repens.

So it’s hot again. Way too hot for May. A lot of the bulbs didn’t flower last month because it was way too hot for April.
There really isn’t much of any humidity so it would probably feel a lot less hot to people who experience humidity when it gets hot.
It’s still too hot, though.

Before I get to the main topic of today’s post, I should mention that there was another incident here several days ago.
The guy I live with stabbed himself with a kitchen knife. I mean really stabbed himself.
It was scary; there was a lot of bleeding.
Fortunately, after the last incident, the emergency room doctor told him to buy some clotting gauze, since I can’t help with these things, and that quickly took care of the problem. After he read the intructions, of course.

Anyway, the main thing. For years, there’s been talk around here about how to get Hesperaloe parviflora to flower. I mean if the plant isn’t irrigated, which is the usual thing, often by drip irrigation. Then they can flower like crazy.
But without that, there can be years with no flowers at all.
The guy I live with noticed that in years when we had rain or snow at a certain time, there would be flowers, and he now maintains that that certain time is the first two weeks in April. We got about a tenth of an inch of rain on the first of April and apparently that was sufficient for this to happen.
They look like pink asparagus, don’t they?
Hesperaloes are in the family Asparagaceae so that makes sense.

This particular plant was flattened by a backhoe when we had the sewer drain replaced. I think you can tell how tough it is.
There are two new plants behind it, by the yellow flag that indicates the location of the old gas line.
(That empty area on the right is a sign that the guy I live with is planning something.)

And that’s all I have for today. The guy I live with said that “they” are talking about storms next week. If so, I hope they’re not too scary.

Until next time, then.