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 to tell you about my scary night, and some other things as well. You may remember me from such posts as “Oaks From Afar”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. 
I’m inspecting my suddenly-lush Private Lawn, which is Cody buffalo grass. You can see how it responded to the downpour we had last week.
Other lawns I’ve walked by didn’t do this, so I feel privileged.
That area on the left side had plants in it, but they were dug up. That kind of gouge on the right side is where bunnies have been eating the grass, which the guy I live with says is okay. The grass comes back very quickly.
Penstemon richardsonii has been flowering very happily in a sixty-year-old glazed pot. It seeded itself there; the original plants in the rock garden died and the pot was, at the time, right next to the rock garden. The guy I live with moved the pot onto the flagstone by the patio.
Bumblebees like this penstemon a lot.
A scary thing happened this last weekend. The guy I live with went to the store, and when he got home, the power was out. It was about 90 degrees (32C) outside.
Someone came to the back yard to look at the transformer, which is in a corner of the yard.
Then what seemed like a long time passed, and other people came to look at the transformer. The guy I live with had done work like this, but with phone stuff, so he talked to them. There were a bunch of houses without power.
More time passed, and eventually there was digging, about the time I went on my evening walk. There was a lot of digging. With shovels.
It got dark, and the guy I live with lit some candles, but I thought it was creepy, and I was really hot.
I wanted to go to my Upstairs Fort but the guy I live with wouldn’t let me, because he said it was even hotter up there.
So he took me on a third walk, and we went by the creek, where it was much cooler than anywhere else around.
More time passed, so the guy I live with took me on a fourth walk, to cool off again. The power came on about one in the morning; the guy I live with turned on the air conditioner upstairs, and after a while we were able to sleep.
What had happened was that there was an old fault in the buried electrical line, and when all the water from the downpour rushed into the storm drain pipe, the pipe started leaking and shorted or grounded the electrical wires.
I inspected the filled-up pit the next day.
Everything looked fine to me.
But there’s more to the story. After this picture was taken, we kept walking, and the guy I live with saw this.
He instantly knew what this was.
On our way back home, he picked up the tool “so no one would swipe it”, and put it in the wooden box on our driveway. The box has been there for deliveries ever since the pandemic; people who deliver stuff find it convenient.
The next day, the guy I live with was talking to our neighbor, over on his driveway, when someone walked by. The guy I live with struck up a conversation with him, like he does with everybody. They talked about working outside, retirement (the guy I live with told him his retirement story like he does with everyone who says they yearn for retirement). The man worked for the water department, so the guy I live with showed him our front garden, which hasn’t been watered in thirty-nine years.
Then the guy I live with mentioned that he’d found this tool, which is a hook to open utility hole covers.
The water guy said “I’ve been looking all over for that!”
He was very happy to get it back.
To wrap up today’s post, I know that things have been very stressful around here. There are a lot of terrible fires in the state, and elsewhere, too. The guy I live with has been talking about them and they sound scary to me.
He’s also been working a lot in the garden, moving rocks and gravel again. He set three heavy pieces of flagstone today, without dropping them on his feet or fingers.
And the dirt path finally had gravel spread on it, after about forty years of it being dirt, or thick mud in the winter.
The area to the left of me is a “problem area”. It’s been like this for a while. The soil there is not very good, for reasons I don’t understand. I know what dirt is, but that’s about all.
I lay in the problem area while the guy I live with set the flagstones. You can see what a mess it is. The guy I live with hasn’t given much thought to the little area even though he walks by it every day, but he says he’ll be thinking about it fairly soon. The grass on the right of the picture and also to the left of me is bluebunch, Pseudoroegneria spicata, a native.
We’ll see what happens when the guy I live with starts his “serious thinking”.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
The bumblebee living its best life in that penstemon! Far too hot to have no power. Sorry that happened to a purebred border collie. We had a transformer sparking last week, which got fixed, but only four hours without power (we were lucky). Y’all made that water department guy’s day. I hope there are no fireworks this weekend to scare you or to start any new fires, anywhere.
Thanks. I heard a firecracker on my evening walk just now, and had to cut the walk short.
I agree that it was far too hot for losing electricity. Our house has no air conditioning, because the guy I live with is old-fashoned that way (no one in Denver had it when he moved here, and there were no firecrackers either), but it wouldn’t have mattered.
The little portable air conditioner in my bedroom does a very good job of making the room freezing cold.
MEE-YOW Mani that iss sum story!!! 90 deegreess iss too *hot* an ucky! What a mess with THE water an all THE diggin’. No ‘A- Cee’ icin on THE cake so to meeow. Glad youss’ found relief down bye THE creek. An that efurrything got reepaired. An mee with you about candelss. Their lite creepss mee out two 😉 Guy yore hard werk allwayss payss off…
***nose bopss*** BellaDharma an {{{hugss}} BellaSita Mum
The guy I live with bought some candles just for this purpose.
We don’t have air conditioning and our windows are open all the time, with the swamp coolers running in the kitchen and living room.
Mee-yow wee reememburr THE “Swamp Kewlerss” Mani an Guy. Wee due not have A-Cee heer eether an ree-ly on fanss to circulate THE air an keep us sumwhat kewl. Iss cloudy an rainy today an it iss sumwaht kewler. Sumwhat…..
It’s just been hot here, and the swamp coolers are running.
You’ss do not have hue-midity due you Mani an Guy?? Mee has herd Hu’manss meow “Dry heet iss easier to live inn.” Not sure mee beeleeves them 😉
It’s 31C right now and 13 percent humidity. That’s about twice as humid as it would normally be at that temperature.
The guy I live with worked in the garden and he said it wasn’t bad. I stayed inside of course.
NICE!! 13% iss so low!! Our humidity iss 60% tonite…it iss still a bit hue-mid butt not as bad as it was. Guy yore a Garden Warrior!
Here, 13 percent seems a little high, when it’s hot. The humidity goes down when the temperature goes up.
Iss furry opposite heer Mani an Guy. Tempyture goess up an so doess Hue-midity…it can bee brutal…youss’ wuud NOT like it at all!!
We always enjoy a happy ending story and that tool being returned to its owner seems as good as any. Well done. Sorry about the power outage. I’m in a new community in Jefferson County now and have recorded 7 power outages in about 14 days. It’s ridiculous. Xcel told me they’re working on transmission lines. I wonder if they’re working two feet at a time. 😬 Our power grid is truly a disaster. We hope you and the man you live with have a calm, safe and quiet Fourth of July weekend.
The guy I live with says “transmission lines” usually means the big metal tower things; very high voltage.
I already heard one very loud explosion.
That might might sense but this community is all solar and thee are no power lines.
Sorry about the explosion. Most of the metro area has bans on fireworks but unless you can provide an exact address, the police cannot do anything. Sigh.
The guy I live with knows nothing about solar except that he wishes we had it here, but maybe those transmission lines do come from Xcel. Like our neighbors have solar but still have electricity so when their power went out, the solar kicked in. They let him put some food in their refrigerator.
He’d never heard of this neighborhood and looked it up. He says it’s way, way too close to Takiza Tacos. He’d go there every day.
There was one real troublemaker in our neighborhood but they’re no longer there. I guess we’ll see. And hear.
It is so serendipitous when lost things find their rightful home – nice work facilitating that with both the hook and the penstemon!
I missed the window to leave a comment on a recent post of yours (something seems to be wrong with my notifications) but I wanted to ask if the guy you live with will just direct sow Oenothera caespitosa seed on the ground this fall for natural cold-stratification or if there will be any special work/preparations to coax it to grow?
The guy I live with had to make it so it older posts couldn’t be commented on because the blog was getting tons of spam, mostly not as comments, but as comments on individual pictures, which was weird.
He said he was going to direct-sow the seed this time, though whether or not it gets cold this coming winter is anybody’s guess.
He used to sow the seeds in pots and leave them outside all winter. Then mice discovered the seed pots, and that was that.
“Seed pots” does sound enticing! Can’t quite blame the mice … but I shall follow suit and direct-sow this fall, and see what happens. I was unaware of a white variety of ‘evening primrose’ native to Colorado, and I have been researching Victorian moon gardens, so a white, pleasantly-scented, moth-friendly native is SO EXCITING!
As for the spam and bots and all the rest of it, we are in for some interesting times as AI ramps up!
The guy I live with used to sow almost all seeds some time around the end of the year, in “seed frames”, rectangles built of 2×6 boards, with a cover. The pots would sit outside all winter and get covered with snow. But a couple of winters ago he saw that all the seedlings left from the year before had been eaten; there was a mouse nest in the frames.
Sowing directly works but there is less control over the seedlings.
Oenothera caespitosa usually grows in clay soils and is favored by the white-lined sphinx, Hyles lineata. The flowers open at night and are strongly scented of lemon.
In the wild they’re often found growing in a ring around a harvester (red) ant colony.