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 tell you how things have been going. You may remember me from such posts as “Hot, Dry, and Crispy”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
I’m “swamp-cooling it”; lying in the cool breeze of the swamp cooler.
This is mostly what I’ve been doing day after day, while the guy I live with works out in the garden, in roasting heat.
I’ll leave it to you to decide which one of us has a better understanding of what to do when it’s so, so hot.
Even though it’s been blistering hot, I mean from my perspective it’s been intolerable, it actually rained today, for quite a while. The guy I live with said that that was the “monsoon” stuff. We’re talking about the North American Monsoon here, which isn’t as reliable as the Indian one, so some people say it isn’t a true monsoon.
The guy I live with has turned his attention to “the enclosure”, which was, and still is, a real mess.
Today he scraped a bunch of mud off the flagstones, which are no longer all level and will have to be redone.
The wheelbarrow is lying on the site of the old firepit. The guy I live with pried out the grate yesterday, and filled the pit with soil.
The guy I live with said this was an extremely melancholy task.
Here are some pictures of how the enclosure looked, twenty-five years ago. The guy I live with’s wife built all of this.
A squirrel chewed that skull to pieces, and the fence gradually fell apart, because the enclosure was watered a lot.
That’s all I have for today. I spent most of the day basking in swamp-cooler air, and then it cooled off outside, and then it rained, and everything is pretty muddy.
I was able to lie outside for a while, too, before it rained. Here’s an atmospheric picture of me doing just that.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Better the cooler than the firepit today!
Much better, though now it’s so humid the swamp cooler doesn’t work as well. We have a giant fan.
At least somebody has some sense. Good for you for staying in where it is cool. I’m glad you got some rain.
Seems to be the month for melancholia. I just got back from upstate NY, where I lived 20 years ago. It was disconcerting and disorienting at times with the number of memories that come flooding back from the loss of my first partner in Ithaca in 2006. Take care of TGYLW. No heat strokes.
Thanks. We did get rain, but not enough to get down to the root zone in some parts of the soil. It depends on what kind of soil is there.
The enclosure is kind of a sad reminder of the way things used to be, though there were no plants on the right (east) side of the enclosure back then, except for the mullein you can see. It was one of the “fancy” mulleins.
Reminders of loss can be difficult.
That was a lovely enclosure. I am glad you got some rain. We didn’t get much at all.
The guy I live with says the rain is being very unfairly distributed.
He remembers times when the entire Front Range would get soaked. Maybe that’s a thing of the past.
Yes. And I remember regular afternoon summer showers, and how rare it was to have air conditioning. I find this entire climate situation quite depressing.
Wee think you have THE rite idea Mani!! Guy you must LIKE *hot* heet…wee due not…warm iss guud; hot iss UCKY! Wee due hope you can reestore THE Enclosure. Yore Wife Lady made such a lovelee place. Shee sure was creeative! Mani yore 2nd foto is ADOORBSS! Stay kewl deer frendss…
**nose bopss** BellaDharma an (((hugss))) BellaSita Mum
Thanks. It’s been hot here forever, and going to be hot for a long time, I guess.
The rain has been so welcome. Let’s hope there’s plenty more next week. 🤞🏼
The guy I live with said we only got about a tenth of an inch of rain. Or even less.
Except for the downpour a month ago, this has been very disappointing, especially for a garden almost entirely dependent on rainfall.
Sadly I think we’ll be a constant state of wanting when it comes to adeaquate water.
The guy I live with agrees, and is prepared for disappointment. We had some scary thunder tonight, but it just sprinkled here.
Back here in NE North Carolina, we have finally emerged from a long period of drought. Water year to date precipitation has returned to just a tad below normal with almost 9 inches of rain this month. The rain lilies are loving it. El Nino has been good to us so far and hopefully it will prove beneficial to those states that depend on the Colorado River. Seems they still can’t work out a plan to address the problem.
Nine inches is about what we’ve had, water year to date. The guy I live with says one can only hope that this next winter’s snowfall will be more normal.