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 give you just the bear facts, as well as talk about our garden, some. You may remember me from such posts as “The Cow-Pen Daisies”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
Well right off, I’ve been listening to the guy I live with explain to me that he thinks his garden should exemplify a state of calm. He prefers not to have a lot of plants in flower during the summer, because he says having that’s a holdover from climates that have a lot of summer rain, and he prefers a drier look, which he thinks is calmer. He said this would be a very unpopular view if he advocated it, which he doesn’t. It’s just for him.
Grasses waving in the breeze can help assuage depression and anxiety, which the guy I live with has a lot of both.
One non-calm event has been slowly taking place here. The cutting down (but not removal) of two lilacs.
These lilacs came from The Green Spot nursery in Littleton, which the guy I live with thinks was originally the late George Kelly’s nursery when his Cottonwood Garden Shop was wiped out in the flood of June 1965. He could have his facts wrong. George Kelly was a pioneer when it came to growing native plants, but of course nurseries have to sell lilacs, too, to make customers happy.
The guy I live with and his wife visited that nursery just once.
You can see how bad the lilacs looked after this summer. Maybe they’re in a place where rain doesn’t reach at all. (The green is the New Mexican privet, which doesn’t care.)
The other non-calm thing has to do with Mahonia (now Alloberberis) fremontii.
It was covered in fruit a couple of weeks ago.
Now it looks like this.
I’ve noticed some highly unusual scents on the mahonia.
The guy I live with said that his neighbor across the street said she saw “the bear” in someone’s driveway a couple of days ago, so that explains it.
I don’t want to see the bear. I’ve seen a bear, and one was enough for me.
Now for some calmer things. The guy I live with took this picture and said “Safer with me than any creature on earth.”
He said that was from “Big Trouble in Little China”, a movie I’ve never seen.
As you can see, the bunny is very, very safe.
The bunnies live here; I don’t chase them. They do nibble on newly-planted plants, maybe to try them out, which is why you see cages in some pictures.
Now for a series of pictures which the guy I live with thinks illustrates the idea of calm in the garden. 
The white river rocks have been moved so the guy I live with can crawl under the privets to collect pea gravel. The fence will be removed, eventually, when plants adapted to sand are growing there, instead of fancy bulbs.
There’s an incipit (I’ve always wanted to use that word) of a path here. The path will be dirt. You can see the big metal chicken.Â
A peep into the Employees Only section of the garden.
The red thing is a tomato, dropped by a squirrel.
The trough patio, with the ants.
Eriogonum corymbosum.
Where the cyclamen live.
That brings me to the end of today’s post. I will definitely let everyone know if I have the misfortune to see a bear again.
I prefer calmer things, thank you very much.
Until next time, then.
Thank you for this extensive tour of the garden, with its new, calm vision emerging! There is much I will be returning to and thinking about. That happy, healthy New Mexican Privet, green after this summer – amazing! And the bunny, safe as Fort Knox?
You’re welcome. The bunny is very safe. The poles in the back part of the garden were perches for Great Horned owls, which I know seems at odds with safe bunnies, but the owls were chased away from our section of the green belt by (illegal) spotlights.
The are six or seven privets, all male except for one, that the guy I live with bought for $6.25 each at the nursery that used to be across the highway, maybe about 1990. They’re huge now.
The one female privet does produce a big crop of berries, some years, so there are seedlings around the garden.
Is that tomato a home-grown one from your garden, Mani? If so, I am envious. The extreme heat has wreaked havoc on my tomato plant production this year.
No, it’s from a neighbor’s garden. The guy I live with gave up trying to grow tomatoes. The melons all died too.
As is obvious, the guy I live with isn’t a “waterer”, and having a daily schedule of watering things like that is just too much for him.
Incidentally, he was looking at the Alplains catalog and it said Jamesia americana preders “part shade and peaty soil”.
The one that’s been here for ages is in too much shade, and the soil certainly isn’t “peaty”.
Still, if he finds some plants he’s going to plant them in that shady area he cleared out a month or so ago.
That Alplains information is good to know; tell the guy thanks. I have decided that shrub is coming out, as I am getting quite serious these days about who stays. Want more Baby Blue Rabbitbrush and wish I could work up the wherewithal to visit Harlequin’s, since they seem to be the natives place par excellence (never been). But it would be an 90-minute drive one way for me and that is challenging at the moment. Maybe some day!
The guy I live with says you could dig up the jamesia, put it in a pot, and plunge the pot (as they say in the U.K.) into the garden for the winter, and then find a place for it in the spring.
He says maybe all the rabbitbrush are gone but, also maybe, Creekside Gardens has some. (There’s an even smaller one here that’s been her for decades.)
It is quite a drive to Boulder, but a drive he’s made many times. (Only a couple of times by himself.) He goes up Highway 93.
His friend was busy, and after a very happy 27-year marriage he learned some things; he knew she might get bored watching him wander around looking at plants for an hour (though she likes plants too) and then do the other fun stuff, wander around the mall and go into the Boulder Bookstore and other cool places.
He’s driven out to Nick’s twice, by himself. Another great nursery and they may have the rabbitbrush. Very friendly staff. Another long drive and way more aggravating. (He only says that because he drove not quite that far in Friday night rush hour a month or so ago. I’m super glad I wasn’t in the car with him.)
Love the pea gravel pathways. Walking on that surface gives me a calming sensation and makes me linger to observe the small things in a desert garden. Lovely.
Thanks. Most of the paths have been gravel for like forever, but the one in the first picture just had gravel spread on it this year.
It was always super muddy in winter.
There used to be another path going out to the back, going out to the arbor, but I use this one to run out to see what’s going on, so the other one is just buffalo grass now. Both paths were made by the border collies who lived here before me.
We should only be so lucky if it’s muddy this winter. Despite all the prognostications about it being a super El Niño weather event, I’m not all that optimistic. Guess we’ll find out.
The guy I live with is highly dubious, but he admitted to me that his feelings for “this time of year” may be getting in the way. (It’s his anniversary later this month, and his wife’s birthday next month, and, later, Halloween, her favorite time of the year, and even after all these years he gets pretty down.)
But there is this NOAA thing saying that we may get above average precipitation for October and November. A downpour once a week would be excellent.
Trigger dates like that are always rough and made worse during the holiday season. We hope your Dad is able to get through them without too much painful anguish. Sending gentle thoughts of comfort his way, Mani.
A furry ZEN garden inn deed Guy an Mani…
***purrss*** BellaDharma an **wavess** BellaSita Mum
Thanks.
Yore both wellcome Mani an Guy….wee wuud love a Zen garden like yoress 😉
It was partly designed by border collies, running out to the back fence to see what was what.
Border Colliwss are so clevurr Mani…like hee has to meow that you you??? Keep up THE guud werk.
Pee S: BellaSita can bee sarcastick about weather heer two 😉
We can be clever, sometimes.
Felt your absence at the NARGS-RMC fall plant event today. I was hoping to chat about how to render ‘calm’ in a garden that is true to the high plains/Front Range. I’ve been thinking about this a lot since “the bear facts” post, and so far I am landing on evergreen pines, oaks and golden (dried) grasses . . .
The guy I live with said the sale started way, way too early, and he only got about four hours of sleep that night; he was choking on that “home fragrance” stuff.
Then we had a gross incident: there was a dead goose in our yard. I guess the guy I live with is going to talk to the Division of Wildlife tomorrow to see what to do.
He says it’s layout first, then plants, or the other way around, and that you can always come over and see for yourself.
Well I’m sure glad you didn’t encounter the bear Mani, formidable creatures when surprised or disturbed. I totally agree with the guy you live with re: the garden should reflect calm’ especially during the glaring hot days of summer. We live in a short grass prairie so absolutely love the look of grasses swaying in the wind, how they change colour through the season and even the tawny winter look. Pops of colour are nice but as your home is a place of respite it should provide the mood you enjoy when home. Your garden seems quite large, how big is it?