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 not much of anything. You may remember me from such posts as “The Broken Cockroach”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
You can see how busy I am in this picture.
They mowed the green belt the other day, which made the guy I live with angry. He says that since it doesn’t seem to be able to rain here for more than a few minutes every day, the mowed grass will dry out faster than it would have if they’d left it alone.
They also mowed the wildflowers growing happily along the canal road last month, but the plants came back, and decided to flower despite having been mowed almost to the ground.
Here I am walking next to them. These are Grindelia squarrosa.
The new electrical line was installed a couple of days ago, and now we’re waiting for the power company to come and splice the new wires into the transformer in our back yard, so we have this, right now.
The buffalo grass looks worse in this picture than it actually is, but it has had a rough summer. To add insult to injury, it got painted on. The paint will wash off, eventually.
How it’s going to wash off is another story, since all the rain seems to be falling east of us.
Anyway, with all this utility locating, we have a lot of extra flags. No one seems interested in getting the flags back, so the guy I live with makes use of them: marking new plants so he doesn’t forget to water.
In this picture, it’s just the green flag. The red one in the lower left marks our phone line.
That wood was laid by the guy I live with’s wife; the path was called “Pooka’s Shortcut”, because Pooka, a purebred border collie who lived here before me, didn’t want to run all the way around the raised bed in the middle of the picture, and so he made this shortcut out to the back fence.
The guy I live with read something about how planting in hot summers isn’t the best for plants, but that hasn’t stopped him.
Quite a few are in the enclosure.
That’s why there’s a hose here, just like there’s a hose by the electrical transformer, for the plants in the back garden.
I was probably walking out to the place where I can see almost anything that goes on in the green belt.
As I’ve said before, this has always been an open place in the back garden, for purebred border collies to survey stuff.
The sedums are ‘Matrona’ and ‘Autumn Joy’, and are going to my doctor’s office, because there are empty spaces in the garden there. The sedums haven’t been watered at all this summer.
There are some plants in flower here. This is Colchicum bivonae.
The guy I live with gave away a whole bunch of colchicums, but he didn’t give them all away. The summer was so dry that most of the corms didn’t reach flowering size.
He said it was stupid to have a small part of the garden just filled with colchicums and labels, instead of being fully integrated into the garden, so those were the ones that went.
Just like it was stupid to have a whole bunch of snowdrops in pots plunged into the garden in one place, so all of those snowdrops, a total of eighteen pots, went to the botanic gardens last week. There are still lots of snowdrops here.
I was going to say that I didn’t have anything else to say, but the guy I live with reminded me that we should talk about the bear, even though I didn’t want to.
He said that a neighbor said that the bear has been sleeping in a tree in another neighbor’s back yard.
Just saying this gives me the willies, and it isn’t even Halloween yet. Thinking about a bear sleeping in a tree anywhere near me doesn’t seem right at all. The guy I live with said that no way would we walk down the green belt in the direction of that tree, so at least that makes me feel better.
Until next time, then.
Stay safe, Mani!
I plan to, thanks. I’m going to walk in the opposite direction of where the bear is sleeping.
I have added ten new colchicums to the garden in recent weeks and decided to keep as many as possible together to form a colchicum corner, so to speak. We’ll see how it works out but they are delightful plants which I enjoy very much.
There were lots of lots of colchicums here, still are, but the guy I live with wanted to plant something else there (an arctostaphylos) and so off went maybe a dozen named colchicums to a new home, the botanic gardens, along with all the species snowdrops that were growing in pond baskets.
Last year the colchicums produced their leaves almost immediately after flowering and the leaves grew two to three times their normal size, because we had nothing resembling winter here.
That wooden path is a nice one! The colchicum is lovely. They sure do bring a welcome spot of color. We, too, are getting only a few raindrops a day, though a treat yesterday evening was a double rainbow in the eastern sky. I’m glad TGYLW is keeping you clear of the bear!
Thanks. The guy I live with says it’s surprising the wood hasn’t rotted (it did in one place); it’s not treated wood.
The lack of rain is pretty discouraging; the guy I live with mostly wants it to help all the new plants in the garden.
Oh, that must be frustrating to have the greenbelt mowed. Perhaps it was to make it less combustible.
The guy I live with says it was to make it more combustible. All that dried grass. The smooth brome would have stayed green for a very long time if they had left it alone. It’s very unlikely that we’ll get enough rain to keep it green now; all the rain is falling east of us.
Whoever decided to do it probably did not put that much though into it.
Probably no thought at all, which is typical.
I love “Pooka’s Shortcut ” – it is handsome, as one would expect, being created by such an artistic person, but also lovely in how it accommodates everyone in the family. Maybe it is time for “Mani’s outlook” platform to be built at the back lookout, presumably where “Pooka’s Shortcut” leads? A stone outcropping, perhaps, since the guy you live with has been working with stone so much this summer?
Thanks.
The guy I live with promised me that this outlook would just stay dirt, like it always has been.
He’s run out of rocks. All the big flat ones were not what he expected when he ordered a pallet or two of sandstone, years ago; the flat ones were at the bottom and didn’t look so big at the time, but he found a use for them, like the ones you can see to the left of me. They keep down weeds, for one thing.
I couldn’t tell you why, but I don’t care for Colchicums. Maybe the petal is too thin, or the color too pink-y? On the other hand, I have an obsession with autumn-blooming Crocus, and just today planted Crocus speciosus ‘Conqueror’ and Crocus speciosus ‘Oxonian.’ Oh, and of course, the obligatory saffron Crocus sativus. I hold the guy you live with responsible for stoking my obsession for crocus via an essay of his last year in the NARGS-RMC newsletter.
The guy I live with says speciosus is a beautiful one, though what they call ‘Oxonian’ usually isn’t a nice one, though.
Mee-yow nice touch with yor openin an closin fotoss Mani! Very artistcik 😉 Wee had a Yearling Bear inn backyard inn a tree a few yeerss ago. THE Forest Peepss came an tranqued him an brott him down an took him up North to a new place. It was sorta scary butt THE Peepss were grate at their job…. Pleese bee safe! An wee purray fore rain for youss’ there. Yore gardenss lookin guud deespite not alot of rain Guy! ***purrss*** BellaDharma an (((hugss))) BellaSita Mum
Thanks. The guy I live with said that th division of wildlife wasn’t going to do anything about the sleeping bear. We’re just not going to go anywhere near it. He heard it was a little one.
Hardly any rain falls here, when it rains.