the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to tell you that once again, I’m roasting hot. You may remember me from such similarly-themed posts as “Still Roasting”, “Beyond Super Roasting”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
You can see how green it is after the rain two weeks ago. It rained today, for about ten seconds.
It’s pretty hot. It was 96 or something yesterday, the same today, and it’s supposed to be 99 tomorrow.
The weird thing is that it’s humid. Not like steamy, but more than we’re used to, for sure. About twenty percent humidity.
That almost never happens here; usually, as the temperature rises, the humidity goes down. But not right now. It does prevent the plants from transpiring too much water, so I guess the humidity is okay. It certainly is different.
I still have to check on things.
Cotton is flying through the garden, but it’s not from cottonwoods, rather from the willows along the canal. The guy I live with said cottonwoods and willows are in the same family.
It’s kind of hard to believe that just an inch and a half (give or take) or rain two weeks ago brought out the mushrooms in the “way back”, under the Wasatch maples.
This was a big one.
The Persian yellow rose is having an excellent year.
The guy I live with posted some different pictures of this rose on Facebook, and a couple of people said something about “blackspot”. Even with mushrooms growing in the garden, and the extra humidity, it’s too dry for things like “blackspot”.

There are other roses. This is kind of a crummy picture of ‘Darlow’s Enigma’.
‘Paul’s Himalayan Musk’ rambler. Tiny little flowers.
The salvias are starting to flower, too. This is Salvia sclarea var. turkestanica. Kind of a smelly plant.
Melica ciliata, too. We probably have too much of this in the garden. The guy I live with didn’t know it would seed around so much.
It started out in the “way back” border, but instead of going into the field, which would be wrong, it’s seeded in the other direction, toward the house.
Speaking of seeds, the guy I live with hasn’t been too happy about his overall results with seeds this year (not that the seeds didn’t germinate, but a lot of seedlings died), but the ‘Heavenly Blue’ morning glories have done really well.
There are two pots of these which will going into The Enclosure and hopefully the plants will climb up the fence.

Some plants came in the mail. They took longer to arrive than expected. I guess that’s nothing new, these days. The guy I live with was a bit concerned about plants in boxes in this heat, but only one plant didn’t make it.
Some were a little rootbound, so they’re being repotted into larger pots with the “special soil” surrounding the rootball, and then watered a lot. The “super genius” method I talked about some time ago.
Looking back on that post, it’s hard to believe how much the garden has changed just since I’ve been here. A lot of plants have died, some have thrived, and new ones have been added to the garden.
Anyway, this is the special soil.
Almost no organic matter at all.

So that’s really it for today. Oh, except that a hawkmoth flew into the kitchen last night. That was kind of exciting. The guy I live with caught it with his hands, let it go outside, and it flew back into the kitchen. It was caught and let go again. Of course I wanted to catch it and eat it, but the guy I live with told me not to do that. I guess he’s never tried moths.
I’ll leave you with another atmospheric picture of me taking care of the garden yesterday evening. The sunbeam didn’t quite illuminate me, which was disappointing.

Until next time, then.

Greetings and saluations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to tell you how totally soaked we are. You may remember me from similarly-themed posts as “Rain, Rain, Rain, Rain”, among at least a few others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
Maybe you can see that I’m checking the garden to see how wet it is. Really, really wet.
Since about two o’clock in the afternoon yesterday, we’ve gotten an inch and a quarter of rain (that’s a little over three centimeters). There wasn’t any thunder, either.

This is really typical for June, here, and after all the dry weather in April, and the fire warnings, it comes as a huge relief. But it’s wet, and so there’s going to be no gardening.

Let me back up a couple of days, though, and tell you what happened to the guy I live with, who isn’t as strong as he used to be, but thinks he still is.
He went over to help his neighbor saw down a big broken branch off the honey locust tree in their front yard. He showed his neighbor the right way to make the first cuts before making the one by the branch collar. The branch came down just fine, but the guy I live with thought he could hold up the branch and let it fall slowly to the ground, without damaging the new fence that the neighbor had put it.
Well, naturally, he couldn’t lift the weight of the branch like he would have been able to do twenty years ago, so the branch sort of slipped, and smashed the end of his little finger. Not badly, but enough.

I also got into a little trouble when I saw a fairly large eastern yellow-bellied racer in the cactus garden. I really wanted to get it, by crashing through the cactus, and the guy I live with kind of lost it when I started to go into that garden. He yelled at me really loudly.
I guess he really does have my best interests at heart, though, because he explained afterward that it would have meant a trip to the doctor’s office, for me.
The snake is now in the front yard. It must have slithered all the way around the house.  Just thinking about that gives me the creeps.

Well, anyway, back to today and our soaking-wet garden.
The only action here is the constant racket from orioles, demanding grape jelly. You can see the feeder off to the right, there.
We can’t find the holding rod for the other feeder so I guess we’ll just have one, all summer.  The rain, of course, washed away all the jelly last night, but I think it’s been rejellified at least twice, just today.
We also have goldfinches and nuthatches, but the regular feeders are empty, because of the bird flu, I guess.

On my morning walk, I thought it would be a good idea to check the water level in the creek.  Somenody needs to do it, after all. The guy I live with said that when he and his wife moved here, there was always water running in it; now it’s mostly dry. But not today.
You can see that the field was mowed, which annoys the guy I live with no end, because he says the grass will easily out-compete any weeds, but no one ever listens to that, even though it’s super obvious. The mowed parts become full of weeds, and the unmowed parts don’t.

That’s all for today. The guy I live with said it’s so wet we might even see a slug, but somehow I don’t think so.

Until next time, then.