the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here to tell you about our quiet day today. You may remember me from such posts as “The New Thing”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
You can see that the native grasses are turning green. They don’t need much water to start growing.
Most of the other green stuff is bulb foliage.

Water has become quite a concern here. We did have a little bit of rain a week or so ago, but mostly it’s been really, really windy, with high fire danger warnings almost every day. There’s no rain at all in the forecast. The guy I live with says he’s never seen a spring this dry or windy. He said experts are predicting a hotter than normal summer, and so I guess we’re going to have more fire warnings, unless the wind stops.

The wind has had an effect on the snowpack in the mountains, which in some ways doesn’t affect us since the garden isn’t watered much (except for the shade garden), but in other ways it does, of course, and overall, it’s not good.
The dust blown by the winds, which blew sixty to eighty miles an hour just yesterday in southern Colorado, have covered the snowpack with dust, and that’s lowered what scientists call its albedo, or ability to reflect sunlight, meaning the snow will melt faster than usual.
The snowpack for the Rio Grande watershed, in southern Colorado, is almost completely gone. That water goes to places like New Mexico. I’ve never been there.
(You can see that I’m learning stuff, but I’d rather learn happier stuff, like the stuff near the end of my post.)

But today was a nice, quiet day, without constant wind. I guess tomorrow will feature more wind, though, and critical fire danger.
There were bumblebees on Amsonia jonesii today. This will flower regardless of whether or not it rains.
The flowers are bluer than the pictures suggest.

There are a few other dryland amsonias which are being raised from seeds here. The guy I live with said it’s fairly annoying that while Amsonia jonesii seeds need a cold treatment to germinate, some of the others don’t, and yet they’re much harder to get established in the garden. (He tried sowing some seeds directly into the ground, but that didn’t work.)

In other news, less filled with agitation and worry, we saw a muskrat.
This is the muskrat’s happy home. We know because we saw it swim into the grassy bank there.
It’s not the same muskrat as before, but you can be sure I’ll be looking for it on my walks.

Until next time, then.

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to complain about the weather. You may remember me from such spring-related posts as “Sunless Spring”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
I’m getting ready for a day of gardening, if you couldn’t tell.

The weather here has been, in the words of the guy I live with, “nightmarish”, with wind almost every day. Not just breezes, but wind. The forecast this week calls for wind, wind, wind, wind, wind, and more wind.
If you look at my previous posts done in May, you’ll notice the word “rain” over and over again, but not this year.

Despite all this, the guy I live with went with his friend to the plant sale at the botanic gardens. He wasn’t going to buy much, since he’s been pretty discouraged lately, but he is a gardener, so he couldn’t help himself.
Nolinas, hesperaloes, dasylirions, yuccas, and a couple of plants of hardy rosemary.

I have some pictures of plants flowering in the garden here, but I should say beforehand that some of these aren’t quite in focus. The guy I live with blames the wind, of course.
When the wind isn’t blowing, the whole garden is scented with the strong smell of cloves from Ribes aureum.
Mahonia (or Berberis if you insist) fremontii is in bud.
And in the shade garden, there’s Anemone nemorosa ‘Vestal’. He got this from a friend about thirty years ago.
There are a couple other forms of this anemone in the shade garden, too.

The other day we had a visitor, who wanted to look at the purple-leaved Prunus andersonii, because people might want to take cuttings of this to introduce it into the trade.
I guess it has some Prunus × cistena (purple-leaved sand cherry) genes in it.

So that was fun. I got to show our visitor all around the garden.

And something else. Another one of those objects of mystery. We were just walking along the canal road by the old sluice.
I think I mentioned in an earlier post that there used to be an iron wheel that fit into the threads on top of the gate, but apparently someone swiped it. There used to be a farmhouse some distance to the north of the sluice.
(There’s another sluice a little bit to the west of this one, too.)

We came upon the object, or objects, of mystery.
We pondered this for a while, and then went to see if there were any trout in the canal. There weren’t any; maybe it’s too early to see them.
You can see that the water slows a bit at this bend; this is usually where we see trout. And not little trout, either.

That’s how our spring is going, thus far. (I’ve always wanted to say “thus far”.)  Lots of wind, no rain, and no trout.

Until next time, then.