the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to talk about something a little different. You may remember me from such posts as “A Discovery”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
Well, so, yesterday was my birthday, and now I’m seeing what it’s like to be seven. It seems pretty much the same as being six, if you ask me.

We did some work in the garden yesterday; more work was done today. It’s 60 degrees (15.5C) today and so the work was pleasant, though the guy I live with had to wear a mask against the strong laundry smell from next door. Good thing he’s used to wearing masks.
There was a bunch of sawing, and other stuff.

The enclosure now looks really different. I’m not sure what to make of it. This is the view from the north side.
The bird bath was broken some years ago, so now it’s just ornamental. The little garden there is filled with Geranium macrorrhizum.
All of the slats will be removed, eventually, and the lattice on top will go, too. You can see how much the section on the far right is leaning.
The guy I live with’s wife built this fence, but, as I keep hearing, nothing lasts forever.
And, it’s something to do, other than just wandering around the garden. That’s fun, but projects are even better.

This is what it looks like inside the enclosure.
You might say delapidated, though that really refers to stone. (“Lapis”, stone.)
The big metal chicken is facing the wrong way, which is weird. Maybe the wind blew it around, or something.
The whole whiskey barrel on the right has collapsed; something has to be done about that. The wood, which is oak, will be reused, somehow.
This is what the new fence will look like. The guy I live with did this part of the fence.
Since his wife built the enclosure (and laid the flagstone, and built the fire pit which is never used), there are all kinds of reminders of her in this little garden.
She bought the funny little raccoon to sit on the bench she built. The sundial was a gift, but the sickle belonged to the guy I live with’s grandfather, or maybe even his great uncle. It’s really old. Older than seven, for sure.

And, of course, the bats.
Hopefully everything will look spiffier by this time next year.

The area where the lilacs were (mostly) cut down looks pretty bad right now. But you can see that a path has formed; the guy I live with says it gives a sense of direction. We really like paths. And you can also see the slope I talked about just a while ago.
The guy I live with is fairly excited by the potential here. (From the blue ephedra you can see in the distance down to my Private Lawn is a drop of about three feet, maybe even more.)
The bench under the arbor, that straight piece of wood behind the thistle feeder, is perfectly level (his wife built it), so that may give a sense of how much it slopes there.
Then there are the troughs. As I probably said, most of the alpine plants growing in the troughs have died. At one time, there were three dozen large troughs in the garden, filled with saxifrages, androsaces, daphnes, and so forth. The troughs needed almost daily watering.
They needed to be moved, anyway, because the honey locust that was shading them has to be cut down, maybe some time early next year.
The troughs are going to the Chatfield Arboretum, part of Denver Botanic Gardens, and not very far from here. (See my post called “The Arboretum Again.”) I think about ten have already gone there.
After the troughs were emptied of the soil-less mix, they were carted onto the patio until they got picked up, for the Arboretum.
One time, the guy I live with was moving a trough from the dolly, to stand it against the shelves, and felt a sharp pain in his hip. He thought he’d broken something, but he could walk, so maybe just tore a ligament or whatever. It hurt for a couple of weeks at least, but seems to be better now.
You can guess how slowly and carefully the moving is done now.

Some troughs just broke when he tried to move them. They can be glued back together, but not if they’re being given away.
All of the troughs, except for four by the patio, will go to the Arboretum; it’s a slow process now that the guy I live with has realized he’s not nineteen any more.
I didn’t say anything about only being seven, because then I might have been put to work.