the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to delight you with a post almost entirely about me. You may remember me from such me-related posts as “Radar Ears, Rabbit Feet”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristically horticultural pose. The guy I live with was taking pictures yesterday, so I looked at things in the lawn. Our lawn is full of things.

It’s been pretty hot here lately, so much so that almost no gardening has been done. It was hot today, too, but then it cooled off a lot, and started to rain a little.
I don’t like it when it rains, because it might thunder. This is me not liking it.
It stopped sprinkling, and the guy I live with suggested we go for a walk. He said it was safe.
They mowed the field, I mean like seriously mowed, not just going over it like they did earlier, and it looks very different now. The smooth brome is flowering. This is the grass that the guy I live with really detests. It’s spread all over our garden. But it looks okay here. You can see the creek there, too. It’s dry right now.
So, anway, we were walking along the coyote path behind our house, and I suddenly smelled something in the grass. This was the second time this week that I noticed it.
I really wanted to go into the grass, but the guy I live with said no.

You may not know this, but my eyesight and hearing (not to mention smelling power) are vastly superior to the guy I live with’s similar faculties. I knew there was something out there.
So we stood by the tall grass, watching, and all of a sudden the guy I live with said “You’re right”. There was something out there, and we could both see it moving through the grass.
I tried to talk the guy I live with into wading into the grass, to see what it was, but, once again, he said no. He said we should go on the other side of the creek, and maybe we could see it.
So we did.The picture isn’t much in focus, but that’s my back yard in the distance.

Still, I looked and listened and sniffed.
There was something there.
I didn’t find out what it was, even though I was super alert.
I’ll leave you with a picture of me being super alert, and I’ll let you know if we ever find out what it was.

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 bring you up to date on what’s been happening here. You may remember me from such posts “Licorice Lips”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
It’s been hot again, but not so hot that I can’t lie out on the patio. Even weirdly, like this.

All the firecrackers were pretty scary, but it wasn’t as bad as most years. Then it got hot again, but totally overcast and dark; the guy I live with said there wasn’t any kind of weather as detestable as that. It was pretty creepy.
And now there are fires out west; the smoke is coming into our part of Colorado.

There aren’t a lot of plants in flower in our garden, which the guy I live with says that’s how it’s supposed to be, during the summer. Only ones that do well without watering are really welcome here. There could be more of those, but not much effort has been put into that, lately. Some plants have been grown from seeds, but most of the seedlings died, the way I hear they do. He forgot about them during the hot weather.

This is an evening picture, looking down the overgrown path on the north side of the garden.
There are ratibidas (Ratibida columnifera) all over the garden; they do very well without having to be watered.
Some of the grasses are flowering, too. This is the alkali sacaton, Sporobolus airoides.
The phone camera doesn’t do justice to the flowers.
The guy I live with said he would be content if the garden were almost nothing but grasses.

Speaking of grasses, my Private Lawn was mowed. The guy I live with said he was going to go buy a cordless lawn mower, and did a lot of research, but he hasn’t been feeling all that great lately, mostly because of the heat, and so it got put off, and then, suddenly, he realized that buying a lawn mower for this much grass was a total waste of money. He used the push mower, instead.
I suppose the lawn should be raked, and then watered, which is what you do after you mow buffalo grass.

The other thing–there have been more “other things”, but mostly not worth talking about–has to do with the oriole feeders.
The guy I live with said he’s gone through eight jars of jelly in the last month and a half. We have a lot of orioles.
He went to the store a few days ago, and got more, but when he opened the jar, it was jam. And it said “jam” right on the jar. So then he wondered if the orioles would like jam just as well as jelly.
One feeder now has jelly, one has jam, and they seem equally popular.

This is the sort of thing I have to deal with.

I guess that’s all. Pretty fascinating, huh?

Until next time, then.