the miserable gardener

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 the weather, and about colchicums. You may remember me from such posts as “The Kitchen Cricket”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
This is me in the morning, not totally ready for the endless heat.
The guy I live with said they predicted 90 degrees F (32.2C) for the first of October.
He said this is far too hot and I certainly agree.

Yesterday evening, this happened.
It wasn’t very much, but it was some. And it did cool off.

Later, on my evening walk, the sky looked like this.
You would think this would signal more rain, but no, it was just the sky, full of idle promises.

Now I’m going to talk about colchicums. They’re planted all over the garden, some in sun and some in partial shade, but most of them are planted here, among the Geranium macrorrhizum, which the guy I live with likes the smell of.
Here I am next to a lot of them.
The guy I live with didn’t feel like walking through the geraniums to take pictures, so here is ‘Beaconsfield’ photographed from afar.
Its obvious, but tesselated, companion is ‘Disraeli’.
And look at ‘Nancy Lindsay’ now.
Believe it or not, there are more colchicums.

Colchicum autumnale ‘Major’ (really C. x byzantinum but this is what it’s called in the trade).

‘Daendels’.

Colchicum haynaldii, a species from the Balkans.

‘Lysimachus’.

Colchicum bivonae ‘Apollo’ a selection from a Balkan species.

‘Herbstkugel’ (autumn globe).

‘Herbstkugel’ again.

‘Pink Goblet’.

The guy I live with says some of these are nicer than others, but he wanted to try as many as he could.
If you like these, there are two sources which sell flowering-sized corms; one is Daffodils and More, another is PHS Daffodils (but their colchicums aren’t for sale now).

So that’s our news for today. I’ll leave you with a picture of me lounging on my Private Lawn, surveying Aster oblongifolius for bees.

Until next time, then.

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 bring you our latest news. You may remember me from such posts as “Nature Is Icky”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
I’m looking at bees, if you were wondering. There are zillions of bees on the flowers of Sedum ‘Matrona’.
I eat bees, even though the guy I live with says not to. I think that’s because he’s never tried them.
Really, though, bees and wasps and yellowjackets are scary, and I eat them to keep them from stinging me. That may sound odd to you, but I don’t think it is, though the guy I live with calls reasoning like that “border collie logic”.

As promised, I have some pictures of colchicums today.

Colchicum autumnale ‘Nancy Lindsay’ again.

‘Rosy Dawn’

‘World Champion’s Cup’

Colchicum laetum, a smallish species found in southern Russia.

Colchicum x agrippinum

Those are the colchicums for today. That last one takes the cake for tesselation, doesn’t it?
There is another tesselated one that I hope to show soon.

So today I was left alone to my own devices (that is, I slept) while the guy I live with went to a plant sale not far from here, to a big public garden next to Kendrick Lake.
He only bought three plants, and didn’t wander around the garden like he thought he would, because he’d spent too much time there and wanted to come home to see me.

But he saw this, and he said it made him “blue with envy”.
This is Salvia azurea. If you’ve read Claude Barr’s Jewels of the Plains he mentions this, and S. pitcheri, which is now considered the same as S. azurea.
Barr says that the salvia has very deep roots that search for water, and will survive drought, but won’t flower in autumn unless it rains.
This garden is watered quite a bit, and though the guy I live with has a plant of this in the garden, he said he wanted it to be as big as this one, so he’s going to water more.
(By the way, if you do an internet search on “do roots search for water” there are quite a few websites that say they don’t. They do; it’s called hydrotropism.)

And that’s all I have for today. I was hoping this post would be more about me, but the guy I live with assured me that a post mostly featuring me might come in the near future.

Until next time.