the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here this evening to tell you partly that the guy I live with has not lost his mind trying to create posts in the “classic editor” instead of the new way, which he detests, and also to talk about some more interesting things.  You may remember me from such posts as “Colchicum Time”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. The Abies lasiocarpa ‘Compacta’, or whatever its name was, that you used to see in pictures all the time, died and was cut down.
So now the view is like this:The guy I live with really liked the little conifer, which was about twelve feet tall, but the garden became too dry for it. So that was that. You can see the stump right at the bottom of this picture.
And you can also see the new roof. The guy I live with got all teary-eyed when he saw the new roof finally in, with new vents and stuff. He feels very strongly that this is his wife’s house, as I’m sure I’ve said before. It’s my house, too. The guy I live with felt pretty bad about the fir, which is what an abies is, but there wasn’t much to be done about it. It started dying a couple of years ago.
The garden is really, really dry. Lots of plants have died this year. Plants that have been here for a very long time. Especially ones in the troughs. So there have been a lot of changes here, this year. But some things stay the same. Like the view of the studio window downstairs. The windows are very dirty but the guy I live with’s wife wanted them that way because of the light, for her drawing.And what he calls the “Wardian case” out on the patio table. That stays the same. There isn’t much of anything in it besides some feathers and snake bones. Yes, I know, but he thought it would be cool. We found those on one of our walks.

The guy I live with and his friend went to the bulb and plant sale at the botanic gardens last Friday. He bought a bunch of stuff, but almost all of it was for her.
They didn’t wander around the gardens much but here are two pictures of the steppe garden and Leonotis leonurus. I guess it used to grow here, as an annual. 

I don’t think these pictures are much in focus. The guy I live with should start using his regular camera more.
Which he does for the owl pictures, like this one. Still not in focus much.He thought this was the same owl as always, because of its left eye, but then found a picture of an owl taken seven years ago, and it obviously isn’t the same owl. That really is pretty much it for now. My walks have been good.I guess I’ll let you go with a picture of me, and ducks in a row. We’ll work on getting the pictures more in focus.  He does take the pictures while we’re walking, so there’s that. 

Until next time, then.

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today on what will probably be the last post of this summer. You may remember me from such posts as “Autumnal Equinox”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. 

You can see how well I guard the house from this position.

Kind of a lot has happened since my last post. A lot for us, anyway. The guy I live with and his friend went to the Chatfield Arboretum, which is part of Denver Botanic Gardens, and is sort of close to where we live.
I have some pictures, even though I didn’t get to go.

They also have animals there. This goat had an itch on its tummy, and was scratching itself on the wooden hay-holding thing.

The animals are very well-cared-for. Rather like me.

Here are some more pictures of that willow sculpture I showed a while ago. It’s called “One Fell Swoop”, and it looks kind of scary. The guy I live with said it was cool. 

I guess he’s been in kind of a peculiar mood lately, and there are reasons for that, I suppose.
For one thing, he said he was going to change my name to Runcible G. Codd (the purebred border collie). I think Mani is a perfectly good name, though both of us get annoyed when people pronounce it like “Manny”. It’s Sanskrit, and it means jewel, which I certainly am. But he said Runcible G. Codd was maybe more like me and my personality. I of course completely disagree.
But we’ve been going through a bunch of changes this year. Some little, some majorly huge. 

This is in the majorly huge department. We’re getting a new roof.

The guy I live with put this off for years, especially after his wife died. There was a hailstorm a few months after she died, and he didn’t get a roof then (though the storm missed the house by two blocks, the way storms do), and then there was one in 2014, and two last year. (Only one from the year they moved in, 1985, until 2009, so that says something.)
He felt bad about putting this off, because he usually doesn’t put things off, but did with this, but now we have a new roof and new gutters. The old gutters, especially were really leaky.

Now it will probably never rain again.
One thing, though, just possibly, there will be less fretting when the next severe storm heads our way. There were several this summer, in fact, every time the temperature went below ninety degrees (F) we were under a severe thunderstorm watch, or warning. Maybe this will be the weather of the future, blazingly hot for weeks on end, and then on the one day that it cools off, violent weather headed right toward us.
The guy I live with pretty much detests the weather here, these days, but he said “Here we are, anyway.”

There are some native plants in flower, despite the pretty much endless heat and drought (though it did rain a bit a few days ago). This is Aster ericoides, by the canal. 

For some reason, no one mowed along the canal like they usually do. 

So many things have been different this year, it’s becoming hard to keep up. But the colchicums are still flowering, like they do every year.

Dick Trotter

Rosy Dawn

Innocence

agrippinum

World Champion’s Cup

And the cyclamen are starting, too. This is a special color form of Cyclamen hederifolium. It’s growing in the upstairs bedroom for now. (It was going to be planted this year but things happened, you know.)

Well I guess that’s it. It’s not as hot as it has been, and that’s nice, and I’m going to ignore the guy I live with if he keeps up this Runcible G. Codd silliness, because we purebred border collies are usually very serious, and this is just too much.
I’ll leave you with a picture of me, showing just how dry things are here. 

Until next time, then.