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 my encounter, and a few other things. You may remember me from such posts as “In The Furnace”. among, so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
It may look slightly stormy in the background, but the guy I live with said that was “just for show”.
I heard thunder, but the storm passed us by after a couple of minutes of sprinkling.
The storm went to the northeast, as usual.
I can tell how frustrated and disappointed the guy I live with is right now. We haven’t had a good soaking rain since July 16.

He has been enjoying the hummingbirds, which are still here, maybe because of the buffet on the south side of the house. Not a very good picture, but I think you can see all the redness.And the buffet in the front garden.
The most conspicuous buffet selection here now is Salvia darcyi. It was wilting pathetically a couple of days ago so the guy I live with turned on the hose and pointed it right at the bases of all the plants. He stood there for a while, watering.I have to admit this isn’t all that exciting to me, since I don’t see red, and even though the guy I live with tried to describe the color to me, I didn’t get it.

And anyway, I had an encounter on my evening walk yesterday.
I could tell something was afoot because my super-efficient nose told me so.
The fox, which is what this was, looked at me. I looked at the fox. The fox looked at me some more. I looked at the fox some more.
We looked at each other for quite some time while the guy I live with fumbled with his phone and tried to get a halfway decent picture. Maybe this is just quarterway decent.
We just kept looking at each other.

Eventually the fox trotted away, and naturally I wanted to drag the guy I live with on the leash down into the underbrush to look for the fox, but I could tell by all the complaining at the other end of the leash that I was overdoing it.
This was of course the first time I’ve ever overdone anything.

I guess that’s it for today.
This evening we walked all the way to the end of where we walk, toward the east, where the canal takes a turn, and the streets there were wetter than our street. They even got more rain three blocks from our house than we did.
The guy I live with had an opinion about that. I can’t repeat what he said.
I found something interesting to look at.
Then we turned around to go home.

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 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.