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 yet another mistake that had to be made right. You may remember me from such posts as “How To Avoid Gardening”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.I’m sure you would agree I look like I need to have a biscuit, and eat it on the couch, with the swamp cooler blowing nice cool air on me.
I got one, of course.

It’s really dry here. I mean like super dry; we’ve received about a quarter inch (6.35 mm) of rain since we had that downpour the last week of June. And it’s been over 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32.2 C) almost every day since like forever.
We did have two cooler days this week, and even cooler nights, which was very nice, but we have a “heat advisory” again for tomorrow and the next day.

Even so, the green belt mostly looks very green.
The guy I live with thinks that the grass in the upper right is brown because the soil is different there; not “creek-bottom loam” but something that the rain didn’t infiltrate very well, like clay.

A couple of days ago the guy I live with left me to go out to lunch with his friend. They also went to a little nursery. The guy I live with saw this sign.
I can’t say exactly what happened when he saw that sign, but maybe you can use your powers of deduction.
Yes, again.

He didn’t find any Hesperaloe parviflora there; if he had, he would have bought some because it’s the only plant in flower for the hummingbirds right now. (See my post “Pink Asparagus”.)
In fact we disturbed a male broad-tailed hummingbird visiting the hesperaloe when we came home from my evening walk.
The hummingbird got very annoyed and sat on an oak branch waiting for us to go into the house so he could go about his business.So about the title of today’s post. It really should be “things undone and done”, but the guy I live with said that sounded clunky.

I’ll take you out into the “way back” garden to show you what happened.
On our way out, let’s look at the enclosure. More work has been done.
There was someone out in the green belt so I had to check that first. There are several places with no plants against the fence, for purebred border collies to look out into the green belt to make sure everything is okay.
Then I went and looked out, standing on my Private Lawn, which is very dry and crispy right now.
(Those posts are perches for Great Horned Owls, if you didn’t know. Owls have perched on them, and it’s scary to walk back here and see a large owl looking at me. The bamboo stakes are for plants, which of course are going to be moved later.)
Anyway, yesterday evening, the guy I live with suddenly realized he had made a “terrible mistake” that had to be corrected as soon as possible.
I didn’t get it, but he said that it felt all wrong. If you saw my post “Moving The Sacatons”, you know that he moved these eventually-huge grasses to the other side (the east side) of my Private Lawn.
He said these big grasses should be on the west side of the lawn, by the fence, where they were first planted. Since the fence is chain link, and there’s the open green belt behind that, this is where the grasses belong.
They were moved back this morning, and watered.
The guy I live with said the rocks are there because he couldn’t figure out what else to plant there, though he did sow some seeds of galleta, Hilaria jamesii. (This is the time to sow seeds of that grass.)

And on the other side now, two plants of Mirabilis multiflora, some grasses, and then some seeds of more grasses, Ratibida columnifera, and other things were sown, which is the right time to sow these, too.
The cages are to protect the new plants from bunnies. (Those green plants behind the cages are Sedum ‘Matrona’ which he’s been trying to give away.)
The guy I live with sprinkled some “compost” (mostly wood chips) on the newly-sown and watered seed; he said that all that brown is very unsightly. Hopefully we’ll get some rain next week–the guy I live with isn’t counting on it–and then the buffalo grass will revive quickly and start moving into that brown area, too.  There isn’t all that much time for the grass to revive this year, though, if it doesn’t rain in the next couple of weeks.
The shriveled plant in the center is Centaurea orientalis, which he’ll see if he can transplant or give away.

And that’s it. Another mistake rectified, much to my relief, since I don’t have to listen to the cries of horror. The guy I live with said that probably no one would know, and I certainly won’t tell anyone.

Until next time, then.

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the purebred border collie, Mani the roasting hot border collie, here today not only to tell you how totally roasting hot I am, but to talk about the enclosure. You may remember me from such posts as “Into The Garden, Endlessly Roasting”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
I’m facing the other way from my last characteristic pose, to cool off my hindquarters.

So, big surprise, it’s been hot every day here, since like forever. Denver does have hot summers, but this seems ridiculous to me. Even more ridiculous is that this is, so far, only the second hottest summer in Denver on record.
It’s 97 degrees Fahrenheit (36C), with eight percent humidity, right now.

The guy I live with said it’s best that we stay inside today, with the swamp cooler running. I don’t have many objections to that.

Yesterday he worked in the enclosure and I worried that he was going to get heat exhaustion, but he did come inside frequently, to drink cold rooibos tea.
One issue that he’s facing is what to do with the tree peony, Paeonia rockii ‘Highdown’.
This was his wife’s favorite plant. He moved it into the enclosure, where it took about a dozen years to recover and flower again, but it’s really suffering in this heat and very dry weather. He offered it to some people last year, but they declined. He then offered it to his sister, but after talking about how big this thing gets, and how many years it takes to recover from being transplanted, she didn’t want it either.
I don’t know what will happen to it.

The roses are another issue, but an issue that’s been resolved. There are four, and the guy I live with dug up three, so far. These are spoken for. They’re sitting on the patio, looking okay, and will get a weak foliar feed after a while. I discussed this in my post “The Pump.”
The roses will be buried in the ground over winter, and then dug up next spring, though the guy I live with wonders if we’ll even have a winter.

Anyway, he cleared out all the vinca from one part of the enclosure a few days ago, and decided to plant the Agastache rupestris he purchased earlier this year. This is a fairly high-water demand plant for our garden; earlier this year the guy I live with imagined filling the enclosure, which was regularly watered, with a lot of plants that hummingbirds would like, but the heat, drought, and watering restrictions put an end to that plan.

The agastaches really aren’t desert plants, like some people say. More of a mountain plant (rupestris means “rocky”, as in cliffs and stuff). The monograph on the genus says this species is found (at the type locality in southwestern New Mexico anyway) “growing among vegetation-covered boulders of pink granite, on north-facing slopes, in sandy soil” (or something to that effect). Hummingbirds love it.
There’s no north-facing slope or sandy soil in the enclosure, but the guy I live with does have some ugly pink granite, which his late father-in-law collected somewhere (so he obviously can’t return it).
There are two agastaches there, among the pink granite.
The plants were in “the waiting room”, with their roots grown out of the root balls using the “Super Genius Method”, but today they were wilted, which the guy I live with expected. He watered them.

There are some penstemons that will be planted here, watered, and then this little area will be mulched.

And that’s all I have on this roasting hot day. I’ll leave you with a picture of me on my morning walk; we got up extra early to enjoy the cool weather.

Until next time, day.