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, as the title suggests, to talk about red things. You may remember me from such posts as “The Less, The Better”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
The guy I live with has been watering, even though we did get a little rain yesterday and the day before (but nowhere near as much as almost everybody else has gotten). You can see how tall the cowpen daisies are in the background.

Just a while ago I was looking out of the screen door. This is yet another one of those things the guy I live with says he’s going to replace. Eventually.
There was something in my front yard.
It was a fox. When the guy I live with went out to look at it, it ran into the neighbor’s yard.
These are not great pictures.
It would have been more exciting if I’d seen it on my walks.
So there’s one red thing. Two, if you count my red collar.

Here are more red things: the fruits of Berberis (Mahonia) haematocarpa.
The fruits are said to be edible. The guy I live with says no they’re not.

Back to watering. I’ve talked about the hummingbirds here, and the guy I live with wanted more flowers for them, and since we haven’t had very much rain in the last two months, it was time for more watering.
In a “normal” year, whatever that is these days, all these plants would get sufficient rainfall here for them to flower, because they get roughly the same amount of rain (actually more) at the same time of year in their native habitats.
If you look at Alpine, Texas (for Salvia greggii), it gets an average of 2.65 inches (67mm) of rain in August, so if we get a quarter inch of rain in August, the guy I live with said we have to make up for quite a bit of that by watering in order to get the salvias to flower.
Or Galeana, Nuevo León (for Salvia darcyi); it gets the same amount of rain as Alpine, so again watering is necessary if no rain falls.

In the side yard, Salvia greggii is flowering after being watered. This is ‘Furman’s Red’.
Not the best picture, I know.
This is a different one; the color is actually darker than the camera shows.
These salvias have been seeding around in this garden.

Maybe you can see the hummingbird in this picture. If you follow the wooden fence post down to where the flowers are, it’s humming just to the right.

This is Salvia ‘Raspberry Delight’. The guy I live with said he couldn’t get the color right unless he used the “pro” setting on the phone; otherwise the colors were washed out.
This is close to the right color.

And finally, Salvia ‘Windwalker’. The stem is lolling on leaves of Salvia darcyi which hasn’t flowered yet.
And that’s all I have for today. A bunch of red things. And happy hummingbirds.

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 repotting. You may remember me from such posts as “Smoke, Stripes, And Glowing Eyes”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
The sky got all dark, and there was thunder. It even rained for about three seconds.
I was afraid we might have a downpour like we did yesterday.
This was our downpour yesterday:
Anyway, I talked a bit about repotting seedlings yesterday, but there was a lot more of this today.
Sometimes this is called potting up or pricking out, but since the seedlings go into a larger pot, the guy I live with calls it repotting.
First he did a bunch of penstemons (Penstemon eatonii and P. cardinalis), then he did the horsetail milkweed, Asclepias subvertillaris.
The guy I live with saves cottage cheese containers just for this purpose.
He also says that it’s easier to separate the roots of the seedlings when the soil mix is dry.

The seedpots are surfaced with what they call “squeegee” for some reason (I’ve talked about this before). The squeegee keeps the soil-less mix from being washed out when the pots are watered, and also helps keep the seedlings more or less upright.
And here they are. These will need to be watered every day that it doesn’t rain.
In other words, they’ll need to be watered every day.
You can see the almost-empty bag of squeegee in this picture.
The guy I live with’s wife made these shelves just for the purpose of raising seedlings outdoors. The wire mesh and chicken wire keep squirrels out, but in the winter the guy I live with has to add some window screen, to keep mice out.
The guy I live with said that if this were a “normal” August he would be thinking about planting out the seedlings, but it’s been so hot and dry that’s not going to happen.
I’m not sure what he means by “normal”.

I couldn’t believe this intense burst of energy while it was so hot. He worked really fast.
I kind of looked at him, and he said “Repot Man’s always intense”.

Until next time, then.