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 a few things that have happened. You may remember me from such posts as “Jam Session”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
If the garden suddenly looks all green, that’s partly because the guy I live with has been watering, but also because, at about 10:30 last night, it started to thunder a lot, and then it poured rain for two hours.
It rained so much that the guy I live with’s neighbor ran out at night out to clear the storm drains so his front yard wouldn’t flood. The guy I live with didn’t see him do that, or he would have helped.
This bird bath was empty yesterday morning.
I could tell the guy I live with was very relieved by all the rain.
I thought it was scary, and wasn’t sure I was going to be able to go out before bedtime, but it turned out I was able to, and then the guy I live with dried me off with a towel.

Day before yesterday, the guy I live with spotted a huge crawdad right by the canal. Why it was strolling around on the path I don’t know.
He put it back into the water.
But then yesterday evening, before the storm, I encountered another big one that threatened me. 
It held up its big claws as if to say “You shall not pass!” but I just bravely hopped over it.
The guy I live with put that one back in the water, too.
He also looked up whether crawdads should be walking along paths and I guess they do that, but it’s not a safe place for them to do that, because there aren’t any ponds around here, and the creek is almost always dry these days. (It wasn’t, this morning.)

The guy I live with said this hawk might like to snack on a crawdad.
By the way, that’s how our sky has looked for days and days now; this picture was taken today but it’s not going to rain.

The other thing, and this didn’t really work out the way the guy I live with hoped, is the new growth on the ‘Folsom Blue’ oak. It didn’t work out because the phone camera didn’t capture the right color today, with all the new growth.
This is the right color:
You can see why it has “blue” in its name.

This oak was grown from acorns by the late Allan Taylor from a tree growing near Folsom, New Mexico.
Aside from that original tree, this may be the only one.

The guy I live with said he thought it was important to acquire plant selections made by gardeners from an older generation, which is why there are so many of these in our garden.
After the guy I live with’s wife died, he would prowl nurseries and sometimes there would only be one or two of something, and if the plants looked special, he would buy them.
Of course he did kill a few of those plants, which still annoys him.

He acquired two oaks with this label but the other one was mislabeled, and it deeply resented being transplanted after the guy I live with realized he’d planted them in the wrong place, which he does a lot.
This is the other one, which isn’t as big.
Probably because he didn’t get all the roots, it died back quite a bit one winter, but as you can see it looks healthy now. Healthy but little.

That’s all I have for today. Rain, crawdads, and oaks.
I’m more or less assured there won’t be any thunder tonight, but since we’re getting “the tail end of the monsoon”, anything is possible.
And here’s my tail end.

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 complain about the weather. You may remember me from such posts as “The New Arrivals”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
We haven’t had a decent rain in about a month, which is very unsettling, but here I am trying to put a brave face on it.
I’ve heard thunder almost every evening but nothing has happened except for a few sprinkles.
It’s been very dark here almost all day, every day, and hot, too, and if this sounds really gross, well, it is. Totally covered with dark clouds most of the day, thundering, almost no rain at all, and hot.

The guy I live with took a bunch of pictures in the last couple of days so I thought I would post them here.
A lot of these were taken in the evening.
You can see how much rain we get in the next picture.I really need to show you a picture of my Private Lawn. This is ‘Cody’ buffalo grass which the guy I live with started from seed. Buffalo grass seed is now super expensive (90 dollars for three pounds) so he hasn’t continued the lawn for the path in the distance.
He admitted he could have done a better job mowing my lawn, but I don’t really care. He  uses a push mower for this.
The grass needs to be watered after it’s been mowed, but not much at all after that.
So that’s it. A bunch of pictures. Not much else to say since it’s been so hot, so dark, and so dry. The guy I live with says if this sounds sort of like a gardener’s nightmare, he wouldn’t argue.

I’ll leave you with a picture of me, a Livingstone in search of a Nile, in the tall smooth brome.
I really am there, if you were wondering.

Until next time, then.