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 to bring you the latest news from our garden. You may remember me from such posts as “Under Construction”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.There’s been some gardening going on, but not a whole lot. A few crocuses are flowering. The guy I live with went to a “box store” to get an extension for the gutter downspout and found some hollies on sale, fifty percent off, so he bought them, to put in a space which had been empty for over a year. I kind of liked the empty space, but the hollies look okay there.

They might even survive. They’re protected from our hot winter sun by the fence. In theory.This isn’t really the climate for hollies, or many other broad-leafed evergreens, but the guy I live with said you never know, and I guess you don’t, so there they are. It’s true that other hollies have been planted here in the past, and are no longer here, but that’s never stopped him from trying again. Especially at fifty percent off.

Getting a discount was nice. I bet you didn’t know that the guy I live with is, in fact, an ordinary gardener just like everyone else, and has always paid retail price for the plants that go into the garden. This is why, sometimes, he gets irked when people say such-and-such a plant will grow in “dry soil” when in truth it needs lots of water. He won’t talk about the amount of money spent on dead plants.

Occasionally friends send plants, or seeds, but, basically, the guy I live with goes to nurseries, or orders plants through the mail.

The really big news here, and I guess it’s created kind of a crisis, is that the guy I live with, who as you may know has decided to paint the house again, is considering painting the house a sort of brown, I think. He’s studying colors and thinking a lot about this. So it will be a house of a different color.

Well, so, that news is out of the way.

Another thing happened. A moth flew into the kitchen. 

the moth

He caught it, eventually, and put it outside. That was a huge relief. I do like the way I make multiple shadows.

The only other thing that happened–actually it happens almost every evening now–is that we’re beginning to get some excellent sunsets. I wanted to share these with you. The first thing that happens is the back yard turns all reddish.And then…

Can you see the moon in this picture?

That’s it for today. I know this is a short post but I did want to show the sunset pictures. The guy I live with said that there were a whole bunch of snowdrops up, already, and he thought that was pretty exciting. We do like the break from gardening that winter offers, though it isn’t as much of a break as you might think, considering all the things that go on here. I suppose if we lived in a climate where you could garden year-round he would like it, at least at first, and then probably start complaining about how much work it all was. 

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 to bring you up to date on the latest news from our garden. You may remember me from such posts as “One Hundred Tulips”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. You may notice that my Personal Hill is now free from cow pen daisies. I like to lie on my hill in order to survey things that need surveying, and guard things that need guarding. You can never be too careful, these days.

The reason the cow pen daisies are gone is because, as I said it would in my last post, it snowed.It wasn’t the end of the world, or anything like that, but a few plants did get nipped, and were very unceremoniously removed.

The Mirabilis longiflora got nipped (you may recall that he grew these from seed earlier this year), like the native one here (M. multiflora) does, too, and so today the guy I live with dug up the roots so that they could be planted in the garden.The weather changed after the snow. Today it was seventy-three degrees (about twenty-three Celsius) and five percent humidity. When the guy I live with says to say we live in a dry climate, that’s what we mean.

There are some crocuses and cyclamen flowering now. This is Crocus pulchellus, flowering under a yucca. I know that’s a weird place for crocuses, but they were here before the yucca was planted (at which time they had been long forgotten). Not much has been happening except for a lot of bulb planting. Bulbs have been planted here every day for at least a week, now.

Today, after he was finished, he said that was “the last of the bulbs”, unless someone sends him some.

It’s been exhausting watching him plant bulbs. But now he’s done.

It’s a nice time of year, here, even with all the wandering around looking for places to plant bulbs, and the digging. 

Some bagged soil, or maybe I should say “soil”, was spread in the “way back” garden. I’m not sure why this was done. The picture doesn’t do the buffalo grass lawn here much justice; it’s been doing very well. It’s my Private Lawn, if you didn’t know. The fence still hasn’t been fixed. Lots of Crocus speciosus in “the enclosure”. The crocuses have seeded all over the garden.The shade garden has become almost impenetrable from the east side. You know all those pictures of well-ordered, manicured gardens in garden books? This isn’t one of them. The front yard is even less well-ordered. Something was supposed to be planted in that little pile of gravel, but nothing was. I’m not sure exactly what happened there. Things here can often be mysterious.

I still get biscuits upon request. This is me looking like I need one. Or maybe two.And my walks have suddenly become much longer. We walk all over the place. Here and there. Sometimes back again where we walked before. In circles, in other words.

There is still water in the canal. Today I saw the ducks. The water level is a lot lower now. The guy I live with said yesterday that there was a muskrat in the canal, and that I completely missed it. I was looking at something else, I guess. We looked for it today, but didn’t see it. I wouldn’t mind seeing a muskrat.

We walk over to what’s called a “frontage road” and walk down the sidewalk. Though the landscaping there is what you might call “industrial”, at this time of year it’s quite nice. I think these are Acer rubrum.

At this time of year, even the deep green lawns don’t look strange. I think that’s about it for now. I’m not sure what the guy I live with is going to do, now that all the bulbs have been planted. He said something about painting the house, a while ago, and so maybe that will happen. I’m not going to help. 

Until next time, then.