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, and some areas outside our garden, too. You may remember me from such posts as “Crickets And Coyotes”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. The carpet was shampooed last Wednesday.
“They” said it might rain today, and indeed, it’s been drizzling for a little while now. As you can tell just by looking at that picture. The guy I live with said we need some “real rain” in order for the water to get down to plant roots.
I guess today is the first full day of autumn, and it’s pretty chilly outside. And inside. The furnace just got turned on, for a furnace test, and there’s that dusty furnace smell in the house, which the guy I live with says is a pleasant sign of the change of seasons.
If I listened to him more, I would say that this past summer has been one of the most dreadful ever, with a little over an inch of rain since the solstice (four “rain events” of more than two-tenths of an inch), and only a few days of sun. I liked the summer because I don’t care whether or not it’s sunny, so long as there isn’t a lot of thunder, which there wasn’t, just lots of clouds and darkness, along with all the complaining.
On our morning walk a few days ago we came across an expired animal and decided not to go that way for a while. Then when I was playing with my buddies at Day Care, the guy I live with said there was a vulture circling over him. At first of course he thought it was looking at him, but then he remembered what we’d seen on our walk, and sure enough, the vulture landed right near it.
He tried to take some vulture pictures but this is all that resulted from that attempt. In the first picture he said that the vulture was there, “somewhere”. He said he only had the point-and-shoot with him, and so just pointed and shot. I guess that makes sense. 
But you can definitely see it here.
I saw the vulture the next day, on my morning walk, circling over me, but the guy I live with said I was safe, and explained vultures to me. I got a case of the creeps.
Nature is icky, if you ask me. What with vultures, and all these bugs constantly landing on me, it’s almost too much.
The guy I live with said to look at the water in the canal. That made me feel better.
Even though they’re just Siberian elms, they make nice shady spots on the canal road. 
That same day, a box of bulbs came from Brent and Becky’s. The bulbs come in bags, which is extremely handy.
That way they can all be soaked at the same time. It would be a mistake to soak the bulbs without the bags, unless they were done one kind at a time. Soaking gives the bulbs an extra drink of water so that when they go into the bone-dry ground they’ll have a tiny head start on life.
A lot of the plants sitting out on the flagstone path were planted in the last few days, because the roots had grown out of the root balls, just like the guy I live with said they would (I didn’t hear much boasting about that, which was surprising), and because rain was predicted.
When it started to drizzle, the guy I live with decided to take pictures. That didn’t sound right to me, but he used the point-and-shoot instead of the “big camera”. So here are some pictures taken today, on a dark and drizzly day. They’re kind of gloomy. See if you can see me in the first one.
the little yard on the south side of the house
me
Zauschneria ‘Etteri’
Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ and Artemisia ‘Powis Castle’ in the enclosure
some Sedum sediforme ‘Turquoise Tails’ were planted on the left side of this path, to fill in
Leptodermis oblonga
the “way back” with the poles for great horned owls
The dirt path there, in the picture above, is one of the many “problem areas” in the garden. It was grass, at one time, but had to be watered an awful lot, and eventually most of it died. Before that it was dirt, and so I guess it’s going to be dirt again, for a long time.
the purple smoke bush and blue lyme grass in the “way back”
Salvia lemmonii after it got watered
Colchicum ‘Innocence’ just beginning, in the shade garden
That really is it, for today. It’s beginning to rain more, now, though in our climate that doesn’t mean it will keep raining. We hope it does.
Time for me to talk the guy I live with into another biscuit, before I go on what might be a very wet evening walk. I might not even go on my walk, if it’s thundering, and that would be just fine with me. Walks are spoiled by thunder, if you didn’t know. I have to race back home, dragging the guy I live with behind me. 
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 