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 “My New Toy”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.Obviously, I think the title of today’s post is pretty funny. The sun was out. Get it?

The sun actually did come out today, which surprised the guy I live with a whole lot, since we haven’t had a whole day of sun in so very, very long. He said, “So the first day the sun comes out, it’s going to be eclipsed. Typical.”

The eclipse made these strange patterns on the patio. Also typically, he didn’t have the camera at the right settings. You would think a person with two cameras who takes a lot of pictures would have a clue as to what the right settings are, but, whatever, huh.

Then it was over. That was the main excitement of the day.

Yesterday there was quite a bit of excitement. One of what I figure was Norm and Celeste’s kids showed up in the field. All the dogs who live along the field were barking like crazy. The guy I live with went out to see what all the commotion was, saw the coyote, ran back into the house to get his camera, ran back to the back fence, and scared the coyote, who was lying down in the grass. He got these pictures anyway.  We decided that since it was a youngster it didn’t know that the time for coyotes to stroll down the “green belt” (really just as field filled with smooth brome, which as you can see has turned green again after it was mowed and then rained one that one time) was early morning or dusk. Though the young coyote did seem to know that the path, the same path we walk on sometimes, was a coyote path.

Back to today, after the eclipse business, the guy I live with spent a long time making these things called steamed buns (Chinese steamed buns), though I guess that really at the end of the process is when they could be called “steamed”. Eleven buns were made. I didn’t get any, as usual.

No gardening took place today. The guy I live with said that the combination of an eclipse and making steamed buns was way too exhausting.

I do have a picture of the cow-pen daisies, though. This is their time of year, so they get their picture taken a lot.You can see some bee plants there, too.The real reason for all the daisies and bee plants being there is that the guy I live with couldn’t figure out what else to plant there, though some things have been planted since then, and the lavenders are going there, too.

I still got to go on my evening walk, even with all the steamed buns being made.

The sprinklers were on across the street, but the guy I live with said not along the sidewalk, but farther back in the office park, and that we should stay on the sidewalk, so we didn’t go over there.The hops are looking pretty good right now. I guess I don’t need to say that they make good companion plants for rabbitbrush again, do I? That picture could have been more in focus, I think.

This is part of the canal road where I don’t often go.  The canal is on the left. The levee, I guess you would call it, was made with pieces of concrete about the size of a tennis ball, in this section, and so it’s not much fun to walk on. There are kind of a lot of alfalfa plants in the way, too. That yellow bit is a piece of poplar branch that fell from a tree on the other side of the canal. The goldenrod is looking pretty good right now. We stopped to admire it. Being a purebred border collie, I can see yellow. The goldenrods were pretty yellow. That’s Amorpha fruticosa on the right. The guy I live with said that when he was a kid, he used to get something called “eggs à la goldenrod” all the time, because he and his dad both liked it a lot. When the guy I live with heard that there was a plant called “goldenrod” he thought that was part of the recipe, but then, he was little at the time.

There are several plants growing along the canal which you don’t see in places where there isn’t constantly running water. The guy I live with thinks that seeds floated down the canal from the mountains; the water from the canal comes from Turkey Creek. Or maybe it comes from Bear Creek. Or both. I think both creeks flow into a lake, really a reservoir, to the northwest of us.

Anyway, that’s what I have for today’s post. The guy I live with said it would be completely excellent to make a post with a title like today’s, on an eclipse day. We won’t have too many opportunities to be so riotously humorous in the future. I’m not sure that’s true; we’ll see. 

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 the latest news from our garden. You may remember me from such posts as “The Project”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. Just lying on the patio, the way I do a lot. The guy I live with sometimes talks about cleaning the patio rug. It’s a pretty comfortable rug.

When we went on our evening walk, yesterday, the guy I live with set the sprinkler in the middle of the back yard, so the cow-pen daisies could get a little water. I guess you can see that they did.This truly did used to be a lawn. A green one, that was mowed by a regular lawn mower. That was a long time ago.  The guy I live with said that both Slipper and Chess, purebred border collies who lived here before me, enjoyed the green lawn, but he always wanted a buffalo grass lawn instead. Back before “the turn of the century”, which sounds strange to me, there was a ‘609’ buffalo grass lawn, but the grass turned out not to be winter-hardy, and ninety-nine percent of it died in the winter of 1999 or thereabouts. So then the green lawn was installed.

But the green lawn had a problem, because there was one area where it got tinkled on kind of a lot. Chess, whom some of you may remember, liked to do that. So there was this green lawn, with a huge brown area right in the middle. It was turned into what you see in the picture above. In a way, then, all these cow-pen daisies are in a central bed which was started by Chess.

Today was a pretty interesting day. The sun came out for a while. Then it was dark again. For a while we thought it was going to rain. It got really windy.

Then it rained. The guy I live with got all excited, or at least somewhat excited, for a minute, until the rain stopped. “Oh well”, he said, and we went about doing whatever it was we were doing.

Yesterday, a shipment of epimediums arrived in the mail. Some were fairly rare ones. But they were on sale, so, well, you know. I’d never heard of epimediums before, but the guy I live with said there were a few in the shade garden on the north side of the house, and that there was an empty space by the birch, in the back yard, where these epimediums were going to go. I knew there was an empty space there and wondered about it from time to time. Not a lot, but every now and then. The way you do. When you see an empty space, don’t you wonder about it, too?

There is even a book all about epimediums.Epimediums are one of the “in” genera, like snowdrops and hellebores, and gardeners who are interested in them are said to be ultra-sophisticated, which of course is why the guy I live with had to order more. Though I suspect that epimediums are no longer as “in” as they were a decade or so ago, and the guy I live with was just catching up, which is pretty much the way things go around here.

The epimediums came from Edelweiss Perennials and when he removed one from its pot, he said that this was how a root ball (not really a ball but that’s what we say) should look; it looked very excellent. These plants could be planted right in the ground without anything being done to the roots, though as you can see they were soaked in a dish pan first. (The guy I live with says every gardener should have some dish pans.)

So holes were dug. The plants were set into the holes, and then watered. It was just regular dirt, but the water, from the watering can, disappeared immediately. It was amazing; I watched this very closely, and couldn’t believe my eyes. The water was poured in, and disappeared. In just regular dirt. Each plant got a whole gallon of water from the watering can.

Once they’re established, which can take a couple of years, here, epimediums will tolerate a considerable amount of “dryness at the root”, as Graham Stuart Thomas used to say. There are really very few plants that will grow in the “dry shade” garden writers talk about all the time, but epimediums are one. I mean at least if they get watered about once a week, so not really dry, but sometimes dry. Or at least not moist all the time.

Here I am, watching over the new epimediums. If it looks like I’m lying on a path, that’s because I am. Slipper created this path, a long time ago, because he was always looking for shortcuts.  I really like watching the gardening process as closely as possible. I might learn something, so I can help in the garden later on.

The bit of green rabbit wire in the lower left is because of the cyclamen which were planted there a little while ago, and in fact, it’s not to prevent me from stepping on them, but to remind the guy I live with that cyclamen were planted. They’re Cyclamen hederifolium and a couple are flowering now. 

Later, there will be leaves, which remain all winter long, and the rabbit wire can be removed.

The guy I live with said he’s ready for cooler weather now, because this summer has been so gloomy and depressing. He said that he always thought August was a melancholy time of the year because, first of all, when he was little, having to go back to school was looming on the horizon, and then when he didn’t have to do that any more, it was the idea that somehow he didn’t do all the “summery” things he should have done, like go to the beach or the swimming pool, or something else he never really did do.  The end of summer was so sad. But now, the weather seems to have changed, and summer is no longer summer but just a season of darkness and endless thunderstorms featuring large hail, to be avoided (hopefully) and endured, not to be enjoyed. I think I agree.

So the cyclamen, flowering, represented the beginning of cooler, and sunnier, weather. I would like that, for sure. We purebred border collies do not care for thunderstorms or hot weather.

Well, I might have gone on more than I needed to. If you think I go on, you should be around the guy I live with, who pretty much never stops talking. He said once that eventually he’ll stop talking, and just make gestures, but I doubt it. 

Until next time, then.