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 bring you up to date on what’s been happening here. You may remember me from such posts as “A Scary Visitor”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
I’m being brave after the events of yesterday, which I’ll get to in a minute.
You can see what’s been happening here.
And also this:
The guy I live with decided that the old, wobbly, cracked wooden stepladder might not be what you would call exactly safe, so he bought a new one which he really likes a lot.
For painting, of course.

In other words, there hasn’t been much gardening going on here, except for some picture-taking and weed-whacking.
The guy I live with has a nice battery-operated trimmer, but the smooth brome that invaded the garden again this year grew very tall and he knew the big Echo trimmer was what was needed. (You’ll see me walking through the smooth brome in the field, later.)
He thought about getting a gallon of gas and some two-cycle engine oil, but when he went to the hardware store for some other stuff, he found, to his delight, that he could buy premixed fuel in a small quantity, and he spent quite some time making a lot of noise out in the back yard, while I stayed in the house for safety’s sake.

Yesterday we were both out in the garden and the guy I live with noticed something before I did. That doesn’t usually happen.
I walked over to the guy I live with and stepped on a snake.
Not just any snake, but a bullsnake about four feet long. (That’s about 1.2 meters.)
The snake became enraged and started hissing furiously and pretending it was a rattlesnake by buzzing its tail. They do that.
It coiled up under the big sagebrush and just hissed and hissed at me.
The guy I live with said it was harmless otherwise and wouldn’t try to bite me, but it was really, really angry. I guess I would be too, if someone stepped on me.

A little later the guy I live with saw it slither across the patio and hide behind the shelves on the patio, and when I came out to look it hissed at me again.
He said he was pretty sure this is the same bullsnake I’ve seen every year since I was a puppy, because no one else in the neighborhood has reported seeing a huge snake, and I have every single year.
The guy I live with calls it our “guest” and thinks all the voles that were in our garden are gone now.

Still, it was pretty scary, believe me.

In between all of this, the guy I live with did manage to take some pictures.
Here are some cactus flowers. (He also posted these on Facebook.)

And here are some pictures of Ixiolirion tataricum, which has seeded all over the front part of the back garden.

And here are some pictures of Penstemon palmeri:

That’s all I have for today. It was kind of a lot, really.
And to think the guy I live with wonders why we have so few visitors. Just kidding of course.
I’ll leave you with a picture of me walking through the sea of brome, as promised. You can see how tall it’s grown since my last post.

Until next time, then.

Greetings and saluations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to tell you about our new guests. You may remember me from such posts as “Practically Nothing”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
We haven’t had much rain lately, but things are still very green.
You can see the big paper trash bag in the distance; that’s full of dead rose branches and things like that. It adds a certain something to the garden, don’t you think?

The guy I live with took this picture to illustrate a very good reason why he will never let anyone work in his garden.
Do you see it?
There’s a lot of bulb foliage in this picture, and also some bindweed, but right in the middle of the picture is Gladiolus atroviolaceus, a gladiolus native to the Near East, Iran, and so on, about to flower.
It would almost certainly be pulled up by “garden help” and the guy I live with would be furious.
And probably all that stuff that looks like grass would be pulled up, too. Those are seedlings of Ixiolirion tataricum, the “mountain lily” from Central Asia.

So that’s that business.

The only other thing is that a few days ago the guy I live with said “They’re here!” As usual, I had no idea what he was talking about, until I heard the hummingbird.
They’re back, after wintering in Mexico.

The guy I live with made some sugar syrup, but then a couple of days ago he went to the Indian grocery, and on his way back he stopped at a nursery and bought these:
They’ve been repotted in gallon pots with his special soil mix (in the trash can) to help the plants grow more roots.
These are all red-flowered penstemons except for two Agastache cana.
He said the hummingbirds would enjoy these even if they were sitting on the patio.

It was a broad-tailed hummingbird that we first heard and saw, but we also have black-chinned, and, sometimes, rufous and calliope.
It really depends on what’s flowering in the foothills as to whether or not we get all four species, or just the first two.

And that’s all I have for today.
I’ll leave you with a picture of me doing what I do while the guy I live with paints.

Until next time, then.