the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the smaller-than-huge 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 “Hazy And Jungly”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. I’m looking at a bug on the wall outside the front door. I guess you can see why the guy I live with calls me “Licorice Lips” sometimes, because on the left side of my lips there’s an extra black spot, which, he says, makes it look like I’ve been eating a lot of licorice. I don’t eat licorice. The guy I live with loves it, though.

Anyway. It’s been sort of raining here, sprinkling a little, then seeming like it’s about to rain a whole lot, but not doing that. The forecast for a couple of days here was for heavy rain, but not much of anything happened. The guy I live with has been weeding, a bit, and he says it’s easier if the garden isn’t soaking wet.

He worked on the old rock garden the other day, and I inspected his work. It was okay. He missed a few weeds. (A few thousand, but I didn’t say that.)The clematis are blooming. There aren’t many here these days. I guess there used to be, back in the old days. I think this is ‘Etoile Violette’. There are bumblebees everywhere, too. The guy I live with keeps telling me not to try to catch them, but I don’t see why not. He says something about stinging, and also says he knows best. We think this is Verbascum densiflorum crossed with V. olympicum, but we’re not really sure. There was a bee on Eremurus olgae, too, but it was on the other side of the flower stalk here, so you’ll just have to imagine it.You can see the eremurus in this picture, too; off to the left. The garden has gotten a bit jungly, again, for my taste. And there haven’t been as many orioles here this year, which makes the guy I live with sad. There are some, but not a lot. The feeder is that orange thing in front of the shed. I keep getting reminded that this is a gardening blog, and not an entirely-about-me blog, and so I should show more flowers, but on the other hand this is the time of year when everything really is about me, or it ought to be.

There have been firecrackers. They are really scary. Also against the law, but that doesn’t stop some people. I don’t think thunder is very scary, but huge explosions over my back yard are definitely scary. Good thing I have a fort to secure myself in, isn’t it?

Back to flowers. This is the “wild petunia” (but not an actual petunia), Ruellia humilis. The guy I live with says you plant it in one place and soon it appears in another. This is one of those other places.

And then the rose, ‘Darlow’s Enigma‘. It flowers pretty much all summer. There are four plants in The Enclosure. This little garden was only half-finished when the lady of the house passed away; it was her little garden space, with a bench to sit on and read, and a fire pit, and the guy I live with fretted about it for a while, and then eventually planted these roses there. The little garden is bathed in scent all summer.In the “way back”, there are a lot of plants of Lavatera thuringiaca flowering now. They sow themselves all over the place, I guess. I suppose it’s time to wind this up now. The weather has been so cool and pleasant, but I hear that it’s going to be roasting hot again in a few days. I’d rather it be cool and pleasant than roasting hot, but the guy I live with says there’s nothing he can do about that.

I know this picture makes me look like I have a horned poppy in my mouth, but I don’t, really. I had to turn around to look at something. There’s always something to look at or listen to, around here. Oh. I keep posting pictures with me in them, instead of bringing this post to a close. I can’t really help myself, what with me being so photogenic and all.

Until next time, then.

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the regular-sized purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you up to date on all our activities. You may remember me from such posts as “Another Fantastic Week”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose, enjoying a dried cow ear. Dried cow ears are really quite excellent, if you didn’t know. I got this to chew on because I just came back from vacation. Yes, you read that correctly; I’ve been on vacation.

It started last Thursday, when it looked like I was just going to Thursday Day Care, but then instead of being picked up by the guy I live with, it turned out that I was on vacation. It was okay. They have swimming there, and I know everybody. I’d never been on vacation before and the guy I live with was super-nervous about it, though he didn’t tell me that until I got back this afternoon.

The guy I live with and his friend went to Steamboat Springs for the North American Rock Garden Society annual meeting.

They drove over Rabbit Ears Pass. (This picture got wrecked when it was uploaded, but I guess you can see why they call it that.)

I kind of wondered why I didn’t get to go along, but I guess there was something called hiking, which according to the guy I live with involved walking uphill for miles with no relief and no end in sight, and then a bunch of walking downhill. Except for the first time when they went down in something called a gondola. The guy I live with said he was resigned to descending “thousands of feet” in a gondola. About halfway down the gondola stopped, and swayed in the breeze, a bit. He didn’t take any pictures of that.

This is what the beginning of a hike looks like. It goes on like this for a very long way; up and up and up. Those are penstemons flowering on the right. Really, though, this is looking back from where they came. He says this is probably Penstemon strictus, though the leaves are kind of wide for that species. This is what the trail looked like on part of the hike. There were weird witches’ brooms on some of the conifers, in the dark part of the woods they hiked through. A bug on the Colorado columbine, Aquilegia coerulea. This is the Elk River. As you know, I like water a lot, and wouldn’t’ve minded swimming in the river. The guy I live with says that’s one reason I didn’t go. This is the Mount Zirkel wilderness area; this picture was taken today. The guy I live with says this is one of the wettest places in Colorado. The Wyoming border isn’t too far away, off to the left (north). A pond in the mountains. I could have gone swimming in that, for sure. I guess they saw other stuff, but these are the pictures that the guy I live with said to post.

I’m not really sure who was more exhausted by their vacation, but it might have been me. I’m glad to be home and to be able to lie out on the cool patio at night. 

Until next time, then.