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 talk about our latest news. You may remember me from such posts as “Float Like A Feather”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
You can see that it rained here. It rained for about half an hour.

I saw a bear today. I had smelled something very interesting and new along the canal road, on my morning walk, and when we came back home I sensed something highly unusual in our neighbor’s apple tree. No one lives in that house now, but there are still apples, and I saw the bear and jumped about six feet.
It was hard to see, and it was a little bit bigger than I am, which made the guy I live with worry about the mother bear, whom he said we do not want to meet.
I knew there was talk about bears being around here, and now I know it’s not just talk.
Other people came over to look, and I think the Division of Wildlife was called, maybe to relocate the bear, or bears, to a more bear-friendly habitat.
The whole thing was very scary.

The guy I live with spent some time clearing out the border in the “way back”, even though he saw the bear too.
It’s a real mess, as you can tell.
The guy I live with worked on this until he couldn’t work any more. I didn’t think this was all that interesting, because I saw a bear.

There are some things in flower here. I’d show you more pictures than this, but I saw a bear.
This is a very yellow seedling eremurus.
The bear wasn’t yellow. It was black.

This is Lilium martagon, also not a bear, flowering next to the apple tree. The guy I live with said the apple tree didn’t flower this year, so we won’t have bears in the tree.
That’s the plinth for the broken birdbath, if you were wondering.
The guy I live with said plinths won’t attract bears.

That’s really all I have for today. “All” meaning of course I saw a bear. I looked in the neighbor’s tree on my evening walk, hoping not to see a bear, because I’ve already seen one now.
I’ll leave you with a picture of my walking through the sea of smooth brome.
I think I told you that I saw a bear.

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 today to tell you how roasting hot I’ve been.
You may remember me from such posts as “Roasting Again”, “Unbelievably Roasting Hot”, “Ultra Roasting”, “Still Roasting”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.I’m waiting for my waiter to being me the next course of my dinner.

You may have surmised by the title of my post that it’s hot here. It is hot, and we purebred border collies do not like hot weather one little bit.
Today it was 96 degrees F (36C) with six percent humidity. The really low humidity does make the heat more bearable.
It was also windy yesterday.

Our house doesn’t have air conditioning. The guy I live with said when he moved here sixty years ago no one had air conditioning; it wasn’t felt to be necessary.
The guy I live with thinks it’s weird to have all the windows closed so you can feel cool, but he did bring up the portable air conditioner to my bedroom. It makes the bedroom freezing cold.
Back then, people didn’t have sprinkler systems either, and we don’t have one of those.
The guy I live with doesn’t do much watering anyway.

There are some plants which seem perfectly happy with this dry heat.
Here’s the giant salvia, happy as a clam. (The guy I live with tried to explain this saying to me, but then said he didn’t understand why clams would be happy. I don’t understand sayings.)
This thing is six feet tall. (Two meters.) He got it as Salvia ringens, but he thinks it’s crossed with Salvia recognita.

The other plants that are happy may surprise you.
This is Lilium candidum, and it seems utterly unfazed by the hot weather. It hasn’t been watered.
The guy I live with says this species is an oddity in the genus Lilium.
You plant the bulbs in September, no deeper than one inch (2.5cm) below the surface of the soil.
Soon after that, the bulbs grow leaves, which overwinter, even here.

This used to be offered in the trade, but now it’s hard to find. It’s easy to raise from seeds, so the guy I live with is hoping to get some seeds this year, and start a Lilium candidum farm.

When the guy I live with went out to add grape jelly to the oriole feeder this evening, he noticed the seed pods on Asphodeline lutea. They look kind of strange. He was startled to see them.
So that’s about it for today.
I’m roasting, and that’s really all that I’m thinking about.
It wasn’t so hot when I went on my evening walk.

Until next time, then.