the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the pretty normal-sized 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 “Mostly Iceless”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. Well, sort of characteristic.There were a couple of anniversaries a few days ago, and the guy I live with talked about them constantly. I was interested, for a while. The last day of May marked the last day the guy I live with worked, and the first of June marked nine years since he’s been retired.

He talked a lot about how the nine years were not at all what he expected them to be, and how he never expected things to be the way they are now, and that there were lessons to be learned from all of this, but I kind of stopped listening.

So most of the last several days has been filled with me doing things, with a bunch of talking in the background.

Something useful actually did happen today, when this was brought home.This is a flat of pots of Dog Tuff grass, which is going to be planted in the “way back”, and is supposed to be tough enough for me to run back and forth on it a lot, and it still grows. The buffalo grass didn’t really do that, but then, it was put in when Chess was here, and Chess wasn’t much of a leaper and racer, unlike me. And, yes, it’s Bermuda grass, though I think it comes from South Africa, which is pretty weird. I mean it doesn’t come directly from South Africa, it was grown here. You know what I mean, I hope.

The guy I live with said it was “kind of green”, but I guess we can live with that.

Well, so, while all the talking was going on in the last several days, and looking at the grass right there, it might be a good idea to reveal the “super genius” idea that the guy I live with came up with. He hasn’t trademarked it or anything like that.

What he said was, oh, you might look at a couple of garden pictures first to get ready for it…(these are huge files which you can embiggen if you want).

If you did embiggen the pictures, you may notice that there are an awful lot of weeds in the pictures. Especially grass. The smooth brome that the guy I live with talks about all the time.

He said (get this) that he might write a gardening book in which weeds are simply considered part of the garden. He hasn’t come up with a fancy term for this style of gardening, but he says it’ll probably catch on quickly. This is, after all, the weediest year he’s ever seen.

I looked more than a little dubious when he suggested that I mention this in the post. (The “super genius” bit was very hard to swallow, too.) This is me looking dubious.So that’s the new plan.

I almost forgot to show the sea kale (Crambe maritima). It’s flowering now. I guess the reason I’m supposed to show this is that there are two plants here, and both got eaten last winter. Right down to the ground. It turns out that the guy I live with and I totally disagree on the edibility of kale. (It was pretty good.) You can see a weed there, too. See, the plan is already in place. I guess that’s it. I feel kind of weird telling you what the guy I live with says is a “super genius idea”, but I did anyway. We’ll see how successful this turns out to be.

Until next time, then.

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the fairly regular-sized purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you the very latest news from our garden. You may remember me from such posts as “The Pine Cone Chronicles”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.I look rather carefree, don’t you think? Well, that was later today.

This was me earlier. It was thundering. Fortunately my Kitchen Fort was very close.The guy I live with said that a huge, no super-huge, thunderstorm was passing to the east of us, not heading in my direction, that is, but we could still hear the thunder. Of course he said that two years ago last Tuesday (which was also an anniversary of something even less pleasant) that he and Chess spent some time downstairs listening to tornado sirens, and so he made sure that his cell phone was charged in case we had to go downstairs and cower.

But nothing happened here. It barely even rained. I still didn’t like it.

You may be wondering why there haven’t been so many posts lately, and it turns out that the real reason is that the guy I live with sometimes forgets that there is a blog. This past Tuesday his friend came over, because she thought he might like the company, and I got to say Hi and stuff. I really like her. They watched The Wrong Trousers, which she’d never seen, and we all went on my evening walk.

We’ve also been pulling weeds. The guy I live with says there are more weeds in the garden now than ever before, and he blames all the snow we got earlier. I say “we” because I do help with the grass-pulling, though I can’t eat it all.

The grass (smooth brome, the “awfullest plant on the planet”) has even gotten into the front yard. It’s the grass in the field, and surges against the back fence, trying to get in, which it does, fairly successfully. You can see it here, in front, growing in the Anemone sylvestris. The anemone is really a “side-yard plant” but often sneaks into the front yard, under the shade of the big Arizona cypress.The side yard, or really, the shade garden, is “a hopeless jungle”. There are, surprisingly, not very many weeds here. The tree you see on the right there is dead. The guy I live with says it was struck by lightning years ago.The back yard is pretty weedy, though. Lots and lots of dandelions and bindweed, and “the accursed grass”. You can see the orange oriole feeder there (left of the shed door); we haven’t had any orioles yet, probably because the robins have been gulping down the grape jelly. Of course there are things in flower. Here’s Gladiolus atroviolaceus, for instance. There’s also some peculiar work going on here, which must have a point. You may be able to see some of the buffalograss which was moved from the “way back”. The regular grass, which came back even though it wasn’t supposed to, is being dug out. That much I know. The white thing there is one of my stuffed toys, and it’s still stuffed, and still squeaks. So what I thought was super-mysterious in the “way back” is really just some of the buffalograss being moved. And remember how I said the dirt was reddish here? You can see that it is. You can see it here, too, on the path that leads south to the trough patio and, way off to the right where you can’t see, the Employees Only section. There was grass on the path before I showed up. The anti-me fence on the right does lean a bit, doesn’t it?

The fence you see straight ahead is for the little garden with juno irises in it. And take a look at “the enclosure”. Not very many weeds there, because the vinca has taken over everything. There is a dandelion seed-head, though. Well, I guess that’s it for today. The guy I live with says he would rather see the sun, and that we don’t need any more weather like this, because it makes both of us apprehensive. I’ll leave you with a picture of me being all apprehensive and everything. Not because I am now, but because I’m so attractive in this pose, as I’m sure you’ll agree. 

Until next time, then.