the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the fabulous, yet not extremely monstrously 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 “The Blizzard”, among so many others.

Here I am in a characteristically horticultural pose, with my favorite toy.You may recall that we had a blizzard a while back, like the post I mentioned said. I didn’t go to Day Care, and the guy I live with promised me two Day Care days in a row, which I got to have last week. I also got stuck with needles and poked at, at Thursday Day Care, and the doctor said I looked fabulous, and I guess I have to agree that I do.

The guy I live with says we might get another blizzard at the beginning of the week. The prediction right now is for severe weather–in April–on Friday and Saturday, followed by a blizzard. He said the “insane” original forecast called for forty inches of snow. (That’s a little over a meter of snow.)
Of course he completely freaked out, since that would be the second highest snowfall in Denver’s recorded history, and very bad for the trees.

So he said to show some garden pictures, before “everything gets wrecked”. This is some of the rock garden, and you can see stuff is flowering. I think the flower pots were left over from when bulbs needed to be covered. A piece of duct tape was put over the holes in the pots. He could pick up the pots, and put them away, I suppose.

The green grass in the lower left is not supposed to be there, but is. He didn’t dig it out like he thought he did, I guess. There are lots of hellebores flowering in the shade garden now. About a month later than usual.The lawn in the “way back” doesn’t look so good. The guy I live with blames me, running back and forth, on patrol. He says he’s going to dig up the buffalo grass there, and move it to the front of the yard, and sow “regular” grass seed, which will come back after I run on it all winter. (Maybe you remember when he took out the “regular” grass back here…..) You can see that the fence hasn’t been fixed yet either, like he said it would be. The part behind the apple tree, I mean. The birdbath cracked to pieces a couple of winters ago, and so only the stand, or maybe it’s a plinth, is still there. And hasn’t been removed, obviously. If you look closely you can see the little hill at the end of the path there. That’s where all the juno irises live. I wrote about them in “Day Of The Scorpiris.” They haven’t flowered yet, though the big one on the left, by the yucca, flowered last month. Around on the other side of the fence, the narcissus ‘Beersheba’, a favorite, is flowering.And there are bunches of selections of Corydalis solida flowering in the rock garden. On the shady rock garden, I should say.

The guy I live with said I could have posted the names, but someone removed the labels. I wonder who he means. Lots of cyclamen, too, still flowering. 

This one does have a label. It says ‘Going Rouge’.  You can get these corydalis from Odyssey Bulbs, if you want. Well, I guess that’s it for now. I’m still fabulous. The guy I live with is super-mopey about the weather forecast, and says to say that if you don’t hear from us next week, it snowed, and we’ve moved to the Bahamas. 

Until next time, then.

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the not-completely-enormous purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you up to date on the latest news from our garden. You may remember me from such up-to-date posts as “The Blizzard”, among so many, many others. True, “The Blizzard” was my last post, but it was definitely up-to-date.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. If you’re thinking that this was taken during one of those dumb biscuit-on-the-head episodes, then you would be right. You can also see that I’m somewhat damp. More about that later.

The reason there haven’t been many posts is that the guy I live with was so grumpy about the two times it snowed after the blizzard that I couldn’t print anything he said about it. This is what the back yard looked like on the thirty-first, last Thursday.That’s because it did this the day before.It turned nice again and the guy I live with says it’s spring now. It could still snow, but he says he refuses to think about that.

This is what it looks like now. You may think this is awfully brown, for spring, but the guy I live with says it’s mostly brown here in spring, until the warm-season grasses start growing. All the broken branches were taken care of, and the patio cover has been repaired. He did that all by himself. Well, there was kind of a lot of swearing and stuff to go with it. But it’s done.

The 1970s screen door, this “tacky aluminum piece of …aluminum” was also fixed, so now I can do serious guarding, and look outside too.

Lots of stuff is flowering now. The mahonia, which we guess is Mahonia aquifolium, just appeared here many years ago. The spots are from anti-rabbit spray. The guy I live with says the camera must have focused on the spots.Lots of bulbs, of course. The blue chionodoxa, which has seeded everywhere,and the pink, which hasn’t yet. The best thing of all, if you ask me, and I’m the one worth asking, is that I got to go to Day Care last week (another excellent report card, of course), and I can go on my regular walk now.

The green here is from non-native grasses, mostly smooth brome. The guy I live with is not a huge fan of smooth brome. Anyway, this is me, if you couldn’t tell, heading south toward the willows. This path was made by Norm and Celeste, the coyotes, and improved on by Chess, a border collie who lived here before me, and I’m trying to make it even better.

The big scary willow, which is a different kind of willow from the ones growing along the creek, had a big branch broken off it, but it was carted away today. There’s water in the creek. It comes from a lake to the south of here. It’s not what you would call warm. There are water striders striding on it, and little fish swimming in it. That’s me there, again. Of course I had to sit in the water. It was indeed pretty chilly. The guy I live with mocked the appearance of my hindquarters, afterwards. Like his would look any better.

I guess that’s really all for today. I don’t think this looks too bad at all. 

Until next time, then.