the miserable gardener

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.

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 all the happenings around here. You may remember me from such posts as “The Yellow Pigs”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
You can probably see how super-green everything is.
It’s been raining here. In fact, in just the first two weeks of this month we’ve almost received the average amount of precipitation for the entire month of May.

The seakale, Crambe maritima, is kind of stealing the show here, despite it not growing by the seashore.
The other thing that’s been happening is, of course, more painting.
The guy I live with paints at night, which I think is odd, but he says he can paint, and then use a flashlight to find the “holidays”, which show up better that way.

And there was one more thing. The guy I live with has been talking for years about draining the waterbed downstairs, and even though he isn’t the sort of person who puts things off, he put this off, not knowing exactly where to drain the water.
Of course there were people who said the water would smell really bad, since the waterbed hadn’t been heated for fifteen years. So he had to think about that.

He bought a waterbed pump, cut a hole in the screen to run a hose out into the front garden, and pumped the water out over a period of three or four days. (They make a screen-repairing tape which is easy to use.)
The water smelled like water.

Then there was the business of dragging the mattress and frame upstairs, and cleaning up the carpet.

He then thought he needed something in that space. A chair, a sofa, a futon; something. He looked at things online and suddenly decided to do this instead.
He dusted the table after he took this picture.

That’s what’s been going on here, and why I haven’t posted lately.
I’ll leave you with a picture of my enjoying my walk through the tall green grass.

Until next time, then.