Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the tiny purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you up to date with all the latest news about me, and our garden. You may remember me from such posts as “The Star Student”, among so many others.
Here I am in a characteristically horticultural pose.
You can see how hard I work in the garden. It’s been hot, and I haven’t felt like doing much.
My cone came off on Tuesday, and that was pretty great. I got to go to Day Care yesterday, and that was even better. They have swimming at Day Care.
Today we did some weeding, and some other stuff; I forget what. Some things are in flower here, like Cylindropuntia imbricata.
Lavatera thuringiaca is out in the “way back”. 
There’s other stuff, too. Salvia sclarea var. turkestanica, and the feverfew that the guy I live with dislikes so much. It seeds everywhere. The wood is because there’s supposed to be a fence here, but no one has done any work on it. 
The ‘way back” is really overgrown, and my private lawn is being encroached on. The white here is from Tanacetum niveum. 
Later, I went on my walk, and that was excellent.
In one place, the weeds were so high I couldn’t even see over them, and neither could the guy I live with, but we did see an actual native plant, Penstemon virgatus var. asa-grayi, which you can see here, if you look hard enough. There’s a ladybug, too. 
The canal is full. The guy I live with says it’s really a ditch, but he calls it a canal, since that sounds better. He says it has fish and crawdads in it. I don’t know what those things are. The creek goes under the canal, through a culvert, about where the tree is at the upper middle right (near the flowering poison hemlocks). 
The creek has water in it, too. There’s a place where you can walk right up to it; that is, there aren’t any banks. 
I guess that’s it for today. As you can see, things are pretty much back to normal. 
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 