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 take you on a short walk. You may remember me from such posts as the highly-relevant “Employees Only”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
We’re going on a short walk, for not much of a reason at all except to look at the trough patio again.

First we’re going to the wrought-iron table, and we’re going to see something highly unusual, at least for Colorado. Not as unusual as seeing giraffes in the garden, but pretty unusual.
The guy I live with picked up those snail shells from the garden. He ordinarily would have said we don’t have snails here, but I think that’s incorrect.

Now out to the shed. I’ve shown pictures of this before, but it’s on the walk.
I was running, not walking, out to the back fence to bark at something, which is what I do.
Viburnum farreri on the left.

Behind the shed is the trough patio. You can now see the pattern laid down by the guy I live with’s wife.
The low wall in front is like the most level thing on the planet.

The patio abuts the Employees Only section, divided by a large hedge of Rhus trilobata, which is out of the picture on the left. I’ve shown a picture of this section before, and here’s another one.
It’s at least twenty-feet feet to the corner of the yard. I’m the only one who goes in here regularly.

And that’s the short walk. I’ll leave you with a picture of me on my much longer evening walk.

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 talk about the rock and some other things. You may remember me from such posts as “The Big Turn Off”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
It’s super extra dry here, and the guy I live with is very much hoping we get some snow next week. Rain would be okay too.

So here are some white flowers, in anticipation.
This is Crocus ochroleucus.
Some more. This isn’t a hugely impressive crocus, but the fact that it flowers now is kind of nice.
This one is impressive; it’s the “late form” of Crocus niveus. It’s flowering right on time.
And there are still snowdrops, besides the ones I showed last time.
This is the autumn-flowering form of Galanthus cilicicus. It’s new at the zoo.

Today the guy I live with made a big design decision about the trough patio.
He said all it needed was a rock. It turns out that he had a particular rock in mind.
I spent the time looking at things while he worked.
After some very careful hauling and moving and pushing, the rock is now in place.
The guy I live with said it was heavy.
Aside from having to reset that one piece of flagstone in the background, and running the leaf blower over the flagstone, the designing is done.
He said that most gardeners would want to do other things here, but he’s perfectly content with just this.

And that’s all I have for today. I’ll leave you with a picture of me on my morning walk; maybe you can see how dry it is here.

Until next time, then.