the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to bring you the latest news from our garden, including, this time, news from the future (oooh). You may remember me from such posts as “Still More Weather” and “Guess The Weather”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in another characteristically weather-related pose. They say it’s going to rain a whole lot, with possible flooding and stuff. They say it might rain two inches an hour, for hours. I’d better get out my calculator. This is one of those “extremely rare” weather events, just like last year. I’m not sure if I believe anything any more. One thing I’m definitely sure of, and that’s how tired of storms I am. Our sky at about one in the afternoon, looking west. It really hasn’t rained all that much here this summer; it’s just looked like this all the time. The guy I live with, who did quite a bit of gardening today, or at least that’s what he said (I was napping), took some pictures after he clicked some dials and things on the camera that he’d never used before. The dials, I mean, not the camera. He said the dials and things are why these pictures are they way they are. (By the way, he says these are large files, and they can be clicked on, to embiggen.)

And, yes, I know, these are kind of the same pictures as all the others, but things don’t change all that much here.

the front garden. pure gravel, two feet deep.

the “way back” again. incidentally, those grasses are Melica ciliata, not silver beard grass like he thought. he knows nothing about grass identification.

looking the other way. the apple tree has pushed the fence to the east, and supposedly that will be fixed.

the path to the place where the picture above this was taken; you could just follow the hose, like I do.

part of the raised bed, made of sand and gravel, looking northwest

sort of looking back the other way, but not really

Oh, and just to show that it hasn’t been totally cloudy and stormy every single minute for the last two months, like the guy I live with claims, we actually did have a sunset two nights ago, and here’s proof.

Part of what gardening means here is transplanting teeny tiny little seedlings out into the garden or into troughs at this time of year. They mostly die, of course, so that’s why the guy I live with plants a lot of them.

Yesterday he planted some very teeny tiny seedlings into the trough. This is Penstemon pumilus. (Pumilus means “dwarf” in Latin, or “extremely tiny” in this case. Tiny seedlings of a dwarf penstemon are super tiny.) Apparently the camera insisted on focusing on the shale instead of the plant, but you get the idea, I think. Planting out at this time of year is okay if we get rain. Not so great if we don’t, of course. There’s a front coming from the west, remnants of the monsoon from Mexico, and a front coming from the east, which they call “upslope” because it’s heading east up the Continental Divide, which is about thirty miles west of us, and almost two miles higher.

looking northeast at about 3 p.m.

So what happens, according to the guy I live with, is that the clouds get squeezed, like wringing out a wet towel, and we get rain. How much rain is what’s worrying me. It could be a foot of rain, some people say. I’ve never had to swim before, though the guy I live with, who can be extremely rude at times, says I’ll probably float.

Enough rain for the garden would be nice, but too much is too much, according to the guy I live with, who is, I’m sure you’ll agree, quite a philosopher. 

Until next time, then.