the miserable gardener

Hello everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to bring you the latest and most exciting news from our garden. You may remember me from such posts as “Il Giardino Di Leonardo” and “As Above, So Below”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.You might notice that there’s some dirt on the dhurri rug, which the guy I live with just washed two days ago, but there’s a perfectly good reason for that, which I’ll get to in a bit.

First off, if you remember the pictures of Oenothera caespitosa, and other flowers, there have been an awful lot of hawk moths in the garden at night, because of those flowers, and the moths have also been flying into the house, which is pretty scary, if you ask me.

The guy I live with tried to take a picture of one on Fendlera rupicola last night. It might be there in the picture, somewhere. There were a couple of moths visiting Amsonia jonesii, and you can see at least one of the moths here. This is it. The white-lined sphinx, Hyles lineata. People say that’s what comes from tomato worms, but tomato worms make a much bigger moth, Manduca sexta or M. quinquemaculata. Well, so, anyway, the forecast for today was severe thunderstorms, and so the guy I live with took a bunch of pictures of the garden, as if to say farewell to it, but he didn’t like any of the pictures. He liked what happened next a whole lot less. I hid.

Now, the guy I live with is supposed to be resigned to stuff, but I heard him yelling at the weather. Nothing happened when he did. Eventually it stopped.

The street flooded, and the guy I live with and the neighbor kid worked to clear the storm drain, standing in ice water while they worked, and at the same time a couple of trash bags filled with grass clippings floated down the street. “Very classy”, the guy I live with said.

Anyway, here’s a short movie. (Gardeners strongly cautioned.)

It didn’t wreck everything, which has happened here, like on the first of June 1991, when I wasn’t around, but my grandpa Flurry told me stories about it. Whatever. This Friday will be the fourth anniversary of me losing my buddy Slipper, and Saturday will be the fifth anniversary of me losing my mommy, so, compared to those things, hail messing up the garden doesn’t seem like much. We try to be extremely philosophical here.

After it was all over, I felt I had to go out and take a look. Things were pretty damp. I guess it will be a cool night for sleeping, anyway.

Until next time, then.