Hello everyone; yes, it is I, Chess the purebred border collie once again, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you the latest and most fascinating news from our garden. You may remember me from such fascinating posts as “Naming Names” and “After The Equinox”, among so many, many fascinating others.
Here I am in a characteristically horticultural pose. I’m headed in a certain direction, which will be obvious after a while.
me walking in the garden
You can see there’s a strip of burlap, and also some topsoil, spread over places where the guy I live with sowed more buffalo grass seed, and also all the native grasses doing their grassy thing on both sides of the path I’m about to walk on. There’s a direction I’m going in, in other words.
What I’m going to do this evening is give you a behind the scenes look at one of the little nurseries here, which are scattered here and there all over the garden. This is a very special one indeed.
On my way, let’s look at the “gumbo lily”, Oenothera caespitosa. It blooms at night and is scented of lemon, and gets its picture posted here all the time. (The catmint isn’t supposed to be there, but it’s there anyway.)
Oenothera caespitosa
Okay? Good. Now let’s look at the nursery behind the little hill that the oenotheras are growing on. You might not suspect that this was a nursery if you just looked at it. I think you’d have to be told. Which I’m doing now.
It’s not like it’s camouflaged or anything, it just has a lot of weeds in it. And believe it or not, the weeds are allowed to stay.
Rancho de las Mariposas
The guy I live with, who is very sophisticated when it comes to things like this, calls the nursery Rancho de las Mariposas, or butterfly ranch, or, in this case, since mariposa is also a common name for calochortus, calochortus ranch. (The guy I live with grew up in Southern California where everything was called Rancho This or Rancho That.)
Here’s a closer view of the Rancho.
You saw the cages, I bet, and this is what’s in the cages. No, not just the weeds. 
What you see there, the green grass-looking things, are Calochortus nuttallii. Now, if you look at the picture above it, you’ll see more green grass-looking things, but with a kind of channel on the leaves. Those are Allium caeruleum.
I’ll let you figure out how the guy I live with knows these are calochortus and not alliums. (Besides being in the cage, I mean.)
A few years ago he direct-sowed a bunch of seed of different calochortus species, put a cage around each sowing, with a holder deal for the cage (you can see that on the left side of the cage), stuck a label in the ground, and waited.
The weeds couldn’t be pulled, because if they were, the calochortus bulbs would be pulled right out of the ground, too.
Pretty neat, huh? I mean if you were a gardener instead of a purebred border collie, and you cared about stuff like this. Maybe I shouldn’t say “neat”, but you get the idea.
The bulbs will be dug this summer and replanted in the actual garden.
That’s it for the gardening news. There are other plants blooming, and stuff happening, but I thought it was high time I should you the Rancho.
Oh, here are a couple of the now-obligatory baby bunny pictures.
This one was on the lawn a couple of doors down. Free lawn mowing service.
Okay, now that’s it. I’m going to take a pre-bedtime nap, so I can be all rested by the time actual bedtime arrives. Or at least I would be napping if the guy I live with would stop taking my picture when I’m in my fort. 
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 