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 bring you up to date on what’s been going on here. You may remember me from such posts as “Nature Is Icky”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. I was guarding our trash, to make sure no one stole it, but, as usual, a big truck came and stole the trash while I was watching. I don’t know why this happens every week, but it does.

I’ve been gone for much longer than I ever have been, but I couldn’t think of anything much to say except how hot it is. Imagine a post every day with me complaining about how hot it is.
That’s because it’s been hot. It’s supposed to be 90 degrees (32C) tomorrow, and while that’s not unusual for September here, it is annoying. (The guy I live with used another word.)

The guy I live with has been watering more than he has since the garden was all green and needed constant water, about twenty years ago. He said grasshoppers mostly attack drought-stressed plants. So now we have what he says is the largest cowpen daisy (Verbesina encelioides) on the planet.
It’s taller than he is.
He says the flowers are scented of “unsweetened chocolate”, whatever that is.
This is a self-sowing native annual.

A few days ago the guy I live with began to inspect the potted crocuses. You can see, on the right, that a flowering stalk is emerging (it’s Crocus mazziaricus), but when he poured everything out of the pot, the corm still didn’t have any roots, which isn’t part of the plan. This one was growing some roots.
This is how it should be, so the corm can form little cormlets, later. Otherwise this will be the end of the crocus.
I showed you Crocus suworowianus a while back, with the corms planted on their sides, and those did start to flower, and grow roots, so they were planted into the garden.
So the rest of the potted ones will get more water until they grow roots.
We certainly can’t count on rain here, these days.

Yesterday two people came from the botanic gardens and took three empty troughs, so there are only six left in the garden, I think. The guy I live with said this was “the end of an era”, but it didn’t make him sad.
At one time there were three dozen troughs here, filled with alpine plants, but they needed daily watering in the summer, and eventually everything died.
In return, he was given a couple plants of Atraphaxis virgata, from Central Asia. These are giant buckwheats that will grow with no watering at all. We have one atraphaxis here already; a different species.
The cage is becauise a squirrel got way too interested in the one not yet planted.

Today, the guy I live with decided to move some self-sown plants of Aster oblongifolius. (He said he wasn’t going to type the new name, “syhmp” something.)
This is a pink-flowered one similar to ‘Dream of Beauty’ introduced by Claude Barr.
These transplant very easily, even in summer.

That’s almost all I have to talk about, except for what happened on my evening walk along the canal.
I was convinced that there was something in the water. The guy I live with didn’t think so, but this is my area of expertise, and I was really sure.
I would have gone in, but the water was very muddy, because we got half an inch of rain a few days ago, and every time it rains the water in the canal is muddy.

When we went back on the other side, on our way home, I needed to check that side, too, but the guy I live with still said no going in the water. Here I am not looking at the water.
I’m not standing in grass, but in sedges. I’ve never stood in sedges before, and as you may know, sedges have edges.
I think that brings you up to date. Tomorrow is supposed to be a smoky day, which will be no fun, especially since we can’t have the bedroom window fan on.
The air conditioner is cooler, of course, but noisier.
I’ll leave you with a picture of me taken last night.

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 mostly to talk about my Private Lawn. You may remember me from such posts as “Clearing the Path”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
This is mostly what I’ve been doing, since it’s been so hot.

A few days ago, despite the unrelenting heat, this happened. It sprinkled on and off all day, too.
And then there was this, which I didn’t see.
Despite this, there’s yet another fire, this time near Lookout Mountain, which is several miles to the northwest of us. It was started by lightning. We can see all the communication towers with their red lights flashing if we walk out to the very back of the garden.
Buffalo Bill was buried on Lookout Mountain. The guy I live with has been up there once, the first or second year his family moved here.

The guy I live with saw the first Cyclamen purpurascens in flower today. They flower before the leaves appear, here. In other regions the leaves might be around most of the summer, if not all year.
He says you can tell it’s Cyclamen purpurascens because the bottom of the flower is sort of blunt. C. hederifolium, another species which flowers in autumn before the leaves appear, has little auricles at the base of the flower. They look like little ears, which is what “auricle” means.

Anyway, I should talk about the title of today’s post, and let me say I take no responsibility at all for that title.
The guy I live with has been hemming and hawing, mostly hawing I think, about whether or not to mow my Private Lawn. I didn’t have an opinion. I like my lawn a lot, though.
At first he said he wasn’t going to, because the lawn is buffalo grass, and it’ll start to go dormant next month or maybe a bit later. It would need to be watered after being mowed, but the guy I live with has been watering more than in any summer I remember.

He finally made a decision, and got out the lawn mower. I’ve shown this picture before.
I hear it’s really easy to use and does a nice job.
So he mowed, while I stayed indoors for safety reasons, and then he got out his gardening bench, kneeled on it, and trimmed the lawn with sheepshears, like he’s been doing for a long time. His grandfather showed him how to use sheepshears in his garden in Los Angeles, in the 1950s, so that’s how long he’s been using sheepshears.
This is a different, newer pair.
And this is the result. This is ‘Cody’ buffalo grass (nice tie-in with Lookout Mountain), which was sown from seed, before buffalo grass seed got very expensive.
He said that empty area by the hose will fill in next summer. Bunnies have been nibbling at the grass, which he said is okay.
If this had been done earlier in the summer he might have used the edger to make my Private Lawn fancier-looking, but this is more than acceptable.

By the way, the guy I live with said the reason he didn’t recommend buffalo grass in his last book was because of all the chemicals, like pre-emergents, people said you needed to get a lawn established. He didn’t use any chemicals; the lawn just grew. I live here, too, so chemicals are out of the question. He did use burlap to keep the new lawn in place; I think Chess, the purebred border collie who lived here before me, showed how that was done. (If you want to see that post, it was called “My Strange Little Garden”.)

So that’s all I have for today. I’ll leave you with another picture of me lounging on the bed.

Until next time, then.