the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here to bring you up to date on what’s happened in the last few days. You may remember me from such posts as “The Flannel Bush”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
This is mostly what I do. It’s been hot, though today it wasn’t so hot, just hazy and smoky from fires somewhere.

I sometimes lie there, awake, and watch the hummingbird fights. We don’t have much in flower for them, so it’s mostly the feeder they fight over.
This is the broad-tailed hummingbird, Selasphorus platycercus. This and the black-chinned hummingbird are the most common ones here. The black-chinned ones do a lot of dive-bombing; they fly really high and then down they swoop.
The guy I live with says it’s important to change the sugar water every day when it’s hot. It’s been hot, let me tell you. The guy I live with said next week was going to be really hot, I hope not.

Last Saturday, this happened.

It was a huge relief to the guy I live with. I thought it was scary. We got about two-thirds of an inch (about 17 millimeters) of rain. It’s still super dry here but this was very good.

The garden is infested with grasshoppers and it’s really gross, They’re eating a lot of plants. I learned a new word a couple of days ago: “skeletonized”.
The guy I live with said he’s tired of this awful summer and is ready for some snow.

There are some among us who are enjoying this plague of grasshoppers.
They’re eating every single grasshopper that falls into the water. The guy I live with said they’re going to be the biggest ducks the world ever saw.
There are some ducklings, too, with their mom, but I haven’t seen them for a while. They hide in the grass along the canal when I come by.
It’s true that, as you can see in my first picture, I do present a ferocious and deadly demeanor, so no wonder the ducklings hide.

That’s all I have for today. I’ll leave you with a picture of me inspecting milkweeds along the canal bank.

Until next time, then.

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to bring you up to date on almost nothing at all.
You may remember me from such posts as “The New Arrivals”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
It’s been really dry here. We had a little rain yesterday.
That amounted to about two millimeters, bring our total since the first of June to 14 millimeters.
And we had some rain today.
You can see how dry the grasses in the field are.
Our garden is just to the left of that little tree in the center of the picture.
Some of the native plants don’t care at all, though. This is Grindelia squarrosa, growing in the canal road.The other thing that’s discouraging to the guy I live with is the infestation of grasshoppers. They’re bad all over the eastern part of the state right now.
This is an echinops.

This is a different echinops. Maybe it’s time to remove these.
So this is just gross.

It’s also been super hot, except for the last two days. The titlle of my post refers both to the temperature (after it was almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit this last weekend), and to how old the guy I live with is now. Super ancient.
The guy I live with decided to order me a portable air conditioner. It’s pretty noisy, but drowns out thunder when I’m taking refuge in my Upstairs Fort.
At least that’s something positive.

That’s all I really have for this post. Incredible heat, drought, millions of grasshoppers, and a new air conditioner.
And even when it’s hot, it cools off nicely at night.

Until next time, then.