the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to talk about my unpleasant experience, and some other things. You may remember me from such posts as “Mice In The Rice”, among so many, many others.|

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
You can see all the gray-leafed plants around me. Some of them had a difficult time with all the rain we had earlier, but they’ve recovered. (That’s the alkali sacaton, Sporobolus airoides, behind me, if you needed to know.)
The “partridge feather”, Tanacetum densum subsp. amani had some parts that rotted away, but it’s growing back.
And the “mystery centaurea” is doing really well again. It has a nice purple flower, but no one has ever been able to tell the guy I live with what its name is.
It grows like this; a flat gray mat.

The maples (Acer grandidentatum) are turning color now.
It may look like it’s going to rain in that picture, but it’s not going to. We had a few millimeters of rain yesterday, but the forecast calls for more dry weather. October is often a dry month here.

There are still some colchicums in flower. This is Colchicum cilicicum.
The guy I live with said it should be cilicium; that’s the correct Latin word meaning “Cilician”, from Cilicia in Turkey; he said, “Whatever”.

And there are sphaeralceas. They guy I live with posted pictures of these on Facebook, but he said why not post them here, so I am.
And, finally, there’s Solidago ‘Wichita Mountains’.
So that’s the gardening stuff. I saw a raccoon on my walk the other night; we hadn’t seen any for quite a while (years, maybe) until then.

The guy I live with told me one of the biggest sources of anxiety, for him, is having to set the alarm for something. The jury duty business means he’ll have to be there two hours before he normally gets out of bed, so he’s going to have to set the alarm four hours earlier than he usually does.
So, as I said in my last post, he’s been trying to think of every eventuality, and maybe find me a place to stay in case he has to do jury duty.
He called one place, and sent emails, but got no response. He said not responding is typical of the way things are now. He makes phone calls, sends emails, and so on, and gets no responses at all.
But finally he did find a place, not very far away at all.

It was hard for me to believe that I have documents, but I do, and so he downloaded a thing called an “app” on his phone, spent quite some time trying to figure out how to upload my documents to this app, and then he called the place, and someone answered.

Let me indulge in a little interlude here.
The guy I live with worked for the phone company for thirty years, and he gets very irritated when people don’t answer the phone. He said everyone has phones they carry with them, but no one ever answers their phone.
The latest in communication is something called “texting”, and he says that’s a perfectly good substitute, but people don’t answer texts, either.

Anyway, the people at the place I might stay talked to the guy I live with, and I had to go for an interview, like to see if I was a maniac or a weirdo or something.
(The guy I live with says that all purebred border collies are weirdos.)
And so we went.
I was absolutely terrified and didn’t want to approach anyone there. I even crawled under the bench that the guy I live with was sitting on. The guy I live with felt very sorry for me, but didn’t understand why I didn’t like the place, since I like going to my doctor’s office, and liked going to Day Care there.

I was afraid I was going to be abandoned, right then and there, but the guy I live with assured me he would never, ever abandon me, no matter what.
We’re going back next week, for another interview.

Of course, there’s a chance that none of this will be necessary, but the guy I live with said this was “just in case”.
I got extra cuddles and kisses after my ordeal.

And that’s the situation here, on a chilly, dry, and windy evening in October.

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 all the exciting things that happen to us almost every single day. You may remember me from such posts as “The Ghost In The Grapevine”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
You can see that the leaves on the birch are turning yellow.

It was pretty windy today and all sorts of stuff blew onto the patio and everywhere else. I think the wind is because it might rain some time this week, but the guy I live with isn’t very confident about that.

Things have been a little unsettled here for a while now. I’ve had some issues with eating, even after I stopped taking the antibiotic for my cut paw, and that’s upset the guy I live with no end. We had an argument about breakfast just yesterday.
Maybe I’m back on track now, with regular eating, though.

I know he worries about me, just like I worry about him.
He was summoned for jury duty, something he said he’s been dreading for years now, and he’s not sure whether just to leave me here at home for hours (longer than I’ve been left at home before), or have me go to a day care place. I’d have to spend the night.

He said he thought about trying to fake his own death to get out of this, but I think that wouldn’t work. I can tell he’s stressed out.

And it’s October. Not his favorite month, because it was his wife’s favorite month, and he said he can feel that. Her birthday is this next Sunday. I know he misses her terribly, and especially now, because she could stay home with me while the guy I live with did his jury thing.
He says it’s very hard to talk to people about that, because most people don’t want to talk about death, loss, and grief. They can’t relate at all.

The colchicums are almost done here. This is Colchicum ‘Pink Star’. The guy I live with was given some corms to try to determine what they are, and this is what he decided it was.
The first crocuses have appeared. These are Crocus kotschyanus, the one called ‘Reliant’, though I guess it isn’t, totally. Sometimes crocuses form all these little cormlets which take a few years to grow to flowering size again.
These were named for Karl Georg Theodor Kotschy, an Austrian botanist in the nineteenth century.

This seems to be mostly a month for yellow flowers, like the cowpen daisies, which I can see, and red flowers, which I can’t see. I can’t see the color red, I mean.
Salvia greggii is doing very well. We had a little rain a while ago, but everything seems pretty dry nonetheless.
That’s a seedling, from the original planting of ‘Furman’s Red’.
This is ‘Furman’s Red’.
The hummingbirds have all left, for Mexico, which is kind of sad, because we have all these flowers for them.
This is Zauschneria ‘Ghostly Red’. It’s just starting to flower.
This is native to California, where they have hummingbirds year-round, and the salvia is native to Texas, where the hummingbirds would find them on their journey south.
So the salvias flower here after the hummingbirds have left, but are still flowering much farther south. Like at least 800 miles (1278km) farther south.
The guy I live with says that’s the way things go.

The last red flower for today is one that the hummingbirds might look at, but not find interesting. This is Cyclamen hederifolium ‘Corfu Red’.
The guy I live with says there aren’t any hummingbirds on the island of Corfu. He knows that without checking.

The last time we had any rain worth talking about was about two weeks ago, but now we have these coming up in my Private Lawn, which is buffalo grass.
These are mushrooms, if you didn’t know.

The guy I live with said he would have to spend “some time thinking” as to why there are mushrooms in my Private Lawn and nowhere else. It could very well be that something was added to the soil back there at one time, because the garden has undergone so many changes in the last thirty-five years or so. Things didn’t work out, the guy I live with changed his mind, plants died, all sorts of things like that.

Anyway, there are mushrooms. The guy I live with removed all of these the other day.

So that’s what’s been happening here. Not really a whole lot. I mean if you don’t count all the stressing out and stuff. The guy I live with was very good with functioning under stress, when he worked for the phone company, but it’s been a long time since he did that, and maybe he’ll have to get used to doing that again.
I would be very upset if he tried to fake his own death, or if we had to head to Mexico because of all of this. I don’t speak Spanish. And it would be too hot for me.

I guess that’s all I have for today. A bunch of stuff that’s maybe too weird for me. I’ll leave you with a picture of me sleeping on the patio, which has been swept repeatedly in the last couple of days, and needs to be swept again.

Until next time, then.