Either in gratitude for my spendy order or because they know I'm a sucker, High Country Gardens offered me 10% off any additional order placed by 19 June. I did try to buy xeric tulips (did you know they exist?), because you can buy whenever for plants to ship later, but HCG is too wise for that. I am still going to buy a zillion tulip bulbs (from them or whoever) to plant this fall, even though I just bought yet more plants with the discount.
My overly enthusiastic spring pruning or the hail took out one of the two-year-old Salvia farinacea. Its siblings are coming up, and it still might grow from some roots, but hey, 10% off! Even though it's in the south garden that the white Achillea ageratifolia seems not to be thriving, the Lavandula x intermedia "Alba" will go in the north half because there is no white in that garden at all and only the foliage and ruby Centranthus ruber and peachy-orange Agastache rupestris relieve the eye from blue and lavender and violet (those pervese eyes that need relief from such colors). I moved the Artemisia versicolor into the main garden and it's still alive (two days without collapsing so far) and its hole against the south porch will be filled with Ribes odoratum, about 60 inches tall and wide. Supposedly it will set a currant-like fruit, edible to birds (and humans?), smell like cloves, and turn its leaves mahogany-red in fall. As long as its scent (clove) doesn't clash with the delicate hummingbird mint, redolent catmint, sage, and lavender, it and I should get along fine. Lastly, I splurged (relatively: each plant costs almost twice the median) on Symphytum grandiflorum because it's lovely and anything that can survive against the south fence, attacked by bindweed and receiving little sun, is something I want to try.
I told RDC we'd have to sell the house. The garden is just not big enough.
When Shadow was young, she would not explore the staircase. Eventually, she tried it out, getting herself upstairs, but for a while we had to carry her down. Staring down those 13 narrow wooden steps, her urge to please could not overcome her fear of that flight, what with her big paws and puppy clumsiness. Finally, she did it, with me by her side should she slip.
We now possess a rooftop evaporative cooler, hooray. Sometime soon we will remove the window unit, and RDC's office will have more light (though not air: I have to build a screen for that window) and the side of the house won't have a burl poking out.
The plumber suggested a mineral block to suppress mold and so forth. I'm not the one afraid of heights, so clearly I am the one to climb up to the roof and set the block into the drip tray. I've been wanting to climb around on the roof for a while anyway, but I have never quite understood how you get from ladder to roof. The plumber said over the top, which I hadn't thought of before, and so today, I went over the top. (Please excuse the WWI metaphor.) It's easy to lift a leg from the third-highest (highest permissible) rung over the gutter to the not-very-slanty roof and, another suggestion from the plumber, to fall forward.
I did that, scrabbled up, removed one side panel (the downhill one, which is Wrong because you lift the panel down which means your weight goes down and the drop is down too), placed the block, and scrabbled backward toward the ladder.
I felt a lot like my three-month-old dog.
Stepping on the topmost rung is no good: it's not just that the safety label says not to, it's that weight on that rung could tilt the ladder and I had no reward like an intercostal clavicle to make it worthwhile. If you fall forward to get on the roof, do you fall backward to get on the ladder? Yii. I turned left, my right, stronger, dominant side to the roof, left hand on the left stile, right foot gripping the sole of my right boot, whole soul hoping that boot had all the gription it ought, left foot out yii out yeepers out to the second rung. After that I was fine.