Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here today to bring you, well, just some stuff. You may remember me from such posts as “Sunsets, Shadows, And Snowdrops”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
You know how you do something and then a little while, or a long while, later, you think you should have done something else? Maybe it’s just the guy I live with, but now he wonders why he didn’t plant more of the native birches in the garden here. True, it’s had a rough time over the years, but it’s still here, and it’s always attractive. Sometimes the branches die, but then the dead branches attract downy woodpeckers, looking for bugs.
The native birch, Betula occidentalis, is actually native to the big creek just to the north of us, Bear Creek, but it’s hard to find in nurseries. This one was purchased about thirty-five years ago from a local nursery that specialized in native western plants.
The guy I live with said he saw a couple at another nursery last year, and he might drive out there next year to see if the nursery still has them. It “would be cool” if nurseries sold him plants in the middle of winter, but I guess they don’t.
He and his friend went to Denver Botanic Gardens a couple of days ago and he said he wished that the garden here had been more Japanese in style. He especially likes this little entrance gate, which he said was called a hougei, which I guess is Japanese for “welcome”. 
But the construction in the garden here, which was mostly done by his wife, is very satisfactory. The fence around the enclosure is sort of falling apart, but that can be fixed. You can see one extra-slanty bit right here. This picture was taken a couple of days ago, when the guy I live with sawed off a big branch on the apple tree that the snow had broken. Here I am guarding the piece of branch. 
Well, a weird thing has happened. Not really weird as in creepy, just very unusual. The water in the canal is flowing again. That maybe has never happened before. (This, like the picture above, is a not-very-focused phone picture.)
There are a lot of crocuses in flower now. It was seventy-seven degrees yesterday, and almost that today (so you can tell it’s going to snow tonight…), and the crocuses really liked that. Crocus speciosus is in flower all over the garden.
The snow will wreck them, but there will be more.
This is Crocus cartwrightianus ‘Halloween’, a little bit late. The guy I live with says this is a “crummy phone picture”. He said the phone can take good pictures, but it doesn’t always. He says it’s probably not the phone’s fault. 
So on our walk this evening we noticed that there might be a pretty nice sunset, and it turned out that our noticing was pretty accurate. We both try to be expert noticers of things. The guy I live with purposely does not pay attention to a lot of stuff, so he can notice the things that are more important to him. Like sunsets. 
Oh, of course we heard and then saw an owl, but it wasn’t sitting in a place where we could get a good picture. So the sunset pictures will have to do.
And that was our day. I’ll leave you with a picture of me, heading home on my walk, at sunset. 
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
I have always loved your blog. The crocus’s are lovely as are the sunset pics.
Thanks. It’s a little chilly now, but I did get to see owls this evening.
That’s nice, I wish I could see some owls around this neck of the woods. Keep warm now.
Well, the guy I live with says where there are owls, there are rabbits. There was apparently an explosion in the rabbit population here about 25 years ago, and the owls moved in too.
Oh goodness me! I hope there are not too many rabbits around now, but owls are good, I think.
There are zillions of rabbits around here, actually. I’ve caught a few, myself, much to the alarm of You Know Who. (The guy I live with tends to forget I’m a dog.)
I tend to get a bit like that myself, Oh I mean forgetting that my dog is a dog. But if my dog – Ben the Border Collie, caught a rabbit I would be shocked too, not that we have any rabbits around here, we have foxes though, and lots of cats, and there are two dogs who live on either side of us. Come to think of it we have lot’s of dogs in our area as well as sheep and cows.
It’s kind of shocking to humans that we dogs can be deadly, though the last rabbit that I caught got away. I was running around the yard with a rabbit in my mouth; the guy I live with freaked out (because once I brought one into the kitchen), but the rabbit got away, minus a great deal of fur from its posterior.
Rabbits still get into the back yard. We’re not sure how. The guy I live with says maybe they climb the fence.
Maybe the dig under the fence. Farewell for now and wishing you both a lovely day.
Thanks; they do did under the fence. (We didn’t see this comment come across on email.)
That’s ok.
Well it was weird. The guy I live with had all these problems with email; we get comments on email and just respond. (Which is why some comments have those weird characters, like this one will have, which never used to happen on the Windows 7 laptop, which barely works now.) So the only way we can discover if comments went unanswered is by discovering an odd number of comments at the bottom of a post. It should be an even number, because the guy I live with says itâs not polite to ignore comments.
That last sunset picture is especially beautiful.
Thanks. The guy I live with had stopped to talk to one of our neighbors; I was getting impatient, but he said to wait, because the sunset was going to get better. Which it did.
Speck-taculer photoess Mani an yore ‘guy’!! Wee appurrciate all photess an preefurr REEL pix like yoress. Yore Crocusess are so purrty. Wee still can not get over them flowerin inn Novemburr….butt then you have warmer weather than us here inn ‘Snowin Sound’, mew mew mew…. LadyMew calls Owen Sound (where wee live) this durin Winter! an guess what? It iss snowin like crazey here today! LadyMew stayed home an watched Reemembrance Day ceremony from Centy…no wait Sen-no…oh man…Cenotaff (that’s THE werd!) on Tee V. Mistur Eric said a purrayer an laid a reeth from THE Jewish/Mewish community here an LadyMew meowed to him when hee got home…hee said it was fureezin down at THE river…speekin of which yore river iss flowin guud!
An yore sunset pix are furabuluss!! You both notice THE bestest thingss!
An Mani you are hansum purr usual…
***purrsss*** BellaDharma
Thanks; it’s cold here, too, today. The guy I live with was in Canada around Remembrance Day. It’s different up there, from the way it is here.
It’s supposed to warm up again and maybe we’ll have more super-red sunsets.
Mew mew mew well THE snow snowed fore 24 hours strait Mani! Today Sun iss shinin butt iss onlee 17 deegreess outside. Mee stayin inn!
Reemembrance Day here iss Veteran’ss Day there….diffyrent name but THE feelin iss THE same! Grattytude to all THE fallen soldiers an pilots an anipalss who fott inn THE Warss! Wee are furry blessed to not have war where wee livess!
Yes; that part is the same here. It’s 58 here and the sun is shining. The guy I live with is having computer problems. New computer, too.
Sent from Mail for Windows 10
EEKKK!!! Pee C trubbell iss THE werst! Does yore ‘guy’ say notty werdss?? LadyMew says ALOT of notth werdss when laptop actss upss….shee used to bee inn Tow truckin so shee meowss like a trucker 😉 An yet shee iss so sweet an kind…..with a notty potty mouth, mew mew mew…
Our high today was 18 deegreess an it was sunny fore a while. Now it is snowin tonite **sighsss**
Oh, the guy I live with has a very colorful vocabulary. He worked outside for many years and learned all kinds of words. When his wife died, his mom said that she had never heard him say that one word so many times. And with the cancer therapy that same word has come in very handy.
The computer stuff is okay, for now.
It’s 54 degrees F right now, and supposed to be in the 60s for the next week. The guy I live with likes that.
Nice tempyture there Mani!! It was a hole 37 deegreess here today. Mee managed 20 minutss out inn condo today!
An mee can emagin yore ‘guy’ an mee LadyMew meowin furry color full werdsss fore sure!LadyMew even apawlogiezess to mee fore her notty potty mouth….very nice of her rite? An shee NEVURR usess ‘those’ werdss to mee!
It’s important not to get angry around us, but the guy I live with does have conversations with himself which sometimes make me think he’s talking to me. He always apologizes afterward.
Mew mew mew our Hu’manss are furry kewl!!! 😉
Usually they are.
An Mani what wuud they do without US?? 😉
I have no idea. Probably just sit there.
Stunning sunset pictures indeed. Interesting about the Japanese gate as I have frequently thought that some of your garden pictures have a sort of Japanese sensibility – color, rhythm, sight lines, blah blah. Allowing of course for the very different climates and plants.
ceci
Thanks. The guy I live with says the garden could be more Japanese. He’s probably told the story of growing up in Los Angeles, with both his grandfathers having been in the Pacific during the war. He feels very differently about this, and responds very positively to Japanese, in fact all Asian things. Different generation.
I like the sort of Alpenglow in the last picture. And the willow pictures in the previous post. They did have a sort of fairy tale scary enchanted forest look to them. Why is water in the canal unusual? Is it an irrigation canal? It’s too warm here to plant bulbs if you can believe that. And, I’ve had to water. In November. Maybe somebody there had to water and so the canal was filled.
Thanks; fairy tale scary enchanted forest sounds kind of cool, except maybe for the scary part.
The canal is really a ditch, but “canal” sounds so much better. Irrigation ditch. It goes somewhere east. There are two sluices very close to us which still have the steel plates that open with wheel-shaped handles (I’m not up on old-time irrigation terminology), but the plates are closed and the handles are gone. One was here until just a few years ago when I guess someone swiped it.
But there’s never water in it at this time of year; it gets shut off. It was turned on again for who knows what reason, and then just this evening it looked like the water flow was down.
The guy I live with said it was less interesting to learn that it was really a ditch. He has met the guy who maintains it, a couple of times, but never asked where the water ultimately went. I guess he thought that would spoil the romance.
Part of it is now underground where the apartments are that you sometimes see in the pictures. Back when it wasn’t underground, Pooka, a purebred border collie who lived here before me, jumped into it, not realizing there was water in there, and got scared of water ever after.
You and your guy are quite the observant pair! I would love to see an owl or two. I recently had a young hawk (likely red-tailed) swoop through my yard to check out my three chickens. Of course, it happened so fast I couldn’t get a picture. Being a purebred border collie, I’m sure you would do an excellent job guarding chickens and rounding them up to go to bed in the evening. I also noticed that the Crocus sativus I planted several years ago are finally blooming for the first time; well, just 2 blooms… I understand your guy’s disappointment in not finding many native trees/shrubs in local nurseries. I would like to find an Acer grandidentatum; maybe one day I will.
Thanks; I think I’m the more observant one. But the guy I live with noticed the owls. I’ll post pictures of the pair of them in my next post.
The guy I live with said that one year there were several Acers grandidentatum at Timberline Gardens, maybe the year before it closed, and they were not very expensive, even in ten-gallon containers, but he didn’t buy them and wished now that he had. Like everything else.
No autumn color on them this year, for us, but in past years there has been. They do get anthracnose in the spring, here, but they shrug it off during dry summers.
Is that the birch in the first picture? It looks shrubby, like a big filbert. The crocus are rad. All the Dutch crocus bloom early in spring. The autumn blooming crocus also bloom in spring! I don’t know what’s up with that.
Yes, that is the birch; not really a tree, even in the wild, I think. No crocuses here, now, because of the snow on the ground.
Oh, that is almost sad that they got covered up! At least they bloom on time there. I will eventually try to grow saffron crocus again to see what they do once they get established. (I left them at a home I moved away from years ago.) Heck, even if they don’t bloom on time, they were nice anyway. I don’t know if what I grew really were saffron. They sure looked like they were, but they grew like weeds and bloomed late in winter like Dutch crocus. I did not mind the first time, but when they did it the second year, it was sort of strange.
They do get covered with snow but then more flower later. It’s supposed to snow again tomorrow night and the guy I live with is not very happy about it, but he doesn’t have to work any more and so he can stay home with me. So we kind of see the crocuses in little glimpses, between snowfalls.