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 things we’re not doing, just like everyone else. You may remember me from such posts as “Helping In The Garden”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. You might have to look closely.
Well, things are weird. Like completely weird. The guy I live with hasn’t gone anywhere since he went to the doctor on the twelfth, but then again, it’s not like he goes a lot of places anyway. And now he can’t go anywhere.
I do know that I have plenty of food, thanks to Chewy dot com, and the guy I live with has food delivered from time to time, so we’re okay except for the fact that things are weird.
It snowed, and then melted, and then snowed. The guy I live with took a bunch of pictures of the willows in the snow, a while back, but never posted them on Facebook, which is where he was going to post them, but he’d already posted lots of these pictures on Facebook much earlier, so I thought maybe you’d like to see them here, as hopefully the last gasp of winter.
Kind of evocative, aren’t they? The guy I live with said “Evocative in a dismal and cold way.” He doesn’t like cold weather at all.
It was nice in between snowfalls, and it’s nice now, more or less, even though the guy I live with constantly complains about how cold it is. That’s because he’s an old person.
There’s been a little bit of gardening, but not all that much, because it hasn’t been warm enough for him.
The cyclamen, Cyclamen coum, are in flower, finally. (These are phone pictures.)
This one has just started; it’s called ‘Lake Effect’. 
And then there’s Fritillaria raddeana. These are regular camera pictures. The light was very odd, though.
The hens and chicks are beginning to look pretty nice. Here’s a picture of one of them.
Well, that’s it. I just thought you might like to know that we’re still here, and that things are weird.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Well things are weird everywhere my friend and the worst part is that no one knows when it will end. But things like crocus, tulips and daffodils still continue to bloom, bumblebee queens are out and about and spring is a coming. It’s all hard to take but next year at this time we will look back and be so happy it is to her. Best to all. Hug your pets and family and enjoy the warmer weather however you can.
It was pretty nice today though the guy I live with didn’t sleep very well last night so we didn’t do much out in the garden.
I got to cuddle with the guy I live with this evening; we watched a tv show called “Columbo”. The guy I live with fell asleep for part of it and so he missed some important things but he said Columbo got the “perp” in the end. I’m not sure what that means.
Next time will come quickly I’m sure. These days of nothing blend in to one another and the days fly by. Gloomy weather doesn’t help, hope it warms up there and the sun finally comes out to stay. This winter thing has gone on long enough!
Thanks; the guy I live with said it was supposed to snow again this weekend. You can imagine the moaning and groaning.
Our car is kind of iffy, too. It wouldn’t start the day he went to the doctor, and then it did, then it wouldn’t, then it did, and then that Sunday it wouldn’t start at all, but then it has started every day since, and he ran it for a while, and said he was going to take it in, but his neighbors said no, he was too old to go out, and anyway the guy I live with said that except for the car repair place there was nowhere to go. (His neighbors said if, perish the thought, I had to go to the doctor they would help with that.) And that’s the weirdest part. The governor has issued a stay-at-home order.
Now, maybe you don’t know this, but a stay-at-home order is about the same as a “buy a whole bunch of plants online” order. In other words we can live with it.
Tell your guy to hang in there. It’s going to be tough. Deciding where to order from, what to order, when to ship, order for the summer or start ordering for fall… it’s almost overwhelming, but it’s the right thing to do. Do it for the governor.
Thanks; we don’t need all that many excuses to order plants, but trying to figure out which ones is I guess a totally different story.
We have a lock-down here in the UK as well for a week now. Many small plant nurseries need help of course as they won’t get any customers visiting. So I’ve been in “buy a whole bunch of plants online” mode as well. The delivery drivers are getting quite friendly.
I guess you can order plants online here, like from the Amazon storefront, and go and pick them up, because nurseries are considered essential businesses. Vegetable plants. Or something like that.
The guy I live with said he might order plants from faraway places like Oregon.
We have lots of plant nurseries who offer mail order,and the plants are delivered by courier. Some are large ones, but others are small, run by just one person, and sell really specialist plants (like those TGYLW grows). And we also have Garden Centres but these are all closed. Nurseries are not considered “essential business” over here, although they are essential to gardeners like me
There used to be a wonderful nursery here, Timberline, but they closed. There are a couple smaller ones close to where that was, which I mentioned a while ago. All the rest are pretty far away from here.
But there are quite a few nurseries that do mail order.
Good to know that you all are being careful and in such a lovely place. Buying on line can be comforting; for some reason I had to have a bunch of raspberry plants this week. I’m looking forward to tucking them into their nice sunny spot when they arrive.
ceci
The guy I live with said almost the same thing, that ordering things online can be comforting.
We’re having some groceries delivered on Friday; there’s candy coming in the mail (I have an idea that’s not for me), and some other things. No plants, yet
Meow meow Mani an yore ‘Guy’ wellcome to THE Twilite Zone fore sure! LadyMew bin inn self isolation with mee t 2 weekss. Shee had 2 symptomss an so called Dogtur who said “ISOLATE!!” LadyMew iss Okay now…WHEW!
Now wee are runnin out of foodabullss so Aunty iss goin to take LadyMew shoppin tomorrow. Mee foodabullss an treetss an flee treetment an Feliway an stuff iss all reddy to bee picked up.
LadyMew WILL wear a mask an surgical glvoess an bee carefull…(mee iss wurried; mee not want her sick!) Butt wee need to eat rite??
OKay back to youss’ Yore snow fotoss are lovelee an what was that werd?? Eevocative…..fore sure.
An yore flowerss are purrty. Our Snowdropss are droopin an sicklee lookin…no snow here but lotss of rain an cloudy so much…wee need Sunshine beefore wee both go catsh*t crazy…sorry…
Pleese bee safe an well an know wee think of you dailee…..
***purrsss*** BellaDharma
Thanks; same to you. We are isolated anyway because there’s no place to go. The guy I live with’s friend is in Arizona; she left before the stay-at-home order.
We can have food delivered from restaurants pretty close to us and also grocery stores.
Wow, your friend is a long way away.
I bought some plants online, too, and am tempted to buy more, except we are not allowed to work so I shouldn’t spend money. I might buy more if we did not have to go to the post office to get things shipped by mail (like food items, as usually plants come by UPS or Fed Ex). It feels risky to go to the post office during a pandemic so usually Allan goes after midnight.
Yes, she is. The guy I live with talks to her almost every day, but also super misses her. I miss her, too; I haven’t seen her for a while, because of the leg business and then the virus business.
We had our car (I think I can safely call it “our” car) towed to the dealer’s, and now it’s fixed, and is going to be towed back here, but only because I need to go to my doctor’s for my annual checkup, and maybe the guy I live with needs to go to the urologist later this month, but today, this morning actually, the pilot light on the water heater went out, and the guy I live with tried to get down on the concrete floor of the laundry room to relight it, but he immediately got cramps in both legs, which he said was a holdover from the hormone-blocker therapy, so he called a service company and a super, super nice guy came out, with mask and gloves and shoe protectors, and fixed the water heater.
The guy I live with told the guy who came today how uncomfortable he was with all of this, because it was like everyone was hostile to everyone else, with the masks and stuff, when really he trusts other people completely (at least until they prove unworthy of that), so that’s really the weirdest part of all of this.
He hasn’t ordered any plants yet.
Life does feel very uncomfortable any time contact outside (or inside, with repairs) one’s home is required.
It does. There isn’t much to do here anyway, except go on walks, and we might not do as much of that in the next few days, because of the weather.