Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today with some fairly interesting news. You may remember me from such other newsworthy posts as “Some Nose News”,among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. 
I bet you can tell that the weather has changed here. It’s been pretty nice. They say it’s supposed to rain tomorrow, which the guy I live with says is just fine. It rained for about four hours the other day; that was different.
I’d like to make a little prologue about the news I’m going to report. For some reason this is important to the guy I live with. We purebred border collies don’t have to deal with much of this, which leads me to believe that we’re just superior. I only worry about my breakfast and dinner, though I always get them right on time.
He says, “You know how when you do something, some people will always react with something negative, no matter what it is?”
We have a new metal friend.
The garage is filled with something called “new car smell”. And now we have a car that starts, reliably, in case we have to go anywhere in a hurry.
The guy I live with didn’t want to say what that meant, though I know if I had to go to the doctor, late at night, like if I ate something the guy I live with said not to but I did anyway, we would just go, even in three feet of snow, without fretting about a fifteen-year-old car.
“What if the economy collapses? What if gas prices go to ten dollars a gallon? What if there’s World War III? What if you can’t get gas any more?”
The guy I live with said he bets most people reading this post know people who say things like that.
He says he has two parrots; one on each shoulder. (I’ve never seen them.)
The parrot on the right shoulder babbles stuff like those questions. It chatters constantly, loudly, about all sorts of things that drive him crazy.
When it gets to be almost too much, the parrot on his left shoulder (closer to the heart), leans in to him and whispers, “She died“.
And then he sees things for what they are.
Well, so, anyway, that’s our big news, at least in the reliable transportation department. I have some other news, as well.
The bulb frames are gone.
The bases of two of the frames are still there, though eventually they’ll be removed.
There’s a whole new planting space which you can sort of see on the right.
You can also see that we have a lot of puschkinias.
They’ve seeded all over the place.
There are even more in the beds to the left of the picture. These are Puschkinia scilloides, which used to be called P. libanotica. Very common in the bulb trade.
All kinds of bulbs are in flower now. This is Fritillaria pudica.
This is Tulipa kaufmanniana ‘Ugam’. Named, I think, for a mountain range in Uzbekistan.
Tulips, if you didn’t know, are mostly native to regions of the world that have a climate pretty much exactly like ours. The guy I live with has always wondered why the Front Range of the Rockies doesn’t have more species of bulbs, but it doesn’t, for some reason. No doubt a weird evolutionary reason.
I guess this tulip is also marketed as ‘Ice Stick’.
There are “regular” tulips here, too, and though they’re perennial, they do tend to disappear in what the guy I live with says are “annoying ways”, like he would plant a few dozen, and only ten of them would come back year after year. He says it’s because they’re “bred plants”, of which there are very few in the garden. But the species tulips, like the one pictured above, always come back.
So that’s it for the news. I hope you didn’t find the guy I live with’s pontificating, which I did because he said to, excessively tiresome. I do have to live with him, after all, so I know what it’s like.
I’ll leave you with a picture of me after a long day of gardening.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Do you happen to know any Labrador Retrievers or English Pointers or any sort of bird dog? They do not need to be pure bred like a certain Border Collie. You should get one to take out that Right Parrot.
The guy I live with said that most people have those parrots, but only the one on the right shoulder, so they lack that kind of perspective.
Almost every time he goes out he meets people like that. As I said, he’s had this low-level fear operating in the background of his life ever since his wife died right in front of him; he talks about it, and it affects some of his decisions (like not being able to tolerate the chance of the car not starting), but he doesn’t go around sharing that with other people when he talks to them, like telling everyone they should be building bomb shelters or stuff like that.
It could be worse. As you know there are those who tell others that they should build bomb shelters. They could use the help of a left parrot. Sadly, I sometimes encounter homeless people with hoarding disorder. Other people get very annoyed by the hoarding because it is so visible, and because it often involves too much ‘material’ to move away efficiently. Many of those who hoard have experienced some sort of scarcity, and perceive their accumulated ‘material’ as some sort of abundance. It can be comforting in a way.
What a difference a few days make. The garden has emerged from its cover of snow and the plants are appearing ever so quickly. A big change! I love the Puschkinia which don’t do so well here with me – isn’t that often the case, that we desire those plants which don’t really want to grow for us! I’m with you on the species tulips – always better than the commercially bought and bred varieties which are one year wonders only. The new car is absolutely splendiferous – I wish you well wear and safe driving and no need for late night emergency outings. Parrots can be a nuisance at times.
Thanks. The guy I live with says lots of people around here have those parrots. I don’t know why.
We’d be happy to send you 100 million puschkinias. There would still be plenty left over, here.
It’s bizarre that it’s the third of April and we still have crocuses and snowdrops in flower. We usually don’t have winters as long as the one we just had.
The tulip business is just plain odd. There are a handful of ‘Queen of the Night’ in the front yard, which were planted in the late 1980s, and a couple of fosterianas, too. They look gross all by themselves, instead of being planted in groups or drifts. Why have some survived for all these years while most of them died out?
The species tulips love it here; Tulipa tarda and some others have seeded all over the place.
Naturally, there are some very unusual tulips here. We could have shown the flower of Tulipa buhseana, but someone chewed it off in the middle of the night. Probably a mouse.
Best tulip performers here are T. bakeri ‘Lilac Wonder’ which spread like crazy and T. sprengeri which self-seeds very generously – I love the strong red of the flowers.
We grow ‘Lilac Wonder’, too; it’s seeded itself quite a bit.
The guy I live with just got some seeds of Tulipa sprengeri. They’re in the refrigerator now.
That photo with the puschkinias, the 4th photo down. Everything looks so manicured. The garden looks good in all the pictures, but that one, the rocks, the flowers, the pine (?) branch, it looks perfect. Very serene and lovely. TGYLW must be working very hard.
I have tulips that disappear, and then 3 years later I’ll have one.
My parrots only talk to me at night.
Oh, that’s because the guy I live with had the “manicured look” filter on his phone. (Lol.) He’s been raking a lot.
There’s a big patch of Geranium well, I don’t know what it is, and the guy I live with’s mind has gone blank, which it rarely does. The leaves smell like 7-Up. It never flowers. Dalmaticum, maybe.
And then Origanum ‘Kent Beauty’ to the left of that, both on the rocks beneath the pine. The pine is a bristlecone, Pinus aristata; a dwarf the guy I live with got from Jerry Morris, who passed away recently.
Some people say that commercial tulips are designed as bedding tulips and not expected to live very long.
The parrots are, I guess, a drag, and the guy I live with really wishes he didn’t have the one on his left shoulder, but it does put things into perspective.
Hi Mani,
I have those two parrots. It has been very difficult over the 61 years I have been on this earth. I do love your new automobile though. I am sure you will be excited to go for a spin around the block. Your garden looks very nice!
Thanks. We’ve been working fairly hard. (Supervising can be exhausting.)
I think I’m going to get to ride in the car fairly shortly, because it’s time for my annual physical. I don’t mind that, because the doctors are nice to me, and at least I don’t go to the doctor as much as the guy I live with does.
I hear those parrots can be annoying, but the one on the left does remind him that he lost the one thing (or person, really) in his life he never wanted to lose and that everything else is pretty minor in comparison.
Beeuteefull flowerss…that wee yellow tulip is so purrty! HURRAH fore Rain an no more snow! Wee gotted snow over weekend which has melted now….still too chilley to sit out **sighss**
Concatss of THE mew car! It iss guud to have a reeli-abell car ‘just inn case’!!!
BellaSita Mum sayss yore bloggie’ss title iss furabuluss an so kewl…
shee has 2 parrotss allso. An shee lissenss to them both an makess a guud decision (most of THE time…)
An Mani aftur a day of gardenin, you sure look ‘dog-tired’…..mew mew mew….
***nose bopss*** BellaDahrma an ((huggiess)) BellaSita Mum
Thanks. They say it might rain tomorrow, too. But they also issued a fire warning, so that parrot on his right shoulder is squawking away.
It is nice to have a reliable car, though the guy I live with said that not having to take a key out of the ignition is pretty different, and may take some getting used to. (It has a pushbutton; he’s driven a car like that before, though. I guess it would be more realistic to say that the old car was probably reliable, but the guy I live with got spooked when it wouldn’t start.)
YIKESS nota fire warnin??? Not so soon onn mew yeer Mani an Guy!!
BellaSita Mum sayss mew carss are like spaceshipss to her!! Mew mew mew…..furry alien….
Pretty windy here right now.
YIKES! Same ehre Mani!! Mee DID get to sit out inn Condo fore an hour…iss sorta sunny out….bettur than rain or snow rite?
Windy again, here.