Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to bring you our latest news. You may remember me from such posts as “More Boring Stuff”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
It was forty-five degrees today. (That’s 7.2 Celsius.) Pretty toasty in the sun, and let me tell you, the sun here is very warm, because we’re closer to it than most people are.
The snow is melting, slowly.
This is what it looked like night before last, at about midnight, when it was Tinkle Time. It was cold.
We’ve had an issue with rabbits getting into the garden, and the guy I live with was pretty upset with me when instead of going outside for the last time at night, to tinkle, in the freezing cold, I spent a long time chasing a rabbit around the back yard. (I didn’t catch it, but it was good exercise.)
It’s going to get warmer and warmer, but then maybe snow a little at the beginning of next week.
It was so nice today that the guy I live with raised the plastic sheets that were covering the snowdrops planted in pots.
Very stylish-looking, isn’t it? The guy I live with thought he might start a blog called Elegant Garden Design, but I wasn’t really sure about that idea.
The plastic was just to help keep the soil from freezing when it got very cold, because that slows down the snowdrops, and he mainly wants them to increase.
The soil is frozen solid where that two-by-four is; the wood is so he can kneel down to look at the snowdrops. I worry every time he kneels in the garden, because he might not be able to get up. (The other pieces of wood are there so he can lift the plastic without having to kneel down, or were to keep the plastic from blowing away.)
But see the little white dots? This is what they are.
And in the front yard, there are snowdrops that have escaped from the main flock in the shade garden:
The guy I live with said that some plants use glucose to create heat so they can push through the snow. This is called thermogenesis.
There’s still not enough energy in the zillion snowdrops in the shade garden to be able to get through the snow, but maybe some warmer temperatures will help with that.
I don’t know why that cage is still there. It was to protect some colchicums several months ago.
Crocuses can do thermogenesis, too, but this poor thing got frozen first. This is Crocus laevigatus. It’s normal for it to flower in late December.
There still could be some more flowers, but the guy I live with says probably not, which is okay.
Someone is coming out this weekend to give a quote on a new furnace (another form of thermogenesis, maybe), and now that it’s become nicer, the guy I live with said he’s “firm in his resolve” not to let the nice weather make him think we don’t need a new furnace. The thing is fifty years old, with some corrosion and all sorts of weird wiring.
And I’ll get to watch all of this.
So that’s our news, I’ll leave you with a picture of me in what I think you’ll agree is a pretty relaxed mode.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Wee love yore backyard fotoss’ Mani….an wee bet you had so much fun chasin THE Rabbit!
Wee have not seen Indy, Cyndy, Windy or Lindy Bunniess for 2 monthss now….Nor Bindy an Mindy their Pawentss……they all must bee burrowin sumwhere warm…..wee hope!
Our tempyturss are -14 Cellseeus an North wind an snowin!!
Wireton Willie did NOT see hiss shadow so early Spring>>> ROFM!!!!
Spring iss still 5 weekss away….
This Thermogenesis stuff iss so innterestin. Mee just leerned sumthin new!
An poor Crocus Frozenicus……bbbrrrrr……
MMMM mee feelss like curlin up on sofa with you an havin a nap Mani….ZZZZZZzzzzzzzz……….
BellaDharma an 🙂 BellaSita Mum
Thanks; it’s pretty nice here, now, though the guy I live with says the snow will be here for a while.
Naps are excellent no matter what the weather.
Wee happy yore weather settled won!! Wee are now inn a ARTICK Vortex an iss feelin like -25 Fahrenheit an North wind an sum Sunshine, butt freezin anyway! Our now iss not goin anywhere soon eether Mani 😉
The guy I live with has seen the forecasts for places like New Jersey; looks like the cold is moving farther east now.
Which is typical for winter cold; it moves west to east across North America, so, usually our coldest time is right before the end of the year (like it was right before Christmas), and then by February it’s colder in the east. Not always, but usually.
Rhody likes to exploit kitty thermogenesis, but Darla does not approve.
Being toasty is nice.
Even if kitties are not.
I guess; I don’t know anything about them.
It is likely better that way.
I guess; I’ve forgotten what this was about, now.
You really have to go to heroic lengths to grow your snowdrops. I am less devoted, I must admit. There is great success with those which are easy to grow here but some, G. reginae olgae for example, which don’t suit our conditions and I am unwilling to make any great effort to accommodate them. What will grow, will grow. By the way, I joined a gardening talk, via Zoom, earlier in the week from a Stephen Shaw, speaking about snowdrops in American gardens, and found it very interesting. He was presenting to the Hardy Plant Society, Galanthus Group, in the United Kingdom.
The guy I live with says the snowdrops are in pots so they can be easily dug up and the bulbs shared. Covering them with plastic helps keep the soil from freezing so the snowdrops continue growing instead of just sitting there.
They probably wouldn’t need to be covered in a normal winter but we’re not having anything like a normal winter, here. (As he keeps saying, a normal winter here has at least one 16C day every week, with some cold now and then. The last day like that was last year. It’s supposed to be about 14.5C today, which is more like it.)
The lack of precipitation in autumn is another new thing he has to deal with.
Always better to get the new furnace before the old one plays out (and in my experience with 2 such episodes, the playing out usually happens during a terrible cold snap/ice storm/power outage type thing. So bravo moving forward with the furnace project! Dogs need to be kept warm!
ceci
The guy I live with figured that furnaces go out when it gets really cold, because they’re on more. We don’t keep our house as blazingly hot as some people do; the guy I live with said most people he knows who do that get sick a lot in the winter because of it. Back when people came over they used to complain about how cold the house was, but it wasn’t; they just kept their places really hot.
In fact the furnace guy asked the guy I live with if the house was always kept “this cold” (it was about 58 degrees in the house at the time, and the back door was open), and he said yes. It’s comfortable for us.
Oh, those evenings standing in the freezing cold while a dog misbehaves. They make us grouchy, Mani.
I used to keep my house at 55 while I waited for my ancient heat pump to fail entirely, which it did on a 105 degree day. Made a sound like an explosion.
Is it also thermogenesis that keeps the ground under a tree from freezing when all the other soil is frozen solid?
The guy I live with has a lot of experience just standing in subzero weather, like say waiting on hold when he worked for the phone company, so this comes in handy when I get distracted at Tinkle Time. But it is my job to chase rabbits out of the garden. (We’re not sure how they get in.) He does get impatient, though, because it’s cold and he wants to go to bed.
We do keep our house fairly cool, I guess by American standards, but the guy I live with also has a space heater pointed at him when he sits in the kitchen, which he does kind of a lot.
The guy I live with was curious about your question, and looked up some things, and there was something about leaves on trees radiating heat downward, which sounds weird to me, because even I understand that the upstairs bedroom is warmer than the downstairs one.
Tell the guy to keep planting snowdrops. I’ve planted a lot and believe there are finally enough to keep the garden warmer during the winter months, and suspect that with another few years of planting I can move the whole garden south another zone.
Please let me know if there are plants which generate water or a beachfront since I would be interested in also looking at a shoreline while we enjoy warmer winters.
The guy I live with said that might be a good idea, but there would have to be trillions of snowdrops to melt all the snow here. The snow seems to be highly resistant to melting in most places in the garden.
Or maybe it has to be self-sown snowdrops like the ones pictured in the post.
In one of his many idle moments, the guy I live with looked at the weather forecasts “back east” the other day, and saw a warning for “dangerously cold” low temperatures of 7F. That was the high here one day last week, but he said that 7F there would probably feel like -50F here, because of the humidity.
Gosh, those snowdrops are just lovely. It’s such a treat to see bulbs poking through frozen ground toward the sun. The hyacinths that started to make an appearance last month are none for the worse-I saw them yesterday after the sun melted the mounds of snow that had buried them. Makes one smile on a Colorado winter day. Cheers good boy-hope you and the guy you live with have a swell weekend.
There isn’t much melting going on here, but now it’s a little windy, and that might help. The guy I live with is mildly put out that there aren’t more snowdrops, but this has been a weird winter.
Wee allwayss check weather out inn Western Catnada to see what iss comin. Butt not all weahter comess from there. It can come from Artick like it iss doin here now an it can come up from Minny-soda an Whizz-consin two!!
Sumtimess wee get weather from all 3 placess all inn 1 big messy weather ball Mani!!!
BBBBRRRRRRRRRRRR 😉
Our cold weather comes from the country to the north of us …
Summer storms come from the west, from the mountains. Not very much weather comes from the south, or the east, though sometimes it does.
Yore Geeograffee iss furry diffyrent from ourss Mani. Must bee why wee have such diffyrent weather. Iss no freezin today; just cold at 28 Fairenhite . Wee take it!!!!! 😉
It’s very different. Colorado is really three areas; the eastern plains, the mountains, and the “western slope” (drier, but warmer in the winter).
We’re right where the plains end and the foothills of the mountains begin.
It was 60 degrees F here today. Supposed to snow tomorrow, maybe.
Mee-yow youss’ are nestled inn nicelee there. 60 F yesterday? Wee are 30 F degreess here today……happy Winter to us Mani!
Yes you do look very relaxed Mani. How lovely to see little blooms at this time of year. Such jewels in an otherwise barren landscape. Maybe the guy you live with should outfit you with a harness so if he can’t get up you can help pull.
One of those pieces of wood is made of oak, and besides an aid to lifting up the plastic, it’s there so he can pull himself up, if he needs it.
There are more snowdrops in flower here, finally. Some are almost a month late, but that’s okay.