Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to talk about this and that. You may remember me from such posts as “Some Adventures”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
I like to do this, a lot.
The guy I live with said that someone, not saying who, when he was a puppy, chewed the carpet right there where you see the nail sticking out.
Anyway, it’s mostly been hot and dry here, though it has rained a little in the evenings. Like this:
Not too much is in flower, though the annual sunflowers, Helianthus annuus, are doing well this year. They’re native here.
Birds of course like the seeds, which can make it difficult to get these started in the garden. Maybe it’s kind of a common plant, but the guy I live with likes them.
Cyclamen are starting to flower, but we’re going to wait to show pictures of them.
The cow-pen daisies are flowering, but the ones in the “way back” border are having a hard time.
You can see how wilty they are. The daisies have a very shallow root system, and the soil here holds almost no water at all, at least down to about a foot or so. These sowed themselves here and I bet they’re sorry they did.
There are more, all over the garden, actually. They’re doing much better.
I have some news about the sinkhole. We did some investigating after hearing water trickling in the sinkhole, and saw water in it. That was pretty strange.
The guy I live with studied this for a while, though I wanted to look at other things, and he finally decided that the water was coming from the canal, flowing into the sinkhole, then trickling into the culvert (we could hear it echoing, the way it would), and then it’s flowing into the creek. The canal is leaking, in other words.
He left a message with the people who own water rights to the canal but maybe they can’t do anything until the county comes out and decides what to do.
The guy I live with potted up the rest of the Ipomopsis aggregata today.
He couldn’t find peat pots locally, and decided not to order any online, because that seemed like a pointless expense, since he had all these pots already.
He said that gardening can cost too much money and that sometimes takes the fun out of it.
Another thing, and this is kind of major in a sort of way that’s difficult to describe, is the storm headed toward Los Angeles. He talked to his cousin who still lives there.
There was a hurricane in Long Beach, where the guy I live with grew up, in 1939, and he wondered why he’d never heard of that, because parents and grandparents tell stories like that to kids, but then he realized his grandparents and his mom were in the Philippines then. Those things become memories, and then it’s almost like they never happened, unless someone tells a younger generation, or someone writes it down.
So that’s all that stuff.
Today he got a box in the mail.
This is a box of colchicums.
Three bags are Colchicum autumnale, and two are mystery colchicums which were sent to him to see if he could figure out what they are.
The guy I live with likes a good mystery, and likes figuring out stuff like this, even though he’s not a botanist. He kind of fixates on things like this and knows where to look up stuff. He told the person who sent them that he would do his best to sort this out.
He’s kind of a Sherlock Holmes when it comes to things like this.
The guy I live with hasn’t smoked a pipe for a very long time, but I thought I would show this anyway. (This is an Andreas Bauer calabash, if you needed to know. It still smells like expensive English pipe tobacco.) And he knows Sherlock Holmes never smoked a pipe like this except in movies.
Tomorrow will be Colchicum Planting Day. And then the game will be afoot.
He has this as a reference:
That’s what’s been going on here lately. A bit too much scary thunder for me, but not enough rain for the guy I live with.
And some mysteries.
I’ll leave you with a picture of me in my happy place, in a room full of mysteries and memories.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
I recently discovered your blog and wanted to say I enjoy it very much.
Thanks.
A book I have enjoyed also and the pipes here are from former days and unused nowadays.
The guy I live with says there’s a Peterson churchwarden in the display case downstairs (I’ve shown pictures of that case), which is more like what Sherlock Holmes would have smoked.
The guy I live with hasn’t smoked a pipe in a long time.
The colchicums were planted today, and it will be interesting to see if he can figure out what these two mystery colchicums are. There are so many selections or hybrids of bulbs with incorrect names in the trade, as the colchicum book says.
Our flight back home from Denver on Saturday night was delayed 2 hours by severe thunderstorms. You’ve certainly got the rain this year. Meanwhile, back in dry, dry Oregon, our creek has completely dried up for the first time ever. Sure could use some rain. The guy you live with must be happy to have finished potting up all those Ipomopsis. Now, he has to keep them alive until they can be planted.
We’ve gotten very little rain since the first of August, but maybe more is on the way this weekend. We hope so.
Meanwhile it’s roasting hot here today; the guy I live with has to make sure the little ipomopsis plants get watered twice a day.
This is the kind of weather (breezy, too), where if he turns his back for more than a few minutes, everything new gets fried instantly.
Fun little mystery to figure out. Hope you can solve it. It seems too early in the season to be planting Colchicums and other bulbs. Summer seems to go by faster every year. What with fires, extreme heat and smoke summer is becoming something to endure. Have to appreciate all the little moments when everything seems to come together. I like your happy place Mani. We should all be so lucky to have one like yours.
Thanks.
The guy I live with says August is the best time to plant autumn-flowering bulbs. Though colchicums have corms. I know because I get lectured about this.
You’ll be impressed by how much I’ve learned, just by listening. A corm usually only lasts for one year. At a certain time of the year, say next month, the starch in the corm begins to degrade, and the colchicum (or crocus, too) flowers. If the “mother corm” hasn’t formed roots, that’s the end of everything.
So it’s very important for the corm, the “mother corm”, to form roots at this time of year, which it does if they’re watered. The guy I live with digs holes, usually just a big wide hole, sets the corms in place with a little soil to keep them from tipping over, waters them, and then backfills the planting hole.
If the mother corm has formed roots, it flowers, and then has enough energy (because there are roots) to form “daughter corms”. The starch is transferred to the “daughter corms” so they have energy to grow. The “mother corm” withers away during the following year.
The corms grow until they go dormant the following summer.
If the corms don’t get enough water and nutrients, they won’t flower the next year, and will maybe wait until the year after that, or even the year after.
It all depends on the conditions from planting until about a year after.
The guy I live with once got some colchicums from England, in December (because of Covid), and what he did was plant them, water them, then mulch them heavily. He wasn’t sure if they would survive, but they did (since there were leaves the next spring). They still haven’t flowered.
Same thing with crocuses. There are thousands of corms of Crocus speciosus in the soil here, most about the size of BBs, which will eventually flower, but certainly not the year after the “mother corm” flowered.
Great information. Fascination how every type of ‘bulb’ has it’s own way of doing things. How wonderful it would be for all those bb sized crocus corms to bloom at once. I look forward to pictures of the blooming colchicum. Have only had limited success with these, maybe because they arrive too late to form adequate roots for the next generation to survive.
The guy I live with says that’s probably right; the “mother corms” didn’t have a chance to form “daughter corms” and so that was that.
He learned this the hard way, with some very expensive autumn-flowering crocuses, which he’ll never be able to find again. (Probably just as well, considering the expense.)
Crocus are in the Iris family and have three stamens; Colchicums are in their own family, Colchicaceae, and have six stamens, but the corms grow the same way in both.
What a fun an innterestin bloggie post Mani! Wee love yore ‘characteristick’ pose only showin yore pawss…..mew mew mew….yore so funny!
So there iss a leek inn THE Canal?? That soundss furry scarey. Wee hope Guy heerss back from THE County peepss soon.
THE Ipomopsis aggregata look guud an wee hope they all take root an grow guud.
An wee hope Guy can solve THE mystery of THE Colchicum plantss out!
THE Pipe iss furry kewl….mee thott it was Mistur Homess pipe…mee iss a well red Feline, mew mew mew…. OMC Mani guess what just came on Tee V as BellaSita iss typin fore mee??? “SHERLOCK” with Mistur Bennydict Cumberbatch!!! YEAH!!!!
An yore happy place lookss cozy an peecefull.
***nose rubss*** BellaDharma an {{{hugss}}} BellaSita Mum
Thanks. Yes, there is a leak in the canal. Kind of creepy if you ask me.
I imagine there will be a lot of thinking when the new colchicums flower.
The guy I live with liked “Sherlock”, but he thought it went off the rails quite a bit in later episodes. His favorite is the series with Jeremy Brett.
There was one time, when the guy I live with had some dental work, tooth pulled, and the dentist gave him a few painkillers. He fell asleep on the couch with the Jeremy Brett episodes playing.
He woke up about three in the morning, hearing all the dialog he knew so, so well, and it seemed like he was sick and his wife was taking care of him. He got up and made some soup, Juanita’s albondigas if you wanted to know, then took another painkiller, and went back to sleep on the couch, listening to Sherlock Holmes.
His wife loved the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes too.
Mew mew mew Mani pleese woof to Guy wee agree! “Sherlock” went so-o far off THE railss we were not sure if it wuud bee abell to come back!!!
BellaSita ADORED Mistur Jeremy Brett as “Sherlock Holmes” Hee was her fave two. Did Guy nose that Mistur Jeremy an Mistur Matin Cluness of “Doc Martin” fame are COUZINSS?? Fore reel!
THE soup makin inncydent soundss purrty funny….
May mee ask what iss ‘albondigas’? Mee not nose fancy foodabullss!
Long Live Sherlock Holmess!
Albondigas is a traditional Mexican meatball soup. Tiny little meatballs. There are recipes online.
The guy I live with did not know that about Martin Clunes. He really enjoyed ‘Doc Martin’.
I don’t know how many times he’s watched the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes but it’s a lot. His wife watched it a lot, too.
He also liked “Enola Holmes” on Netflix.
Wee gonna GOOGLE THE soup fore sure!
An Guy watchess “Doc Martin” two??? BellaSita Mum ADOORSS that show an mee findss it funny two!
He does watch “Doc Martin”.
And, incidentally, the guy I live with has also seen, in a library, original copies of The Strand Magazine, and Collier’s Magazine, where the Sherlock Holmes stories were first printed, with illustrations.
Oh, he can identify the unidentified Colchium. I know horticulturists and a botanist who are not as meticulous with botanical details as the guy you live with.
Well maybe so. He has kind of an OCD about things like this.
He also knows how to look up things very quickly, and remember where he looked, later; a skill he learned in his last job.
Did he ever identify the ‘breed’ of the black and white striped kitty for you? You might find such information to be useful.
No. We haven’t seen any striped kitties here for a few years.
“Doc Martin” iss a furry funny Hu’man. Wee watch his Speshellss on Poochiess an Horsiess an hee iss nothing like “THE Doc”!
WOW! Guy has seen THE original maggyziness that published “Sherlock Holmess”? Furabuluss Mani!
Yes, he said it was pretty cool to see the original issues.
BellaSita has A book that iss an Original volume of ALL “Sherlock Holmess” storiess An it has illystrationss two Mani….Our Hu’manss are so cultured rite?
They are. I guess.
The guy I live with has a two-volume set that his grandfather bought for him, but also his grandfather’s set, the “memorial edition”, printed in 1930.