Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to talk about the labels, and some other things. You may remember me from such posts as “Rooting Around”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
It’s been pretty hot here lately. Usually it doesn’t rain when it’s really hot, and we sit in the kitchen with the swamp cooler running, but the other evening, when we thought we had little chance of rain, it suddenly poured rain here for quite a while.
I’ve been sort of under the weather, actually. I hurt my paw, and had to go to the doctor, where I got an antibiotic.
The guy I live with tries to watch for things like broken glass on our walks, and wonders what’s wrong with people who do things like that, but somehow I cut my paw and my doctor didn’t want me to get an infection.
Things like this have happened before, of course.
The guy I live with said that friends on Facebook, in Europe, were posting pictures of cyclamen, and as I said in an earlier post, we have some in flower, but it’s a lot hotter here than it is where the gardeners in Europe are, and he said that kind of delays things here.
This is Cyclamen fatrense.
The guy I live with grew this from seeds a long time ago, and some of the tubers are now six inches (15cm) wide.
I know this isn’t really in focus, and that one patterned leaf is actually Cyclamen cilicium.
This is Cyclamen purpurascens ‘Extra Fancy’
It used to be in more shade, but the honey locust branches that were shading it died, so now it’s in too much sun.
Well, the big deal here, aside my my regimen of pill-taking (the pills are wrapped in soft Mexican cheese; the guy I live with said that German immigrants to Mexico taught Mexicans to make very good cheese, and very good beer), was what you might call the triumphant acquistion of decent plant labels.
These are mostly for bulbs.
The guy I live with can remember the names of thousands of plants, but there are so many bulbs in the garden that he said it’s sometimes easy to forget where bulbs are planted.
He used to use those four-inch plastic labels, but now they’re very hard to find, and, besides, they get broken, either by being stepped on in winter when there’s snow on the ground, or by hail.
We had hail twice in 2018 and a lot of the plastic labels were smashed to pieces. (That’s why we got the new roof, too.)
The labels outside lasted for years, but the intense sunlight here made the plastic very brittle. There are broken pieces of labels all over the garden, still, and I could have stepped on one and cut my paw that way, too.
What the guy I live with wanted was inconspicuous labels. Nothing that would “announce itself”, if you know what I mean.
This is what he got:
You can see that they’re not very big. They’re zinc. I don’t know anything about zinc, and maybe I should learn a little about it.
The guy I live with said it was a bit weird that the main use for these is tagging animal traps, for hunters (being a dog, I have a different opinion), but they can also obviously be used for plants.
He’ll make steel pegs, from old tomato cages, to drive into the ground, and then the copper wires will be wrapped around the pegs. Or he could just use large nails. That might be a better solution.
But now he has labels he can live with.
So that’s really all I have for today.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
When I used to inspect trees within large landscapes, such as for condominium complexes, I labeled trees with numbers stamped into metallic tags. I did not mind doing so at the time. Now though, such tags can be scanned, so people who live in such complexes can identify trees that they happen to like, or know what the maintenance schedule of such trees is. I suppose it is useful, but it seems almost degrading for the trees, as if they are merely commodities.
The guy I live with said that’s what they had, maybe still have, at the botanic gardens, and sometimes he or his wife would search through a shrub or tree to find the stamped name. Now everything is on a computerized map, I think.
Well, it would not be so degrading at a Botanic Garden, where people are there to get acquainted with them. That is a good point though. It makes me feel better about these tags for trees.
I am a big fan of labelling as I have a terribly poor memory. My labels come from a small company in England – Alitags – and are made from aluminium. Names written with graphite will last for many years – I have some up to 30 years old which are still legible. Because I am very particular about naming my snowdrops I also etch the labels and stick on a printed plastic label…belts and braces! I use a heavy wire to hold them in place in the ground.
The guy I live with looked up Alitag and his labels are probably like “A1”.
Why it took so long to find something like this is another story. There was a place that offered what he thought he wanted but it turned out the labels were twice as big as what he wanted.
Another thing you hear people talk about is what works best for writing on labels. Pencil is the only thing that lasts, here. The guy I live with heard that have something like thirty percent more ultraviolet than at sea level, and light intensity, expressed in calories received, equal to Cairo.
On receipt of the aluminium labels it is necessary to wash them in soapy water to remove an oily residue. Pencil then remains very well on the surface though, as I have said, I sometimes use a small electric etching tool to engrave the name more permanently – a sure sign of optimism and faith in the longevity of the plant!
There’s no oil on these zinc labels. The guy I live with is kind of surprised that there’s no letter-stamping kit in the house here, because that’s something that could easily be here.
He might be too superstitious to make permanent markings, though.
And, I hope the injured paw is better very quickly.
Thanks. I’m pretty fortunate that I have someone at home all day, almost every day.
Pretty little cyclamen. Didn’t realize tubers could get that large for such a small plant. Finding good labels is a challenge. I have rock gardening friends who use similar labels but also pieces of Lexan with computer generated text and etched aluminum ones with good results. Still trying to find ones that the *@!# magpies won’t pull out. I swear they do it just to annoy me. I am sorry to hear about your paw Mani. Hope it heels quickly.
Thanks. It seems to be healing pretty quickly. These things happen. I tore one of my toes pretty badly some years ago; I forget what I was doing.
The guy I live with said that a certain purebred border collie pulled out a whole bunch of labels when he was a puppy.
Back in 2018 when we had two hailstorms (the first one wasn’t as bad as the second, but neither was as bad as as the one in 1991), a lot of the labels in the pots in the seed frame were smashed to pieces, but the labels were old at the time. Now the frame is covered with hardware cloth, just in case, but there are pots with no labels. That doesn’t matter much because after three years it’s not likely there will be any germination and the pots will be emptied later this year.
POTP to you deer Mani!!! Wee hope aunty-byeotick ridss any innfection from yore paw an you ae fightin fit inn no time!
Wee heer you about Peepss who throw stuff on THE ground. There iss a man inn heer who chain smokess an hee throwss his cig butts all over THE place! BellaSita furinallee lodged a complaint against him….these buttss are full of chemmycallss an make THE soil an water poisoned! YUCK!
Sum Peepss due not scoop THE poop an BellaSita has reeported them two! Wee due not want that on our lawn…..
BellaSita told me many yeerss ago shee used to walk outside bare pawed from May til Novemburr……well not anymore!
Those zinc label stickss look grate an wee thinkss they will not rust or brake or blow away….
THE Cyclamenss are furry purrty an mee thinkss mee faverite flowerss….
Yore Selfiess are so lovelee; yore so hansum Mani….
***nose bopss*** BellaDharma an (((hugss))) BellaSita Mum
Thanks. I think my paw is getting better.
We’re seeing a lot of trash dumped in the little field to the north of us. It’s private property, so that’s against the law, but the guy I live with says they’re dumping it at night.
People can be really gross.
We visited Cuauhtémoc, a Mennonite city while we were in northern Mexico visiting my husband’s family back in July. They still make the best cheese, which is used in many Mexican dishes in Chihuahua. My in-laws would scoff if they saw how cheddar and other orange cheeses are put on a lot of the Mexican food up here in the US.
Hoping that the labels are effective placemarkers. I use sharp sticks to mark the location of plants that I don’t want to lose track of, with some mild hope that the rabbits or deer will poke their eyes out or impale themselves if they try to eat the plants next to the sticks. So far, no luck. Eventually the sticks decompose and disappear, but so do many of the plants that I’ve chosen to mark, so it’s a win-win situation.
The guy I live with says they also make beer there. Good beer. (He no longer drinks beer, but likes to think about it.)
He and his friend have been going to authentic Mexican restaurants here, mostly for tacos, and no orange cheese piled on things.
The labels came from Scheel’s, https://www.scheels.com/p/dakotaline-snares–cold-creek-write-dakotaline-snares-on-trap-tags-per-25/65334151542.html#q=tags&lang=en_US&start=18
Looks like a terrific solution to replace the plastic markers. I need to do something like that-my iris garden was carefully marked but the plastic has faded the lettering and is now brittle after 21+ years in the intense Mile High sun. Nice job, Manni and the man you live with…well done. Hopefully the temps will break soon, as for us, we’re so over summer and are looking forward to at least Indian Summer if not autumn outright.
Your Denver pal,
Elsa 🐾 and mom
See my reply to Jerry’s comment about where to get the labels.
The guy I live with said he’s ready for snow. He said on this date in 1961 it snowed four inches. Did quite a number on the trees around town, though.
His family has moved to Denver, Littleton really, in April of that year and the guy I live with wondered what the heck.
It rained here a little just now.