Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred collie, here today to tell you all about my boring day. You may remember me from such similarly-themed posts as “More Boring Stuff”, among at least a few others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
It wasn’t all that cold out today, say 65 degrees F (18.3C), and so you might think it would have been a perfect day to do some gardening, but you would be wrong there. I’ll tell you why, in a minute.
Granted, we have crocuses in flower.
Crocus niveus
And some snowdrops, too.
Galanthus bursanus
The guy I live with said the other autumn-flowering snowdrops have been “a complete flop” this year, because October was so dry, but he went out to look at the “main crop” of snowdrops in the garden on the north side of the house, and this is what he saw.
These are Galanthus elwesii ‘Theresa Stone’, and there are a lot of them up now.
It’s supposed to snow this weekend, but the guy I live with says the snowdrops will be fine. “They have ‘snow’ in their name, after all.”
You can see that we did actually go around the garden looking at stuff, and the guy I live with sprinkled some vole repellent into tunnels here and there, as well as fill the bird feeders, which is a major part of winter gardening here, but other than that, not much happened.
There was a lot of talk about basil. The guy I live with read of a way to keep basil, in this case Thai basil, fresh for a lot longer than it usually stays fresh.
The basil has been like this for a week. Most of it has been used.
After the leaves have been removed, except for a couple of tiny ones, he takes the stems, cuts them back a little, and puts the stems in a jar filled with water, in a propagator under lights upstairs, with bottom heat, so they’ll root.
On such a nice day, you would think most people who like to garden, and the guy I live with does, mostly, we would have spent the whole day outside doing things besides just wandering around, filling bird feeders, and trying to get voles to leave our garden.
But no.
The guy I live with has been having trouble with his email lately, and so he sat at the laptop for hours, typing messages to something called “technical support”. (He said later there was an actual person on the other end.)
I lay on the bed upstairs watching him. You have no idea how boring it is to watch someone type.
The guy I live with said he would have suggested that I go outside and watch the grass grow, but the grass here is dormant, so instead, I decided to take a nap.
I’ve mentioned before that we don’t get email messages alerting us to comments on posts, but now, apparently, that’s been fixed. About a hundred emails appeared after the guy I live with was done “chatting” with technical support. Now the guy I live with doesn’t have to go searching for new comments. If some of your comments went unanswered in the past, that was why.
So now I guess everything works. I’ll leave you with a picture of me showing how excited I was by this news.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Well, at least Thai basil is interesting, especially while it grows to make more. While you watch the guy you live with type, do you try to look interested? That is what Rhody does, although I know that he is just being very polite.
I didn’t even try to look interested. I know he likes Thai basil a lot, so there’s that, but he was sitting at the laptop for like three hours, when we could have been doing something actually interesting.
Work does get in the way sometimes. Maybe you will get to go out more tomorrow. Isn’t a bit late (or too early) for bulbs to be popping up? It’s been so warm here I’m getting a little concerned things might break dormancy. ?
I have to confess that the bed upstairs is super comfortable, and I was lying on the bed watching the guy I live with. But it was still pretty boring, compared to being in the garden and chasing squirrels.
The crocuses and snowdrops pictured are flowering right on time; the snowdrops have been in flower for a few weeks now. (There are some others that haven’t done so well with the very dry conditions in October, which set them back; they should have finished flowering by now.) And it’s normal to see ‘Theresa Stone’ up now, though they might not be in flower until the end of January or early February.
OMC!!! Wee nose about Tech Support heer two Mani….
BellaSita on hold fore 87 hourss an then talkin an tlakin an talkin antalk…you get THE pickture….iss as xciting as watchin grass grow or paint dry (((((YAWNSS)))))
Wee hope yore Snowdropss are Okay inn THE snow……Our Snappydragonss are just startin to dye off. Wee have had maybee 3 innchess toetall of snow since Octoburr….
Wee glad it iss not snowy so wee can feed Luna an Charlotte catss.
THE Basil lookss guud…..mee likess THE smell of Basil; due you?
***purrss*** BellaDharma an {{{hugss}}} BellaSita Mum
I think basil smells okay. The guy I live with grew some holy basil that smelled “just like bubblegum”; I’ve never smelled bubblegum.
He’s also super patient waiting on the phone (though he didn’t do that yesterday), because he worked for the phone company. It’s nice that everything is fixed.
He says we’re supposed to get snow this weekend. A “white Christmas” in Denver is pretty rare, but it does happen.
Wee due hope you have a White Catmess Day…that wuud bee lovelee Mani an Guy!!!
Basil plant that smellss liek gum?? Kewl!!! 😉
Thanks; same to you. Snow would be fine, though it’s not supposed to snow a lot here.
No snow heer yet Mani a Guy…..iss gonna bee a green Catmess!!! Last yeer 233 had 6 feet of snow,,,,,,weerd rite???
Meowy Catmess to youss’ ❤ ❤
We’ve never had that much snow here.
It rained last night, which was pretty nice. I got all wet on my walk, but the guy I live with has old, clean towels to dry me off.
No crocuses blooming here yet but a couple of snapdragons are still very green and look as though they might. I think they have their seasons mixed up though it has been unseasonably warm. We’re looking forward to the snow forecast, provided we can get to our Christmas destination in southern Colorado first. Woofing you and the man you live with a very Merry Christmas. 🎄
Thanks; same to you. The guy I live with says this weather isn’t all that unusual, though quite often it’s very cold before Christmas. We’re hoping it snows, too, and even hoping for a little rain later this afternoon.
The crocus pictured is an autumn- and winter-flowering one; we can grow some of those, though they are very unreliable due to the vagaries of the weather. Like all other bulbs, I guess.
We arrived in Colorado just a month or so before the Christmas Eve snowstorm of 1982, when the Mayor sent all the snowplow drivers home to their families and two feet of snow fell overnight. The next morning, we looked out of the front door, which was almost blocked by a drift and heard or neighbor yelling “You kids can open presents later! Get out here and start shoveling this snow!” As if it would have made any difference…It got so cold on Christmas day that my husband took a saw out to cult blocks of snow from the roof of our car. It was a little Subaru hatchback, about the only car that was able to negotiate the moguls that formed on the streets on the days to come. It was along time before we saw any clear ground, much less any plants or flowers. Maybe you will get lucky too this year and get some good snow. Here in Albuquerque we have rain today.
The guy I live with said he remembers that blizzard. He drove his wife’s Mazda GLC to work, with tire chains that had teeth on them.
(That may have been the time that the driver’s side window, which was broken, rolled down by itself and the whole car was filled with snow.)
We’re still waiting for the rain they say might fall later this afternoon.
I had just moved to an apartment across from the the Botanic Gardens that summer and remember that blizzard vividly. Friends got together whose flights ahd been cancelled and we made snow angels that night. since the local grocery shelves were completely emptied. At the time I was driving a MG Midget and it was buried in a drift of snow over 3 feet tall in my apartment parking lot that faced northeast. It took 2 weeks to find it and dig it out before I could use the car. A number of neighbors dug out the alley so folks could get to work once things opened up. Luckily I could walk to work in Cherry Creek and I found a Seiko watch in the snow that weeked which I still have! Although I have experienced many blizzards in the metro area, that one was quite the experience and left me with indelible and unforgettable memories. Merry Christmas 🎄
Same to you. The guy I live with said he didn’t have very many pleasant memories of that blizzard, or the Big One in March of 2003.
Fortunately they’re not very common here.
Oh yeah, that 2003 one was quite a doozy! I think it too me until April to shovel the oversized corner lot. What was I thinking buying a house on a corner? 🙄
Correction: He CUT the blocks of snow. My plants are loving all the rain.
That’s okay; we can edit comments here. The guy I live with freaks out about typos and sometimes goes back to correct posts, which I think is silly.
We wouldn’t want too much rain here because some of the bulbs are sensitive to “winter wet”, but some rain is okay.