Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to bring you a post with some highly unusual content. You may remember me from such posts as “The Long Lead”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
It was a pretty nice day today. The weather website says it’s snowing here, but it really isn’t. It might later, though. It’s probably snowing somewhere, but not here.
Here’s our resident front-yard bunny in a characteristic pose, too.
The guy I live with has, so far, left the dried stems of Sphaeralcea parvifolia just so our resident bunny can have some cover. The bunny doesn’t do much damage, now that the guy I live with knows what it likes to nibble on.
While he was out in the front yard, the guy I live with checked up on some plants, and was surprised to see basal leaves on Salvia ‘Raspberry Delight’.
This is a really good sign. The guy I live with has tried this salvia several times, and it looks like it will make it through this winter, because, he said, plants native to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico almost always grow basal leaves which overwinter. He said it was “some monsoon thing”. Agastaches and some penstemons do this too. If they don’t grow these basal leaves, the outlook is grim.
And this is Zauschneria ‘Sky Island Orange’.
The guy I live with said this was excellent.
I know there’s been something weighing on the guy I live with’s mind; something about “fifteen years”, and I have no doubt I’ll have to say more about this later, but he’s also been thinking about the snowdrops that aren’t up yet. They should all be up now.
Today, the guy I live with decided to check on the snowdrops, and pulled pots from the ground.
I wondered about this, but he said he’d been checking on plants by digging them up for over sixty years, and so not to worry.
He removed the soil from the pots very carefully, and found the bulbs sprouting at the bottom on the pots, so he even more carefully transferred the bulbs into his new pond baskets, being ultra super careful with the roots.
Galanthus cilicicus
You can see that the emerging foliage isn’t green, so this was covered with more soil, and then the pot was “plunged” back into the soil, with the bulbs at normal depth insteadof twice as deep, like they were before.
The pond baskets will make it even easier for the snowdrops to be removed, for sharing purposes, later.
I was glad to see the guy I live with so happy doing this, especially since he was afraid he had lost this particular snowdrop.
And now for the unusual content.
Yesterday afternoon the guy I live with got a text from his neighbor asking him if he had seen the emergency warning. He said he hadn’t, so his neighbor called him to say there was a “shelter in place” warning, and that law enforcement personnel were turning cars away from the major intersection near us.
The guy I live with then discovered there was that message on our landline. Yes, we still have a landline, because the guy I live with worked for the phone company.
We waited for four hours to go outside.
It turned out that new owners of a storage shed had found a landmine. I guess if people don’t pay the rent on a storage locker it and the contents get auctioned off, and that’s what was found. The guy I live with didn’t tell me what a landmine was, and I decided I didn’t want to know.
The sheriff was called, and then someone from the army, and eventually they determined that the landmine was inert, but let me tell you, that was a very long four hours for me. The guy I live with apologized over and over again, even though it wasn’t his fault.
Eventally the “all clear” was sounded, and I got to go on my evening walk.
So that’s our news of the last day and a half. We don’t lead very exciting lives, which is the way both of us prefer things to be, and maybe yesterday evening was a bit much, but for now, anyway, things are calm again.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Oh my! That certainly is highly unusual. However, when I was a kid, I went with my Pa to a house demolition party (after the new house was built next door to the old house.) In the process of demolition, an ‘artillery shell’ was found underneath the floor. I do not know what an artillery shell is, but it supposedly looked like a humongous bullet, and could have had the potential to explode. It was in a rural area, and about 1979, so there was no major evacuation or shelter in place while a team of specialists came to determine that it was not dangerous, and took it away.
The guy I live with said there were brass shells here, from the war. One was made into an ashtray. All gone now.
The War?!
Yep.
What war?
World War Two.
Thankfully, the day ended well! All safe and sound.
Yes, it was a very strange day.
Good God. I had to read this twice to take it all in. If, somehow, the sheriff had also come across the basal leaves, it would have been too much. Very, very glad for the land mine being inert. 🍃
Yeah, the guy I live with went through all the scenarios in his mind until the final one, which turned out to be not that big of a deal, and meanwhile I needed to tinkle.
A landmine in the metro area…who’d have thunk it?! Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised these days-just about anything is possible. P.S. Mani…[please tell the man you live with those pond baskets are simply brilliant.
Yes, it was pretty weird.
The guy I live with says thanks but the pond baskets were something he discovered on Facebook; other bulb fanatics growing bulbs in pond baskets.
The thing is that he didn’t maintain any consistency in the soil mix in the gallon nursery pots so a couple of bulbs rotted because of the perched water table, and the pond baskets may not have such a thing.
You don’t hear about landmines in the US very often. Glad it was found to be inert and no one was hurt. I always find after a big cold front has passed, and the sun comes out, the urge to check on plants and bulbs is irresistible so not that unusual for us gardeners. The big pond baskets are a good idea especially if there are lots of voles about. A quiet life is good. You look very relaxed Mani. Keep it up.
The pond baskets will help with a perched water table, and also they’re a bit less conspicuous. He got three baskets from Amazon, to test them, but they weren’t quite right (not open enough at the bottom), so the latest pond baskets came from a bonsai supply store.
EEEEKKKKKK!!!! A landmine iss a BOMM Mani! Glad you an Guy are safe an it was an inn-ert mine….
An wee happy you got to go out fore nite walk. Yore chin on stair foto iss so adoorabell.
***nose bopss*** BellaDharma an 🙂 BellaSita Mum
Thanks.
It was pretty scary, though mostly not for me, because all I could think about was getting to go outside.
Mee understandss Mani! It wuud bee scarier fore Guy fore sure! 😉
It would be.
Wee so sorry you went thru THE trauma ❤ ❤
Thanks; it was pretty scary.
Wee hope this nevurr happenss again Mani an Guy! Wee nose you ss’ liek THE quiet Life an so due wee!! 😉
We hope so too. Saw the fox tonight, though.
WOO HOO!! Was THE Fox cute Mani?? Wee had cute Foxess inn Wireton!
I could barely see it. Just the glowing eyes.
That is terrifying…aren’t you glad that it’s unusual??
Glad to hear all is clear.
Stay safe and well!
Thanks. We are very glad that this sort of thing is unusual.
Mani, if you ever visit, I will advise you which canyons to avoid. The military used non-urban areas for practice once upon a time, and then the city built out the land into suburbs. Kids, of course, play on hillsides and canyons, and every now and then, BOOM. But where you live? Who’d a thunk it. Happy you are safe and back to your quiet life. We had rain, the drains and sewers failed, and now a certain portion of the village population must shower in the civic gym between 7 am and 7 pm until the pump stations are fixed. Insurance claims are being filed by folks in the lower flooded portions of the village. We are higher up (thank you, earthquake fault) and we built garden swales, which I’m sure the guy you live with knows about. That bunny probably believes his view through obscuring grasses is very fine. The view of your characteristic, at once fierce-and-mellow self at all times is fine.
Thanks. The guy I live with read about all the rain in southern California. Some rain is nice, but there can be too much.
We woke up to snow this morning but it’s all gone now, and just the snow that won’t go away is still here. (In other words, only the new snow melted.)
The guy I live with, who is ancient and creaky (an unexpected side effect of the cancer treatment) wore his YakTrax this morning so as not to slip in ice, but yesterday evening he slipped in mud.
I guess people can buy landmines if they’re deactivated. Maybe for door stops. That must have been what caused us to stay inside for four hours. (The guy I live with did stick his head out the front door to tell our neighbor across the street about the shelter-in-place warning.)
The bunny is pretty safe, with all the cactus and yuccas in the front garden. I’m not sure if it’s the one who sneaks into our back garden, because I don’t see how it could, and it’s my job to know about things like that.
Reading about the basal leaves in your blog reminds me of when I was taking an introductory botany class and was reading about all of the adaptations plants have evolved for different ecosystems. I don’t remember this one about basal leaves, so thank you for letting us know about it. I notice that trait a lot amongst the Lamiaceae – on Nepeta, Origanum, Teucrium and so on from other dry regions too.
Glad the danger passed and you were able to go on your walk.
Thanks; it was pretty scary, though not for me since I didn’t know about it and was only thinking of being able to go outside.
The guy I live with says he noticed that business about the basal leaves many years ago. I think even if the leaves get wiped out by cold it’s still a sign that the plant will survive.
I guess it’s because these are suffrutescent plants rather than purely herbaceous.
Excellent reminder why suffruticosa is used as a specific epithet for many plant names, or even as a cultivar name in the case of Buxus sempervirens ‘Suffruticosa’. I just noticed that many of my penstemons have this habit. The tops were wiped out in our recent ice storm, so I hope there is enough left alive down at the root crown that they resprout.
The guy I live with said there is some sense in those “Latin” names. (They often really aren’t Latin but people say that anyway.)
Like Penstemon fruticosus, not really suffrutescent but frutescent. Latin frutex, shrub.
Sempervirens, always green, literally “always greening”; virens is a present participle, an adjective. Suffrutescens would be literally something like “less-than-shrubbing”, but it really means “less than a shrub.
The guy I live with’s Latin is a bit rusty but he says he thinks this is correct.