Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to bring you up to date on all our news, which isn’t really much at all. You may remember me from such posts as “Biscuit Time”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose, after “illegally” drinking from the birdbath.
At least the water was clean; the guy I live with refills it all the time. Yes, I know mice and squirrels drink from the birdbath, with their icky rodent lips.
In the background, you may spy a pot with a conifer in it. The guy I live with dug up one which had fallen on its side and was being smothered by other plants.
The stones are there to keep the conifer, Pinus ponderosa, from falling it. It’s a dwarf conifer.
Since the root system isn’t as big as the green parts, it will get fed through the needles with a weak solution of Miracle Gro all summer. Maybe once a month.
The reason I’ve been away for so long is that it snowed again, and the guy I live with said showing pictures of snow can get old really fast.
The snow melted, and this crocus, Crocus tommasinianus ‘Albus’. flowered.
This is Tulipa ‘Ugam’. It also has another name, which the guy I live with forgets.
The purple-padded cactus are starting to turn green.
But mostly this post is about all the snow that melted.
You can see that the grass in the field is turning green now. This is right behind out garden, and there’s been no grass here for a couple of years, but it all came back, the way grass does.
Lots of water flowed down the creek in the last couple of weeks. The guy I live with thought this looked very odd.
We found part of a crawdad, too.
What was really surprising, besides finding half a crawdad, was seeing all the sand in the creek. It’s a lot of sand, as you can see.
Of course I had to check it out. It’s not often I get my paws in sand.
The guy I live with said he would have scooped out some of the sand, for potting mix, but the water that flowed here came from streets, so it could have oil and “other gunk” in it.
And that’s all I have for today.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
This is so funny, Mani. I was just thinking about you when your post showed up. Good to hear from you! Happy Easter!
Thanks. We haven’t been doing to much because it snowed twice here, a week apart.
Often learn something new from your blog, Mani—feeding the dwarf conifer through the needles, did not know that! Enjoy your weekend.
Thanks; the guy I live with learned that from the late Jerry Morris. It’s when there aren’t enough roots to support all the above-ground parts. (And it’s the only time he uses Miracle Gro, because we don’t really use fertilizer here. It’s a very weak solution.)
You can look at the post “Trip To Jerry’s Nursery”, though this was before purebred border collies took over the narration, so it’s less interesting, of course.
Thank you! I read that post and man, what an amazing place, and what a talented person.
Impossible to avoid developing a severe case of H. plantarum there, if one wasn’t already afflicted with it. 🙂
You’re welcome. The guy I live with said when he first thought about going there, with his wife, he didn’t think he’d see much, and he was totally stunned. He said he wished he’d had ten thousand dollars in his wallet.
The garden would have looked very different, for sure. But there are a lot of Jerry’s conifers here.
Crocus tommasianus ‘Alba’ is pretty. The species is appealing because it is one that might be able to naturalize for us; but this cultivar is even more appealing to me because it is my favorite color.
Feeding the Ponderosa pine through the needles sounds like it will be fed intravenously.
It does sound like intravenous feeding.
The guy I live with says the crocus does seed around a lot.
Oh, well, seeding could be an advantage, as long as it does not become aggressively invasive.
Ants spread the seeds all over the place.
Does the guy you live with find that to be a problem, or are any unwanted seedlings easy to control? Do they get very far from their source?
Well they show up about fifteen feet away from where they are planted. Ants are very busy creatures.
At that rate of travel, they could cover considerable distance rather efficiently. It would not be a problem in a large landscape, where I could see fifteen feet from their origin, but that could be a problem within a fenced garden, where they could spread unseen into adjacent gardens. (I think like that because I lived on a fenced parcel in town a long time ago. My neighbors’ gardens were right over the fences, but I could not see into them.)
They will spread a bit. The guy I live with did some work along the south fence the other day and saw a cyclamen flowering in the neighbor’s yard. It came from our garden, of course.
It is difficult to predict what will be potentially invasive in a particular environment. I mean, species that are invasive there may not be invasive here, . . . although I do not necessarily want to find out.
The guy I live with says a distinction should be made between “invasive” and “spreading all over the garden”. The crocuses do the latter.
I used to have a border collie named Pete who loved to play in the sand. It’s pretty amazing stuff. I am imagining the crawdad washed down from some place where the water is more permanent. We’ve got a few in our creek too, but they tend to be very small.
According to the guy I live with, this has been another long, protracted winter. He said that “back in the last century”, whatever that means, it would be normal to see crawdads in the creek, which had water flowing all the time, then.
We have sand here, in bags, and there’s always been some sand in the creek, but never as much as there is now. Even after it flooded last year the creek didn’t have this much sand in it.
And it isn’t like sand from streets higher up, because that’s much larger, coarser sand.
Very mysterious.
Dear dog, you look as if you have all the fun sleeping! Enviable. All the photos–especially of plants and greenery–make for a celebratory Easter Sunday post! And, of course, happy April Fools day, and may you not suffer from any.
Thanks. The couch is old and very creaky, but unbelievably comfy.
I don’t think anything weird is going to happen tomorrow. The guy I live with said he was going to the store, and to a place called Chuck and Don’s, where he said he gets stuff for me.
You look utterly exhausted after your busy day. Tulipa ‘Ugan’ is gorgeous. Have never seen this one before. Wonder if all the sand in the creek is due to erosion from somewhere further up it’s course? My guilty secret is I go and sweep up all the fine gravel on the road in the Spring before the street sweepers come through. I do rinse it all very well before applying it as a mulch in rockeries. The county uses beet juice instead of salt on the roads so it’s pretty safe for this purpose.
It was a busy day. The tulip is offered commercially under another name, but the guy I live with didn’t write it down.
Where all the sand comes from is a complete mystery, though maybe it comes from the native soil, which is pretty gritty. We don’t walk along the creek nearly as much as we used to, because now there’s a dog that jumps the fence along the way.
Farther southwest, the sides of the creek aren’t as open as you see; there are a lot of willows along the banks. I would think the sand would get caught in the willows.
The guy I live with said they used to use beet juice–sugar beet juice–along dirt roads here in Colorado, to keep the dust down in summer. Made them all sticky to walk on. He’s not sure if they do that any more.
Mew mew mew April Fool’ss…just when you think Spring ‘sprng’; it snowss! UCKY rite? Yore fotoss nevurr get ‘old’! Wee love them all. THE flowerss an Cactus are so purrty.
THE Creek lookss so weerd Mani….like a Sand Man walked thru an dumped ALOT of sand…..wee due not reememburr seein sand inn THE creek beefore?!?!?! An where iss THE rest of THE CrawDaddy? Best wee not think about this….
As long as THE water iss cleen it shuud bee Okay…squirrel an mice lipss made us MOL/LOL!
***nose bopss*** BellaDharma an ((hugss)) BellaSita Mum
Thanks. It’s raining and snowing here, on and off, right now.
The guy I live with thought about calling the county and telling them about all the sand, because otherwise maybe it would cause flooding. (He’s not a sand expert, though.) In some places the sand is two or three feet deep.
Guud Greef Mani an Guy!!! It iss Swinter there fore sure!!! Wee wunderin why there iss so much sand in creek two? It seemss weerd…sorta not natural?!?!?!
There was some snow last night, but basically it just rained.
Some of the sand is gone, because there was water in the creek this morning.
Mee-yow now you gotted more snow Mani?? What cray-cray weather there!! Iss rainy heer! Wee reeleeved sum of THE sand iss gone…..it sure was creepy……