Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here today to bring you up to date on all the latest news. You may remember me from such posts as “New At The Zoo”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
You can see we still have quite a bit of snow in the garden, though there’s no snow in the front garden now, and not much out in the field.
We still have crocuses in flower. These are Crocus niveus, in their rabbit-proof cage. This is a species that grows overwintering leaves, as you can see, and rabbits love to eat the leaves right down to the ground, which is very bad for the crocuses.
And still more Crocus speciosus. These grow leaves in spring. The leaves have to be protected against rabbits then, but a spray like Rabbit Stopper works well.
Though there are more snowdrops elsewhere, this is ‘Barnes’.
There’s a reason why there’s only one flower. He got a bulb of this some years ago, in spring, and thought he had planted it, but a few months later he saw the bulb lying on the ground. Maybe someone dug it up. So he replanted it, but it’s taken all this time to regain strength.
There are some crocuses upstairs, too. They’re growing under lights because when it started to get cold, the crocuses barely had leaves (they were just being slow about it), so they were brought upstairs and put under LED lights, and you can see they’re growing quite well now.
You can see that they’re in pond baskets.
These will go back out into the garden on the next warm day, with little cages to protect the leaves.
Anyway, about the title of today’s post. The guy I live with had ten packets of seeds, and he decided to sow them today, but he said he probably wasn’t going to sow any more seeds (unless he got seeds of cyclamen, crocuses, or snowdrops), mostly, as he said, because we’re running out of room in the garden. So this may be “the last sowing”.
We have a terrible infestation of voles right now and if the voles eat everything, then he’ll probably sow more seeds, but he’s also been sprinkling Mole and Vole Stopper around the garden, so maybe the voles will leave.
He sowed the seeds in “the usual manner”, which is says is the most effortless way to do it. I know I’ve shown this method before.
You can see the seeds in some of the pots.
There’s still a little bit of “squeegee” left, too, in the bag.
The squeegee gets sprinkled on top of the pots after the seeds are sown.
He was going to put the pots in the seed frame, but there was a slight problem there.
The pots are going on the shelf on the patio, for now. The guy I live with watered the pots, which he wouldn’t have done if there wasn’t snow on the frame cover.
Snow is the best insulation for seed pots, and if snow falls on the pots they don’t need to be watered.
The issue with having pots just sitting on the shelves is that they can dry out, which can delay seed germination for a very long time.
He said you know how some activity holds your interest for a long time, and then one day you realize you’re no longer all that interested, well, that’s what’s happened to him.
I could relate, because there was a time when I liked chewing things, like the linen curtain in the living room, but I’m not interested in that any more.
We saw a bald eagle fly over our house a couple of days ago. The neighbors walking their dog saw it too.
The guy I live with sometimes goes over to talk to those neighbors and actually touches their dog, which I find deeply offensive, but I do get over it.
I think that’s all I have for today. The guy I live with said we may get more snow next week, which is fine with him.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Those are cool Crocus speciosus. I have not grown crocus in a long time, although some that we planted here are still here. I do not remember what most of them are, but I do remember that some that are supposed to bloom for autumn or about now instead bloom during spring along with those cheapy common Dutch crocus.
The guy I live with says there are crocuses that flower in autumn and winter. (The “spring” crocuses here flower at the end of winter, never in, like April.) Same with species of narcissus, cylamen, and snowdrops.
Yes, but, for example, saffron crocus bloomed with those cheapy Dutch crocus at the end of winter, like spring crocus. They only did it twice before I gave them away, but I suspect that they might have continued with that schedule. It was not a problem, but it was odd.
Well the guy I live with says saffron crocuses definitely do not flower in spring, they flower in autumn, so something must have been amiss.
Like, . . . maybe they were something else? I think that it was the guy you live with who said that two years or so ago. I do not need to worry about it now that I no longer grow it, but I am still sort of curious about what it was.
They had to be something different. All species of saffron-bearing crocuses flower in autumn.
I want to try it again, but perhaps from a different source. The former was certainly pretty, and looked just like saffron, . . . but without the saffron.
Local garden centers usually sell it, but if not, there’s Brent and Becky’s.
It was from a local nursery. I will likely get it online next time, from a supplier that is more discriminating.
The one mentioned is an excellent choice.
Yes, but I will likely purchase it in conjunction with other bulbs, as one grand purchase from the same supplier, if that particular supplier happens to have it available. I do not know who that supplier is yet, and I have almost a year to figure it out. It may not be next year either.
The guy I live with says Brent and Becky’s is your best choice. Scheepers doesn’t offer saffron crocus.
It’s good to see such little treasures appear in the garden – all very interesting plants. By chance, we have a forecast for snow, a rare enough occurrence and it will probably come to nothing, just a cold spell, with cold rain.
The guy I live with said he didn’t think of Ireland when he thinks of places where it snows.
He likes the quiescent aspect of the garden that starts from around now until January or February (when the main flock of snowdrops begins to appear), and that seeing the occasional crocus or snowdrop in flower makes it even better.
Technically there are “supposed” to be flocks of snowdrops right now but something mysterious happened over the last couple of years.
Snowdrops have been very slow to appear here this year.
The guy I live with said last autumn was weird, too. Clumps of Galanthus elwesii var. monostictus barely emerged from the ground.
It was so hot earlier this autumn that that probably affected some of the snowdrops.
The crocus flowers are beautiful.
It is such a thrill, for me, to see a Bald Eagle in these parts, though I know they do nest in the area. Last year I saw one flying over a section of Cherry Creek that runs right through southeast Denver.
Then when visiting a daughter in southeast Alaska, the Bald Eagles were as numerous as a plague of grackles. Almost pests!
The guy I live with said there used to be a pond not far from here, surrounded by large trees, and he and his wife would see bald eagles all the time, but the pond is gone now, and so are the eagles.
I appreciate seeing another photo of the pond baskets. It has given me a better sense of scale. I think I might try them next time I plant some of the more tempting bulbs. I don’t suppose that planting them in baskets makes it less likely that they get accidentally sliced by a wayward shovel while they are dormant? Still haven’t made the Sichuan chili oil, but have gathered all of the ingredients. We did make a Sichuan chicken dish from Fuchsia Dunlop’s book that I borrowed from the library. Made the mistake of adding a few extra chilis, but otherwise it was magnificent.
These baskets are four inches across. There are some others that are larger, but the four-inch ones are good for just one or two bulbs.
The guy I live with says ground Sichuan chili from the Mala Market is really the way to go. It’s not very hot at all but has a lot of flavor. He gets the roasted rapeseed oil too, for that.
This is the recipe he uses: https://thewoksoflife.com/how-to-make-chili-oil/
It is important to get the oil to the right temperature; he uses a candy thermometer.
He also told his friend he was “having a passionate love affair with Fuchsia Dunlop” and she stared at him, so he quickly said “the recipes in her books”. The only problem is that the print in Every Grain of Rice is difficult for him to read.
“having a passionate love affair with Fuchsia Dunlop” Yup! Her book “Land of Plenty” is the go to source here for Szechuan cuisine.
The guy I live with has that book too.
He found some pretty decent Chinese-cooking websites a while back. Red House Spice and The Woks of Life.
Also Made with Lau on YouTube.
You might enjoy Mrs. Chiang’s Szechuan Cookbook. I believe it was the first authentic Szechuan cookbook in english. It was first published in 1976.
The guy I live with said he might check it out.