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 talk about things seen and unseen. You may remember me from such posts as “Thirty-Three And A Third”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
The guy I live with has been painting every day, and I’ve had to watch him do it, but in this picture you can tell I’m not watching.
It’s also been windy and not very warm, so that doesn’t make for much fun in the garden.
Still, we have gone outside now and then, and the guy I live with took some pictures.
This is Colchicum bulbocodium (it used to be called Bulbocodium vernum):
There are cyclamen, too. Lots and lots of them.
These are Cyclamen coum, all self sown.
Well they’re not all Cyclamen coum, the plant in front is C. pseudibericum, but the flowers are those of C. coum. You can see the leaves of C. coum in the middle of the C. pseudibericum.
You can also see some snowdrops.
These are Galanthus alpinus var. bortkewitschianus, which is a sterile variety of regular G. alpinus.
The Kew book The Genus Galanthus says this variety occupies a very small area (about twelve to fifteen acres) in the wild in the north Caucasus and propagates itself vegetatively, which the guy I live with said was very weird indeed.
Then he saw this:
You can see how the bulbs are multiplying, so that’s how they must do it in nature.
(There’s a tiny cyclamen seedling and some crocus seedlings too.)
Besides these, there are still a lot of snowdrops in flower.
This is ‘Lapwing’:
This is ‘Mrs. Backhouse Number 12’:
Backhouse was the name of a nursery in England; there are other bulbs named for them, like the lily ‘Mrs. R.O. Backhouse’, and there’s a daffodil, too.
This is the green-tipped Galanthus nivalis ‘Warei’, an old variety which is slightly larger than ‘Viridapice’ (that name means “green tips”).
So those are the flowers. There are crocuses and irises in flower here too.
I got to watch the guy I live with paint the living room. He painted it the same colors as before, which were colors his wife picked out.
He had to move a bunch of books, which he’d never really looked at. There are a lot of books in this house that he’s never looked at, books that were his wife’s, that he can’t bring himself to get rid of. He just sees the spines of the books.
But the other day when he moved the books in the living room, he opened them. Dusted them, too.
His wife loved illustrated books. He knew it would make him sad to look at them, but he did it anyway.
There are also some old Everymen’s Library books. They have distinctive spines.
I know this post wasn’t mostly about me, which makes it less interesting in my opinion, but now the kitchen and living room are very clean, and mostly painted. There are some areas that need to be touched up.
The guy I live with is talking about getting new drapes for the living room, too, because he says “a certain party” chewed the bottoms of the drapes “when he was a puppy”.
I’m not sure who he’s referring to.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Gee, I do not know what is prettier; the cyclamen or the illustrations. I notice the cyclamen because I happen to find them interesting. I have never met those species. I still think that I prefer the foliage of Cyclamen hederifolium to Cyclamen coum though. Besides, I have actually met what I believe to be Cyclamen hederifolium in the neighborhood here, so I believe that it is reliably perennial here.
The guy I live with says Cyclamen hederifolium has way more attractive leaf forms that C. coum does.There are a lot of the former here, but not in this picture.
That is sort of what I think I might prefer about it, but I did not want to say so since the guy you live with is so fond of Cyclamen coum.
Well the Cyclamen coum here has a backstory, which was probably told on the blog. C. hederifolium has tons of different leaf shapes, and flower colors, like red and almost black.
EW! I would not want black. I like the bright colors of common Cyclamen persicum, but for Cyclamen hederifolium, I sort of expect it to bloom with pastel pink or blushed white. I think that red or richer pink might be odd. I figured that most Cyclamen coum bloom with similar color, or perhaps whiter white.
Well it’s really a very, very dark red.
You certainly know a lot about color for someone who can not see much of it; or did the guy you live with tell you?
He did tell me.
Colchicum bulbocodium is a stunner, all fabulosity. I appreciate how in such detail the guy you live with looks at the world. Evidently, his wife looked in such a way at the illustrations and swirling patterns of books. We have a few E. P. Dutton & Co. books on our shelves too. The otter reminds me very much of a platypus in an Australian pond who played to his/her audience as he/she swam the perimeter around which we observers were standing. That otter was a comedian. More on Australia: a speaker at a Heritage Rose Conference in Albany was the wife of the head guy at Kew, then retired. Fascinating to hear about the experience of living in a cottage on the grounds from the spouse’s viewpoint. My husband later was scrutinizing an Australian tree when the Kew husband himself approached and they had quite a conversation. Lots of finely-bred border collies in Australia, Mani. And lots of sheep.
The guy I live has said there are a lot of sheep in Australia, and New Zealand, too. We have a very nice neighbor who’s from New Zealand.
He also said he wouldn’t mind living in a cottage almost anywhere in England. With me of course.
You can get the colchicum from any place that sells bulbs, pretty much.
There are other Everyman books in the house, including an encyclopedia of gardening that’s fallen apart, but the books illustrated by Harrison Cady may be familiar to anyone of a certain age, which the guy I live with is.
What great, beautiful books, Mani! Y’all should hold onto them because…well, you can hold onto them. Not like that internet kind that may go “poof” because somebody somewhere punched a button.
They carry that same value with your plants and flowers – you can see them with your own eyes and feel them with your own hands – uh, well, paws.
Thanks for sharing, Mani.
Harriet
You’re welcome. There are a lot of illustrated books here and maybe I’ll share more of them later.
Mee lovess all yore flowerss Mani an Guy!!! Guess what? Our Snowdropss are up inn THE wee garden under bedroom window!! That made us both happy!
BellaSita Mum iss ohhin an ahhin over THE bookss Mistur Guy. Shee meowed shee had THAT “Marco Polo” book many many yeerss ago. It gotted lost sadly.
Mani you look furry comfy inn THE last foto…wee nose it was not YOU who chewed THE drapess
😉 BellaDharma an **giggellss** BellaSita Mum
Thanks. I can’t say who chewed the curtains, but the guy I live with knows.
That’s the main reason people like snowdrops, because they flower in winter, or very early spring.
Mew mew mew about the drapess! Snowdropss are so purrty. Ours were open an purrty yesterday; today iss snowin again. Snowdropss are hangin’ lookin all bee-draggelled an sad Mani an Guy 😦
They were expensive drapes…
The guy I live with says the snowdrops will be fine. They have “snow” in their name, after all.
Some here went through temperatures below 0F (-17C) a few months ago with no issues.
You nose Guy iss rite…they are SNOW dropss aftur all not RAIN dropss or sumthin….mew mew mew Mani…..
Yep.
Mew mew mew yeah…..
You are a remarkably erudite and empathetic border collie, Mani. But then, you are a border collie, so that probably goes without saying. Once again, thank you for the garden tour and for your efforts to improve my understanding of botanical taxonomy. Pretty flowers… that is all I see.
Lovely books, too. Those Everyman’s Library editions make me wish I had the aptitude to be a book designer. They are so beautiful, seems like they would be a pleasure to create, right down to setting type. As for Harrison Cady, thanks to your prompting — and border collies are pretty good at prompting, right? — I learned that in addition to his illustration work, he was well-known for his Peter Rabbit comic strip, which I wish I could see as well. Those illustrations you shared remind me of Japanese woodblock paintings.
You’re welcome. Yes, Harrison Cady did the Peanut Rabbit comic strip, and there were a lot of little books, almost like magazines, from the 1930s that he did for childred. The guy I live with gave those to his sister along with the Uncle Wiggily books.
The new Everyman’s bindings are not as elegant. There are a few more old ones upstairs.