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 being you a partly interesting post on a partly interesting day. You may remember me from such posts as “More Changes”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
This is my favorite place to relax, especially after a partly interesting day.
The guy I live with said all the purebred border collies have loved this ninety-year-old creaky couch. He sometimes takes an afternoon nap on this couch when it’s not occupied.

Today was only partly interesting because I was left alone for a while. The guy I live with did come back with some biscuits for me, so all was not lost.

As I mentioned, this post may only be partly interesting so I’m going to start with that.
Here is Crocus niveus again. This is native to the Mani Peninsula in Greece. I know it’s really difficult to believe that the place isn’t named for me, but my name is Sanskrit and has nothing to do with Greek peninsulas. Or crocuses.
The Latin word niveus means “snowy” or “snow white”, but you can see that these aren’t.

You may wonder why this crocus was given that name. E.A. Bowles described it in The Gardener’s Chronicle in 1900 from plants he had growing in his garden.
“This handsome species is now flowering here [at Myddleton House] in a cold frame and at Kew in the open border. It is remarkably robust and vigorous, and quite the best white-flowered autumn Crocus I have ever seen…”

Apparently Bowles only saw ones that were white.
This sort of thing happens often and so the guy I live with isn’t going to fault Bowles, who was an expert on crocuses as you can see here. (The print is hard to read.)
https://www.eabowlessociety.org.uk/crocus
Very nice watercolors too.
Bowles raised crocuses from seed and you can still get his spring-flowering crocus ‘Snow Bunting’ which was one of the guy I live with’s wife’s favorite spring crocuses.

This is Crocus goulimyi ‘Mani White’. Again not named for me.
You can see this species is also synanthous so the leaves will have to be caged against rabbits, with an occasional spraying of Messina Wildlife’s Rabbit Stopper, which makes the leaves taste icky. It’s safe for me, if you wanted to know.
The guy I live with has had a terrible time trying to keep Crocus goulimyi, which is usually kind of a blue-purple, in the garden, but these have survived, probably because he made sure to water them well after they were planted.
The life cycle of these autumnal crocuses which flower with leaves is different from autumna; colchicums in that the mother corm needs roots in order to flower and produce leaves.

This is Sternbergia sicula.
The leaves are narrower and floppier than those on Sternbergia lutea, and “for some dumb reason” the guy I live with, who should know better according to him, kept thinking about sickles.
The Latin word for sickle is falx (like in falcate leaves), so why he thought about sickles is beyond me. He still claimed the leaves sort of looked like sickles.
The specific epithet sicula means Sicilian.

So that was the partly interesting part.
I’m not sure you can imagine what it’s like to be a sophisticated purebred border collie and have to live with stuff like not totally-white crocuses, and sickles.

But on my evening walk, there was something much more interesting reflected in the guy I live with’s headlamp.
Those shafts of light are from the apartment complex near us.
Just what we needed at this time of year, eyes glowing in the dark.
Eventually the eyes, and the horrible demonic creature that had them, went away.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep going on my walk, but the guy I live with with said it was okay, and we kept going.
I was astonishingly brave.

I walked almost to the end of the canal road, and then we turned around to go home.
I didn’t see any more glowing eyes.

Until next time, then.