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 our day. You may remember me from such posts as “The Bleak Season”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
The guy I live with watered the whole back garden yesterday. Not with the “tower sprinkler” you see to the right of me (it’s now been put away in the shed) but with the oscillating sprinkler he got earlier this year, a Melnor XT Metal Turbo, which he likes a lot.
He said he watered mostly because it helps keep the leaves he raked into various parts of the garden in place. He knows people who rake leaves and then throw them into the trash, but he doesn’t do that.
(Some parts of the garden don’t get leaves raked onto them because the plants wouldn’t like it.)
It really isn’t all that dry here, compared to some years; we did have an hour of rain last week.
But it looks kind of dry. And autumnal.
Water is still running in the canal. I had to inspect the old sluice this morning.
As I’m sure I’ve said before, there was a steel wheel at the top of the sluice gate behind me, but somebody swiped it.
There used to be a farmhouse to the north of here, behind me. The wheel was turned and the gate opened upward, and water flowed to the farmhouse.
And sometimes you can see trout in the water, especially in the foreground where the water slows. We haven’t seen any trout this year.
We haven’t seen a lot of things, like goldfinches, orioles (maybe one or two), striped kitties, and raccoons, but fortunately there was no plague of grasshoppers this year.
Back in the garden, there are still flowers, though not a lot except for snowdrops.
The tiny colchicum, Colchicum baytopiorum, is still flowering.
The guy I live with said the species was named for two Turkish botanists named Baytop, and the ending -orum is genitive plural, “of more than one”. I’m sure you wanted to know that.
There’s also the beautiful light blue Crocus baytopiorum. I guess I’ve never shown a picture of that crocus; maybe next spring.
There are more Crocus oreocreticus.
And one of the latest crocuses, Crocus hadriaticus ‘Purple Heart’.
There are also some Crocus ochroleucus starting to come up; kind of a tiny one and may not get its picture taken.
That’s always a late crocus here, and it tend to form lots of tiny cormlets which don’t flower for a few years, but it is nice to see something in flower in late November.
Speaking of things that flower late, or super early next year, the guy I live with noticed that Viburnum farreri has lots of buds on it.
The plant at Denver Botanic Gardens can be in flower any time from about mid-December to the end of February, but the one in our garden is in more shade and so flowers later.
The flowers are scented like heliotrope.
I’ve shown pictures of this oak before, but the color today was particularly nice.
He got this from the late Jerry Morris; he doesn’t know what the species is. It produces acorns about the size of the nail on his little finger. Either finger, really.
And there there’s the moss in the trough, which I’ve also shown before. (It’s nice to have at least some continuity from year to year.) The guy I live with thinks this is a native species which may have come from a trip to the mountains a long time ago.
It becomes totally brown and dry during the summer, to the point where clumps of the moss can be easily dislodged.
The guy I live with really got into moss after reading Moss Gardening by George Schenk, which he says is one of the best gardening books ever, and I’ve probably said that before, too. There are a lot of posts on this blog, after all.
Unfortunately this isn’t a terribly ideal climate for moss, but this species seems fairly content to live here.
We do get quite a bit of lichen growing on the wood of the patio frame and elsewhere though.
I’d like to close this post with a little editorial comment.
It seems to me that my dinnertime is later than it was last week, which, let me tell you, has taken some getting used to. The guy I live with said it was something about the clocks “setting themselves back”, which sounded very weird to me. He explained that “back in the old days” people would set clocks back by turning dials, but now the clocks do it by themselves.
Also, the period between my dinnertime and the time when darkness falls seems to be a lot shorter than it was last week.
So my evening walks have seemed early to me, like practically in the afternoon, but dark.
The guy I live with took a picture of the canal, illuminated by lights from the apartment complex.
I’ll leave you with a picture of me inspecting something farther down the canal road.
The sluice I pictured earlier is just beyond that boxelder tree which looks like it’s in the middle of the road, but isn’t.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
It’s been windy and dry in NW Denver too. Last year we received snow before Halloween but this year…zilch, nada. I hope this isn’t a sign for winter-we need moisture or there will be lots of casualties next spring.
The whole switch back to standard time from daylight savings is the pits. It’s the dumbest thing Congress has ever done and that’s saying something. This twice a year exercise in madness is problematic for peeps and critters that appreciate and thrive on routine. It’s also problematic for anyone (man or beast) who require perfectly timed medications for conditions like epilepsy. Resetting the biorhythms takes time. Spring is worse-it takes me a few weeks, but it’s still ridiculous to go through this exercise of folly. You cannot manipulate time. Period. Wilson feels your pain, Mani. Hopefully it will get better.
We stay up late, so now it feels like there are only a few hours of daylight before night comes again.
And we have our routines, too.
The guy I live with says that MSN weather is talking snow for weekend after next, but I wouldn’t get hopes up.
Dry winters are okay for most plants we grow here but the snowdrops do appreciate snow or rain because they’re in active growth most of the winter.
Could pass on the time change as well.
Agree about George Schenk.His table and pavement gardening is also fantastic. I’ve got an easier time with moss than you, though.
Cheers to you both
Thanks. Schenk’s shade gardening book is also one of the best; the copy here has almost fallen apart from being read so much, just for pleasure.
We saved a copy of Schenk’s nursery (The Wild Garden) catalog from the 1960’s but gave it to Avent at Plant Delights for his library several years ago. That nursery was very influential back in the day.
The guy I live with sasy the Helen Fowler Library at DBG may have copies; they have a collection of old nursery catalogs, like Claude Barr’s Prairie Gem Ranch.
” DBG may have copies” Makes sense. Seem to recall reading that as a teenager, Kelaidis bought plants from The Wild Garden.
The guy I live with said that wouldn’t surprise him.
He still has Schenk’s heuchera ‘Chiqui’ in the garden, but from Siskiyou Rare Plant Nursery.
A beautiful colchicum and outstanding colour on that oak! Our climates are in perfect contrast at present as the ground is waterlogged here with a good deal of surface water in parts of the garden. Today will be our second day of persistent heavy rain so there will be more books read than normal. No walkies here!
We wouldn’t mind some heavy rain, for sure.
The colchicum is about 3 cm across; it sent up one flower some weeks ago but this one has persisted in flower, unlike the similarly-sized Colchicum boissieri which put up one flower and then gave up.
Very non-colchicum-looking leaves in spring; long narrow things.
A few other species were planted here but one got sliced apart by a trowel, and maybe others never came up because the guy I live with couldn’t figure out which end was up with the wishbone-looking corms when they didn’t have vestigial roots. He knows which end is up now.
I will add it to the wish list!
The guy I live with says it has a regular corm rather than a weird which-end-is-up soboliferous corm.
More information here: https://crocusmania.blogspot.com/2013/07/colchicum-baytopiorum.html
Hey, Mani, I’ve been out of pocket for awhile. It’s good to see you again.
Thanks.
It is nice to see something blooming so late in the season. I still have a remarkably resilient penstemon sending out flower spikes. Lots of bulbs went into the ground this week. The latest I have ever planted. Not a pleasant task as the ground is so dry it’s like digging in concrete. Not sure about you Mani but I sincerely dislike these time changes. Everyone says this one is the good one because you get an extra hour of sleep. Yeah, right!
The time change may explain why the guy I live with has been so tired lately, though old people (which he is) often don’t sleep so well.
Digging in hard dirt isn’t much fun. The guy I live with often waters the area the day before, but the Samson spade he got a while ago does make things easier.
Ah, Siskiyou Rare Plant Nursery. So many of our rockery/alpine plants in the CT gardens came from there. Really miss the Primula allioni cvs. that found an agreeable spot in the frost free greenhouse. Had to give them away… the coastal plain of NC would have turned them to mush in a week. Where have all the great nurseries gone?
All gone now, according to the guy I live with.
He also said there’s a Primula allionii in a trough here; it’s been there for a quarter century. It never gets watered.
Had quite a few Porophyllum Saxifrages, most with silver leaves, from several old school nurseries. Gave them to Karen Bussolini as she lived in the same CT village. She wrote and photographed a well regarded book “Elegant Silvers….”. Now I collect edible bok choys and chicories.
The guy I live with said there were dozens and dozens of porophyllums here, in the troughs.
They were neglected after his wife died, and the rest of the alpine plants in the troughs died some years ago.
The troughs, though some did break, are at the Chatfield Arboretum now.
THE nite time Canal foto iss furabuluss Guy an Mani!!! Yore flowerss lookin beeuteefull purr usual. Mani you lookin fine purr usual two….Wee love THE autumm colorss there. Wee ae inn full Autumm heer an apposta to SNOW this weekend!! ***nose bopss*** BellaDharma an ((hugss)) BellaSita Mum
Thanks. We could really use some snow right now.
If wee cuud send snow to youss’; wee sure wuud Mani an Guy!
That would be nice.