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 leaves. You may remember me from such posts as “The Big Turn Off”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
You can see how dry it is here. The guy I live with is really hoping for some snow this weekend, but, the way things have been going, he does expect those hopes to be dashed.
I’m aware of how unsettling this is to him.
There are snowdrops in flower. This is ‘Barnes’. It’s had a rough life; some years ago the guy I live with was sure he had planted the bulb of this, and then discovered the bulb lying on the ground. He had no idea how long it was just lying there. Maybe a squirrel dug it up, or something. Or he forgot to plant it. That does happen.
The guy I live with has been especially irritable lately. I can tell.
Fortunately no one told him he should be going over to someone’s house to eat turkey today, which would make him feel even more lonely, even though people not in this situation don’t have a clue about this. He said he would rather spend the day with me, and, except for the couple of hours when he vacuumed the whole house (I had to stay outside), we had a pretty good day together. We did some gardening, looked at things, went on walks, and so on.
But the most irritating thing now is seeing all the leaves raked up by the neighbors so they could be thrown in the trash. This really makes him kind of crazy. I talked about this in my post “The Pumpkins”.
Leaves can be taken to the city greenhouse less than five minutes from here, instead of being thrown away. What a waste.
This is the result of almost forty years of leaves falling on the soil and not being raked up and thrown into the trash.
This is on the north side of the house, in the shade garden.
You can see that there are snowdrops up, already. The snowdrops love this soil.
They don’t need to be protected against cold weather or anything like that.
And now I do need to stop this for a minute and show a selfie of me, to make this way more interesting. I didn’t know that selfies reverse everything, but I do now.
Think of it like old-time TV, a pause “for a moment from our sponsor”.
Okay, now back to improving the soil.
The guy I live with doesn’t improve the soil for dryland plants, of which there are a lot of here, but for the rest of the garden, he definitely does. All you have to do is rake leaves onto the soil, year after year. Instead of throwing them away.
And the cyclamen certainly like this. Here are some of them.
There are even more cyclamen in the garden here. If you asked the guy I live with what his favorite plants are, he’d probably say cyclamen and snowdrops.
He posted these pictures, and more, on Facebook and discovered that having this extensive collection of cyclamen growing “in the open garden” was a highly unusual thing. Not just in Colorado, but everywhere.
I guess we’re highly unusual. Not necessarily a bad thing.
So that’s my post for today. I’ll leave you with a very usual picture of me sitting under the kitchen table, right next to the guy I live with. I’ve taken to doing this and I like it a lot.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
I couldn’t agree with you more about the leaves. Each year I have raked those on the grassy areas and bagged them, stacked these, and have had excellent leafmould to later spread on parts of the garden and plants which enjoy it. Snowdrops benefit hugely from an application of leafmould. Leaves which blow onto the beds are simply left there and are a great improvement to the soil over years. This year I didn’t bag kthe collected leaves at all but simply added them to the general compost bin. I am having some trouble with my right hand and both shoulders – pressure on nerves causing numbness and pain. The shoulders have responded to steroid injections and I will shortly have two small operations on my right hand. Such a pity that you two were on your own for Thanksgiving. Celebration days make being alone more difficult. Snowdrops are going well here as are the cyclamen – hederifolium, coum, purpurascens and repandum do best here and all seed about without much interference from me. They are a joy.
Sorry about your shoulders and hand. The guy I live with is pretty creaky, and knows about such things.
There are something like seven species of cyclamen which have been here for years and are very happy here. The second picture shows Cyclamen pseudibericum being ganged up on by C. coum; coum has been here for about 35 years, originally a gift from a friend.
The waste of all those leaves made the guy I live with kind of crazy. There were like twenty full trash bags of leaves piled up next door, and now they’re gone.
The neighbours don’t appreciate the gift which nature has provided!
Very true.
Leaves around here go into a leaf compost bin or on top of the raised beds, and get worked into the soil come spring. Otherwise they get blown under shrubs and trees, and I like to think that’s good for insects. The whole garden is covered in several inches of pea gravel mulch (we got rid of the Kentucky bluegrass), which I like to keep on the tidier side of things.
Holidays can be weird.
The guy I live with says pea gravel makes an excellent mulch, just in case any rain falls the water will percolate down to the soil. It’s harder with leaves, but snow on the ground helps a lot with that.
We do have several compost bins but they’re dry, so composting takes forever.
The guy I live with said he woke up in the middle of the night thinking about mashed potatoes, Stovetop stuffing, and McCormick turkey gravy; not the sort of thing he and his wife had for Thanksgiving, except for the mashed potatoes.
Yesterday was okay, though. Mostly very quiet.
We share the man you live with thoughts on leaving leaves. Not only does it nourish the soil it provides a safe habitat for pollinators whoi not migrate to warmer climes in the winter. Sigh…we wish we could educate hoomans so they work with nature instead of against it.
The one thing the guy I live with said he should have done is order some Yum Yum Mix and spread it on the soil before the leaves started to fall. He likes that fertilizer a lot.
Most of the leaves that fall here have been raked or blown into the shade garden for years now. There’s also a thick mulch of Gambel’s oak leaves on the north side of the front garden, and snowdrops have taken advantage of this and self-sowed there.
Mee-yow it ISS dry there Mani an Guy! Wee will try to send rain or snow or both!! THE Cyclamen are so gorgeeus! So many diffyrent kindss an so purrty…Guy you are amazin! BellaSita Mum rakess leevess an putss them inn our wee garden. Wast note; want not shee meowss! Mani yore Selfie iss pawsum an yore reelaxin foto iss adoorbss!
**nose bopss** BellaDharma an ((hugss)) bellaSita Mum
Thanks. We did get a little snow last night.
The guy I live with really likes cyclamen; more than most other plants, actually.
HURRAH!! Youss’ got sum snow! **happy dancin**
Wee nevurr new there were so many kindss of Cyclamen….they are so lovelee Mani!
The guy I live with says not enough snow, though. Maybe more tonight.
Wee send what wee get OKay Mani an Guy? 😉
The guy I live with says we’re supposed to get snow the day after tomorrow. We’ll see.
Wee keep our pawss crossed heer fore youss’ to get snow! 😉
Thanks.
It’s snowing right now.