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 the viburnum and some other things. You may remember me from such posts as “The Long Lead”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
Once again, it may look very dry here but the soil is quite damp just an inch below the surface. We got about four or five inches of snow ten days ago.
However.
I put that word in a sentence by itself because even that much snow seems to have no effect on the guy I live with’s peace of mind.
He suffers from considerable anxiety, and is seeing someone about it, and even with all that snow, there was the wind.
It melted all the snow, as you can see.
Last Thursday he went out to lunch with his friend, and when he came back he saw there was a “fire weather” warning. It turned out that this was for places to the north of us, but that didn’t make him feel calm.
And then the next day, when he had an appointment, there was another warning, and our house was right in “the pink zone” So he canceled the appointment to stay home with me.
I do appreciate this, by the way.
It turned out we got almost no wind.
He explained that anxiety is irrational, and no amount of rational thinking, which he does from time to time, can help that. He looked at a map of fire stuff and we’re in a “low risk” zone but that didn’t help. There is of course the thing that happened before I came here that he still has to live with, and I can tell that’s been affecting him in the last year or so, more than usual.
I guess I understand all that because when I find something scary and have to hide in my upstairs fort the guy I live with often comes up and talks to me softly about how things are really okay, but it doesn’t seem to help much.
There was a time when the wind was blowing so hard a few years ago I was terrified, and didn’t want to go outside. We did go out, but the guy I live with clipped a leash onto my collar so I wouldn’t blow away.
And then yesterday there was yet another warning, but we didn’t get much wind.
The snowdrops didn’t care at all.
This is Galanthus nivalis ‘Flore Pleno’, which is fine with freezing weather, since it doesn’t freeze when everything else does. He got this at a local garden center.
Two of the snowdrops that were dug up to avoid having them wiped out by the new gas line, which will be installed eventually, are under the “instant greenhouse” for better protection. The greenhouse cover has sort of been reinforced.
This is ‘John Gray’; you can see someone has nibbled on one of the petals.
And this is ‘Byfield Special’.
Both of these have been in the garden for some years but have never done much because they weren’t getting enough sun. They’re not completely open, of course, but I wanted to show how well they’re doing, despite being dug up in their growing season.
Graham Stuart Thomas, writing in Three Gardens, says this: “If they flowered at midsummer we should not accord much enthusiasm to snowdrops, but in the earliest months they are specially welcome, and a study of their leaf colours from grey to shining rich green, the vernation, and the flower variations provide a lot of interest.”
This is obviously true for the guy I live with.
Because our winters generally aren’t snowbound, he sometimes criticizes himself for trying to transplant the forms of Helleborus niger that flowered at this time of year (they all died), not planting winter-flowering heaths, and so on, but he most certainly does not criticize himself for planting Viburnum farreri years ago, named after Reginald Farrer, a favorite writer and “the father of modern rock gardening”.
It’s having a very good winter indeed, and, yes, this is the time for it to flower, if the winter isn’t too cold. The guy I live with says it’s hard to photograph.
You can see the bees flying around it even before you get close to it. And you can smell it, too. It’s scented like heliotrope.
A week ago, when he wasn’t sure how cold it would get, he cut some flowering branches, got instructions on how to cut them for a vase, with water, because he has no experience with that, and here they are downstairs.
Also not a great picture. You can smell the flowers when you walk into the room.
After all of this, I’ll leave with you with a picture of me watching the guy I live with today, as he cut more twigs for the house, hoping for some snow tonight. (Rain would be nicer, but we sometimes try to be realistic.)
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Let it rain!
Very unlikely, but we have an inch of snow on the ground this morning.
We got that inch of snow up here on Lookout too! So nice to wake up to.
Such a relief.
The viburnum flowers are beautiful! It is snowing now in SE Denver. Closer to “normal” weather for this time of year (whatever that is these days).
We all need a fort to retreat to now and again.
The guy I live with says it’s not so much that we haven’t had a lot of snow but how warm it’s been, for so long.
We got an inch of snow, maybe a little more.
The guy I live with says he’s lucky that both I an Chess, the purebred border collie who lived here before me, were what they call “crate trained”, though I prefer to think of them as forts.
Places to go when things get scary.
I will need to find a similar viburnum. After a quick tour thanks to google I see ‘New Dawn’ is a hybrid with farreri and perhaps I can find that one! All the best, these are not the most settled and stress-free times so I’m glad you have someone to talk to.
The guy I live with says thanks. He also says that ‘Dawn’ and any of the viburnums with that name are less hardy than Viburnum farreri because the other parent, V. grandiflorum, is a tender shrub from the Himalayas, and in some winters the ‘Dawn’ types will suffer.
They’re still nice.
Why V. farreri isn’t readily available is a total mystery.
Hmmm. Tell your guy thanks. Maybe I should just try both to be on the safe side.
You’re welcome. You can occasionally find Viburnum farreri ‘Nanum’ in the trade. A litt shrub, obviously.
The flower arrangement looks stunning!
Does that Viburnum farreri get regularly watered in summer? Everything I read about Viburnum as a group indicates that they like “evenly moist soil.”
Yes, it does need regular watering. There have been the occasional times when drooping foliage has signaled a lack of attention, but the roots don’t need to be soaking wet all summer.
If there’s a cold winter it flowers later.
It’s found in western China (the drier part of the country), Gansu, Qinghai, and Xinjiang, in forests at highish elevation. Apparently it’s been cultivated in other parts of China for a very long time, and Farrer saw those in his travels in China, and brought plants back to England.
Your snowdrops are so pretty and that Viburnum…wow-just wow. Now that I’ve moved to Arvada, I’m trying to see what things I might want to plant in the new garden which is considerably smaller. It’s going on the list! Have a good week. I don’t think the man you live with is over-reacting on the fire danger. It’s horribly dry on the Ralston Creek Trail we walk on every day and the creek is at best a trickle with a lot of dry spots in between. Last night’s surprise bit of snow was welcome, but the past six weeks of unseasonably warm temps for this time of year were shocked by the teens this morning when I shoveled. Brrr…I know I shouldn’t be complaining, it is National Western Stock Show afterall. Fifty nine days until the official arrival of spring and hopefully a LOT of snow. Happy Monday.
The guy I live with says it’s the endless warm weather (warm weather not being unusual here in winter, but this is too much) plus the wind, which we hadn’t had much of in the last few years.
Most of the snow is gone now, except in our garden, which is mostly in shade but didn’t used to be.
Anxiety can be crippling so a good thing he has you Mani and that he is seeking help. Fierce winds this winter. The indigenous people here call the Chinook winds ‘snow eaters’ and that’s exactly what has happened to all of our snow. Most of it will just have evaporated rather than sink into the ground. However, all the snowdrops are definitely a site for sore eyes at this time of year.
The guy I live with says if you look at posts from past years, in January, there’s often no snow on the ground. So that part isn’t unusual.
It’s supposed to be 54F today, and that’s not unusual, but day after day of temperatures even warmer than that certainly is. (It’s supposed to get down to 8F this weekend…)
He says we had chinooks last century where after one night most of the snow would be gone, and then for some years there was no wind, and then there was that fire across the highway in early 2021, with wind, and then, much worse, the Marshall Fire up north, at the end of December 2021, with 100 mph winds and someone was burning stuff, so there was a huge fire that destroyed 1000 homes and freaked out everyone.
Humidity in winter here can get below 10 percent, so now every time it’s dry and we have wind we get these warnings.This winter we’ve had windy days almost every week.
OKy Mani an Guy you reddy fore this? Wee have had snow efrry day fore 6 dayss strait an now have 3 FEET of snow!! AS inn ALOT of snow….it iss lovelee to see grass an earth an flowerss inn yore post!! Mani yore so hansum. Mistur Guy wee sorry there has been Fire Warningss. BellaSita getss scared when wee get blowin snow….not THE snow part; it’ss THE wind that freekss her out….Mee not wild about high windss eether! Wee gotta take thingss one day at a time…..
***purrss*** BellaDharma an ((hugss)) BellaSita Mum
The guy I live with said that’s a lot of snow. We don’t often get that much, but every now and then we do.
We may get some snow this weekend, and pretty cold weather, but nothing like they may get to the east of us.
He also said that the reason for all the fire warnings was because it’s been so warm here, day after day of warm weather (like 65 to 70F), but that seems to have come to an end now.
Wee reeleeved Fire Warninss are over. We purray fore sum snow or rain fore you Mani an Guy. To keep ground hydrated. Wee are fully hydrated. Frozen two! THE storm you meowed about will reech up to Georgian Bay inn Ontario (our Province). Inn fact, it has started this mornin. Allso wee get Poe-lar Vortex from far North makin it frigid cold…Like last yeer, another wild Winter….sighss……
The guy I live with said we’re only getting brushed by this big storm; today, tomorrow, and Sunday. It’s mostly going east of us.
I went outside just now, at 11 p.m., and it was starting to snow. We don’t expect much snow.