the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to talk about the peculiar and stressful things that have been going on here. You may remember me from such posts as “The Endless Winter”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.As maybe you can tell by the title of my post, it’s been snowing. Every other day now. Snow, then more snow, then more snow. Below normal temperatures almost every day.
The guy I live with is pretty depressed about this; he would rather be gardening than slipping around on the ice and stuff.

But whatever, right? In the next picture you can see one of the frames; this has snowdrops in it, and we looked at them today.

I think this one is ‘Little Ben’. 

This is Galanthus fosteri. It’s been flowering for a while, now.

So at least we have these to look at.

Despite the fact that the guy I live with would really prefer to avoid major things, something extra major is going on here.
The sewer drain needs to be replaced. It’s going to be done next Tuesday. The guy I live with said it would cost a lot of money, but he’s been worrying about it for several years now. In fact, every time he goes down into the laundry room he looks at the drain grate there, to see if there’s water overflowing.
That did happen last week, and so a couple of guys came out and “snaked” the line. I watched. Then the next day someone came out and ran a camera through the line. That was pretty interesting.

So a thing called a backhoe is going to drive into the front yard and dig a hole. Of course there are plants in the way.
The guy I live with worked out in the cold and snow and dug up a few of them. They’re in pots in the garage. He also asked an oak expert if the little oaks could be dug up. Yes, they could, so he dug up the one that would have been flattened, for sure.
He dug up a bunch of big cactus, too. They can sit outside in pots.The manzanita (Arctostaphylos patula) in the lower left can’t be dug up and will be lost. The guy I live with said that that was the way things go.

The “snake” did remove enough roots in the pipe that our plumbing is still usable. The guy I live with did a small load of laundry today and nothing untoward happened.
He said he never took being able to run a washing machine for granted. Well, maybe just a little.
He told me a story of a time in March, back when days in March were nice (they’re predicting below normal temperatures for this March), out in the garden, and he told his wife that maybe he was taking her for granted. She looked at him and he realized right then and there that he never took her for granted. She died two months later.
He said he learned a lesson.

It would be nice if it stopped snowing, for a while, but it’s supposed to snow tomorrow, and Sunday, and Monday, and Tuesday. Highly unusual for this time of year, but the guy I live with said that things were unusual, these days.

Anyway, I get to look for mice and voles, out in the snow, on my walks. I never find any.

Until next time, then.

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to talk about the changes in the weather. You may remember me from such posts as “Our Winter, Thus Far”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. You can see that the sun was shining, and things were pretty good. That was a couple of days ago.
Even though there was still ice on my walks.Yesterday it was seventy-one degrees. A typical temperature for this time of year, but it used to happen more often.
There were snowdrops in flower out in the garden. “Finally”, he said. It started to snow last night. We’re supposed to get about a foot of snow, and by Tuesday night the temperature will be about five below zero. So a seventy-five-degree drop in temperature in three days.
The guy I live with is not at all happy about this. He said he was so tired of winter and being cold (except for yesterday) he could scream, but he didn’t.

I could end this post right here, but the guy I live with said we should show some more of the children’s books that are in the bookshelves upstairs, so that’s what I’ll do.

The guy I live with said that this was his mom’s book. 

He remembers looking at it, as a kid in Los Angeles, because he knows that’s Constable Noakes, who got his thumbs caught in his belt. He has quite a memory, though he never read the book.

Then a couple that were his wife’s. She probably bought them at a used book store here.

Then a bunch more of the little books like the Uncle Wiggily books. These were his mom’s.

Then there are some books by Anne Ophelia Dowden.  Not children’s books, I think, but good introductions to the lives of plants and pollinators. The guy I live with’s wife really admired her work.

HHis wife went up to Boulder to visit her, with a friend, one year. She got some hand-made watercolor paper, as a gift from Anne Ophelia Dowden, which she treasured, and used to for the watercolors for the books the guy I live with and his wife did.

So now that really is it for today. Not much, but, after all, it’s snowing.

Until next time, then.