the miserable gardener

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 to bring you up to date on the latest news from our garden. You may remember me from such posts as “Before It Snows”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.You may gather from the title of today’s post that it was extremely warm today. There are still small patches of snow from when it snowed three weeks ago, believe it or not, but the weather has been pretty delightful lately.

And if you know anything about Denver’s weather, you’ll know that tomorrow night it’s supposed to snow. The guy I live with explained that when it gets really warm, like today, it’s a sure sign that it will snow the next day. I personally think this is very weird.

The forecast also called for rain tomorrow. It never rains in Denver in the wintertime, but I guess there can always be a first time.

It’s been super dry here lately, but then, it’s always dry here in the winter, even if it snows. The snow evaporates in the sun, except in the places here and there where the sun doesn’t shine on them. Maybe you can see how dry it is.

I realize that the next picture has a certain deficiency compared to the ones above, but the guy I live with thought this was a fairly good picture of the “way back”, which, as you may know, is a garden behind the hedge of lilacs you can see in the last picture. The one section of fence on the right is horribly leaning, and we’re not sure how to fix that. There’s probably a way.

You can also see that the bird bath still has not been fixed. The guy I live with said he hasn’t worked out how to fix the bath itself, since it broke into several pieces.All this warm weather brought some visitors to the garden. The guy I live with said there were “zillions” of female red-wing blackbirds in the birch tree. I think he exaggerated just a little.

Red-wing blackbirds are birds of spring, and it was odd to see them here at this time of year. It does happen sometimes.

Then there was a raven on our walk this morning.The guy I live with said that there were always ravens here, but that you didn’t see them a lot. Crows, on the other hand, are fairly new. You never used to see them, and now you see them all the time. Like blue jays, I guess.

The paperwhites are still flowering. The guy I live with said he thought this picture was interesting because you can see them in the mirror on the wall, too.There are some new ones flowering, called ‘Inbal’, and he said those were extremely fragrant. Otherwise they look kind of a lot like the regular ones, which are called ‘Ziva’.

There’s an amaryllis about to open, too, as you can see.

In other news, a couple of evenings ago I saw this on the stairs. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.This is called an effelant, if you didn’t know. The guy I live with said his friend got it for Christmas, and that it was for me. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but now I really like my new effelant, almost as much as my Lamb Chop.

Sometimes the guy I live with leaves me here at home, even though he doesn’t want to, but I have all my toys to keep me company. The radio is on, too. He worries a lot about me when he leaves. I usually just take a nap, which he knows, but he still worries.

He said he knew when he brought me home for the first time that he was in for a good deal of worry, but it was what he wanted, instead of just being at home all by himself. His retirement has been nothing but endless worry, which irks him because he thought retirement would be all serene and stuff. It’s been anything but that. Having someone (that would be me) to worry over helps him, he said.

Anyway, I guess bringing me home for the first time was a good trade because I worry, too, like when I was on my morning walk the other day and I heard loud noises, and he said they were from the trash truck emptying the dumpsters in the apartment complex to the north of us, and even showed me the trash trucks, and also leaned against me to show that everything was really okay.

And I worry about him. Just the other day this came in the mail.This came from The Temple Nursery, as I found out after what I thought was an excessive amount of fretting and talking about how we would have to survive on lettuce for the rest of the year.

I started to worry about the lettuce, which I’ve never had. It didn’t sound very good. The guy I live with said that Flurry, the first purebred border collie who lived here, liked lettuce and so it would be okay. I remembered that he told me Flurry also liked hot sauce, so I began to wonder.

He said everything would be just fine, and not to worry. 

Until next time, then.

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the excellent purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you the latest news from our garden. You may remember me from such posts as “Most Improved”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. Waiting for the guy I live with to come outside with me, as usual.I really like gardening and have a very enjoyable time when he’s out in the garden, too, but sometimes it does involve an awful lot of waiting. Eventually he did come outside, as you’ll see in a bit.

There was a pretty nice sunset last night; the first sunset of the new year. It was not warm on our evening walk, though.Today the guy I live with went to the store. I never get to go. He says I would be bored, but considering the things he brings back–about half of them for me–I can’t see how that could be possible. Maybe he’ll take me next time.

Before he left, he stopped and talked to his neighbor, who also lost his wife, to see how he did over the holidays. It was about as expected.

When he came back from the store, there were seeds in the mailbox. Or maybe I should say that there was a padded envelope full of packets of seeds in the mailbox. The mailbox wasn’t really full of seeds; that would be silly.

After all the groceries were put away and I got to try one of my new biscuits, the guy I live with went about stratifying a bunch of the seeds he got. These were all species of calochortus, if you needed to know.

I suppose this has been talked about before but the guy I live with said this would pad the post a little bit, so here you go. These are all the things necessary for this procedure. The spoon is a special spoon which his late wife bought just for “seed stuff”.The purpose of stratification, as I learned today, is to keep the seeds moist and at about forty degrees Fahrenheit for a month, or two months, in order to break down the germination inhibitors.

Sand was put in freezer bags. The “medium” doesn’t have to be sand, but the guy I live with has used all sorts of other things, like perlite and vermiculite, and likes sand the best. This is just “play sand” like you get at a box store.The seeds are sprinkled in.More sand is added, and then water is sprayed in to get the sand damp. If there’s too much water, like some of the seeds are floating, more sand can be added.Then the freezer bags go into this box, and the box goes into the crisper drawer of the refrigerator (not the freezer). The towels are to help keep the seeds from freezing. That’s all there is to it. The seeds will be checked in a month or so to see what’s happening (okay, seriously, they’ll be checked about every two days, but they don’t need to be).

After a month or two the seeds will be sown in pots under lights and the seeds will germinate. Hopefully. The guy I live with said that sometimes you can see action while the seeds are still in the bags. The embryos start to swell and move toward the tip of the seed (the micropyle).

(You can also sow the seeds–dry–directly into the garden in about November; that works, sometimes, if no one eats the seeds over the winter.)

Later on, the guy I live with said we would show a method for sowing paintbrush (Castilleja sp.) which works pretty well, but conditions have to be right. (There has to be some snow in the forecast.)

The seeds weren’t the big deal of the day, however. That happened a little earlier. We went outside and there was a big hawk in the cottonwood, and two others flying overhead. One of the ones overhead dived down at the hawk in the tree and I guess chased it away, and then the two hawks kept circling overhead. The guy I live with reassured me that the hawks weren’t going to go for me. (The jingling you hear is me.)

Then on our evening walk we saw one of the hawks. (Our back yard runs practically the length of the fence between the two trees there.)

Well, that’s it for today. I hope you enjoyed what turned out to be a rather informative, if somewhat flighty, post.

Until next time, then.