the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, it is I, Mani the 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 “The Finished Project”, (which I posted just yesterday, so I hope you remember me), among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.I’m here today to talk about the bulb frame. Partly because I feel like it, and partly because the guy I live with has gone through so many gardening phases, and finally settled on this one, which was something he wanted to do for quite some time, but never got around to it, because he was all enthusiastic about something else.

I mean, can you believe that at one time he wanted to grow a lot of dahlias? And then there was the variegated plant phase. And the rose phase. And the trying marginally-hardy (very expensive) plants phase. There was a rhododendron phase (no, seriously, there was), an “English garden” phase (not enough water for that), an ornamental grass phase (not enough water, again). Hundreds of trees and shrubs have been planted here, and died. Some died very quickly.

So, well, thinking about that, and especially about the money spent, when he got into bulbs quite seriously a few years ago, he noticed that when he planted some, they never reappeared. And so the bulb frame will be a place where he can pay attention to them. Like a hospital, sort of. Or a nursery, really.

This is it. The point-and-shoot makes the fence on the right look a little slanty, but it isn’t. I’m standing under the Cotoneaster multiflorus, which shades this in the summer time. There isn’t anything else growing here because, well, because there isn’t. The guy I live with says it’s because I chase squirrels there, but that’s not really the reason. There’s some other reason that I don’t know. I also don’t know math, much, so all I can say is that one inch equals 2.5 centimeters, and that one foot equals thirty centimeters. The frame was built using three 2×6×8 ft. pine boards, and three 2×4×8 pine boards. It’s six feet long by four feet wide. The boards were glued together with wood glue, clamped, and then for extra strength those metal plates were attached. (He already had the plates from another abandoned project.) The decision to use pine was an easy one; it’s cheaper, and in this climate will last a long time.

Then screen was stapled to the bottom, with some cedar lath for bracing, or whatever. Also the screen wasn’t wide enough, so the lath helped, because the screen could be (carefully) stapled to it. The roof was built with 2×2×8 furring strip board. This stuff often comes warped, but the roof doesn’t have to fit perfectly. Because the hardware cloth had to be cut, with aircraft shears, there were sharp ends, which were covered by more lath, and so the triangular sections of the roof fit together quite well. Not enough room for a rodent to slip through. (We’re not hugely worried about that, anyway.)This is what it looks like when it’s opened. The back section doesn’t open. It still does need a handle, and a method of holding it up. Another way to have done this was to make those triangular sections attached to the frame instead of the roof, and just have the main part of the roof be able to open. The guy I live with says he wanted to add a brace on either end, for the snow load, so that’s why it was done this way. The hardware cloth was attached with poultry netting staples. Three hinges. Some weatherstripping will be put over the gap. The wood on the frame was painted with Cuprinol, which the guy I live with discovered was kind of toxic, so he painted over everything with real paint after that.

And that’s that. It’s the first thing you see when you come into the back yard. This is the view. The frame is off to the right, in the corner.Wait, this is a much better view. That’s one of my Lamb Chop toys on the path.I am in both pictures, but easier to see in the last one. I’m one on of the paths in the rock garden.

Here’s a picture that I’m not in. It was taken with the point-and-shot and came out okay. Okay, that’s it for today. I hope you enjoyed my talk about the bulb frame. I think I’ll snack on a locust pod now.

Until next time, then.

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 “A Velociraptor’s Day”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. Yes, the old biscuit-on-the-head ploy. The guy I live with has been kind of distracted lately, which is why there hasn’t been any posting. But he thought I should bring you up to date, the way I often do.

It’s been super dry here. The autumn-flowering bulbs have had to be watered in order to get them to flower.

Galanthus reginae-olgae ‘Cambridge’

Crocus niveus.

You can see how super dry the garden is. It’s like, crispy. I hear that this has happened before. 

The big deal here is the finished bulb frame. I guess the front section needs a handle, so it can be lifted, but other than that, it’s done. When there are actually bulbs there it will have plastic over it for the winter. And the frame will be filled with sandy loam. There’s screen on the bottom to help deter rodents. It also needs some sheets of styrofoam glued against the inside of the frame, but I guess that can wait.

It was a lot of fun to watch him build it, measuring and sawing and things like that. He used a Japanese hand saw to cut the wood. He said it was funny, when he went to get the hardware cloth, that when he was asking where it was, no one knew what “hardware cloth” was, but now they do. It’s attached with poultry netting staples, so there was a lot of hammering. For once, he said, the staples were the only thing that was hit with the hammer. It might be a “seed frame” before it’s a bulb frame, with pots of seeds put in there for the winter, but then again, it might not.

I didn’t really have all that much to say, today, because not much has been going on besides this.  I did get to see an owl, in the tree, and that was pretty interesting. You can see it was pretty sleepy. It did watch me, though, before it went to sleep.

So that’s it, for today. (That’s the bulb frame, in the left corner.)

Until next time, then.