the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you the latest news from our garden, even if it isn’t all that interesting to me. You may remember me from such posts as “Bright White” and “Drip Drop Drip Drop”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. That cardboard box behind me is the source of all the excitement today. Not on my part, of course. You may have noticed that I haven’t posted for a while. The reason is that I’ve been really sick (this hasn’t been my year, has it?), and the guy I live with even went out in the dark to get me an antibiotic, but now I’m all better and things are pretty much back to normal. It was just a flare-up of the thing I have, with my tummy and so forth.

Well, anyway, since the cardboard box was set on our front doorstep, by what looked like a not very happy delivery guy (the label on the box said “heavy“), the guy I live with sprang into action. Of course it took him hours to spring, but eventually he sprang. This was in the box.He said he was going to screen it, but I noticed he didn’t, and I understand that it isn’t all that important, but he said he might screen some later.

Seeds were sown. These were old seeds of acantholimons that he was given. You know, acantholimons?They’re pretty prickly, and one of their common names is “spikethrift”, because of their prickliness. They make these huge domes which look kind of odd in the garden.

The first thing that was done was pots were filled with the mix he made, and then soaked in a dishpan full of warm water, and left outside overnight. That’s why he has all the dishpans. Then the seeds were sprinkled on top. (I know, this is a different dishpan.) You’ll notice that some pots have a few seeds, while others have a bunch. This is because they’re old seeds, and each pot represents a different packet of seeds. And even, in most cases, a different species, though acantholimons do all look a lot alike.Then the pots were “top dressed” with the granite. Those are B.E.F. Grower’s Pots, which you can’t get any more, and which have remained outside for twenty-five years.Then the pots went into a frame, where they’ll stay until next spring. The ideal would be for a bunch of snow to be piled on them, but we don’t have any snow here right now.

(Those green tufts in the lower right are Lilium candidum.)There was even a crocus flowering today. Crocus tournefourtii. The reason for the cage is that rabbits like to eat the crocus foliage, and that makes the guy I live with, um, hopping mad. I think I’ve said that before, but it’s still funny. In other news, after the guy I live with looked at the instructions for germinating the old oncocyclus iris seed he got, the seeds began to germinate in earnest. He’s fairly obsessed with this. You may wonder what’s up with all the ancient seed here, well, he got a lot, that’s what, and he’s been sowing it. The seed with an impervious coat is more likely to still be viable (like the irises), he says, but he’s going to sow everything, because you never know. He spends so much time fiddling with the irises that sometimes I wonder if he likes them better than he likes me. I know that can’t be true, though, because of all the cuddles I get, and the irises don’t get cuddles. 

Until next time, then.

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the delightful purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here to bring you the latest chilly news from our garden. You may remember me from such equally frigid posts as “Below Average” and “A Cold, Cold Day”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.Yesterday it was almost like summer. It got to 69 degrees F (20.5C); the guy I live with worked out in the garden, and I sat on the patio rug and watched.

Even this morning it was nice for a few minutes (I didn’t get up until about nine), and then all of a sudden the wind came up from the north, and right now it’s 20 degrees F (-6.6C) and ninety-two percent humidity. That’s cold even for me, because we hardly ever have that much humidity when it gets cold.

You can see how cold it is from the pictures here. Those plastic things are over some agaves which should have been protected the last time it got cold, but weren’t, and so they suffered. They’re not very big plants.

The downy woodpecker ate some suet. That’s the same cage that Earl, the squirrel, tinkled all over when he saw that the guy I live with had added the hardware cloth, last year. It’s clean now, of course. And the lone snowdrop is still blooming. It looks kind of sad. Right smack in the middle of the picture. Its name is…get this…Galanthus elwesii var. monostictus Hiemalis Group. That’s probably why it looks so sad. The blurry thing in the lower right is a post to define the path, in case somebody walked into the shade garden. More seeds are being germinated. Remember I told you that the guy I live with got a bunch of really old seed, and he was going to test it for viability? Maybe I didn’t say all of that, just the first part, but he did test some astragalus seed, and guess what?That’s wet filter paper the seed is on. I know it looks kind of weird. The seeds were nicked, then soaked, and then put into filter paper which was dampened, or wetted, and then put in a mostly-open freezer bag, and left down in the laundry room for a few days, and the seed germinated.

The seed was collected in 1995. This is Astragalus sobolevskiae. Collected by Josef Halda in the Altai Mountains. The guy I live with had never heard of it either, and he says that even Kew doesn’t have a herbarium specimen, so I guess we’re really out on the frontiers of horticulture here.

Of course there was a big to-do about the filter paper. (It prevents the seed from rotting and stuff.) Where, oh where, to find filter paper?Maybe you can see that he found some, and it works really well. I don’t go round telling people that seed is sown on filter paper here and checked with a magnifying glass every day, because, you know, people might talk, but that’s the sort of thing that goes on here.

And I’m supposed to show these two pictures, even though they were accidentally taken as super low-resolution pictures (like the one of me watching, above). I guess you know what the first one is.And two evenings ago we had a really nice sunset. Well, you can tell what that is, too.

Now I’ll let you go. I have another picture of me to show, looking all pensive and stuff, and then that’s it.

Until next time, then.