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 today to talk about things seen and unseen. You may remember me from such posts as “Thirty-Three And A Third”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
The guy I live with has been painting every day, and I’ve had to watch him do it, but in this picture you can tell I’m not watching.
It’s also been windy and not very warm, so that doesn’t make for much fun in the garden.

Still, we have gone outside now and then, and the guy I live with took some pictures.
This is Colchicum bulbocodium (it used to be called Bulbocodium vernum):
There are cyclamen, too. Lots and lots of them.
These are Cyclamen coum, all self sown.
Well they’re not all Cyclamen coum, the plant in front is C. pseudibericum, but the flowers are those of C. coum. You can see the leaves of C. coum in the middle of the C. pseudibericum.
You can also see some snowdrops.

These are Galanthus alpinus var. bortkewitschianus, which is a sterile variety of regular G. alpinus.
The Kew book The Genus Galanthus says this variety occupies a very small area (about twelve to fifteen acres) in the wild in the north Caucasus and propagates itself vegetatively, which the guy I live with said was very weird indeed.
Then he saw this:
You can see how the bulbs are multiplying, so that’s how they must do it in nature.
(There’s a tiny cyclamen seedling and some crocus seedlings too.)

Besides these, there are still a lot of snowdrops in flower.
This is ‘Lapwing’:
This is ‘Mrs. Backhouse Number 12’:
Backhouse was the name of a nursery in England; there are other bulbs named for them, like the lily ‘Mrs. R.O. Backhouse’, and there’s a daffodil, too.

This is the green-tipped Galanthus nivalis ‘Warei’, an old variety which is slightly larger than ‘Viridapice’ (that name means “green tips”).
So those are the flowers. There are crocuses and irises in flower here too.

I got to watch the guy I live with paint the living room. He painted it the same colors as before, which were colors his wife picked out.
He had to move a bunch of books, which he’d never really looked at. There are a lot of books in this house that he’s never looked at, books that were his wife’s, that he can’t bring himself to get rid of. He just sees the spines of the books.
But the other day when he moved the books in the living room, he opened them. Dusted them, too.
His wife loved illustrated books. He knew it would make him sad to look at them, but he did it anyway.

There are also some old Everymen’s Library books. They have distinctive spines.

I know this post wasn’t mostly about me, which makes it less interesting in my opinion, but now the kitchen and living room are very clean, and mostly painted. There are some areas that need to be touched up.
The guy I live with is talking about getting new drapes for the living room, too, because he says “a certain party” chewed the bottoms of the drapes “when he was a puppy”.
I’m not sure who he’s referring to.

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 today to tell you how bored I am. You may remember me from such posts as “Caulk And Vernation”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristically sun-drenched pose.You may notice a kind of exhausted or apprehensive look in my expression.
Things here have been very weird indeed.

There are a lot of crocuses in flower now. This is one called ‘Ladykiller’, which is a pretty weird name, apparently inspired by a 1930s movie.
And there are so many snowdrops I can hardly keep track.
This is Galanthus plicatus.
There was a very weird snowdrop flowering here last week. The guy I live with said he thought this was one called ‘Trym’.
He told me he doesn’t like things like this at all. Not one little bit. Like less than zero percent. He knows that a few people go nuts over stuff like this, but he’s not one of those people.
So he’s going to give it away.

The first colchicum has appeared. This is Colchicum bulbocodium, which used to be called Bulbocodium vernum.

Mostly, though, I’ve been watching paint dry. I can’t begin to tell you how exciting this is.
The guy I live with has been so stressed out by the news that he decided to paint the inside of our house, which requires a lot of moving things around, and taping walls and stuff, and possibly way too much thinking about things.

He has a lot of paintbrushes, which he takes very good care of.
His grandfather taught him how to paint, and I guess he’s very good at it, and I know he likes painting a lot, but seriously, watching someone paint, and then watching the paint dry, is very, very boring.

Just today he blocked off the living room window so he could paint around it, which I found very upsetting, because I like to look out of that window, and bark at things that need to be barked at, but he left the front door open just for me.
It was like 67 degrees F (19.4 C), so having the front door open was normal, but I was very glad when all the tape was removed, the curtains were hung again, and the guy I live with signalled “all clear” for me.

So that’s all I have for today. A lot less gardening, and a bunch of boring painting.

Until next time, then.