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 after a very long absence. You may remember me from such posts as “Bulking Up”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
I think you get why we’ve been gone for so very long. Longer than ever before, according to the guy I live with.
Things have been like this for quite some time.

We did have a couple of nice days at the beginning of this month, and the snowdrops were out.
But it’s mostly been cold here. In fact, I haven’t gone on my evening walk at least five times in the last month, because it’s been so cold.

There are a lot of geese, and lots of honking in the sky. The guy I live with said in the winter there are more geese than humans along the Front Range in Colorado.
It’s hard to believe that in maybe less than a month water will be flowing in the canal.
The guy I live with has mostly been taking pictures of the willows, and posting some of them on Facebook.
The same willow on an overcast evening.
We haven’t heard any owls lately, though I have seen coyote tracks in the snow.

The guy I live with said we’re just waiting for spring, which here can come early and then go away, over and over again.
He says it’s more beneficial to live in the moment, which I of course do naturally, except when dinnertime gets close, but it’s been so much colder than normal, or felt like it anyway, that just being in the moment can sometimes feel like being in an endless loop.

And also the willow pictures are better in the winter than they are in the summer, because naturally they’re hidden by lots of leaves in the summer.
This was taken right before it started to snow.
This one was taken a few evenings ago when it wasn’t too cold to walk down the creek.

So that’s it for today. We’re still here. The guy I live with is painting the kitchen, and I’m taking lots of naps.

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 just to talk about crocuses. You may remember me from such posts as “Crocuses And Snowdrops”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.It’s pretty cold, and it’s going to be cold today, too, but tomorrow, not so much. On our morning walk it was seven degrees F (-13.9 C).
The only drawback for me is that I have to wear my boots, and the only drawback for the guy I live with is that the brightness of the sun on the snow hurts his eyes, even with polarized sunglasses.

Anyway, you may recall the guy I live with’s pontificating about crocuses and their corms. In particular, autumn-flowering crocuses.
He said that autumns are now so dry that newly-planted corms often don’t get enough water to form cormlets after the plants flower, which is why he’s growing some in pots upstairs under lights.
You can see that the leaves in the pot third from the left are starting to wither. He thought the leaves would stay green until spring, but apparently not. They do, growing out in the garden.
What really matters is the formation of cormlets.
In the pot closest in the picture, the leaves had all withered, and he thought it might be because of the heavier, silty soil which makes it difficult for water to infiltrate. He was afraid the corm had died.
He told me (I’m not sure I listened much) that a more porous soil makes it easier for water to infiltrate, and that water is more readily available to roots growing in porous soils.
Like this:
This is old soil-less mix taken from the troughs which were given away.

So he removed all the soil in that one pot, and after searching around for a while, this is what he found:See the new cormlets? The tunic, or outer covering, of the old corm is at the left and middle.
It may take a couple of years for the cormlets to grow large enough to flower, but the process is well on its way now.

And that’s all I have for today. We’re eagerly looking forward to tonight’s -6F (-21 C), warmer weather after that, then colder weather, then warmer weather, and so forth.

Until next time, then.