Greetings and salutations everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to bring you the latest exciting news from our garden. You may remember me from such wonderfully informative posts as “Inching Toward Spring” and “More Weirdness”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic, late-afternoon pose. My ear is being scratched. Sometimes ears just itch, you know? 
Here I am in a more typically characteristic pose. I’m epitomizing our modern lifestyle here.
Well, that’s the interesting part of the post. The rest is just pictures of the various obsessions of the guy I live with.
For one thing, he almost went crazy when this thing bloomed. I mean, he was all like, “Come out and look”, and I didn’t much want to, so I didn’t. (My mommy was that way, too.) It’s Iris rosenbachiana.
morning sun
midday sun
Fascinating. This is the form from Tadjikistan, he says. I don’t know where that is. He says “Over there”, pointing way past the front window. Okay, then.
Those pictures came from his Photobucket. These he took today, and when the cyclamen start to bloom, then I never hear the end of it. Cyclamen this, cyclamen that. Cyclamen coum, in this case. You can see two color forms here. These were planted by ants.
The original tubers came from his late gardening friend in upstate New York, whom I mentioned a while back. The seed is dispersed by ants, and I guess there are a lot of ants here, because there are a lot of cyclamen. One thing follows another, as I’ve said before.
Oh, and then this hasn’t really even started yet, but you should have heard the commotion when he saw Corydalis seisumsiana show a little color. It will go on for almost a month, get bigger with way more flowers (he claims), totally ignore any cold and snow we might have, and just be “generally delightful”, which, I must say, reminds me of me. 
He said this species was native to the Zanzegur Range in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. I didn’t know what to say. It’s been a long time since the guy I live with pored over maps, and so he had to look this up. Incredible as it may seem. It turns out that it’s like this little country between Iran and Armenia, but it’s part of Azerbaijan, so not really a country. Very dry place, though, he says. (Like he’s been there.)
Well, the stuff you learn. As far as interesting stuff goes, I don’t know, but the guy I live with said to put it in because there were two pictures of me today. The quid pro quo business.
That’s all for today. It was chilly and gloomy and even snowed for a couple of minutes, but the guy I live with didn’t care, because of the corydalis.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 