the miserable gardener

even closer to spring

Hello everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to bring you the latest and greatest news from our garden. You may remember me from such delightful and humorous posts as “Home Alone Once Again” and “In The Snow”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. The guy I live with, who was holding the camera, said I was “too close”. But I like being close. Here I am again, “too close”. Oh, why not one more?You may wonder what all this me-centered activity is, so I’ll tell you. Tomorrow is my birthday. I’ll be twelve.

We’re not going to do any celebrating, or anything like that, but I wonder if these are for me?Here I am again; this time in a focused, horticultural pose.I suppose I should say some gardening-type things, instead of all this me stuff. I like the me stuff a lot, but the guy I live with reminds me from time to time that this is more or less a gardening blog, so here we go.

The emerging leaves of Allium platycaule. They really are this color. It’s from California, which might explain it.

Crocus ancyrensis ‘Golden Bunch’. The guy I live with says ancyrensis refers to Ankara, in Turkey. I like turkey a lot. The guy I live with got some roasted turkey breast a while back, and shared it with me. It was good.

You can see a feather in one of the pictures. That’s because there are a lot of birds in the back yard. There’s also a bee.

The extra purple pads of Opuntia polyacantha ‘Dark Knight’. They turn greener when the weather warms, the cells fill with water again, and the pads stand upright. Merendera (Colchicum) sobolifera.The guy I live with took some pictures of “the three towers” last night. The cypresses in their personal greenhouses, I mean. They’re kind of spooky at dusk, don’t you think?The guy I live with has been super-obsessing about “winter-quiescent conifers”, by which is meant that the conifers don’t form resting buds for the winter, but instead just stop growing. They get a little bit of winterburn because of that, and he doesn’t know why. If you feel like looking at his pictures, they’re in his bucket, here. (There’s also a picture of a cedar, which does have resting buds, and bunches of snowdrop pictures, and another one of me with antlers.) But that’s why the cypresses are in their personal greenhouses, in order to get a jump on warmer weather. So he says, anyway.

I guess that’s really all for today. I have to rest up for the festivities tomorrow.

Until next time, then.

liony weather

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to thrill you and chill you with the latest news from our garden. You may remember me from such amazingly wonderful posts as “White Fever” and “Snow In The Forecast”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose. We purebred border collies can be quite serious indeed.You know how they say “March comes in like a lion, but goes out like a lamb”? Well, it never does that here. It comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lion. The weather this morning was very liony.

I’ve never seen a lion, or a lamb, but I know what lambs are without even seeing one. If I saw one, I would know exactly what to do, without being told. My grandpa Flurry went for a trial once, when he wasn’t even one year old, to see if he knew how to herd sheep, which he’d never seen before, and he herded them here, and herded them there, and won a blue ribbon which said “Herding Certified”, so I can tell you I know what lambs are. It’s my job, though, now, as I’ve said before, I’m retired.

What with all the liony weather this morning, we got up later than usual, there being no real need to get up any earlier, but I began to worry that the guy I live with wasn’t going to take me for my morning walk in weather like this. I put on my worried face.And then added a little, for effect.

But the guy I live with said I was worrying for nothing, since we were going to go. He just hadn’t drunk enough coffee yet. I suppose it would help if he didn’t fall asleep on my walk. So eventually we did go, and I got all covered with snow. It was excellent, as you can imagine.

Later, he was just kind of milling around, after shoveling the liony stuff off the sidewalk, and then the mail came. There was a small box of cactus seeds from Mesa Garden. Cactus seeds are little.After filling pots outside, and pouring hot water on them (the hot water helps moisten the soil-less mix), and waiting a few minutes for the water to cool, he brought the pots inside and sowed the cactus seed. He bought some propagators from Garden Talk, to grow more seeds. Like he needs more seeds, huh.The propagator has drainage holes in the bottom, so he lined the bottom with heavy-duty foil. He misted the seeds sitting on top of the soil-less mix.Then the propagator went on the shelf under the lights. There’s a heating mat beneath it.