the miserable gardener

What season is this, again? The calendar says it’s spring. This is not spring.

The downspout burst a month or so ago, and instead of allowing the water to pour into the crawl space, I rigged up a fancy device to pull the downspout away from the house. But a couple of nights ago the downspout burst further up. It might be time to replace the downspout. Also visible, at the end of the downspout, the result of banging at it repeatedly with a hammer to free the ice inside.

The reason for all of this is quite simple. I ventured outside Sunday morning to look at the min-max thermometer, and it registered three below zero. Minus nineteen point four Celsius. This is not spring.

If I had any sense at all I would put the house up for sale and move some place that had a reasonable climate, one where the only experience of snow comes in plastic globes sold for Christmas.

I think about moving from time to time, though the fairly large garden surrounding the house might make it difficult to sell. On the other hand, when we were looking for houses back in the mid 80s we went through a house where the previous owner had a pet monkey that had been trained to use the bathroom (in the house), and the house did eventually sell.

This is the horticultural equivalent of a trained monkey. It’s a good thing I delayed planting of this little garden. It isn’t finished anyway. Imagining the worst, I wrapped the Hesperaloe funifera and Caesalpinia gilliesii. The snow in the right of the picture is really twice as blindingly bright as it appears.

Moving house involves so much work–work I don’t want to do—that I think I’ll just go look at rocks later this week.

marking time

It’s snowing. It’s a winter wonderland.

In order to make days like this bearable, I go down to the laundry room every so often to see how my cactus seedlings are doing.

These pictures aren’t quite in focus, but convey the idea anyway.

I removed the cover and turned off the lights for the picture. Spray bottles are for watering.

This is the cactus seed germination flat on the lower shelf. It has a heating mat underneath; the lights are about a foot from the pots, one plant-growing type, one regular light. I check for fungus every day, but the seed mix, bagged mushroom compost, bagged sand, and perlite, is relatively sterile. One of the spray bottles contains Bordeaux Mixture, just in case.

When enough seeds have germinated, I move the pot to the flat above, just to be in a slightly drier environment.

These shelves have been used for seed sowing for a quarter of a century; the water patterns on the drywall remind me of the decalcomania paintings of Oscar Dominguez and Max Ernst.

This is my very high-tech culture tube holder for treatment with GA-3. I can put off treating the rest of the seeds, particularly from packets that had no germination just sowing under lights, for weeks, months, or even years. Cactus seeds are usually viable for a very long time.

the miserable gardener

spring?

marking time

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