the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to bring you our latest news. You may remember me from such posts as “Another New Toy”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
The weather has been pretty nice, though very dry. The guy I live with said we got some rain last night, which was nice. That must have been the first time it rained this month.
And then they say this weekend the temperatures will be well below freezing, with snow. The guy I live with is kind of excited about the snow. It’s supposed to be warmer next week, so the snow will melt into the ground. The moisture will be a relief, for sure.
Plants like the Salvia greggii will be done for, the flowers anyway, but the guy I live with is fine with that.
The crocus flowers will freeze, but there will be more later. These are Crocus speciosus, and the white form.
You may wonder why I wrote that the guy I live with said we got some rain. That’s because I was away.
Remember that the guy I live with got a jury summons? Without going into all the details, he had to go, so I spent the night in a kennel. Happily, I should add.
He was allowed to go home after a few hours, so he came to get me, while I was having a very good time playing with dogs, which I’m, as you know.
None of this was as awful as the guy I live with imagined it might be. He was even able to get up at five in the morning.

Now back to a bit of gardening.
I watched the guy I live with do some work.
You’ll be able to see how elegantly I tie this in to the catastrophizing that the guy I live with tends to do, at times.

It occurred to him that some of the autumn-flowering snowdrops hadn’t made an appearance above ground, like they should have already. Remember how I said we hadn’t gotten any rain this month, except for last night, so he wondered if that was why the snowdrops weren’t up.
These snowdrops were growing in a pot plunged into the ground, so he dug around in the pot soil (it’s soil, not potting soil) for a while, didn’t see anything green, and so began to tip the soil out of the pot, and I heard all this moaning and groaning. He thought all the bulbs had rotted. But then I heard a cry of triumph; the bulbs were growing right at the base of the pot, and had multiplied.
So he repotted all the bulbs into two pots.

Galanthus peshmenii

Obviously, bulbs planted this deep take longer to emerge. (The bulbs are planted deeply to protect them from freezing in the pot; the top of the pot is close to the surface of the soil. The reason for growing them in pots is so he can find them without slicing through them with a trowel, and share them with the botanic gardens.)
He re-plunged the pots into a new little bed he made. I watched. And stared at the ground, too.
The little bed is up against the fence, on my right, shaded in summer, but the warmest spot in the garden in winter; a good place for early snowdrops. It’s made of pea gravel, leaves dug into the gravel, some compost added, and so forth.
It’s otherwise empty here because it was a place for visitors to gather, after coming through the open gate.

(Note: I had to update this post because the guy I live with changed his mind about the snowdrops. He put one pot back where it was, and planted the other pot of snowdrops into the garden, and watered them.)

So that’s our news.

Until next time, then.

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to tell you about the transformation, as well as some other things. You may remember me from such posts as “House Of A Different Color”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
You can see that the hoses have been rearranged. A freeze was predicted a few nights ago; it didn’t happen, but the guy I live with decided it was time to roll up one of the hoses and just leave one. We have two long hoses, one on the north path and one on the south, all summer, but it was time to put one of the hoses in storage.

It’s been very dry here and so some watering has been necessary, especially with the (few) newly-planted plants.

The path off the patio looks pretty good, now that the guy I live with removed all the weeds growing in it. This path was made by Slipper, a purebred border collie who lived here before me. He didn’t like rigidly-defined boundaries.
Some colchicums still in flower, too.
I heard that Slipper was fairly unusual, but the guy I live with said that purebred border collies can be very unusual indeed.
He went so far as to say that after the events of the last couple of months, with the antibiotic and so forth, I’ve been transformed into a total weirdo.
I had a fairly good time at the kennel yesterday, then got to go to the store, as I said, and then got scared by a huge bullsnake, but my biggest issue right now is flying things.
I don’t like eating if there’s a fly buzzing around.
The guy I live with said that Flurry, the first purebred border collie who lived here, was also a total weirdo and obsessed with flies. He wouldn’t even go to bed unless he was shown the dead “big buzzy fly”.
So I’m in good company.

The guy I live with said to talk more about gardening so I guess I will.
You can see the redbud, which came up in a pot containing a conifer, is turning color.
The guy I live with likes the redbud so it’s going to stay. The maples are turning color in the “way back”, as you can see, too.

There are still a bunch of penstemon seedlings on the shelf. They might get planted out, or maybe returned to the frame. There’s a little rain predicted for next week, so maybe he’ll plant them out to distract himself from jury duty, which is also next week.
The main thing here is the cyclamen; right now anyway. Some people think that cyclamen can’t possibly do well here, but that’s not true at all.
This is Cyclamen cilicium, with C. mirabile ‘Tilebarn Nicholas’ in the upper left.
This is also Cyclamen cilicium, self-sown, with scalloped leaves (lower right) and some leaves of C. pseudibericum (the jagged leaves near the ivy).
This is Cyclamen hederifolium, with various leaf patterns. The guy I live with says people grow cyclamen for the leaves. It’s strange that they produce leaves of all different kinds of patterns. And more ivy.
The ones that produce the most widely-different patterns are C. graecum and C. maritimum, but those aren’t hardy here.
This is Cyclamen hederifolium again. The oval leaves are C. cilicium, I think.
Because it’s been so hot here lately, and dry, the leaves aren’t emerging as fast as they might.
The guy I live with collects pine needles to sprinkle over the cyclamen for the winter. If the soil freezes, which it’s been doing the last several winters, that’s not good for the cyclamen because the tubers can’t pull water from the soil to keep the leaves healthy.
This tub was made for a sort of portable pond, with water going down that chute to another tub, but the guy I live with has never used it for that.
Someone gave him the tubs, and at one point he tried to give them away, but he’s glad he didn’t.
The last tubs of pine needles were left out for most of the summer, and all the rain sort of rotted them, but he used the needles to cover weeds on the path next to the cyclamen, so if necessary the needles can be raked over the cyclamen leaves.

And that’s what I have for today. I’ll leave you with a picture of me, being a “total weirdo” watching for bees and other flying things next to the path.

Until next time, then.