the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to talk about the weather, and some other things. You may remember me from such posts as “Under Construction”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
The guy I live with said maybe it’s time to replace the ramp. It kind of bounces when we walk on it now. You can see how narrow the concrete is, because a second sliding-glass door was added before the guy I live with and his wife moved into the house. The threshold is also worn, from purebred border collies going over it for so many years.

Speaking of work, guess what happened the other day?
The sinkhole was filled in. The guy I live with took me out there to meet everyone, and told them I was the one who first discovered the sinkhole.
He had called the people who manage the “green belt” (which I call the field), because we noticed kids had been playing in the sinkhole, so it got filled in without the extensive repairs that it really needs. This is just a temporary thing, for safety.
The guy I live with pointed out the abandoned muskrat den on the south side of the canal, and said that was where the water was entering the sinkhole, and so the crew filled in the old den, and the water stopped.

That fence belongs to one of our neighbors, who is older than the guy I live with, if such a thing is really possible. The fence was broken when a dead tree was blown over onto it. The guy I live with said he would fix it, with another neighbor’s help, but he keeps forgetting about it, since he has other things on his mind. Eventually it will get fixed.

There was a really big crawdad in the canal. It will go into its home in the mud along the canal when the weather gets colder. The guy I live with said he doesn’t know what happens to them when the water stops flowing in the canal, but likes to think good thoughts about them.
So….sometime tomorrow morning it’s supposed to snow. We could get a lot of snow. The guy I live with is of two minds about this. It will be cold, and all the crocus flowers will be gone, but on the other hand it will be water. It’s been very dry here, with almost no rain all month. It drizzled on our evening walk yesterday.

The guy I live with said it was time to sow some seeds. Ordinarily he would sow the seeds in pots in a dishpan filled with water, but this time he decided to sow the seeds dry, since it’s going to snow.
He had already filled a bunch of pots with soil-less mix he made himself, and put them on the shelf on the patio.
Filling the pots was most of the work, so a lot of time was saved today, and the sowing went pretty quickly.
This dishpan (there are three of them) has been out on the patio for thirty years.

One concern is running out of the “squeegee” used as a surface dressing for the pots, like on the top three pots in the picture. (I don’t know why they call it squeegee, but it’s the same kind of gravel they use on icy roads.)
You can’t just go to a squeegee store and buy some, these days. Garden centers no longer carry it.

The pots go out into the frames behind the shed.
On his way out there, he took some pictures. This is an out-of-focus picture of Crocus banaticus.
The view from inside the shed.
The enclosure, with some Crocus speciosus.
The rose ‘Darlow’s Enigma’ was flowering there. The Japanese beetles are long gone.
And here are the frames.
This one is just for bulbs. It isn’t any different from the first one, except that it’s just bulbs.
The frames were built using the wood from the bulb frames he made but decided not to keep them.

The frames are on the “trough patio” behind the shed. There are only two troughs with plants in them, now, because times change.
Though we may get a lot of snow this weekend, it’s supposed to warm up again later, with nighttime temperatures above freezing, so maybe most, if not all, of the snow will melt.
Later in the year, when more snow falls, it usually lies on the frames all winter, because the trough patio is in shade then. The guy I live with said that’s ideal for the seeds.

I think that’s all I have for today.

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 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.