the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here today to being you a partly interesting post on a partly interesting day. You may remember me from such posts as “More Changes”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
This is my favorite place to relax, especially after a partly interesting day.
The guy I live with said all the purebred border collies have loved this ninety-year-old creaky couch. He sometimes takes an afternoon nap on this couch when it’s not occupied.

Today was only partly interesting because I was left alone for a while. The guy I live with did come back with some biscuits for me, so all was not lost.

As I mentioned, this post may only be partly interesting so I’m going to start with that.
Here is Crocus niveus again. This is native to the Mani Peninsula in Greece. I know it’s really difficult to believe that the place isn’t named for me, but my name is Sanskrit and has nothing to do with Greek peninsulas. Or crocuses.
The Latin word niveus means “snowy” or “snow white”, but you can see that these aren’t.

You may wonder why this crocus was given that name. E.A. Bowles described it in The Gardener’s Chronicle in 1900 from plants he had growing in his garden.
“This handsome species is now flowering here [at Myddleton House] in a cold frame and at Kew in the open border. It is remarkably robust and vigorous, and quite the best white-flowered autumn Crocus I have ever seen…”

Apparently Bowles only saw ones that were white.
This sort of thing happens often and so the guy I live with isn’t going to fault Bowles, who was an expert on crocuses as you can see here. (The print is hard to read.)
https://www.eabowlessociety.org.uk/crocus
Very nice watercolors too.
Bowles raised crocuses from seed and you can still get his spring-flowering crocus ‘Snow Bunting’ which was one of the guy I live with’s wife’s favorite spring crocuses.

This is Crocus goulimyi ‘Mani White’. Again not named for me.
You can see this species is also synanthous so the leaves will have to be caged against rabbits, with an occasional spraying of Messina Wildlife’s Rabbit Stopper, which makes the leaves taste icky. It’s safe for me, if you wanted to know.
The guy I live with has had a terrible time trying to keep Crocus goulimyi, which is usually kind of a blue-purple, in the garden, but these have survived, probably because he made sure to water them well after they were planted.
The life cycle of these autumnal crocuses which flower with leaves is different from autumna; colchicums in that the mother corm needs roots in order to flower and produce leaves.

This is Sternbergia sicula.
The leaves are narrower and floppier than those on Sternbergia lutea, and “for some dumb reason” the guy I live with, who should know better according to him, kept thinking about sickles.
The Latin word for sickle is falx (like in falcate leaves), so why he thought about sickles is beyond me. He still claimed the leaves sort of looked like sickles.
The specific epithet sicula means Sicilian.

So that was the partly interesting part.
I’m not sure you can imagine what it’s like to be a sophisticated purebred border collie and have to live with stuff like not totally-white crocuses, and sickles.

But on my evening walk, there was something much more interesting reflected in the guy I live with’s headlamp.
Those shafts of light are from the apartment complex near us.
Just what we needed at this time of year, eyes glowing in the dark.
Eventually the eyes, and the horrible demonic creature that had them, went away.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep going on my walk, but the guy I live with with said it was okay, and we kept going.
I was astonishingly brave.

I walked almost to the end of the canal road, and then we turned around to go home.
I didn’t see any more glowing eyes.

Until next time, then.

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here today to talk about our autumn afternoon. You may remember me from such posts “One Hundred Snowdrops”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
It was a very nice autumn day today.
You can see that the maple, Acer grandidentatum, is turning color.
We can see all sorts of benefits from the rain. The grass in this area was totally dry and brown a month ago.
Speaking of the passage of time, remember the snowdrops the guy I live with potted up so they would grow roots before being planted?
They grew roots almost immediately. The “trigger” is water at the basal plates of the bulbs.
There was another pond basket filled with snowdrops, which were planted last autumn, and the guy I live with wondered if these had developed roots.
Looks like they did.
The guy I live with decided not to try to separate the bulbs and risk damaging the roots, so he planted the whole pond basket back in the ground, but in a better location and in better soil.
He dug the hole with his fingers.
Some parts of the garden just have regular soil, but other parts, like this, have almost forty years of decayed organic matter in them.
I watched the guy I live with dig the hole. Watching people dig isn’t as interesting as it may sound.
The guy I live with then went around the garden taking pictures.
I stood guard, the way I do. You never know what needs guarding.
There are still some colchicums in flower, but they’re little ones, like Colchicum baytopiorum.
There are crocuses, too.
This is Crocus pulchellus ‘Inspiration’. Like the colchicum, this is hysteranthous; the leaves appear after flowering, next spring.
There are a lot, and I mean a lot, of Crocus speciosus here. Ants carry the seeds around the garden.
This is Crocus speciosus ‘Oxonian’. You can see it has a purple perianth tube. That’s what makes it ‘Oxonian’. This is another one where the leaves appear in the spring. One problem with this crocus, which is super-easy to grow here, is that the “mother corm” can make dozens of “daughter corms” that are so tiny they take years to reach flowering size.
Parts of the garden are just filled with these little cormlets smaller than a pea. It does mean more crocuses in a few years.

Then there are the synanthous crocuses. The problem with these is that rabbits like to mow down the overwintering leaves, so the crocuses have to have cages around them all winter.
This is Crocus cartwrightianus. The orange styles are saffron, though not the kind you’d use in cooking.
And this is Crocus niveus.
Those are the flowers for today, except for another tiny colchicum (Colchicum boissieri) which didn’t get its picture taken, and a new flush of California poppies in flower.

I was planning to finish up this blog with the crocus pictures but then I heard something I thought was fairly alarming.
The guy I live with said he was going to do some thinking.
This rarely bodes well.

He said that even though he tells people there’s no more room in the garden for plants, it turns out that there really is, and he said he might think (there’s that word again) about redoing this little part of the garden where nothing really grows except grass he doesn’t want.
Notice the sun’s rays are illuminating me in a very impressive way.
He started talking about having a raised bed with heaths, of all things. He said Erica carnea does very well in Denver and if the plants get sun in January they’ll be in flower.
I guess I understand that, because winters here can be a lot nicer at times than most people think.

I guess we’ll see. It might turn out to be one of those things like replacing the patio ramp, having the honey locust cut down, and removing the rest of the pickets on part of the enclosure fence.

Well, I’m sure this has been more than enough for today.

Until next time, then.