the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today to tell you my tale of a very rough day indeed. You may remember me from such similarly-themed posts as “A Handful Of Dust”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
Here’s another picture of me later in the day, checking on the sprinkler.
The garden is bone-dry now, after yesterday.
We were under a Red Flag Warning most of the day. It was scarily windy. I was too frightened by the wind to go out, even though the guy I live with said he would go with me. The highest recorded wind gust was “only” 58 mph (93 kph), but it’s been fairly dry here and so there was cause for worry.

The guy I live with double checked our bags. Mine is the one on the left.
At one point, yesterday afternoon, the guy I live with walked outside and smelled smoke. He walked out the front door and into the field to see if he could see anything.
Later he said he saw blowing dust to the west, but now he thinks it was smoke, because there was a fire about six miles northwest of us, near Red Rocks.

Everything was calm by six in the evening.

After the longest winter either of us has ever seen, almost the first nice day brings us wind and critical fire danger. The guy I live with said if this sounds discouraging and depressing, that’s because it is.

There’s a seventy percent chance of snow this coming Tuesday, which will probably evaporate by the time Tuesday arrives. That’s what’s been happening over and over again: rain or snow predicted, the chances go down every day, and then nothing happens.
It’s “supposed” to be either raining or snowing in March and April.

That’s my weather complaint.

I didn’t think I would be showing more snowdrops, but here they are anyway. Snowdrops in April. The guy I live with says that’s totally bizarre.
This is a large-flowered form of Galanthus plicatus subsp. byzantinus, from the garden at Colesbourne in England. It would normally flower at the end of January, or in February, here.
This one has a label that says ‘Augustus’, but that’s a form of Galanthus plicatus, and this is clearly G. nivalis.
The guy I live with said “Whatever”, since this is beginning to look like a very vigorous form.
The snowdrops escaped from the main herd, now growing in the front yard in an extremely dry location under oaks, are still looking good, though most of these are finished flowering. There were more, but he gave away some clumps.
It really is too weird to be showing snowdrops in April, so I’m going to stop.

The Fritillaria imperialis under the New Mexican olives (Forestieria neomexicana) are up (there’s also one Eremurus robustus). They’re said to have a sort of “fox” smell combined with garlic, but I’ve never smelled a fox and so wouldn’t know.
The guy I live with says that, even before they emerge from the ground, he can smell them. The bulbs have been here for years.
So that’s what I have for today.
I guess the sprinkler might be on a lot, in the next few days, though the guy I live with didn’t like the “feel” of the faucet when he turned it on. Imagine the heavy sigh.
He said the same people who installed the new furnace could replace the faucet, and the one out in front, too, even though it hardly ever gets used. It makes a funny wheezing noise when it’s turned off.
He said if he waters a lot it probably will snow.

I’ll leave you with a picture of me chewing an Ark Naturals brushless toothpaste thing. I really like these a lot.

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 some gardening news. You may remember me from such posts as “Before It Snows”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
It was sunny on and off today.
You can see what it was like here yesterday morning.
It snowed, but only this much. The guy I live with says the rest of the month looks pretty dry, with the “exciting addition” of high winds, blowing dust, and fire weather warnings this coming Thursday.
He says we have to face the fact that the weather here has changed, and very dramatically too, in the years he’s lived here.
No rain in March is just bizarre, but the last several springs have mostly been unpleasant, in the sense of almost no rain and record cold temperatures.
He was talking to his friend the other day, telling her, because he’s lived here longer, how we used to have these long periods of mist, drizzle, and rain, any time between March and October, and sometimes more than once during that period. Lots of overtime when he worked in telephone repair. The last time that happened was in 1995. It snowed, but didn’t stick, every day in April into the middle of May, and then rained every day until the first of June.
He might take quite some time to adjust to these new weather patterns.

Last autumn, the guy I live with planted five Eremurus robustus, and there’s no sign of them, even though the one already in that border is up.
He doesn’t know why the new ones never came up.

He also doesn’t know why so many of the seedlings that resulted from the nicking and soaking business died, but he’s okay with that. He just did it to have something to do.
The seedlings of Ipomoea leptophylla, also nicked and soaked, are very much up, though.
And, if you remember my post “Una Furtiva Lagrima”, he was hoping there would be some results from last year’s sowing of calochortus seeds. It looks like something might be happening here.
I did hear another “Ha!” of triumph.
It’s not very likely these are newly-germinated seeds.
So he’s pretty happy about this, especially if the seedlings live.

I’ll leave you with a picture of me in one of my favorite places. You may be able to see my nose under the curtains, in a place where the guy I live with said “a certain purebred border collie puppy” chewed the bottoms of the linen Pottery Barn curtains.

Until next time, then.