the miserable gardener

Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, here today to bring you a partly didactic post, with some weather talk, too. You may remember me from such posts as “The Caterpillars”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
You can see how sunny and nice it was; a little over sixty degrees F (about 16C).
There isn’t anything in this part of the garden except for the huge cotoneaster (Cotoneaster multiflorus), which is so big you can see that the branches are pushing against the fence on the left. (The pieces of wood under the gate are to keep bunnies from coming into the garden. They still get in, but I’d prefer not to talk about that.)

Because it’s been so cold, for so long, there isn’t anything in flower here except for snowdrops. Which is perfectly okay, according to the guy I live with.
This is Galanthus elwesii ‘Theresa Stone’.
This is a seedling of ‘Theresa Stone’; there must be a thousand of these in the shade garden.
This is a super rare one, not in the shade garden, Galanthus koenenianus.
And there’s mud. Lots and lots of mud.
This is the path under the arbor. That big piece of wood was for something, but it’s warped now, and may just stay there like it has for years. Letting things stay in place for years is kind of what the guy I live with does. It’s a mystery to me. Maybe he’s a weirdo.
He did say he might put some rock or something here, under the arbor, because when the snow melts in the main garden, the water trickles down here and makes an incredible mess. The mud must be six inches deep.

So, as I said, it was a little over sixty today. It might be worthwhile to think about this for a few seconds. Sixty.
By tomorrow night, it will be zero, with snow. Zero. Minus 17.7C. That’s quite a drop in temperature, as I’m sure you’ll agree.
Talk about a relentless winter.

But the guy I live with has stuff to do. I mean besides making me listen to opera all the time. (Yesterday it was Il Signor Bruschino, and Ariadne auf Naxos, if you were desperate to know. Today he went to the store, so it was quiet here for a while, except for the music on the internet radio he bought for me to listen to while he’s away.)

The “stuff” sometimes involves germinating seeds, and that’s the other thing I’m going to talk about today.
Namely, how to deal with various members of the pea family (Fabaceae).
The guy I live with says you can sow seeds in autumn or early winter, and hope that cold weather will help germinate the seeds, or you can nick them and have them germinate in a couple of days.

I’m going to show you how he does that, though it was impossible to show the actual action of nicking the seeds, because the guy I live with doesn’t have an extra arm to hold the camera, and I don’t know how to do that.
These are seeds of Caesalpinia (Hoffmanseggia) repens. It doesn’t matter how old the seeds are.
All these seeds require is some way for water to get to the endosperm, and nicking the seed coat is “counsel of perfection”. (The guy I live with used to read a lot of English gardening books.)
The seed coat is nicked with a very sharp knife, at the point indicated by the pencil.
Just a little flicking motion with the knife is all that’s necessary with most seeds.
He uses a watchmaker’s loupe to be able to see what he’s doing.
All the time very much aware that there’s a sharp blade close to his eyes.

The seeds are placed in a dish with hot water overnight, and then put in a damp coffee filter or paper towel, and placed in a plastic bag, in one of the propagators in the upstairs bedroom (with bottom heat); the seeds germinate in a day or so and are potted in peat pots when the seeds have formed roots. The peat pots can be planted directly into the garden.
The guy I live with says this could also be done wearing reading glasses, with the seeds and knife at a safe distance, or without glasses for people who can see what they’re doing without magnification.
Most of the seedlings will be given away. I know that sounds strange, but I’m used to things like this.

That’s all I have for today. It’s okay if you want to think of us at this time tomorrow night, when the snow is falling, the winds are howling, and there are no degrees at all. We do have a new furnace, after all, which was inspected by the furnace inspector just today. I barked at him in my usual ferocious manner, and then showed him where the furnace was, downstairs.

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 talk about snow and snowdrops. You may remember me from such similarly-themed posts as “Snowdrops And Sentiment”, among so many, many others.

Here I am in a characteristic pose.
No doubt you can tell that it snowed again. The guy I live with says December, January, and February are the dry months here (February averages eleven millimeters of precipitation), but I guess not, this winter.
It’s forty-nine degrees here (9C) right now, with lots of melting. The humidity is twenty-seven percent, so it’s actually quite nice out, though very bright, thanks to the sun on the snow.

The only thing I have for today is some talk about the “bulk snowdrops”, Galanthus elwesii, whence the fairly hysterical title for my post.
If you saw my post “Crocuses And Snowdrops” you’ll remember that the guy I live with bought some “bulk snowdrops”, which you can do through one of the online bulb brokers.
I’ve already talked about the failures associated with the “bulk snowdrops” and the guy I live with said that’s probably enough.
Anyway this is the third time, I think, that this has been tried, even though Homer Simpson’s “Trying is the first step toward failure” echoed in his mind, but, for once, the bulbs were planted with really good roots because he used the right kind of soil to root them in.
Today we went out to fill the bird feeders, and then look at the “bulk snowdrops”. There are other snowdrops in flower but he was interested in his “experimental” ones.
The guy I live with had just watched Jason and the Argonauts, so naturally he pointed to a snowdrop and said “There! And there! And still another! And more!”

This wasn’t terribly interesting to me, and I suspect won’t be to anyone else, but the guy I live with said this result is much better than having two hundred bulbs rot to nothing, and considering that he’s “only spent about a hundred million dollars on now-dead plants”, this was pretty good, especially if the bulbs actually survive for more than a year. (Oh. If you’re wondering about the movie reference, it’s here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqRjDGAJ5dc
which was a bit too scary for me.)
The guy I live with said the movie should have showed colchicums in flower, but I didn’t understand that.

And that, my dear friends, is absolutely it for today.
I’ll leave you with a picture of me lying on the bed, thinking about things, the way I do.

Until next time, then.