The burned area where the pulsatillas were blooming.

Looking east, I think that’s Rocky Flats in the distance, on the right. Standing in the mountains, looking at the plains. (Hence the name, Plainview. I think it’s not really a town, just a place.)

And the plants. The specific epithet means “open”, as in spreading open, obvious in the second picture.

Now to Jerry Morris’s conifer nursery, which I believe is closed. Not open to the public; the grafted conifers were raised there. I almost passed out when I saw the place, dwarf conifers everywhere, and bonsai specimens in the wooden boxes. Jerry has something like 850 named dwarf conifers, many of which are in the trade, and all of which do very well in Denver’s climate.

The bonsais are either made by taking a snag and shaping it, then routing a groove up the snag, and tacking the trunk of a dwarf conifer from a witches’ broom into the groove, or, in some cases, they are “natural bonsai” specimens.

A rather large number of the little conifers, ones in pots, found their way to my house. Some were horribly eaten alive by rabbits, which prompted me to start using chicken wire cages; chicken wire is now a permanent, and of course highly attractive, feature of my garden.

And I should say that the nursery wasn’t entirely devoted to conifers; there were dwarf or unusual selections of all sorts of native shrubs and trees.

I like this long wooden trough; I might build one for myself. Not as long, maybe.  

In the trough above, mountain-mahoganies (Cercocarpus spp.)  Why didn’t I see these when I was there? Probably because I was overcome with Hyperacquisitivosus plantarum, and could hardly see straight. (Other symptoms include increased heartrate; inability to visualize one’s own garden and the lack of space it has in reality; temporary amnesia when it comes to things like impending bills, amount of money in the bank, and the necessity for expenditures like food, clothing, and so on.)

Below, a picture of an individual with a severe case of H.P. at Harlequin’s Gardens in Boulder. Typical trance-like body language, not looking down, but off somewhere in the distance as though being sent messages from another plane of existence. Note beard and hat used as a disguise, and deceptively small number of plants in left hand, feigning high degree of selectivity, when in fact there is a well-hidden cart packed to the skies with plants just around the corner.

Anyway, I digress.

At Jerry’s, I did get a few mountain-mahoganies in pots. (According to the Forest Service, mountain-mahogany is a hyphenated word. Just like here.  Why, I don’t know.)

I wanted this. (And if I’d seen the little plants in the trough, I’d have wanted those too.)

I wanted all of these.  Every single one. Want, want, want, have to have, want, want, must have, want. Etc.

This too.

And, okay, this one too. And the one next to it.  

Jerry’s named dwarf conifers can be had from Laporte Avenue Nursery , Coenosium Gardens and Porterhowse Farms among other places.

I had reached a stage in which the contest between man and mouse, that is, who is the more intelligent of the two, seemed to have resolved itself in my favor. What a relief. I always thought I was smarter than a mouse. I put the Tin Cat, with the peanut butter, out in the garage, and hadn’t noticed any signs of mice in the kitchen. A little of the peanut butter was being eaten every night.

Some of the bread I buy (when I don’t bake my own) has heels too big for the toaster, and since I loathe throwing away food, putting it in the garage for the mice seemed like the logical thing to do. I set it half in the Tin Cat, so the lid wouldn’t fall on anyone during their midnight snacking. There were little nibbled areas in the bread every morning, so I knew that my plan was working; the mice were in the garage and not in the kitchen.

This morning, though, I noticed a new, ominous trend. One whole piece of bread has disappeared. Is one mouse strong enough to move a piece of bread? I don’t think so. Maybe an army of them? Or, to quote Dorothy Parker, “what fresh hell is this?”

This is how my life goes. Surrounded by snow that won’t go away, surrounded by hungry rodents. And yet, on our walk yesterday, instead of feeling trapped in an endless winter, I felt a twinge of spring. Maybe it’s right around the corner ….

Everyone needs a Label Garden. The French scare cat (real thing, not the crummy imitation) is scaring away anything that might want to eat the labels.
Mass of dead-looking stuff on the left is Verbascum undulosum in its winter wear.

Acantholimons starting to consume large amounts of space in the new rock garden.  Snowing on them in this picture. They died a couple of years later, which was weird because they usually live forever, or nearly so.

Douglasia nivalis in a trough …in January.

Talk about something taking forever, this is Pediocactus simpsonii, about ten years old from seed.

Iris pumila. This is either the cultivar ‘Piroschka’ or a form from the Kuban in Russia. Maybe it’s both.

A Primula allionii hybrid. These are the only primulas that like me.

When I looked at this as a slide, I couldn’t make it out at all. It’s a leaf of Eryngium bourgatii.

And now for some pulsatillas. Not too many things more beautiful than these, even though they do seed all over the place here. There is one that I truly covet, the beautiful form known as ‘Budapest Blue’. This is sort of close.

Pulsatilla halleri

Some species have more tubular, less open flowers. I once grew, from seed, two species of pulsatilla, one from Sublin’s Lake, one from Death Lake, in Central Asia. They sounded totally cool, but the seedlings died.  They could have turned out like the one below, though, which is less exciting than some others.

Pulsatilla sp. with Erodium sibthorpianum

One of the European species is said to be extremely difficult to grow. I tried Pulsatilla alpina subsp. apiifolia from seed (the seed is said to be very short lived), gave up, and figured that was the end. I even removed the “tails” from the seed which some people say contains a germination inhibitor.

Then one day this carrot-looking thing appeared in the garden. It grew and grew, and eventually did this.

Pulsatilla alpina subsp. apiifolia in a sea of Aubrieta anamasica.

Last, and definitely not least, the native Pulsatilla patens, called “crocus” in some parts of the west. I had this plant in the garden once, and killed it trying to transplant it. Digging them up is certain death for the plant.

These pictures were taken at Plainview, Colorado, in March. I had an ear infection and the wind was blowing, so I just stood around while Cindy took these pictures of plants growing under recently-burned ponderosas. I am very good at just standing around. Charred twigs and juvenile cones are visible in the photographs.

Pulsatilla patens