The Bulb Maven

Happy New Year!

I will remember 2011 as a good year, full of new joys, and a testament to the adage that patience is a virtue, and that hard work has its rewards.

On the patience front was the blooming of some of my South African bulbs, the seed of which I had sown as long as fourteen years previously.  Fourteen years ago my life was vastly different.  I lived in a very different climate with temperatures that could be consistently above 100F for months at a time, and bulbs were a hobby but also a consuming passion.  My work was in the medical profession, and I shared my life with a partner.  Now I live in the cool coastal climate of northern California and the bulbs are my work, as well as my love.  I live a single life, which I enjoy a great deal, and I have a new passion, the sport of dog agility.  It is almost disorientating to look back, feeling as though the person who optimistically sowed those seeds was a different one than that of the present day.  Many of the changes in my life were not of my choosing, but life goes on, and there are rewards in store for us that we may never anticipate.  The blooming of my Boophone haemanthoides was the pinnacle of excitement on the bulb front, although Behria tenuiflora was a close second (this did not take fourteen years!).

On the more competitive front, my female Wire Fox Terrier, Hannah, won her first championship title in CPE agility in May, then went on to win a second championship in November.  While the first one was exciting, the second one was even more so, since it was at the largest trial we attend, and many of our friends were there to cheer us with our winning run.  Hannah loved it, and pranced and danced around to the applause and cheering.  What a ham! I should mention here, that when I got Hannah she was about ten months old, and was so terrified of the world that I could not even enrol her in a puppy class.  She was afraid of dogs, cars, noises, new situations and people.  It took a lot of both work and patience to bring her around, but she loved agility from the very first day.

Besides the trials, we had a wonderful trip to Oregon, hiking the mountains in the Bend region.  Here is a picture of Smith Rocks north of Bend.

And now we end the year with the Oxalis season well under way.  Here is the lovely Oxalis massoniana to the left and an unidentified Oxalis to the right.  The right handed one is clearly in the Oxalis flava group.

 

Happy New Year, and happy bulb growing in 2012.

www.telosrarebulbs.com

C-ATCH Hannah!!

Hannah completed her championship title in CPE agility this past weekend in Oregon!  I was so proud.  Out of twelve runs over the weekend, she placed first or second in eleven.  That (for all you non-agility people) is quite an achievement.  She got special treats (sausage), and lots of congratulations.  The title stands for CPE Agility Trial Champion, and the letters now go before her name, so she is now C-ATCH Hannah.  Just Hannah to me, though.  I was far more exhausted than she was after the trial ended, and now we are catch-ing up at home.

A New Year Dawns

This morning it actually stopped raining, our first non-rainy morning in many, many days.  The dawn sky was beautiful, with a sliver of moon floating in an almost clear sky.  The property is still flooded with pools of water everywhere, but the greenhouses are dry and the bulbs are flourishing.

The year was a good one here at Telos, with many exciting bulb events, like the first flowering of Paramongaia weberbauerii.  I have been growing rare and unusual bulbs from seed for almost twenty years now.  Learning about the bulbs and how to grow them (and where to get the seed) has been an exciting adventure, made much easier these days by the Internet.  At first it was an uphill stuggle (but then, I used to be a rock climber!), and a lot of trial and error - LOTS of error, and much wasted seed - but these days you can Google just about anything and come up with useful information.  I am happy, for although I have most of the information under my belt now, my customers may not, and the more information that is available about these wonderful treasures, the better it is for all concerned.

In looking back at the year that has passed, I feel very blessed to have the life I do.  I have work that I love, work that is constantly exciting and challenging, work that results in beauty, and in pleasure for other people also.  I am past the age of 'retirement', but hope I will never retire from growing bulbs.

The new additions to Telos have grown.  Take a look at Mamie (the grey and white one) and Lucy (the black and white one).  They have learned their jobs well, and I have had NO LOSSES TO MICE!!!!   I have to say that again - NO losses to mice.  Each year I have lost valuable bulbs, some that I have not been able to replace, to the depredations of mice.  Now, with no effort on my part, they are at bay.  The dogs have accepted the cats and even seem to like them, but terriers are not to be trusted with cats, so I never leave them alone together, but when I am working with the bulbs they are mostly unsupervised and do very well. 

The dogs won so many ribbons last year I have stopped counting, and Hannah is very close to getting her championship.  Along the way we have made many great friends, and even when we don't win we always have a wonderful time.  In September we took a trip to Oregon, first to an agility trial near Salem, then the following week to another in Bend, spending the five days in between hiking in the Deschutes National Forest.  It was absolute heaven being in the mountains for five whole days hiking the trails surrounded by spectacular scenery.  Those strange collars are GPS collars (not shock collars), since the little devils love to take off after squirrels, and I don't want to lose them.  Now I always know where they are, even if I lose sight of them.

Oxalis season is well under way, the earlier Oxalis starting to bloom in October, so here is a picture of one, O. pulchella, to end the year, with many more to come.

Happy New Year, and happy bulb growing in 2011.   

www.telosrarebulbs.com

The Trials of Summer

Yes, she stole the cookies.  She looks a little sorry, but not much.  Since this is her 3,274th offence, I am not quite sure what the penalty must be.  Maybe confined to quarters for a while.

All the bulb enthusiasts can skip this posting, for last weekend was our local three day AKC trial here in Ferndale.  I only enter Hannah in AKC, and I don't even enter her that much, since my dogs don't seem to like AKC trials.  Why?  I am not sure.  I would have to get inside their little doggie brains to find out.  The courses are within Hannah's capabilities, but she is very stressed at AKC, and does a lot better at other trials, so we concentrate on those.  Little Willie can't handle it at all, so I don't enter him, but I take him along for company, and he was happy hanging out in the tent.

In spite of my dog's reaction, it is still a lot of fun, for all our local agility friends are there, and it was a treat this weekend to see Mel, one of our special friends, get his third championship.  That giant ribbon doesn't show up very well, but was pretty impressive.

Other friends were competing in AKC for the first time, and doing very well. Muffin wasn't a bit stressed, hanging out in the sun.  

I didn't get any action shots of Hannah, so here to the right is one from her last trial, looking very happy and not stressed at all, just in case non-agility people might get the idea that the dogs don't actually like it.  They do!  Hannah loves it so much she is yipping with excitement when we drive to the show site in the morning.

Here are a few other shots.  I am not much of a photographer, doing much better with flowers that don't move.

A contact we should all strive for!  For non-agility readers, the dog has to hit that yellow zone, called a contact.

And here's Muffin and Mette.

A great weekend.  We have another local trial in about three weeks.  This will be a CPE trial (Canine Performance Events) and my dogs like those a lot better, so Willie will be running and we are practicing daily.  Whatever happens, we'll have fun.

Trials of Halloween

It has been a long time since I posted, having been gone every weekend for a dog event or visit with old friends.  In between, I am involved in a frenzy of shipping, trying to get the bulbs taken care of and get a batch of orders shipped before I leave home.  We have only two agility trials each year in the county where I live, so competing means traveling.  Some months it is impossible because of work pressures, other months it is merely difficult.  It is never easy.  This last month there has been a trial within a reasonable distance (five to seven hours of driving), so off we went.  This last weekend was a three day AKC trial in Medford, Oregon, and was one I didn't want to miss, since almost everyone from my dog training group was going, plus, being Halloween, they were having a costume competition for the dogs.  Now, my sewing skills are minimal, and I am not going to dress up my dogs, but I appreciate the ridiculous, so I was looking forward to this event.  After all, aren't most sports absurd?  Devoting your life to hitting a ball over a net, or scaling vertical rocks, or jumping out of planes?  Driving to Medford, the weather was miserable, but we were treated to this Roosevelt elk grazing in a front yard.

I do not enter my male, Willie, in AKC.  It is just too stressful for him, but he went along to soak up the atmosphere and give support.  My dogs know the difference between the trials held by the various agility organizations.  They really don't like AKC, so we do far fewer of those trials.  Why?  I just don't know.  I would have to get inside those little doggie heads to figure it out.  Friends have told me it must be me, and I thought that possible, but I have got over my ringside jitters and feel very relaxed at shows.  The courses this last weekend were very straightforward, and well within our abilities.  Hannah, however, decided that since it was Halloween, the judge (who follows you around while you are running the course) was a werewolf disguised as an AKC judge, and that each time he approached us to see if we were performing the obstacle correctly, he was going to clamp down on her throat.  This did not improve our performance.  We had two very good runs, one quite brilliant, and placed second in those.  They were both on courses where you don't stop or pause, so obviously she ran like the wind to get away from that werewolf and we did really well.  Here we all are walking the course to memorize it and plan our strategies.

The costume contest was at the end of the trial.  The winner is seen here to the left.  Her dog was a squirrel, and she was the tree. Seems a little risky dressing your dog up as a squirrel with all those squirrel-chasing dogs around.  Apparently, they knew the difference. 

On the way home the sun came out and the autumn colors were beautiful, so we stopped for a picnic on the Rogue River and a short hike.  Driving across the Eel River approaching Ferndale, the pale disc of the full moon was rising in the east above the mountains, while, in perfect symmetry, a great orange sun was setting on the western horizon.  A great welcome home.  

Can you ........

..... teach an old dog new tricks?  Well, here is Hannah with her new trick.  OK, she isn't an old dog, she will be five next month, and theoretically in her prime.  Those are cookies balanced on her paws, and she has learned that if she waits until I say 'get it' she gets both of them.  Willie, however, just eats them.  "Wait" he says.  "Phooey".

But here is a genuine old 'dog' with a new trick -- ME!  One of the advantages of living almost next door to the Fairgrounds, is that after the fair is over there are literally mountains of poopy straw and wood chips that they need to get rid of.  I like the wood chips from the stables occupied by the race horses best.  The straw blows around a bit in this windy environment, but the chips stay put and look very nice.  I can get as much as I want free, delivered to my house, and since the soil here is very dense and lacking in organic material, it is like solid gold to me.  I had eight big dump truck loads delivered, intending to use it on my field that is being converted to a wild garden. 

Well, that was a LOT of stuff, so Mark and I decided to rent a Bobcat, needed anyway to repair my driveway, and spread it all in one day.  That looked like so much fun, that I insisted that I wanted to do it, so he graciously showed me how to run the machine, and off I went.  It was GREAT!  Here is the area I am working on to put in a wild garden and create a wind break. 

 

I think at my advanced age I am learning the fascination men have for big machines.  What's next?  Guns??  The two young twenty-something men that help Mark were a bit astonished at the idea of me running the Bobcat, but, honestly, there was nothing to it.  Easier than driving a car.  I was a bit slow, so around mid-afternoon I handed it over to Mark, who finished the job.

Work on the greenhouses continues.  We have almost finished one, and will start on the next one when another pallet of greenhouse bench tops arrive.  The shipping of orders continues.  There is usually a flurry of orders this time of year, when people start thinking about planting bulbs, although the shipping season will start to wind down soon.  Seed sowing and propagating bulbs will start in earnest as soon as the greenhouse benches are finished.  This is actually the busiest time of year for me, since shipping bulbs, sowing seeds and the repotting of bulbs starts to overlap.  I like the change in pace, though, and I am excited about my new greenhouse benches.

www.telosrarebulbs.com

Summer Doldrums

It has been a while since I posted on the blog, and I apologize to regular readers for the lapse.  We have been away in Oregon for a dog trial, and the week before that had our agility trial here in Ferndale, keeping all of us very busy. The trial in Oregon recently was, well, a real trial for me and my dogs.  The temperatures were in the 90's, and trying to sprint around a course in heat like that was an ordeal.  Our runs in the morning, however, were pretty good and we certainly had a good time overall. This is Cody, a little Schnauzer that in 2008 we beat every single time.  In May of this year, Cody beat us every time.  This last trial we were pretty even, and the intense competition made it a lot of fun.  

Summer is not a very interesting time in the nursery.  Days are spent packing up orders and watering the summer-growing bulbs, and there is little in bloom to comment on.  I am having a new fan system put into the greenhouses, and new nursery benches are being made, something that will, I hope, make my work easier.  Up until now most of my pots have been on the ground, but this has presented problems with fast enough drainage, so I am hopeful that the new benches will solve that problem.

We have another trial coming up in a week, so we are training hard, practicing daily and trying to correct some of the errors that have developed like knocking bars.  It is very demanding, but that is one aspect of the sport that makes it worthwhile.  The intense bond that the training creates between you and your dog and the sheer fun of it, though, are the main things.   Hannah has been moved into the higher levels of difficulty, so our courses are much harder and need to be completed in less time than before. If you think the dogs don't enjoy it, just look at that face.

Summer Time

 Although the 'official' view is that summer doesn't arrive until June, for me it is most definitely summer, with light until 9pm, swallows nesting and my garden in bloom. It is also the time for unpotting the bulbs, a dirty, strenuous job, so I parcel it out daily, doing other more enjoyable tasks the rest of the day.

I haven't posted on bulbs for a while, and hope to correct that soon. My computer was in the shop for almost two weeks, crashing three times during that period, so much work and blogging came to a screeching halt. It is back, but I don't trust it and will be buying a new computer soon, using the old one as a backup, although right now I am just trying to catch up.

When you work for yourself, you work every day, and the Memorial Day Weekend was no different. This weekend the area hosts the Kinetic Sculpture Race, a race that continues over the three day holiday, ending in Ferndale.  The contestants drive bicycle-powered creations that have to negotiate sand dunes, the water of the Humboldt Bay, and pavement.  It is a crazy combination of athletic prowess and endurance, artistic creativity and engineering know-how, and is great fun.  Usually a friend comes to town and we attend the first day of the race together, but she contacted me to tell me they couldn't come this year.  I decided to work instead, having much to catch up on since my computer went down.  I didn't pay attention to the map of the race.  It ends in Ferndale, and the route they choose can change slightly from year to year.  The weather was lovely on Monday, and I took some time to work on my front yard, weeding and watering, when I looked up and saw a flock of human-sized chickens bicycling past my gate!  The race finished this year down my own street, and although I had a front row seat, when I saw those chickens I couldn't resist going downtown to the finish line.

I took the dogs, thinking it would be good experience for them, since the finish is very noisy and crowded, and I want them to be able to handle the stress of crowded conditions.  Well, I needn't have worried.  They loved it.  Maybe it was the drifting smell of barbecue that permeated the area.  Here they are congratulating one of the winning teams.

Ferndale is fun, small enough to get to know people and feel part of the community, but with plenty of activities going on.  If I were younger I would probably enter the race myself.  The thought of a large bulb bicycling into town is tempting.

www.telosrarebulbs.com 

Dog Daze

I haven't said much about the dogs in recent times, since we have not attended any trials since November.  Winter is a rather dull time, trying to train between the storms, and going for occasional hikes.  Last week we went to a local wildlife area, the wild life there being mostly homeless people huddled in the bushes.  The tide was low, exposing the mudflats of the estuary of the river, and the dogs raced out into the sticky mud, then decided to wrestle, with Hannah getting Willie down on his back where he almost disappeared in the black goo.  I don't know what is in that mud, but it smells really vile, so the trip home in the car was not pleasant. 

I was planning on giving them baths and grooming them that night, however, since we had a Dog Expo event coming up, so all was not lost.  Wire Fox Terriers don't shed, so they need clipping regularly, and in the winter I let them get a bit shaggy.  I do it myself, mostly for convenience, since I can groom one dog in about a half hour, less time than it would take me to take them to a groomer and pick them up, and since I am busy with the bulbs in the daytime, I do it in the evening.

The Dog Expo was great fun.  We had a booth demonstrating "my" breed, informing people of the history of the breed, their personalities and needs.  My dogs are not easy dogs.  They are extremely high energy, and have a streak of aggression, since they were originally bred to be used in fox hunting.  While foxes are hunted with packs of Fox Hounds, when the fox goes to ground (escapes down a burrow) a terrier would be sent down to chase the fox out.  This requires a great deal of courage and tenacity, and that has been bred into them.  So, mostly I stood there letting the kids pet the dogs and telling people not to get one unless they had a lot of energy and time to devote to them.  For me, they are the best dogs in the world, but they fit my lifestyle.  I love their energy, their craziness, their love of adventure and readiness to take on anything, AND I am home all day and I have four fenced acres.  Willie loved the little kids, so he got lots of attention.  He especially liked licking their sticky hands and faces.  Here he is waiting for another kid.  I should add that I have to keep them separated at times like this, since when overstimulated they let off steam by attacking each other, something that does no actual harm, but makes a poor impression on people.  Their angelic appearance is quite misleading.

The Dog Expo is put on by a local group called Humdog (Hum for Humboldt County), and is to promote responsible dog ownership.  There were all kinds of demonstrations, including agility, and Hannah did her courses adequately.  Not brilliantly, I have to admit, but the noise level was extreme.  There was a demonstration of all kinds of tricks, obedience and even sledding.  I have, once again, stolen this picture from the newspaper, since I was so busy I didn't have a chance to take any pictures myself during the events. 

The day ended with a raffle and I won a big basket of dog goodies and a $50 certificate off my tax preparation!!  Not bad!  It helps that my CPA's wife does agility so it was a donation from him.  I donated a Veltheimia in bud in a pot.

A very fun day, and my dogs behaved extremely well.  We came home tired but happy.

Mr. December

There are usually professional photographers at the agility trials who photograph the dogs running the courses, otherwise none of us would have those great shots of our dogs.  My dog trainer, Pat, recently e-mailed me asking me if this was my dog on the cover of a dog agility calendar.  Well, sure enough!!  It is Willie, and not only is he the 'cover boy', he is also Mr. December.  All those friends out there, Christmas is coming, and you know what you are getting.  Jackie Phillips is the photographer of Pets and Their People Photography (www.petsandtheirpeoplephotography.com)  and you can see the entire calendar (and order one) at  http://www.cafepress.com/dog_sports.323717328

I have been calling Hannah my star, since she wins most of the ribbons, but clearly I have overlooked a different kind of star quality in Willie.  It has gone to his head a little.  I wanted to take a picture of him yesterday in the garden, and he referred me to his agent.

www.telosrarebulbs.com