The Bulb Maven

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

Rain

It has been a long time since I posted, having been away for almost a week to a dog trial and a dog training seminar, then trying to catch up since I returned.  I actually did write a post the day before I left.  Just as I was about to hit 'save' the electricity went off, and I lost the entire post.  I had also been meaning to replace my battery backup.  Oh, well.  We had no electricity for the entire day, which also meant I lost a day of shipping bulbs, then I left the next morning.

My dogs did brilliantly at the dog trial, and we brought back 28 ribbons (you get two ribbons for each successful run).  We had a great time, and the rest of the trip was filled with adventures, not all of them wonderful, but definitely memorable, like the motel I stayed in, where from about 11pm to 3am it was party time, with boom-boxes, car alarms, screaming and yelling, fights, doors slamming, etc. etc.  When you travel with dogs, your options are limited.

Our first rain of the season arrived.  The day before the front moved in the dawn was magnificent, the mountains to the east rimmed with fire from the rising sun, the sky with just enough cloud to add to the drama.  Slowly the sky turned to mother-of-pearl as the sun made its appearance, with the long slanting rays illuminating the trees and horses, as though a spotlight had picked them out.  The next morning was dark, and I awoke to the soft pattering of raindrops.

The swallows are gone.  One day they were wheeling around the barn in great flocks, the next day there were none and the air seemed empty without them.  My office is in the hayloft of my barn, and they are a constant presence in summer, skimming and dipping over the fields around me, then returning to their nests on the barn and house where I can watch tiny heads appear over the rim of the nest when the adults swoop in with food.

On my morning walkabout last week I was greeted with a welcome surprise -- my first Brunsvigia in bloom.  I have been growing all my Brunsvigias from seed, and it certainly requires patience.  Brunsvigia minor  has bloomed after eleven years from seed.  It is a small one (as you can tell from the name), so blooms sooner than the others, which can take up to 20 years to bloom.

The beginning of the rainy season marks the time in the nursery for repotting, and I started repotting my large Oxalis collection.  This involves about 300-400 five inch pots.  They are starting to sprout now, so I can no longer ship them to other countries, since they will not pass inspection if they have sprouts.  Most of the pots need new labels, and this is a task I do not enjoy, but it is most necessary.  One of the banes of a bulb nursery is lost labels or labels that have faded to nothingness.   I use very large labels, about four inches by three inches, so that I can read the label from a distance without having to bend over, or (horrors!) pull it out of the pot.  I put all the important information on the back, such as date of sowing, source of seed, any data on repotting, etc. If the pots are outside, the labels can snap off in high winds, so I push them well down in those pots.  It is also beneficial to bury a label in the pot with essential data, so that if you do lose the label, or if it has faded beyond recognition, you can still identify the bulbs.  Dormant bulbs look like dormant bulbs, and it is easy to get them mixed up, especially when you have literally thousands of different species all growing together, like I do.  The labels last about two years, even in the greenhouses, then they must be replaced, and I use a special pen for labels (not Sharpies, which fade after about a year).

I have my work cut out for me, what with repotting, organizing the greenhouses for the seed-sowing season and continuing to ship bulbs.  I came back from the seminar filled with ideas for training and retraining my dogs, and am anxious to get started.  My dogs are doing well, but as we move up through the different categories from novice to expert, the courses get much more difficult, and flaws in training start showing.  Hannah won seven of her ten runs.  I made a mistake in one with my timing, so we placed third.  In two runs she was beaten by a few tenths of a second by a poodle.  Beaten by a poodle!!!  We'll have to work on that!

www.telosrarebulbs.com

The Fair

When you work for yourself, you work every day, and weekends don't mean much.  So, I decided yesterday to take a few hours off and go to the Fair.  I wanted to see the sheepdog trials.  Here is a rather grainy photograph filched from our local newspaper, since the light was too poor in the covered arena where the trials were held for my little digital camera.  I was rather amazed in overhearing some conversations, that some people didn't realize that sheep were involved.  Once again, the ladies won the day with their dogs, who appeared to be much better trained than those owned by the men.  Why is that?  It's true that dog agility is also dominated by women.  Is it because training a dog is like training a toddler?  Very slow, very time consuming, done with love and patience, and sort of never-ending?  Not that I have ever had a toddler around, other than a year-long stint helping with an Indian baby (a real eye-opener, let me tell you!).

I also got there in time to see ....... the man shot out of a cannon!!  There must be easier ways to earn a living, like growing bulbs.  Although, maybe it's a simple life.  You get in the cannon, then bang!! you're off, and you either land in the net or you don't.  Here he is:

When I got home, I found I had been at the Fair for five hours, my poor dogs in their crates all that time, since leaving them loose is a clear and present danger to my three cats (used to be four cats, and I won't say what happened to the other one, but it's connected to why my dogs are in their crates).  So, off to the local park we went.  It's a beautiful wild park, up a very, very steep hill, making about a two mile loop.  The thoughtful park people have now put up a sign warning people about mountain lions.  OK, it is mountain lion country, it's true, but I have been to that park a hundred times and never even thought about a mountain lion.  Yesterday, all I could think about was a mountain lion dashing out of the underbrush and grabbing one small juicy dog.  I doubt that the dogs thought about it much, so they had a great time. I was a nervous wreck, worrying every time they got far ahead of me and out of sight.  The park people suggest making lots of noise as you are hiking.  Well, that would certainly enhance the experience, people all shouting and yelling or playing gangsta-rap while walking their dogs.  No thanks.

A Dog's Life

Someone in my agility class introduced me to her daughter a couple of days ago, and also introduced my dogs, saying "they are adorable".  Don't they look adorable here??  They aren't.  I mean, I adore them, but they are terriers, and they are dogs, and they do very non-adorable things.

I was in the barn this morning, and noticed a really bad odor.  Really bad.  I thought something had got in a died, and moved a lot of stuff, but couldn't find it.  I couldn't really locate the smell either, it seemed to be here one time, then there another.  I went into the kitchen, and it even seemed to be there, like it was following me around.  Well, then I looked down, and there they were, both of them covered from head to toe in very fresh horse poop.  They were smiling, and looking very happy.  There should have been wavy lines emanating from them like in a cartoon.  Then they saw I was staring at them, and their expression changed to one of apprehension, like "uh-oh, we're in trouble.  Oh, s--t".  Exactly.  So, I had to stop packing bulbs for Taiwan, and give them another bath (they had had one two days before).

My previous Wire Fox Terrier, Simon, used to do something similar.  After a bath he would find some fox poop (very pungent) and roll in it, then he would seek me out and stand there looking at me with a defiant look on his face.  What was he saying "this is what I think of you, after what you did to me"?; "it was worth it, even though I know I'll get another bath"?; "you made me smell terrible, so I had to do something"?  You really wonder what is going on in their little heads.  They are smarter than we think. 

A Native American friend once said to me "Animals are perfect, they are perfect.  They weren't thrown out of the Garden of Eden".  Indeed, and in most ways they are still there, unburdened by shame and guilt, and full of a joy we can hardly imagine. 

Of course they are surrogate children.  I feel like a soccer mom, driving them to class twice a week, practice (80 miles round trip) once a week, dog trial weekends, home schooling them here, and getting them out of trouble.  We also go to the beach, redwood forests, camping trips, etc. etc.  But at least they don't end up on drugs.  We have them around for ten or fifteen wonderful years, then they die on us and we go through misery, but do it all again.  Maybe it's like Simon and the fox poop.  We know we'll suffer later, but it's all worth it.

The Dog Days of Summer

For me, these truly are the Dog Days of Summer, with two agility trials in the past two weeks, which is why there was a long hiatus from posting to the blog.  I won't bore you with how many ribbons my dogs won, but we had a really great time, making new friends, racing around the courses, sometimes doing well and sometimes not so well.  The last trial was in Ferndale itself, just a half block from my place, and it was a three day AKC trial hosted by our local kennel club.

I get behind with bulb work on these weekends, so a lot of things get put on hold, then the next week is a big catch up.

The term 'Dog Days of Summer' is supposed to refer to a long hot spell, and originated with the Romans, who thought that the rising of the Dog Star, Sirius, during July and August, indicated the onset of the hottest period of the summer.  This is Ferndale, though, and Saturday was colder than a winter's day, with fog, drizzle and cold winds.  We froze.  The weather warmed slightly the next two days of the trial, with actual sun emerging on Monday afternoon.  Last year we had unseasonably hot weather for the trial.  You never know here what to expect.  The fog belt extends only a few miles inland, so you can drive fifteen miles or so east and come into sunny, warm weather. 

Another trial is coming up in August here, so let's hope for sun!!

Some of my Mexican bulbs are in bloom, and I'll post tomorrow on them.

www.telosrarebulbs.com