Thursday, January 26, 2017

Winter view

University of Manitoba Greenhouses, Winnipeg, MB. January 25, 2017.

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I attended a lunchtime lecture at the University of Manitoba this week. On the way between the Tier Building and St. John's College, where I work, I stopped to peer in the greenhouse windows. I'll always stop to look at their collection of hoary old plants, but in winter it's especially necessary.

Leaving the college later that day, heading home, I stopped to look out at the attached garden. There's a spot where the furnace exhaust pipe exits the building and I like it because the venting warm air keeps that spot snow and ice-free.

So there's this warm dry expanse of mulch, then a ring of wet mulch, and then snow. The wet ring actually has groundcover growing on it, despite the temperatures/conditions only a few inches away.

And there was a brown rabbit nibbling on the groundcover.

Imagine being a herbivore and discovering something growing/green in the middle of winter...it's almost an end-times scenario but it was one I sort of didn't mind.

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