Sunflowers in Heaven

There are times, in all our lives, when an event so large, so memorable, and so life-altering occurs, that ever after we will recall exactly where we were, and what we were doing, when the paradigm shifted.

My earliest memory, from age 4 1/2, is the funeral of President Kennedy, a memory etched in granite because I somehow remember my mother sitting before the television and crying.  I recall where I was sitting, and what our family room looked like, in the middle of the night when the Eagle of Apollo 11 first touched down on the Moon.  I was in a DisneyWorld motel, interested in politics at a young age, and watching live as President Nixon resigned in '74 while my parents and baby sister enjoyed the rides in the park.  When my childhood dreams of space travel died in 1986 alongside the crew of the space shuttle Challenger, I was watching the launch in the lobby of the University of Wisconsin veterinary school next to the students and the NASA-obsessed Dean.  When Columbia failed to survive reentry into the womb of Earth's atmosphere, I was listening on the radio, driving to Topeka with my son to buy a jewelry cabinet as a Valentine's Day present for Mrs. ProfessorRoush.

And yes, I remember, and will as long as I draw breath, the moments of the morning of 9/11/01.  I was in my office, early on a Tuesday, a surgery morning for me, when a buzz rose from the adjacent client lobby of the veterinary school.  Coming out, I saw the small TV in the lobby tuned to the national news, news-anchors just starting to try to explain the video of smoke coming from the World Trade Center, long before we knew about the Pentagon attack or about Flight 93.  I saw the live video as the second plane hit.  When the first tower fell, at 8:59 a.m. CST, many in the room missed it, but my surgeon's eyes saw the floors drop away into the dust cloud and I knew instantly that hundreds, if not thousands, were gone.  And I remember the days following, glued to the news every spare moment, until it was finally undeniable that the nightmare was real.

All those lost, the innocent souls in the Towers and planes and the Pentagon, and all the brave men and women who tried to rescue them, I like to think of and pray for them all now as bright Kansas sunflowers shining in Heaven, surrounded by a blue Kansas sky, the same clear blue sky that is said to have been over New York on that day long past.  It's a simplistic view of Heaven, I know, but I can think of none better or more perfect. The peak Fall bloom of the Common Sunflower (Helianthus annuus) along the Kansas roadsides is forever linked to my memories of September 11, 2001, because I saw them each day, as I drove safely here in the Heartland to and from work, while America mourned our dead.

And as for the murderers, the subhuman scum who caused the wanton destruction and loss of life ten years ago today, I know that this is not a very kind or noble thought, particularly from a gardener who is trying his best to follow a good path through Life,  but I hope those cowards are rotting in Hell, in the driest and hottest desert without water or food, with scavengers ripping at them every second.  No, I haven't forgotten, nor have I forgiven.


Addendum:  I noticed that my blog friend Hanna, of This Garden Is Illegal, has also blogged about September 11th.  I want to publicly applaud and acknowledge her husband's service and the sacrifice her family is making for our freedom.  Join me to pray for his safety and quick return.

Beds in the Sun

A week or two back into the past, GaiaGardener asked if I would take the time to post some overall pictures of my garden beds to help readers place some of the plants that I write about into their respective 3-D spaces. 

I have agonized for a time over the thought.  Reasonable though the request seemed, it involves an act that many, if not most, gardeners find to be unnatural;  that of the complete exposure of our gardens, with all their un-deadheaded plants, dehydrated hydrangeas, and misplaced statues.  No sanitized focus on the occasional perfect flowers or the dynamic foliage as we see in most blog posts, showing the overall beds will expose the drought-stricken, insect-eaten, fungus-stained reality show that is my garden on most days. I was too young for the free-love movement of the late sixties and have no naturist bent, but I'd bet most of us would sooner post au-natural pictures of ourselves than our naked entire gardens.  The latter seems just a little too exhibitionist-like, a little too revealing for a conscientious gardener.  

But, given the choice between displaying an old man's wrinkles and moles or exhibiting the deficiencies of my garden design, I suppose it is more humane to readers if I choose the latter.  So here we go.  I'll apologize preemptively for the drought-stricken appearance of my sun-blessed garden and for it's lack of overall acceptable design and any number of other faults you may find with it. 

The photo above is a broad, unedited view of what we'll call the Main Garden, taken from my bedroom window. This view is behind the house, faces due south, and shows a corner of my back patio and the surrounding bed, and a broad view of the beds in the "back yard" that slope away  from the small pergola down to an unseen farm pond and then back up towards the Colbert Hills Golf Course and Manhattan proper.  Outside of the photo, to the left,  are two Purple Martin houses and farther on, nothing but prairie, and to the right lies four unpictured trees (Sycamore, Buckeye, Magnolia 'Yellow Bird' and a 'PrairieFire' crab), and then a electric-fenced vegetable garden, a few lines of grapes and blackberries, and a small, slowly-growing orchard wraps to the west.  As you can see, there is no shade in this garden whatsoever, from the unmowed areas of prairie grass in the foreground, to the rose beds at the back.

For the bed descriptions themselves, we'll use the second picture, below, of the left half of the garden.  I labeled the beds with letters, so we can talk about them, and it'll likely take us a couple of posts to get through them.

Bed "A" is what I refer to as my "peony bed," so-named because the main grouping is a collection of about 20 peony varieties in the center and right hand side, backed on the left (east) by some ornamental grasses, forsythia, and Rose of Sharon. If I blog about a peony, it likely exists in this bed since there are only a couple of others scattered about my landscape.  At the far end of this bed is another pergola, covered by a pair of wisteria, that provides an east "exit" to my garden.  

Bed "B" is the second-oldest of my shrub rose beds and it contains about 20 old garden, Canadian, and rugosa roses. I call it my "East Rose Bed." There are no perennials except roses in this bed and the only ornament is my Aga Marsala statute, a chaste young woman reading a book.  In this bed are, among others, 'Pink Grootendorst', 'William Baffin', 'Harison's Yellow', 'Alchymist', 'Robusta', 'Maiden's Blush', and 'Reine Des Violettes'.

Bed "C" is a long narrow bed stretching across half the garden that I know as my "Hydrangea Bed."  It contains, as it's name suggests, 6 Hydrangea paniculata cultivars, from 'Limelight' on the east end to 'Pink Diamond' on the west.  But this is a very mixed perennial bed, with 8 roses, 7 ornamental grasses, a peck of daylilies, a forsythia, and other assorted shrubs.  The centerpiece of the bed is a 7 foot tall wire-supported Clematis paniculata tower.  This is also the bed where I've moved the Zen Frog into a permanent home.

I think we'll stop there and pick this back up in a couple of days.  Stay tuned next week, dear Readers!

Anguish and Joy

Yes, I know that I haven't posted in several days.  No big excuses here, though.  When last Tuesday came around, and the thermometer crossed back over the 100F mark and stayed there through yesterday, I just couldn't face my garden or anything to do with it.  Aside from watering a few potted plants and the surviving roses of the Heirloom Roses shipment from a few weeks back, I hibernated and dreamed of winter.

And dreamed of rain.  We haven't had over 2/10ths of rain in the past month and things are beyond drying up, they're dry.  I haven't done more than mow the edges of the blacktop (where the crabgrass always grows fastest) in a month, so I guess the positive side is that I haven't been sitting on a roaring mower every week.   Last weekend, knowing that summer wasn't saying goodbye without another heat wave, I watered many of the beds, feeling guilty that I was breaking my "no extra water" rule but wanting to protect the  roses, and then I withdrew from the garden and garden thoughts.  Read some trashy vampire-mystery novels (James Butcher and Laura Hamilton) and pretended I was in Alaska.

But, as the psalmist wrote "...Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning" (Psalm 30:5).   Temperatures today (Saturday) in the low 90's are supposed to lead to daytime highs in the 70's through the weekend and a 40% chance for rain tonight.  I don't hold much hope for the rain, since I've seen several weeks of 30% chances come and go, but at least the temperatures will mean that whatever moisture gets added to the garden might stay around more than 30 minutes.

I'll leave you with this; one of my favorite pictures of my now-grown son.  He was born in Wisconsin but we moved here shortly before his first birthday, and in this picture, taken at about 1 1/2 or 2 years of age (he walked before he was 9 months old), he proved himself to be quickly adapting to Kansas weather as he was rejoicing in a surprise shower after a long hot dry period.  I remember I could hardly get him to hold still from slapping those bare feet down in the puddles on the still-warm concrete.   I don't think the Batman shirt would fit me, but this is otherwise exactly what I plan to do the next time it rains here, if it ever rains here again.