Living Things

The gardening year is winding down, folks, and ProfessorRoush is treasuring each and every bloom that courageously adds color to the garden.  Like, for instance, the brave 'Red Cascade', daring still to emerge with its cheery red tones, bright as a beacon, daring winter to do its worst to it.

In fact, the morning frost on Sunday, 11/08/2026, was a hard one, a "freeze" actually, our first of the season.  I don't know what the low temperature was on Sunday morning, but I know that when I first looked out of my bedroom window, as I do every morning the minute my feet hit the floor, the back yard was a study in hoarfrost, the tall prairie grasses protesting under the weight of the ice captured by their supple length, bending to the moment.  This 'Red Cascade' bloom, photographed at mid-day, shows the aftermath of the frost, darkened and damaged, yet still a brave Dandy, defying the cold day.

This small Ring Neck Snake (Diadophis punctatus) was less willing to show off its defiance of the cold, made captive and sluggish by the temperatures.  He didn't move at all, let alone make any attempt to escape, induced by the cold into indifferent torpor.  I know this closeup of his best (but least colorful) side makes him appear enormous, but this little surprise awaiting me as I lifted the warming black plastic rat bait station he was hidden under was no larger than the palm of my hand.  To those who are doubting that statement, I admit that I didn't test that size comparison by taking another photo with him actually in my palm; no matter how harmless they are, snakes and I don't mingle, we agree to merely coexist in my garden. I replaced the rat station for the snake, restoring his shelter for the time being.  I hope the little guy makes it through the colder days to come.

Reading further about my little snake friend, I was chagrined to learn again that they are mildly venomous, but encouraged that their bite rarely pierces human skin.  Nonetheless, I don't think I'll test the integrity of my skin by lifting that bait trap again this season.  I'll stick with admiring the last cherry-red blooms of the roses, 'Red Cascade' above, and Canadian Rose 'Champlain' here at left, before they fade or falter under the snows to come.

That's What I've Been Waiting On!

Finally, Finally, Finally.   After ProfessorRoush tired of the summer heat, long past the excitements and enticements of Spring, he has long been dreaming of the moment when the weather turned more seasonable and the weeds ceased to grow; dreaming of Fall.  He's been emotionally salivating, in fact, over the taller-than usual prairie grasses and their potential fall parade of color as the excess rain (in comparison to the average for this region of Kansas) and temperate Fall climate kept them growing.  

I've resisted mowing down the adjacent prairie for weeks, particularly those native areas that I maintain as "rain gardens", just so I could enjoy their ochre and umber tones, which are particularly vivid when dampened by seasonal moisture.  I've waited through a several week dry spell for the rains to make the prairie "pop", to make the Big and Little Bluestem shine like fires among the tans of the Switchgrass and other species, and to fully develop the contrasting seedheads for the display and for the prairie critters.  On Friday, my wait was over.  

And the pictures here are my reward for waiting, my dividend for purposeful procrastination.  Normally, I mow (or "bush-hog") these areas early in Fall, to move the yard perimeter away from the house, simultaneously distancing the house and barn and garden from invasion by packrats and rabbits and deer.  Looking at these, however, make me determined to leave the tall grasses, the native prairie grasses, untouched until the hard freezes rob them of color.  Autumn prolonged by design, as it were.  Do you agree?   

Iobelle In the Spotlight

Hold the presses.  ProfessorRoush wishes to interrupt his irregularly scheduled blog with an important emergency bulletin!  'IoBelle' is blooming its head off here in the Land of Rose Neglect and General Garden Disarray.  I don't deserve these fragrant  and bountiful blossoms, but here they are, nonetheless.

I was mowing yesterday, hoping that it was the last such occasion of the year (likely not...) when I motored past the bed containing 'IoBelle'.  I instantly ceased any thoughts about the blog entries I had been planning and I just had to stop and take pictures of her.  'IoBelle' is Dr. Griffith Buck's pink and cream counterpart to the award-winning, but less hardy, 'Double Delight', and she's still joyfully chugging along in my garden despite years of neglect and willful inattention.

I've written of 'IoBelle' before, so I won't  repeat her pedigree or particulars here. But I will bear witness that this 16+ year old member of my garden has survived a number of really cold winters, droughts, storms, waterlogged soils, searing summers, and Japanese Beetles, avoided Rose Rosette disease, and still it manages to produce blooms like those above and alongside these paragraphs.  She needs trimmed, relieved of her dead and diseased stems, and she is showing leaf loss due to blackspot in this summer of abundant rain.  Yet still, her vigor and the former promise of Dr. Buck's breeding program shine through the neglect to brighten my days.  Long live 'IoBelle'!

Cubits and Shrooms and Rain, Oh My!

All the rain we've had recently in Central Kansas has the rich prairie soil sprouting mushrooms everywhere, and it has ProfessorRoush "diving down a rabbit hole" regarding the exact dimensions of a "cubit".  I've lost track of the total, but over 2 weeks, I emptied my gauges of over 12" of rain.  The official total for the year is around 38" depending on where "spotty rains" fell, where we normally have only 27" by October.  Whatever the exact total, I've never seen the roadside ditch this full! 

You all remember "cubits", right?  As in Genesis 6:15, "The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits"?  Well, it turns out that each Middle-Eastern culture, whether Egyptian, Sumerian, Babylonian, or Hebrew, had a different "cubit" defined.  There were Common Cubits, Standard Cubits, Royal Cubits, Long Cubits, Assyrian Cubits, Biblical Cubits, Black Cubits, Cloth Cubits, Hashemite Cubits, Legal Cubits and the Cubit of the King, to name only a few.  All are supposedly (but not supposeably) based on the length of the forearm to the tip of the middle finger.  Don't even get me started on the divisions of the cubit into palms and fingers!  The Wikipedia page about cubits is beyond bewildering.

Anyway, what I've learned is that someone other than me should be the one to attempt an Ark.  Regardless of the temporary panic that brought on the thoughts about The Ark, the rains have since stopped, and fall has arrived with cool nights and sunny days.  And a bumper crop of mushrooms is growing.

Normally, our mushrooms are the grey-white-turning-to-brown monstrous foot-wide toadstools pictured above left, which begin growing as the nice neat puffballs seen here to the right.  But these rains have also stimulated these smaller, frilly brown fungi (pictured below), that can be found everywhere the grass gets mowed.  I don't know if they also grow between clumps of the taller unmowed prairie grasses because I'm not curious enough to wade into the wet, tall grasses to find out.

Needless to say, I don't trust my fungal identification skills enough to harvest or consume any of these wonderful gifts from the prairie.  And in the meantime, please take the painfully-won wise advice of ProfessorRoush and don't ever Google or otherwise exhibit the slightest curiosity about cubits!