Brave Little Warriors

 A warm couple of late February weeks teased this early single daffodil out into the open in my back patio bed yesterday.  Foolish little one, I could have told you this warm sunlight wouldn't last, for I, an apex consumer and representative of a species that has some grasp of weather patterns, knew the coming forecast calls for a cold snap, a light snow, and several days of cold rain.  And this afternoon, I sit cozily indoors, writing in this blog, while rain patters on the adjacent window and you shiver in the back yard.

The courageous daffodil above has many brethren nearby who weren't so brave, weren't so foolish with their lives and resources, and they conserved their time and effort, comfortable to delay and follow the crowd; individuals not, but safe in number.  They won't be first in line for pollination or growth, but their patience may yet be rewarded by the chance to procreate and spread.  At least they will be growing and blooming in less-dry ground, nourished by the Spring rains we have coming.

Outside too, this Winter Jasmine, Jasminium nudiflorum, is beginning to bloom, this southern-most-exposed clump blooming while a greater mass behind it waits for warmer weather.  I don't recall where or when I purchased this plant, but, come February when it blooms earlier than anything else in Kansas, I'm ecstatic once again that I have it.  I don't know much about this plant, but its hardiness and tendency to form local clumps suggests to me that in the right conditions, it could be invasive.  Here, restrained by winter droughts and drastic climate changes, I'm just happy to see it survive each winter.

And inside, this Amaryllis I showed you in the last blog is just outdoing itself in abundance, spreading joy through my little world.  The morning sunlight behind the blooms really highlights their happy-go-lucky orange-ness, don't you think?   This is the sight that greats me each morning as I feed Bella, and every day it gives me strength and promises me the sun and warmth will come back yet another season.  I go off to work with its memory daily, clutching this picture in my mind while I wait for Spring.

Tree Holes and Ground Tunnels

ProfessorRoush has been absent from the blog lately, but I've not been idle!  Various work and other duties have stolen my time away from the garden and the blog, including the loving, care, and feeding of Mrs. ProfessorRoush.   We're nesting a bit, buying some furniture upgrades and aiming for some functional and cosmetic house improvements.  One thing to watch for is a report on the Great Deck Replacement Project of 2026!

Meanwhile, last year's Amaryllis is beginning to bloom again (photo top right).  I keep these "disposable" bulbs in large pots outside during the summer after they've bloomed, and then I winter them in the garage from late October through January once their foliage starts to dry.   I brought this pot indoors about mid-January and began to water it and the 3 bulbs of the pot have thrown up 3 strong flower stems (4 if you include the one that Mrs. ProfessorRoush snapped off this week by closing the adjacent window on it).  In the background of the photo above, you can still see the fog that stuck around until about 11am today (photo at left).  Hey, at least we don't have snow anymore!

One thing I wanted to include today was a plea to not be quite so tidy in your gardens that you destroy habitat.  This seedless cottonwood near the barn died last year, its weak wood topped by wind and snow, and I almost removed it this summer; or, more accurately, offered to "let" a friend remove it for the lousy firewood it would hold.  I changed my mind when I realized a flock of cedar waxwings were using it this spring as a collecting perch for their flock and I decided to keep it around another year.

And now a year later, it holds a secret and I can't bear to think about cutting it down.  A couple of months ago, as I was staring at these wretched skeletal remains and thinking about brittle, falling, cottonwood limbs, I noticed that it now holds a residence for a large "something."  Look closely at the previous photo and you'll see this 3"X4" nest hole about 2/3rds of the way to the top of the trunk.  Squirrel?  Owl?  Hawk?  I haven't seen the new resident coming or going yet, so its identity is a mystery right now, but I'm willing to wait and watch.  Personally, I'm hoping for "owl"; a nice screech owl family would be welcome tenants.

So, the new cottonwood hole is a great example of letting nature have its choice in our gardens, to increase our tolerance for that  planned garden neglectfulness that Mirabel Osler described in A Gentle Plea for Chaos.  I'm advocating for that, and yet at the same time, I'm wondering what creature is behind a second mystery that is occurring in my garden and I'm planning an attack on the latter.  Can you see the raised, superficial tunnels in the photo at right?   My back landscape beds are filled with them and they extend slightly into the yard around.  If I were back home in Indiana, where I encountered this frequently in the soft, sandy soil of my boyhood home, I'd say these were moles, but I've never had moles here before in my garden, nor found them at large in the prairie surrounding me.  The ground is just likely too heavy and rocky to entice them to even try to tunnel here.  These current tunnels are only in the cultivated bed and area of the grass and I fear they're another form of incursion into my space by pack rats and I won't tolerate that.   My embrace of natural ecology only extends so far!

Brave New World

2026 has just begun and I'm already salivating with the anticipation of another spring and summer ahead.  I certainly felt that 2025 ended on a high note, prompted, perhaps, by this amaryllis, a Christmas gift from a friend, that began blooming the day after I received it and bloomed across both Christmas and New Year's Day.  It is just now beginning to fade into the background and I need to remove the "waxy rubber" coat from the bulb, pot it up, and see if I can coax it to bloom again next year.  It certainly bloomed itself onto center stage for the holidays, a bright spot indoors when the seasonal grays imposed.  Look upon it, all ye, and despair not!

Outside, in the garden, all is quiet and dormant.  I keep the bird feeders filled with sunflower and thistle in the hope of keeping SOME movement and life in the garden, all while I also keep the rat bait stations filled to diminish the pack rat population and quell the seeming overpopulation of the filthy creatures.  I have recently noticed some "tunneling" in my back bed, and I'm wondering if moles are making a first-ever incursion into my garden or if the pack rats are merely switching tactics.

Garden statues, and other garden "bones", stand out in winter.  Mine are even more gray this year because I recently observed that my beloved "reading angel", a long-ago birthday gift from my wife and daughter, was disintegrating.  She had toppled over in fall, and her wings were in pieces on the ground and her concrete weathered and worn out on exposed dorsal surfaces.   Another statue, a long-eared rabbit, had lost an ear and broken off a paw over time.  I repaired both as best I could with some concrete patch repair and then I spray-painted most of my plain concrete statues to protect them, with the resulting flat gray appearance you see here.   Once it warms up, if the paint seems to protect them from weather and freeze-thaw cracks, I'll spray other concrete statues and then keep them painted in rotation.  One must care for our bones!

At this time of year, any color other than brown and umber stands out in the garden, so I was delighted to find this Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard' in fine leaf and full variegation despite the frigid temperatures we occasionally see.   I have transplanted this clump twice over the years, and it has cloned itself locally, but this cultivar doesn't seem to have near the self-seeding tendencies of my more common variegated Yucca varieties.  And therein lies my primary observation of this blog entry;  whenever you actually want a near-ideal plant to spread like a weed, they don't, but turn your back on any  common perennial and they'll soon be choking out your most prized plants!

Have a happy and productive 2026 gardening year, my friends!

Bluebirds Down!

The unseasonably warm weather of the past few days lured ProfessorRoush out of the house and into the garden.  Christmas Day and Friday it was 60ºF or over, and the fog was heavy in the mornings; heavy enough to wet the grass and bring out the umbers and reds of the Bluestem grasses.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush loves the foggy mornings when the house feels isolated in a sea of gray and the garden edges are the limits of our world.  

Friday, high 65ºF, I straightened the garage, wandered the garden, target shot for awhile, and just generally enjoyed the free space of the garden, while yesterday it was outside "chore day" in the still 60ºF temperatures of the late morning and afternoon.  I started the day replacing the rat bait in the secure bait stations to diminish the pack rat population of my neighborhood.  All the bait stations were empty; am I poisoning the rats, or merely feeding them?  Afterwards, although I never claim to be any sort of a mechanic, I took a flat tire off of the lawn mower and attempted to repair it with placement of a rubber innertube.  That seemingly simple act involves getting the jack out of my jeep, assembling it, jacking up the lawn mower, removing the tire, and cutting off the existing valve stem in preparation, which all took about a half-hour.   Two hours after that, completely frustrated and defeated, I called a still-open tire shop (Burnett's Automotive of Manhattan Kansas) and took it there where they placed the tube and aired it up in 10 minutes free of charge.  Following that fiasco, putting the wheel back on the tractor was a cinch, the jack and tools were put back into their proper places and the job was complete.

At that point, I should have quit, but the weather forecast for today (Sunday) foretold stiff winds and a massive drop in temperatures, and in the back of my mind was the nagging thought that my twenty-four or so bluebird trail boxes had not been cleaned of old nests and paper wasp nets yet this season.  So I set out and rode the lawnmower where I could, and walked where I couldn't, to service the boxes in the spring-like temperatures.  It's a stiff up and down walk for an old man to the far reaches of the pasture where our house and garden is a distant dot.

Bluebird box nest

I am dismayed to report in hindsight that I found only eight or nine boxes with Bluebird nests and one very twiggy chickadee nest.  Many boxes were empty and I'm at a loss to explain the overall nest decrease from my previous high of 20 nests.  I had not noticed it during the summer, likely because most of the boxes that had Bluebird nests were boxes around the house and garden, so the Bluebirds within my daily vision had not diminished appreciably.  Distant boxes on fence posts of the pasture were routinely empty.  More predators? There did not seem to be more paper wasp nests in the boxes, and my impression is the latter were also decreased this year.    Poor environmental conditions?  More rain?   Less rain at critical periods?   A colder winter last year?  Are Bluebirds domesticating themselves, becoming dependent on populated structures and artificial nest boxes?  

Roush Bluebird Box design

I did get the impression that the newer boxes of my own design were more likely to have nests, and many of my older boxes are nearing 20 or 25 years old, so I have resolved to make more new boxes in the near future and to site them on isolated T-posts instead of on the fence lines so snakes and other predators have a harder time getting to them.  A proper Bluebird home is the least that I can provide as my contribution towards rectifying the environmental excesses of my own footprints on the prairie.

Christmas Galore!

I had long planned to post on Christmas, but this is not at all what I had in mind as late as 6:00 p.m. yesterday.   I apologize that I've been away from the blog for over a month, but it's a long story that I won't bore you with, at least on this most important day of the year, Christmas Day, 2025 A. D.; 2025 years since the birth of Christ, the Son of God.  I had planned a post with pictures of the house and snowless garden engulfed in the thick fog of the past two mornings, but, as often occurs, fate intervened to change my plans. 

Leaving work in the dark on these recent shortest days of winter and traveling towards the grocery, I had recently noticed some Christmas lighting popping up in the K-State University Gardens.  So last night, Christmas Eve, I asked Mrs. ProfessorRoush if she would go with me to see them. I didn't expect such a display, complete with Christmas music over loudspeakers, that would draw us out of the car, and have us walking around the garden in the chill air, but that's what we got.  Evidently, for the 150th anniversary of Kansas State University Gardens, the Friends of the K-State Gardens went all out!  And now, I'll shut up and let the pictures speak for themselves, because the Director, Scott McElwain, and the K-State Gardens outdid themselves this year!

The view from the parking lot approaching the daylily and rose display gardens

The old K-State Dairy Barn, now the Gardens Welcome and Office Center

The "setback" between the Garden's Center and the south wing of the barn

This tree near the walk was spectacularly lighted in bright white

The "setback between the Insect Zoo and the Garden Center

Look closely at the rose garden greenhouse to see the reflection of the Christmas lights in it.

If you'd like to see the display, it's open through December 31st and the music hours are listed on the website linked above.   And if you want to donate to support the display, this QR code works:

Lot's of people were taking selfies next to the backlit statue here!

Merry Christmas to all and all the best wishes for you to have a fantastic 2026 year (gardening and everything else)! 

  

Redemption and Judgement

If I hadn't felt a responsibility to remove (mow) the spent peony foliage down last weekend, I would have entirely missed the annual bloom of the nearby and sadly neglected Hamamelis virginiana, my erstwhile 'Jelena' that I now believe was sold to me falsely identified.  In fact, the pale yellow blooms, plentiful as they are, might have still been missed if the foliage of the shrub had not already dropped. My love-hate relationship with this shrub has not improved over the past few years during my abandonment of its care, but with this latest attempted display of blooms when nothing else braves blooming, I have resolved to follow Luke 6:29, "offer the other cheek", and allow it a chance at redemption.

That last statement, written down and seen  and reread in words, seems blazingly presumptuous, an open declaration of my self-proclaimed status as the garden's judge, jury, and executioner; carelessly risking a lightning bolt or two cast in the direction of my blasphemous gardening soul.  Upon further contemplation, however, I do view the gardener as the God, or at least the stand-in Caretaker, of their garden, making annual and daily decisions about the lives and survival of all the creatures within the gardener's gaze.  Perhaps we are merely the Instruments of Divine Provenance, under illusion that we have any control in the garden, but the act of gardening is at least pretending that we are the ones deciding what to plant, where it goes into the ground, and how it is cared for.

I think that's quite enough digression into the philosophical abyss for one day, ProfessorRoush.  Returning to the subject du jour, suffice it to say that I have allowed this Hamamelis to be overrun by the wild Rosa multiflora that has been growing in the same space, and the Witch Hazel has suffered greatly in the absence of my attentions.  I first noticed the R. multiflora several years back, and have enjoyed its spring display of blossoms and the orange hips that follow it into autumn, but enough is enough; a choice must be made.  One can hardly discern the straggly limbs of the Witch Hazel from their entanglement with the long slender canes of the rose.  This Judgement Day seems overdue for these two plants. 

At its base, shown here, the multiflora rose is seen growing to the left and slightly behind the Hamamelis.  Low to the ground, I braved the thorns and branches and, one-by-one, chopped the rose canes off close to the ground, spraying the still-green stumps with brush-killer to prevent any regrowth.  Finally, the only chore left was to disentangle and remove the rose canes from their close embrace with the Witch Hazel, a task accomplished with only a minor release of profanity and loss of blood by the gardener.  The common name, Witch Hazel, was appropriate for the "toil and trouble" it caused me this day.

It stands now, alone, my (likely) Hamamelis virginiana, looking perhaps despondent at the loss of its volunteer companion, but with a better chance for growth and survival.   I will prune it this spring to encourage it to fill in and prosper without its former competitive neighbor.  The blooms themselves are not as large and brightly-colored as I expected when I planted it, but as my garden shuts down and awaits winter, I'll accept whatever gifts it may meagerly send in my direction.   

Peony Planting

'Coral Sunset'

I don't know about the rest of youse, but ProfessorRoush, he is off in the world planting peonies today. A late "backorder" from John Scheepers came in this week, and today I must, I must, I just MUST, get these into the ground alongside the Orientpets and other bulbs from that establishment that I received and planted some weeks ago. 

 That darned Scheeper's catalogue, along with its sister site, Van Engelen Inc., are becoming a major drain on my annual planting budget as my gardening focus turns towards low-maintenance plantings.   I already planted a number of new daylilies this fall and the Orientpets that I'm fascinated with often come along with a few other miscellaneous bulbs that catch my eye in the catalogs.  I'd forgotten, however, that I'd ordered 4 new peonies from Scheepers.  Today, I'm planting 'Raspberry Sundae' (a peony I've long coveted but it struggles here), 'Sorbet' (my previous start purchased at a big-box store is, in reality, likely a common 'Sarah Bernhardt'), and two roots of 'Joker', the latter an irresistible pink-edged white double peony that caught my eye as I viewed the catalogue offerings.  Hopefully, next Spring I'll be showing those off to you!

Today, however, the peony of focus today is one I planted just last year, blooming for the first time in my garden.  The photographed peony on this page is 'Coral Sunset', an early bloomer that captures the sunny disposition of May in Kansas and gifts it back to the gardener.   I've wanted this 1965 Wisser introduction  since I saw it on a slide in a lecture Roy Klehm gave at the National Botanical Garden in 2008, and I finally planted a labeled specimen last year.  It was healthy this year for me, and produced 5 or 6 of these beautiful blooms that perfectly color-complimented the potted pink Pelargonium behind it.  'Coral Sunset' received an APS Gold Medal Award in 2003.   

If they are not in bloom and you can't confirm the variety visually, there are really only two ways to buy plants that you covet.  First, purchase a known start from a trusted local or online nursery and hold them accountable for its identity.  That's the smart way to spend your money.  Alternatively, you can purchase a bargain plant whose name you vaguely recognize from a big-box store and hope and pray to the gardening gods that it is not mislabeled.  Sometimes, the latter works out as it did the year I purchased my 'Lillian Gibson' rose from Home Depot.  Often, it doesn't.  I can't tell you how many peony roots I've purchased that were labeled as something I wanted but turned out to be just one more 'Sarah Bernhardt' bomb.  However, two years ago, I purchased a container of two peony roots labeled as 'Coral Sunset' and, looking at the picture to the right as one of them first bloomed this summer in my south-facing back bed, they just may be 'Coral Sunset' or its nearly identical but taller older sister, 'Coral Charm'.    Wouldn't it be something if I have three of these gorgeous coral creatures already?

Surprise Snake

There I was, minding my own business last weekend while I was doing some fall-cleanup chores; you know, things like putting the peony supports up for the winter, filling the bird feeders, and mowing off dead peony stems.   And there it was, trying to be inconspicuous and camouflaged for the surrounding.  Luckily for both of us, it moved.   Do you see it?   As you look closer, please be courteous and ignore the fact that most of the "green" stuff here are weeds (Common Dayflowers). Sometimes, one surrenders to the chaos.

Here, I'll outline it for you.  Now can you find it?   Thank God, at the time I discovered it that I wasn't weeding on my knees with bare hands like I did in this bed during the hottest part of the summer!  It seems late in the season to come across a snake, and it was relatively cool that day, maybe 55F at the time I took this picture, so I certainly didn't expect the encounter.  Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of snakes in the grasses of the prairie, but I rarely see one.  Just search for "snake" in the search box on the right hand side if you want to see other species that I've encountered here.

I'm sure this is a North American Racer (Coluber constrictor), and a big one too.    If the species maximum length is up to 55.5 inches, this one was every bit of 50 inches long and 2 inches in diameter at its thickest area, although I didn't ask it to hold still for any measurement, nor did I go inside and come back out with a measuring tape. In fact, once it recognized that I had noticed it, it quickly slithered away, gone as I attempted to zoom in for better detail.  I got more detail than I really wanted anyway; just click on any picture here to see it full size.  

Here, I'll give you a closeup of the head.   Now can you see it?   Internet sources tell me it is harmless, not really a constrictor, and prefers to dine on insects, frogs, lizards, small mammals, and small birds rather than large, hyperventilating gardeners.  But if you've read my blog since its beginning, you know that factoid doesn't bring me any comfort.   I hate snakes, although I do acknowledge their value in controlling vermin in my landscape and I am less prone to running headlong into the next county at the sight of one then I used to be.  Regardless, if this guy's (girl's?) home territory is really 25 acres, I'll likely never see it again.   Or so I hope.  One sighting is more than ample.

Missed the Memo

Sweet Gum

ProfessorRoush woke up this morning a little late, reading on his bedside clock that it was just prior to 7:00 a.m.   Normally his eyes shoot open, fully awake, at 5:30 a.m. and he seldom sleeps past 6:00 a.m, so that was a little odd, but pleased at gaining a little extra sleep, he went about his Sunday in his usual pattern; 1) close bedroom door so Mrs. ProfessorRoush can sleep in, 2) let Bella out, 3) feed Bella, 4) get on the computer to read the news and forums and blog.  It was dark still, and a glance out the window told me there was frost on the ground, but I entirely missed realizing that it was still too dark for 7:00 a.m.

It wasn't until Mrs. ProfessorRoush rose an hour later and turned on the television for the news, expecting that she was a little late for "Meet the Press" and finding "Sunday Today" in its place, that we realized that the governmental tyrants had once again failed to repeal "Daylight Savings Time" and have forced themselves upon our biological clocks.  Again.  It was still 7:06 a.m. and I'd been up for over an hour.

This morning, I had intended to blog about the changing colors in the landscape and the beauty that Fall brings to the prairie, but instead, I'm aggravated that the time arbitrarily changed and the madness continues.  I have nothing to look forward to except a week of being sleepy early in the evening and driving to work with the sun in my eyes.

Sour Gum

Along the way, I was planning to point out the fantastic colors of the Sweet Gum, Liquidambar styraciflua, (photo above)  that I planted near the barn, and to talk about the pros and cons of my Black Tupelo, Nyssa sylvatica, which is also known as a "Sour Gum" or "Black Gum" tree.   The latter is one of the most dependable trees for red foliage each fall, but I've found that you had better be quick to enjoy it because the leaves turn and then the first cold wind will strip them off.  I could be also waxing poetic about my Red Horse-Chestnut (photo below), Aesculus x carnea, a true "three-season" tree with pinkish-orange flowers in spring, yellow fall foliage, and the brown chest-nuts I pick up from around it in the winter.

Red Horse-Chestnut

I should, instead of ranting about the authoritarian time change, be planting the bulbs that arrived via mail this week, admiring the fall colors of the prairie, and enjoying the last relatively warm days before I have to force myself out into the cold each week for necessary seasonal chores.  But thank you, One World Order, for this disruption  in my pattern as I once again face your unreasonable demands and the upset of my entire metabolism.  A Pox on both houses of Congress!

County Crush

In the modern world, there are many, many things that the curmudgeonly ProfessorRoush does not understand.  Chief among these is the proliferation of late night television ads promoting iPhone and video games such as "Candy Crush."  Growing up in the era of "Pong" and "Space Invader" standalone kiosks, ProfessorRoush never caught the passion then, and subsequently never became addicted to the generations of video and computer games that followed.  Are these TV ads really cost-effective ways to promote the games and make money?   Or are the games themselves just a doomsday plot by nefarious actors, a mass way to engage the masses, similar to the gladiators of Rome?  Does no one else remember a young Ashley Judd acting in Star Trek Next Generation Episode 106,  circa 2002 and titled "The Game"?

Sorry, I'm off on a tangent from my original goal for this blog entry.  This isn't supposed to be about all the things I don't understand.  My original intent before the temporary mental digression was to rant as coherently as possibly about  a specific recent action by the country roadskeepers.   Bear with me, Readers, as I get to the point.

Walking Bella down the road on September 19th, I noted that the wild Liatris punctata clump that I watch for near the road and that I'd written about previously, had bloomed once again and was, in fact, proliferating nicely (see photo above and compare with the previous year).  Tall and colorful, and breathtakingly beautiful, it came complete with some pale yellow Clouded Sulphur (Colias philodice) butterflies as this photo proves. 

More recently, however, I noted that the county had mowed the roadside with a bushhog, as it does annually to increase traffic visibility near turns and make the roads "neater," an activity that my German genetic heritage regretfully approves of.   This year, however, the county mowed a broader swath, a "two mower-wide path", and in the process cut off all these beautiful Liatris clumps before they could form seed.  Please take a moment of silence here for this elimination of beauty from the prairie and mourn as well for the butterflies and bees deprived of food.  Dear County, was that act of environmental fascism really necessary?  Ozymandias, King of Kings, gaze on what you destroyed!

Thankfully, on a brighter note, even a two mower-wide swath didn't reach these fledgling Liatris further down the road.  I can only hope to see these mature and spread across the untouched prairie of our neighborhood.

What's my purpose here?  In a broad sense, it is to write again that, as always, nature is better left alone and I'm happier when it is.  And also I recognize that perhaps, just perhaps, ProfessorRoush doesn't fit so well in the "modern" world.