Helianthus horridus ssp. horrendous

Well, that's not actually its name.  I could also call it 'Sneaky Santa Fe' and that moniker might fit better, and it certainly snuck by me, but that's not its name either.  This rampant invader, my friends, is Helianthus maximilliana ‘Santa Fe’, planted in my garden in 2010 and eradicated by 2017 along with its cousin 'Lemon Yellow',  when I realized that they self-seed the 7 foot tall stalks everywhere in this climate.




Once again, to be accurate, I should say "attempted eradication in 2017."   It seems I was successful with lighter-colored  'Lemon Yellow', but 'Sante Fe', or its open-pollinated offspring, lives on.  It has persisted in the form of no fewer than 8 separate clumps which evaded my periodic weed patrols and currently grace the garden.  I've spent the summer pulling it up wherever I noticed it, all except for this spot, which is so nicely placed and healthy that even the busy Bella had to stop and pose with it.  "Any Bella-approved plant can't be all bad," I thought. "Let it grow in just this one spot, and I'll cut it down before it can form seeds."  'Santa Fe' had other plans.




It grew rampantly here, along this bed, hiding among the native goldenrod, and then swiftly sprawled this week out over the path, flattening everything in its way.  I need to cut it off before it seeds again, and I have to cut it soon to mow this area, but it is so pretty that I just can't....yet.











It also grew tall in this bed, hiding among the variegated Miscanthus and other tall ornamental grasses, but once this baby blooms, it is hard to hide, isn't it?  Beautiful and bountiful and bright.  I know that I've found other volunteer clumps in this bed this summer and pulled them on sight, but the evidence suggests that I somehow missed these.











This last little 2-foot tall-but-avidly-blooming example has cropped up in the short time since I last did a major weeding and inspection of this bed, barely a month ago.  Helianthus maximilliana  must speed up its growth as blooming time nears so that it can cast seeds as far as possible, even if it only has a few weeks to try to outshine the sun.  Is it still 'Sante Fe', I wonder, or has it evolved under the harsh Kansas conditions into something more formidable?  The Kansas version of kudzu, perhaps?  I promise, I'll cut these all down before they form seeds.  Or maybe I'll just "gift" other gardeners with the seed this year.  Perhaps this plant is like a flu virus and you have to give it away to be done with it.

Foxi Pavement

There are roses that you love from the first glimpse, and roses that sometimes have to earn your love over time.  ProfessorRoush is here, live on blog, to tell you that 'Foxi Pavement' is just another potential Hybrid Rugosa that you've heard of and don't really care about, right up until finally you grow her.  I promise that 'Foxi Pavement' will grow ON you as it grows IN your garden, just as it did for me.

'Foxi Pavement,' also known as Luberon®, UHLater,  and, inexplicably, as "Buffalo Gal" (the approved ARS Exhibition name), is a 1987 introduction Hybrid Rugosa by Jürgen Walter Uhl.  Well, according to helpmefindroses.com she's a 1987 introduction, but Modern Roses 12 lists her under 'Buffalo Gal' as a 1989 introduction.  As readers know, because of the rose rosette catastrophe which struck here, I've chose to grow as many roses with R. rugosa heritage as I can find, regardless of their color or form.  I may not have formed the most perfect display rose garden, but the experience has made my garden into an exquisite testing ground for roses I might not otherwise have bothered after.  'Foxi Pavement' is one of those roses that I'm happy to have happened across.

In my Kansas climate, she is often a little frazzled and worn, but she's resilient and seldom without a few flowers. All the pictures on this page were taken this week, in a random moment while I was mowing.  Her R. rugosa genetics show up in the heavily rugose, light-green foliage and complete disease resistance.  The pictures on this page are of a mature 'Foxi Pavement' near the hot end of summer, only the slightest bit of blackspot near the bottom of the plant and a little mild insect damage on the unsprayed plant.  Most importantly, there are no signs of rose rosette disease anywhere on my 4 year old plant.  Her mature size is 4 foot tall and 5 foot wide in my garden, and the semi-double to mildly double flowers (17-25 petals officially) have a strong R. rugosa fragrance.  She is completely cane-hardy with no die-back in my Zone 5-6 climate, and she sets fantastically large hips after bloom, giving her a second season of display in my garden.

When compared with the other Pavement roses, that I grow, 'Foxi' is the intermediate color choice between pale 'Snow Pavement' and dark 'Purple Pavement', with a size and form bigger than the latter and identical to the former.  One big advantage of 'Foxi Pavement' is that she doesn't show any signs of suckering.  In my garden, 'Purple Pavement also hasn't suckered, but 'Snow Pavement' suckers occasionally and 'Dwarf Pavement' is a diminutive (2 foot tall) monster, spreading over 5 years to cover a 10 foot wide area in one of my garden beds.

'Foxi Pavement has earned her permanent place in my garden and I'd recommend her in any garden.  I grow a distant and better known relative, 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup' nearby, and comparing the two, I think I much prefer 'Foxi' over 'Fru Dagmar'.  'Foxi' is taller and more upright, and although the lavendar-pink tone is similar to 'Fru Dagmar', I think 'Foxi' is a brighter pink, perhaps helped out by her higher petal count.  Both plants are very healthy and their gorgeous hips are almost identical in number, color, and size.   Remember, ProfessorRoush likes big hips and he cannot lie...(don't hesitate to click the link here, it's SFW...mostl)

Also...pretty proud of himself, and I'm sure you're pleased, that ProfessorRoush avoided any puns or plays on the 'Foxi' name.

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band Interlude

I promise you, I'll get around to making this post garden-related, but ProfessorRoush and Mrs. ProfessorRoush had the opportunity last weekend to see the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in concert in Manhattan, Kansas, and I want the world to know it.  We had great tickets, didn't we?  They are one of ProfessorRoush's favorites and I often play their music during surgery.  Yes indeed, your dog may have had its leg repaired to the tune of Mr. Bojangles!

Fifty-three years, 53 YEARS(!), this band has been entertaining gardeners and anti-gardeners alike.  Two original members of the band, Jeff Hanna (guitar and lead vocal) and Jimmie Fadden (drums, harmonica, etc), still lead it, along with Jeff's son, Jaime Hanna (guitar), and current members Bob Carpenter (keyboards), Jim Photoglo (guitar), and Ross Holmes (fiddle, mandolin).  That's Jaime at the far left and Jeff next to him, with Ross in the brown jacket, Bob at the keyboard, and Jim in the background.  Jimmie Fadden was a little hard to see (he's behind Jeff) from our vantage, but he's an amazing musician.  I was astonished at the sheer talent displayed by all the members, all of whom are also lead and background vocalists on various songs as well as musicians.  Unfortunately, they are so good in person, they made ProfessorRoush's dreams of becoming a rock star fade into the distance.

If there's ever a musical band that a gardener can get down with, it's got to be the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, doesn't it?  I mean, even the band's name draws gardeners down the path towards them, you dig? Let alone the songs they've done.  Do you think any gardener can really resist Buy for Me the Rain?  Listen to the lyrics: (You-tube link if you click here)

♫Buy for me the rain, my darling, buy for me the rain; Buy for me the crystal pools that fall upon the plain. And I'll buy for you a rainbow and a million pots of gold. Buy it for me now, babe, before I am too old.

Buy for me the sun, my darling, buy for me the sun; Buy for me the light that falls when day has just begun. And I'll buy for you a shadow to protect you from the day. Buy it for me now, babe, before I go away.

Buy for me the robin, darling, buy for me the wing; Buy for me a sparrow, almost any flying thing. And I'll buy for you a tree, my love, where a robin's nest may grow. Buy it for me now, babe, the years all hurry so.♫

Need I go on?  Of course, I must.  A Kansas gardener can always Stand a Little Rain.  I can practically hear the brook in Ripplin' Waters and I like to Make a Little Magic in the garden as often as I can.  And when the day is done, it's ProfessorRoush singing to the Mrs.;  ♫Lazy yellow moon comin' up tonight, shinin' through the trees.  Crickets are singing and lightning bugs are floatin' on the breeze.  Baby get ready.  You and me going Fishin' in the Dark.  Lying on our backs and counting the stars where the cool grass grows.♫

Fifty-three years and counting!  Rock on, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, rock on!

Please, Fall, Come.

ProfessorRoush is absolutely, assuredly, positively, unquestionably, and undoubtedly ready for Fall.  Things out there in the greater garden are looking bedraggled and I'm decisively ready for Fall.  I'm tired of mowing the lawn every week without fail and I'm surely ready for Fall.  The lilac leaves are mildew-ing and dropping and both they and I are conclusively ready for Fall.  Everything is overgrown and I'm losing to the weeds and I'm categorically ready for Fall.  Come on over, Fall!

I woke this morning to the perfect hint of Fall, but I have yet to be convinced that we will see it.  There was moderate fog around and I love the fog for its dampening of sounds from town and the sense of isolation it brings.   The view above, straight into the garden and lacking the usual houses on the horizon, takes me back 10 years in an instant, to a time before those houses were built and it was just us and the sky to the south.  Click on it and dive in with your soul.  And the view below, at a slight eastern angle to the first, picks up the longhorn cattle grazing in the pasture and my neighbor's pond beyond.  Serenity at its finest.  Don't you feel calmed by the scene?

It has been such a weird gardening year with the rain and all.  If you knew anything of Kansas, you should know that the garden above should be browning by now, if not completely August-drought-dry.  Instead, the growth is nearly as green as at the beginning of spring, as it has been all summer long, just beginning to show the changes of grass color to the reds of fall. I've never, since moving to the prairie, mowed every week all summer and by this time of year I'm usually able to cut every other week if not just once a month.

I checked on Friday, and through that day, we've had 42.18 official inches of rain in 2019, an increase over average rain of 14.76 inches, or in other terms, 54% more than the average annual rainfall through September 6th!  Climate change or coincidence?  Just for those following the fictions of Al "the Arctic will be ice free by 2014" Gore, the high and low temperatures here for September 6, 2019 were 94ºF and 68ºF respectively.  The records for that date are a high of 106ºF set in 1913 and a low of 42ºF set in 1962.  If climate change it must be, I think I'd prefer the extra rain and today's temperatures versus the high of 1913.  In fact, even 1913 seems to be a weird record since the majority of the high temperature records in this area were established in the Dust-Bowl 30's. 

The strangest part of this year, to me, was that because of all the wet weather, my garden's fairy ring never materialized.  I have an enormous fairy ring in my garden, which I've never written about but have intended to.  In recent years, it has approached more than 50' in diameter, old and growing every year.  Instead, I waited and waited and they almost never came.  These two mushrooms above, the smaller posing for a close-up in the photo below, just popped up in the fairy ring yesterday and are the only two I've seen anywhere in the garden this year.  Since the same official rainfall records note that we are -0.72" behind our annual average rain for September (making the earlier part of the year even more wet in comparison), is it that this fairy ring only dances in drought times?  Inquiring minds would like to know.

Taking Stock

Occasionally, during the hum-drum of daily garden affairs (and often, as it happens, while mowing), ProfessorRoush's mind plays a little fantasy game.  A little game called "if I were moving, what plants and things from this garden would I want to take or duplicate?"  It's a thought experiment that can be endlessly repeated based on the size of the retirement garden to which one aspires.  And it suffices to pass the time while mowing.

This week, it was the Surprise Lilies (Lycoris squamigera) that prompted the onset of the mental gymnastics.  They've been in my garden a number of years and they never fail to surprise and delight me, as they have yet again this season.  Sometimes, in the spring, I'll see the daylily-like foliage and have to think a minute to remember not to weed it out, but I've spread these so they now pop up several places in the garden.  Whether my next garden is 10 acres or 10 square feet, I always want these Naked Ladies (their other, less politically-correct name) to pop up and delight me.

'Cherry Dazzle'

What else, from this pre-Fall period, would I want to preserve?  Well, crape myrtle 'Cherry Dazzle' is not maybe the most spectacular crape I have, but it certainly never disappoints with the color and floriferiousness and its under 2' circumference would fit in a small garden.

'Cherry Dazzle'

 I wouldn't want to live without a panacled hydrangea around this time of year, 'Limelight' or some other.  I just enjoy their brazen display when all else is turning brown.  And the Sweet Autumn Clematis (Clematis terniflora) is starting to bloom and by next week it will be perfuming the garden from one corner to the other.  How could I go on gardening without at least one massive tower of C. terniflora?  Unfortunately, with Sweet Autumn Clematis, having just one is the difficult part since it self-seeds everywhere in my garden.

'David'

And then, last but not least on the seasonal list of plants that I would just have to move, there is the phlox 'David', massive pure white heads standing straight and tall, unmarred by sun and rain.  'David' is easily transplanted and easily propagated.  I believe it also comes true from seed, and doesn't revert to pukey majenta like many garden phlox seem to.  There actually may be an advantage to allow it to self-proliferate, because I have clumps that look identical but bloomed more than two weeks apart in the same bed.  I bought one plant of 'David', one time, and now I have 6 or 8, spaced all over the garden beds.  Yes, I divided and moved it once or twice, but it grows now in places I never placed it, where it had to have self-seeded.   

Unless, of course, it grew feet and walked.  Sometimes plants try to sneak past an inattentive gardener.

Alaska Times

The Turnagain

Friends, sorry about the long lapse in posting, but ProfessorRoush was away from gardening while visiting family in Alaska and OPSEC is that I not disclose my location during my absence. The photo at the right is our first glimpse of some real Alaskan terrain, at an area known as the Turnagain on Highway 1 south of Anchorage.

Fireweed and Black Spruce

Most specifically, we were visiting the Kenai penisula, home to Seward, Homer, and all manner of small outposts.  ProfessorRoush, the traveler, was well satisfied by the scenery, all of it beautiful as demonstrated by the several examples posted below.

Fireweed

Devil's Club

ProfessorRoush, the naturalist, enjoyed the local fauna and flora, at least that which bothered to show itself.  Everywhere, native Fireweed (Chamerion angustifolium) was blooming, in meadows and singularly, fields and fields of it surrounding the Black Spruce trees and in open areas.  And I became intimately acquainted with Devil's Club (Oplopanax horridus), its scientific name aptly giving warning about this prickly undergrowth of the forest.  Look closely at the prickles on the woody stem...and remember not to brush against them!

I also, fauna wise, saw my first real live hornet nest, complete with the hornets, who themselves were not nearly so monstrously large or vicious as the cartoons suggest.  These pictures, however,  were about as close as I wanted to venture and the hornets still didn't seem to like the clicking of the camera mirror. 

Edge Glacier, Seward, Alaska

In Seward, we hiked to the Exit Glacier, one of more than a dozen glaciers spilling off the vast Harding Icefield, and the blue ice and outflow was everything we could have wished it to be.  Seward, rebuilt since it was wiped clean by a tsunami from the 1964 earthquake, also has a really nice aquarium you should visit if you are ever in the area.

Marsh and Mountains, Highway 1, Alaska

For large fauna sightings, however, I was shut-out.    I will report that we saw plenty of salmon fishermen and other tourists during the trip. However, we didn't see a single moose or bear during the trip, despite being out and about every day, and I only saw one Bald Eagle from a distance.  In fact, it got to be a bit of a joke.  My son claims there are only 9 state troopers in all of the very large Kenai penisula, and I saw three of them on the trip, but no moose.  On the way back north to the Anchorage airport, Mrs. ProfessorRoush and I were scanning all the marshes and flat areas, hoping in the late evening to see some large mammals coming down to feed, and at long last I spied two brown lumps moving over a field along the road and turned in for a better look.  They were buffalo at an Alaskan Wildlife Refuge. I'll not bother you with a picture of the buffalo, but I'll leave you with a beautiful scenic view of Homer, Alaska, and its tourist-haven "Spit" extending into the bay.

Looking out towards "The Spit" at Homer, Alaska

Butterflies and Digger Wasps

Today was that rare day in a gardener's world when ProfessorRoush awoke knowing that his mundane garden chores (mowing, weeding and watering) could be at least temporarily set aside and a more seasonal chore could be tackled.  The chore du jour, moved into the limelight after tickling the back of my mind for weeks, was to bush-hog the pasture, cutting down the weedier prairie forbs to discourage them from seeding and shading out the grasses.

I was greeted immediately at the door of the barn by  this gorgeous creature, an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus), a female, happily ensconced on the purple-leafed honeysuckle growing nearby.  Obviously auditioning to be noticed, it flittered around for a second and then landed within reach, posing prettily as my iPhone got closer and closer, fearless and serene. I've seldom seen one that will hold still within my arms reach, but I appreciated its willingness to cooperate for a good photo.

Perhaps it knew what I was about to do and was implanting its own seed in me.  In a butterfly-state-of-mind, I soon ended up leaving a large area of the pasture (photo, left) unmowed in hope that the many large milkweeds in this specific area would feed the Monarch migration that will soon come through.  If you click on the picture, you'll see that almost all of the tall "weeds" are Common Milkweed.  These milkweeds grow here, and not abundantly elsewhere in my pasture, because this is where the dirt was moved during the excavation of the barn over a decade ago.  The disturbed prairie soil in that area has been the home to milkweeds ever since, silent testimony to how long it takes the prairie to heal.  I did see, from the tractor seat, a single Monarch flitting around the area, so I know more will follow.  I'll mow this area later in the fall, after the Monarchs are gone.

Later in the morning, during a mowing break, I was passing through a garden bed, weeding as I often do along the journey from barn to house, when a little movement of earth and an odd sandy hole caught my eye.  Looking closer, I made acquaintance with none other than what I believe to be a Great Golden Digger Wasp (Sphex ichneumoneus).  I've never seen one before, but a little Web research informed me that these are one of God's more useful and fascinating creatures.  The Great Golden Digger Wasp paralyzes the bodies of Orthoptera (grasshoppers, locusts, and crickets) and places them in these ground nests to serve as food for its developing larvae, thus endearing it to the gardener through its slaughter of our common enemies.

Yes Dear Reader, I am aware that at times my gardening blog has a tendency to morph into a naturalist journal, but even while apologizing for such digressions, I also have to point out that this is one of the risks you take when you follow the meanderings of a curious mind.  I pray, sometimes, that these little side journeys enrich your life.  Join me please; preserve all the milkweed you can for the Monarchs and, now that we know what they are, help me protect all the Great Golden Digger Wasps that want to burrow in our gardens.  The butterflies, digging wasps, and I, thank you!

This Incredible Place

I do not know what changes that retirement, ever more imminent and ever more imagined as my clock winds relentlessly down, will bring to this life, but I was struck tonight, and related to Mrs. ProfessorRoush, that whatever the future holds, I don't think I can ever move from this place, this piece of earth that I know so well.

I know its moods; its sunny overbearing exuberance, its threatening and yet beautiful summer storms, its winter icy blizzards, its fall foliage kaleidoscope, and even its few cloudy, dreary days.  I can sense the rains coming hours away and predict when the officially-predicted storms will go around us.  I curse, sometimes, at the fickle nature of this land, like the thousands before who washed up on these prairies, but I love her always.

This morning started with the wall cloud pictured here, moving over us far earlier than the weatherpersons had predicted, delivering just enough moisture to wet the grass and suspend my mowing, but not enough to drive me in.  I puttered, I weeded, I fertilized, damp throughout, but happy in the garden.  The periodic clouds later afternoon became a drizzle, and then a smidgen of wetness, not enough to grace the ground deeply, but carrying some badly needed cooler temperatures.

Then, late evening, as I was passing through the kitchen, I noticed the setting sun and golden skies in the clearing west shining into the drizzle continuing to the east and thought to myself, "that means there is likely a rainbow to the south."

Wow.  I mean, wow was there ever a rainbow!  The most glorious double rainbow I've ever seen started just at the next hill south and arced completely over the house to the northeast, enveloping my house and world in wonderment.  The first photo above shows the view at the north corner of the garage, the photo at the left follows the rainbow as it rounded the south corner of the house, heading towards the neighborhoods of Manhattan.


I'll leave you here tonight, at the southwest caress of the rainbow onto the prairie.  You can click, if you wish, on the perfect iPhone panorama below of the complete double rainbow and enlarge it to full glory.  Stare in awe as long as you like, just as I did on first sight of it.  This rainbow tonight has welcomed the sunshine back to the prairie, chased the heat of summer from the Flint Hills, and reminded ProfessorRoush that life is more beautiful and precious with the passing of each moment.

Noel, how am I doing?

7/18/2019

A few weeks back, I read a blog post of Noel Kingsbury's titled "Mind the Gap," a very interesting read about the evolution toward ever-increasing plant density in garden design.  Kingsbury, whose blog I follow and whom I believe is one of the best of current garden writers and researchers, tries at least, to stick to some science-proven basics in gardening.  I find that his blog entries often break through the dry and compacted surface of homespun garden wisdom to provide some fresh nourishment to garden practices.

In his blog, Noel was sharing the results of a seven-year experiment in planting density published in the April 2019 Plantsman. and he related how "delighted at how little time I spent on this (weeding), only a few minutes per plot per year."  Despite the naturalistic planting methods he was investigating, he was able to conclude that, unlike previous widely-held gardener expectations, the plots did not become a monoculture of a dominant plant; "no one species took over."  At least in Herefordshire, about as far from my Kansas environment, in terms of sunshine and moisture, as a garden can probably get.

5/25/2019

As a gardener, ProfessorRoush is by no means so focused on a garden design plan or even a logical planting sequence as the eminent Mr. Kingsbury, but my inner farm-boy hates to see bare ground.  So my front landscape is essentially a hodgepodge of crowded plants developed over a period of now almost 18 years.  I started out with some nicely spaced plants, but my gardening has evolved and the plants in the border have undergone an intense Darwinian thinning.  When something dies, or gets crowded out, I replace it or remove it with something else, with the result of a dizzying mess of plants that I very rarely need to weed and only then usually with a quick tug at an errant solitary stem as I pass by.

The photo at the top of this blog was taken just this morning facing east at sunrise, and in a quick glance, you can take in blooming 'David' phlox, three varieties of daylilies, some bright red Monarda, and a white oriental lily.  Faded away are the Paeonia tenuifolia and Iris, and waiting in the wings you can discern some garden sedum biding time until fall.  Like Noel's experimental plot, I simply clear the dead foliage every spring and weed every third week for a few minutes.

Another view 7/13/2019

The second photo above shows the same area from a slightly different viewpoint taken in late May, with voluptuous herbaceous peonies, iris, and globe aliums predominant, while more subtle yellows are added in the background by the variegated foliage of Forsythia 'Fiesta' and Euonymous 'Moonshadow'.

Another perspective of the bed, taken recently from the front, shows the opposite end of this bed, which I fully admit is mostly a morass of Knautia macedonia that is successfully outcompeting most of the daylilies and irises of this area and pushing the red Monarda to the edges of the Knautia empire.  Next year, I need to remember to thin back the volunteer Knautia seedlings.  I certainly don't want to eliminate it; Knautia macedonia was one of the first plants I sought out that was specifically recommended for the brutal Kansas climate and it survives the droughts that have killed off other groundcovers in the area.

Turning around from the previous perspective, facing west, the opposite bed is a mass of Orienpet lilies, and daylilies, with a rose or two thrown in.  There is also a pair of barely visible panicled Hydrangea up against the garage here, planted just last year and yet to reach full growth.  Some asters to the left are overgrown this year and yet to bloom.




So my obvious question now is, "Noel, how am I doing?"  Aside from perhaps allowing the Knautia to self-seed a little too exuberantly (in defense of its neighboring plants, it seems to have been over-stimulated this year by the excess rain), am I approaching the new crowded-planting conception? Is there anything else you think I can crowd in here?

My (Orien)pets

Oriental 'Montana'

Calling my Orienpet lilies "my pets" is almost as bad as labeling them "my precious," isn't it?  I'm trying not to think of myself as the decrepit Sméagol/Gollum in Lord of the Rings as I say it, but I'm sure I have the rasping inflection and covetous smiling expressions down all the same.  They are just so beautiful and fragrant that they overload my senses.

After my experience with 'Yellow Dream' (picture below) a few years back, I had resolved to buy more Oriental Lilies and Orienpets and you can see the result here.  Oriental lily 'Montana', pictured above, is the most fabulous of the new Orientals I planted, just to the left of my front door, pouring out fragrance for 5 yards around.  Don't you just love her freckles?

Orienpet 'Yellow Dream'

Although some of the new lilies have struggled, others are flourishing and expanding, particularly the Orienpets.  Now if only I could get the Kansas winds to stop throwing them onto the ground, I'd be in semi-heaven for a few weeks.  I prop some of them up with stakes, but I neglect others and pay for it with a few more broken stems after every storm. 

Orienpet lilies, or OT lily hybrids, are hybrids of Oriental and Chinese Trumpet lilies, as opposed to the Oriental-Asiatic, or OA hybrids, like 'Kaveri' that I pictured recently.  Orienpets inherited the best of both their parents and are very disease-resistant and have better drought, and cold tolerance than either parent.  Most are very tall (some gardeners call them "tree lilies") and floriferous, and the only drawback of them that I've seen so far is that blooms of some of the hybrids, like 'Beverly Dreams', face downward, diminishing their impact.

Orienpet 'Beverly Dreams'

I complain about 'Beverly Dreams', but on the other side of that coin, those thick waxy petals survive the searing Kansas sun without shriveling, and indoors, that fabulous color lasts a week or more in a vase.   'Beverly Dreams', in particular, is tempting me to get my first black light since the 70's, since I suspect it would light up spectacularly in ultraviolet.

Orienpet 'Purple Prince'

'Yellow Dream' is, as always, a standout this year, but the rainy spring and early summer here have left her yellow hues more muted than previously.  I also made the mistake of intermixing her clumps with 'Purple Prince', and their colors clash a bit.  I'm not as crazy about the downward facing and slow-opening 'Purple Prince', and I may move these bulbs eventually to a less prominent spot. 

Orienpet 'Anastasia'

The most recent to open, and one of the prettiest, is 'Anastasia', the newest Orientpet in my garden; delicate-colored and beautiful, and reminscent of 'Montana', pictured above.  I must be irrationally partial to the pinks since those two are my "pick of the season" so far.  There are, however, more buds warming up in the bullpen.  And stay tuned, because I'm preparing a "best-of-show" entry of the new daylilies I'm seeing.  Wowsa!

The Arrival

I turned the corner last night, July 5, 2019, and there, right there on the top of virginally white 'Blanc Double de Coubert' in full-on public display, fornicating, yes FORNICATING, in flagrante delicto, caught red-handed (or, in this case, green-bodied) in naked embrace, were the first of the Japanese Beetles to invade my garden this year.  Immodest, immoral, deplorable and disgusting Japanese Beetles!

All right, all right.  My indignation is false, my outrage is fake, although this Japanese Beetle sightings is most certainly not "fake news."  I've actually been expecting them, waiting and watchful, forewarned and forearmed.  In point of fact, while I'm spilling the beans, these weren't the first Japanese Beetles that I saw yesterday evening.  I had already found one a few moments earlier on 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup', cornered it, captured it, and crushed it under my sole.  On the first day, the total casualty count for the Japanese Beetle army at my hands was 6; the pair above on 'Blanc', the pair below on 'Applejack', the single stag male on 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup' and another single male on a second 'Applejack'. 

They are right on time, these horrible hordes.  Based on a search of my blog, from the very first time I spotted one in my garden, 7/7/2013, to the beginning of last year's seasonal foray on 7/1/2018, they've never been earlier than July 1st, nor later than July 7th, with the exception of the fabled beetle-less summer of 2016.  My blog is full of beetles, and I noticed tonight that if you click on the search box at the right and type in "beetles", I've accumulated almost a dozen musings on these hard-bodied trespassers.  Go ahead, I promise it is an entertaining side-path through the blog.

Sore from recent marathon weedings of the garden, nursing what I suspect is my first ever episode of trochanteric bursitis, and in no mood to trifle with more garden interlopers after the earlier spring invasion of rose slugs, I've chosen the nuclear option this year.  Full-on, no-prisoners-taken, garden-wide thermonuclear war in my garden, insecticide at 50 paces, and may the human win.  My sole concession to the less onerous garden critters was to spray as early in the morning as possible so as to spare as many bumblebees as I could, but I'm in no mood this year to stand on the ethical high ground and spend every night and morning searching the garden by hand to interrupt and dispatch Japanese beetle couples in the process of making more Japanese beetles.  So this year, I'll spare myself the bursa-inflaming activity and spare you the daily body count, and I will simply report any spotted survivors here later.  To my fellow gardeners, ye of beetle-inflicted pain, the skirmishes have begun again.  Good hunting, my friends.