Spiritual Prairie Union

 "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth his handywork." Psalm 19:1.  

If a gardener knows any scripture at all, it should be this phrase.  ProfessorRoush has been witness to the wisdom of this Psalm every morning this past two weeks as I drive past a gorgeous heavenly display of two common prairie forbs sharing the same space, purple Western Ironweed (Vernonia baldwinii) and white and green Snow-On-The-Mountain (Euphorbia marginata).   There are few times when I see such showy native plants so wild, yet so perfectly sited to contrast and enhance each other that I can only stand and marvel, jealous of the Gardener who arranged them in combination.

Western Ironweed

I took the picture above in the worst possible conditions for photography; sun setting behind the subject, light rain on the horizon, dusk settling into the valleys.   And yet the beauty of the prairie shines forth from this chance clumping, this union of the blooms of August each drawing in their late pollinators, offering last seasonal meals in exchange for stirred chromosomes, the dance of wildflower and insect continued in another year.

Snow-On-The-Mountain

Neither of the colorful perennials above are rare on the prairie.   Western Ironweed, so drought tolerant and tall in the heat of summer, is a common pasture weed on the Flint Hills and difficult to eliminate from my garden beds.  This member of the Asteraceae is shunned by cattle for its bitter taste, who thus help it to spread in overgrazed pastures, eliminating its competitors while letting it grow.  Snow-On-The Mountain, a poinsettia relative, is also found here in nearly every disturbed spot of ground, popping up randomly in my garden beds next to grasses and roses, and anywhere else it can find a bit of moisture and sunshine.  In contrast to the ironweed, this euphorbia pulls easily from the ground with bare hands, and although it's bitter, milky sap is said to be as irritating as poison ivy, I seem to be impervious to its toxic nature.

The ubiquity of these wildflowers might suggest that their serendipitous adjacency has occurred by mere statistical chance, but I refuse to tempt disaster by agreeing.  ProfessorRoush, not normally disposed to quote scripture, nonetheless feels here a higher design, a greater Hand in this natural combination.  Maybe you have to be here, at this spot, with the waning sunlight and smell of rain in the air to appreciate this moment.  Better yet the sight is simply spectacular every morning with fresh sunlight and cool breeze and living prairie all around as I drive to work.  All I know for sure is that these two plants, every day, brighten my morning, the gift of living made manifest as my day begins.  And I am thankful for it and for my life shared with the prairie.

New Life, New Roses

You know how it is with proud new fathers, right?  Every gurgle, every smile, every first step of the infant is celebrated, photographed, and immortalized?   Well, ProfessorRoush  is absolutely no different with his infant roses, chronicling every new leaf and fretting over every new threat.  

The gorgeous little blush pink darling seen here to the right is the second bloom of one of two seedlings I was able to keep alive this year, from the first tiny sprout in late February clear through to transplantation into the garden proper.  I'm disturbed that I had better light this morning (see the movie at the bottom), but had my iPhone set to "video" and when I went to rephotograph her for this afternoon, the weather is cloudy, and sprinkling, and the light is terrible for her.  

Her first bloom, shown to the left as she opened in late April, showed me a lot of promise, a full double with delicate petals of a faint pink hue, but I am more thrilled to see now that she is remonant, blooming again today with two other buds waiting in the wings.

She's been healthy so far, protected from the rabbits by her milk jug collar and under full Kansas sun, and the bloom at the top appears undamaged by our heat and the rain, but of course she has to go a long way to prove herself before I trouble to name her.  Most important will be her winter hardiness, for I will not protect her from weather, just from marauding deer as the fall approaches.   A chicken wire cage is coming soon!

I have another new seedling, planted a few yards away, also healthy but she has yet to bloom.  Of course, I have no idea of the provenance of either rose although the foliage of each resembles its sister; both are the unknown orphans of a bunch of rose hips gathered in a hurry as the winter closed in and planted into a peat moss garden in the house under artificial lights.  Most of the hips were from Hybrid Rugosas, but neither seedling shows any signs yet of Rugosa heritage.  From her appearance, the one that has bloomed looks most like the English Rose 'Heritage' from my garden, the same delicate petals, similar bloom color and leaf form.  Sadly, I have no idea if I grabbed hips from 'Heritage' during my fall frenzy.

Keep your fingers crossed, my friends, and I'm open to suggestions for naming and for christening presents from godparents.  I gave both roses some extra water today after our week of 100ºF+ temperatures and dry conditions, but otherwise, they're on their own.  At least the Japanese Beetles have disappeared, their summer cycle of irritating this gardener at an end.  

Fabulous Fuchsias

Buzz™ Velvet

Standing out, even from a distance, from the daylily yellow and oranges, from the hydrangea whites and green ornamental grasses, are a few eye-catching, awe-inspiring plants that are cheerfully dragging ProfessorRoush with them through the hot weather of late June.  Some might call them pink, some might call them "hot pink," but they are the definition, the epitome of fuchsia.   Fuchsia color without fuchsia genetics, you might say.

The most vivid, screaming at me from far away in the garden as I peer out my window each morning, is Buddleia 'Buzz™ Velvet', a  2014 planting in my garden introduced to commerce by the venerable British firm, Thompson and Morgan.  I've grown a number of Buddleia cultivars over the years, but this one and 'White Profusion' are the only ones that have stood the test of time and Kansas weather.  The latter may survive only because it's southern exposure and protection from north winds from the house behind it, but 'Buzz™ Velvet' is exposed out in the middle of the garden, protected only by some dead ornamental grass in the winter.     

Buzz, if I can use that shortened moniker, stands about 5 foot tall and is blooming its head off at the moment.   A dazzling vision from the house, I'm showing you the opposite viewpoint here, because looking from the deeper garden towards the house and barn, it is the backdrop to Hibicus 'Midnight Marvel' and the blue-foliaged seed-pod-ed remains of Argemone polyanthemos, the white prickly poppy that I allow to grow there.  Yes, I like Buzz™ Velvet, as do the butterflies who are all over it, all the time.

'Moje Hammarberg'

Marking the corner of a nearby rose bed, fuchsia-pink 'Moje Hammarberg' is also a bright bloomer, although a more diminutive one.   I've written of 'Moje Hammarberg' before, and I still have high hopes for this rose as a survivor in my garden.  He's still short, 2.5 feet tall at 3 years old, and he's a little wider at 3 feet around, but those loose fuchsia blooms are plentiful and were moderately untouched by the Japanese beetle invasion this year.  

 'Moje Hammarberg's lack of attractiveness to beetles is most interesting to me right now, almost as interesting as its fuchsia coloring.  He stands only six feet away, directly across from and mirrowing 'Hanza'.   'Hanza', has nearly the same color, the same rugosa foliage, a little larger bush, and the same loose bloom form, but it is a beetle magnet  In fact it is host for the massive orgy of beetles at the top of another recent blog entry.  The primary difference I can see between the bushes is not one of appearance, but of fragrance;  'Moje Hammarberg' has a little fragrance, while 'Hanza' is loaded with a spicy aroma.  Is that the attraction?   Are Japanese Beetles more apt to attack fragrant roses?   Or is the whole thing just one big fuchsia-tinted coincidence this year?   Inquiring gardeners want to know. 

Changelings and Oddities

When one gardens long enough, and within a large enough garden, mislabeled plants and unexpected seedlings and woebegone cultivars will eventually apparate at will and often in surprising numbers and places.  And I'm not referring to the occasional 'Doctor Huey' rootstock that takes the place of your favorite rose after a long cold winter, nor to the frequent peony seedlings that I encounter in the garden and have spoken of before.  I'm talking specifically about those Flying Dutchman- and Mary Celeste-type mysteries that befuddle the mind and are spoken of later in soft-whispered legends after nightfall.

This Viburnum lantana pictured here and, at fruit, above, was once a green and gold-leafed variegated form that pleased me so much for a few years and has now been replaced by this more bland-leafed but still beautiful shrub.   The original plant just seemed to wither and die two years ago as this changeling sprung up a couple of feet closer to the edge of the bed.  I don't know if this imposter is a seedling or some rootstock from the plant I purchased, but the taller it grew, the more the original plant faded.

I'm never surprised when a variegated plant gets overwhelmed by a reversion to a fully-chlorophyll-ed mutation, having seen it in sedums and euonymus, and lots of other perennials, but I was initially disappointed at the loss of the variegation in the V. lantana.  Now, however, I'm reconsidering that disappointment while the contrast of foliage and bright red fruit is providing a fine ornament to the garden, whether the weather is wet and cloudy, as above, or bright and sunny, as it was this morning.  A gardener should never look a gift wayfaring shrub in the seed head, to mangle a phrase.

And then there are the surprise volunteer seedlings of other plants than peonies in the garden.   I recently noticed that this brassy yellow daylily has sprung up in a bed composed entirely of irises (with only a few Asian lily bulbs scattered among them), and I have no idea how it got there.   Now, granted, some of these iris were moved from a bed that contained both daylilies and irises, but there are several reasons I don't think it was accidentally just transplanted.   

'Hesperus'

First, this volunteer seems to be growing in the middle of the 5 or 6 year old iris clump and it was never there before.  Second, there are no other yellow-ish daylilies in my garden, anywhere, that are identical enough to be the parent clump.   The most similar daylily I have at present is 'Hesperus', the 1950 Sprout Medal winner, but the latter has wider petals, is a little less brassy, and is more fragrant than my garden-crashing volunteer.  No, I think this is a new daylily, a random seed scattered by a bird or rodent that happened to like the soil here. 

My volunteer daylily

So, feel free to compare and contrast, 'Hesperus' above at right and the brassy interloper here at left, but I'm certainly not going to complain at a free daylily.  I'll move it, this fall, to a place on its own, perhaps into a new bed with other volunteer seedlings of my garden.   I consider it, as I stated before, an afterlife effort to drive the next owner crazy as they try to identify the plant or its provenance from my messy garden notes, a vain attempt to continue to influence the garden from places beyond.  If gardeners can't find satisfaction in this life, it's one way to have a good laugh in the next. 

The Surrender of ProfessorRoush

When the detailed annals of twenty-first century gardening history are collected and indelibly written to the internet, today will be noted as the day that ProfessorRoush grudgingly conceded his unwilling submission to the Japanese Beetle horde.   I have lost my solo battle here on the Kansas Flint Hills, completely and irrevocably, crushed by the sheer prolific mass of beetle fertility.  How many beetles do you count on the single 'Hanza' flower at the upper left?  There are at least 14 engaged there in disgusting Caligulan debauchery by my count.   

Poor 'Hanza'

I wave the white flag at last, an unworthy descendent of the heros at Thermopylae, Masada, and the Alamo.  Despite twice-daily rounds of the battlefield under the searing summer sun, hand-picking and crushing the chitinous slobs as they fornicated in their own frass, and occasional mass desperate dispersals of chemical weapons, I can no longer pretend to be winning and must face defeat.  I know the war was lost long ago in the eastern and southern United States, but the battlefront continues its westward move.  The closely-cropped beetle mass at the top is only the most visible today.  Looking at the greater picture (at right) tells the true story, with smaller numbers of beetles on all the nearby blossoms, foreground and background.  At night, I dream now only of the crunch of the beetle masses as they feast on the roses, of their laughter during coitus in the bright Kansas sun.   

Beetles on 'Martin Frobisher'

I blame my defeat on many factors, not the least of which is lack of a national sense of emergency.  Forget the concerns of ecology and species diversity, Japanese Beetles hold no value to the world.   The extinction of these lazy disgusting creatures would make no measurable impact on the world's ecology.  They have no enterprise, no natural predators, no redeeming virtues to promote their preservation, seemingly existing for the sole purpose of consumption, defecation, and procreation.  Where are, I ask, the chemists to create a poison aimed directly at the demise of this sole species?   Where are the enterprising engineers to envision a fleet of affordable micro-drones capable of capturing beetles to transport and release in the fires of  Hell?  Where are the biologists to create infertile clouds of male beetles to slow their spread, or to genetically manipulate a lethal virus specific to Japanese Beetles ?  Where is, Lord Darwin, the evolution of the insectivore who views beetles and beetle frass as a delicacy?   

Today's pyrethrins and insecticidal soaps are worse then worthless on adult beetles.  Yesterday I drenched these beetle clumps directly in modern insecticidal death and an hour later, they still moved and defecated on poor virginal white 'Blanc Double de Coubert' at abandon. I dream, at times, of finding and deploying an old bottle of DDT.  Would it be worth a Silent Spring or three to rid the earth of Japanese Beetles?  I hear now only, in my mind, the Beetle Voldemort laughing at poor Professor Dumbledore; "You've lost, old man."

Daylily 'Sonic Analogue'

Future minstrels will not sing ballads to the losing effort of ProfessorRoush, but upon reflection I take solace that I am a true descendent of those at Masada and the Alamo. After all, despite their valiant and principled stands, they lost too, surrounded by enemies too numerous to count, without aid from the greater world.  If there is hope for the gardening world, it is in Old Garden Roses, resistant to Rose Rosette disease and too early to be ravished by Japanese Beetles, and also in daylilies.  I leave you with this 'Sonic Analogue' daylily, seemingly immune at present to the beetle appetites.  I may have laid down my weapons, but I keep hope that beetle predators will evolve faster than beetle defenses and these daylilies will remain to brighten the rest of my summer days.

Sunshine, Lilies, and Beetles

ProfessorRoush has been waiting breathlessly for these 'Kaveri' lily buds to open, desperately afraid that a strong wind or the neighbor's dog would take them down prior to their display.  They seem to have self-seeded or spread over about a 10 foot area and they're all strong and healthy.  Not bad for a free gift from a gardening company!

And other lilies are holding sway right now, the taller accompaniment to the daylilies which are coming in.  To the left, Orientpet 'Purple Prince' holds a proud place as the protector of a 'Beautiful Edging' daylily on my front walk.

Nearby, this group of 'Yellow Dream' and 'Purple Prince' (below)  will brighten up the area in front of the garage for the next two weeks. You know from my previous posts how much I wait for and love 'Yellow Dream'.   Downwind from this group is always a sweet fragrance treat that I have to stop each time and admire.  'Purple Prince', himself, is maybe not so pretty (at right), but he's a strong and stalwart fellow in the garden.

And then, somewhere in the back garden, this first of Asiatic's paints it's blood-red way among my viburnums.   I always see this lily first, only to watch it fade as the rest come on.

Last but not least, this is obviously not on a lily, Orientpet or Asiatic, but I always try to mark the first arrival of Japanese beetles in this blog so that I can keep track of them.  And here one is, first found on June 28, 2021, on top of  'Fru Dagmar Hastrop', frass sprinkled among the petals.  Thankfully, the disgusting creatures prefer this rose and 'Blanc Double de Coubert' and leave the others alone.  The spray I'm using doesn't seem to make any difference, sadly.  I'm just hand-picking and gleefully smashing under my heels.  Quite a sad comment on the activity of an otherwise peaceful gardener.

2021 Manhattan EMG Garden Tour

ProfessorRoush seems to have slipped comfortably back into his continuing role as the unofficial photographer of the Extension Master Gardener's Manhattan Area Garden tour, albeit with a break during the skipped tour last year due to the pandemic cancellation of the Tour.  I won't comment here on the folly of canceling a GARDEN tour in a time when more of the population would have attended then ever, but that's all rain clouds and opportunities missed. 

Most importantly, I had planned to share in this blog what I thought were the 6 best photos from this year's tour, however, as usual, I'm failing miserably.   It's fairly easy, among 609 photos taken in 4 hours today, for me to weed out all the pictures with identifiable people in them since I shouldn't/can't post people without permission.  And my best intentions to catch a bee in the act of nefarious nectar collection went awry several times today; it was cloudy for most of the tour and the camera shutter speed just wasn't up to catching them as a still life.

It is more difficult than I anticipated to choose the best from the 50 or so daylily pictures and the various vignettes of gnomes and garden ornaments and from the delightful plant arrangements that were everywhere.  Ego aside, many of the pictures are quite good, despite the overcast and early start to the day.  My goal of  posting six photos became a battle to narrow down from 50, and then from 20, until I settled on these 8.   Well, on these 9 if you count the last wanna-be.  Who, anyway, could resist this bronze heron sculpture at the K-State Gardens in the middle of the created wetlands? 

Every photo here is unedited, just as I took them.  Normally I would have cropped them for the blog, maybe removing some of the blurred green space at the top of the picture of the fancy echinacea at the left, and perhaps reducing their size, but I thought you'd like them in all their vivid detail.  Point and click if you want to see them larger.  I apologize, in advance, for the multi-megabyte nature of this blog entry, but most these days don't have the limitations we used to have on download speed, do they?  I hope not.

Trains seemed to be the "thing" for the day and model railroads were laid out at two of the 6 gardens on the tour.  ProfessorRoush perhaps didn't fully appreciate their contribution to the garden, but the many children on the tour certainly enjoyed them.   I just kept thinking, "Okay, that's cute, but after a few times around the track, what would I do with it then?"   To each, their own tracks, I suppose.

With the garden tour a few weeks later in the year than normal, the daylilies were blooming everywhere.   I thought the prettiest daylily photograph that I took was of the pair shown at the top of this blog, but for a single entry, this yellow and purple-eyed daylily was too perfect to ignore.  

There was plenty of wildlife in the gardens today, with one garden featuring a box turtle enclosure with a half-dozen unfortunately photo-shy turtles.  I couldn't share the picture of one owner calling to her turtle, and a soundless still photo wouldn't do the moment justice anyway, but I can share these two sister felines who were intently hunting and torturing a vole in a garden.   Their actions seemed to dismay the garden owner, but then, cats will be cats, won't they?

I loved this quiet pathway fork, lit by the Japanese Maple on one side and shadowed by the 'Forest Pansy' redbud that hung above it all.  I was quite captivated by the light coming through the multi-colored leaves of 'Forest Pansy' and so the tour will cost me in real monetary terms since I'll have to seek one out now.  This was a hard area to catch without people walking through it, but thankfully, if you can identify the legs of the two ladies taking the fork on the right, then you're far more observant, or intimately knowledgeable of these ladies, than I am.

I'll close with this almost-picture of the Monarch butterfly on milkweed.   When the Monarch landed within reach of my lens, fluttering it's wings as it settled for a snack, I was adamantly sure I was about to get the perfect photo for the day, the crowning jewel of my efforts.  For a brief instant, I was still, waiting for this beauty to open its wings so I could capture that instant of miracle, of life and ecology in a single picture.  And then a nearby bumblebee came in like a Stuka dive bomber and the butterfly was gone, beyond my reach,
before my reflexes could trigger the shutter.   Such are the disappointments that come hand-in-hand with these many glorious photos.  Maybe next year.  Or the year after.

Earth's Bounty, Garden's Beauty

ProfessorRoush hasn't blogged, he knows, for quite a while during this busy June, but while the blog may suffer, the garden is never far from my mind.  Nearly every morning and evening I'm there, watering or worrying, watching and waiting.   Watering the new plants, and sometimes old, as we settle in to a very dry summer.   Worrying about that struggling new Rugosa hybrid and watching diligently for the first Japanese Beetles.  Waiting for the daylilies to bloom, for the rain to come, and for the heat to break.

It's been hot, friends, hot like late July, far too early now in June to see the ground crack and the forsythia wilt.  And a month since significant rain, a drizzle here or there, dried on the cement before I can don my shoes.  I water strawberries and tomatoes, petunias and pots on regular rotation, pouring hope onto the soil carried gallon by gallon from the house to the garden.  But nothing grows at temperatures over  100ºF.  Tomatoes don't bloom, daylilies drop buds, and the roses, oh the roses, pout like the garden prima donnas they are.  The garden is static, in summer stasis, waiting on cool September to save it.

Still, there is beauty in the garden, and bounty to find.  Some plants, like the Prickly Poppy (Argemone polyanthemos) at the right, defy the heat, producing these impossibly delicate blossoms in defiance of the searing sun, the poppies of heaven, set down on earth.  Here is the beauty for me to behold, a wild weed given a home for my pleasure and a grocery for the ungainly bumblebees wallowing in the petals.  That bumble in the top photo, a plump glutton of industry, is surely going to please his friends, bearing baskets of pollen to feed the hive.  The luscious blackberries in the second photo, they're for me, first, and then perhaps Mrs. ProfessorRoush if any of the purple pleasures survive the walk to the house.  It's a dicey thing, showing up at the house with stained empty hands, purple mouth, and a smile, one's life spared only by inches and whim.  But that the photo of the blackberries makes you want to reach into it and fill your hands, doesn't it?  Imagine how good they were out in the garden, fresh off the bramble, warm and juicy, the taste of sunshine in every drupe.   Any just jury would stay my execution on the promise of a future handful.

There is, too, in the garden at many corners, feasts for the soul, saving sights for sun-seared eyes.   My gentleman rabbit comes calling, a cheerful lily over a concrete shoulder.   Blanc Double de Coubert, jealous of the angelic pristine poppy, attempts a second bloom cycle, not quite as white, but more fragrant and visible against the dark green foliage.  Panicled hydrangeas begin to bloom, Russian sage forms a mound of airy blue, and everywhere grasses stretch to the sky.  

Blood-red Asiatic lilies have budded and bloomed, giving way now to Orientals and Orientpets.  And yet, I wait still on the daylilies, the main event of the Kansas summer, aliens become dominant in an unforgiving landscape, every view become a fleeting festival of color, a riot of shapes and sizes.  They're beginning to pop up now, a yellow note here, a purple there, a symphony sure to come as summer has arrived.   

Lavender Days and Rabbit Plagues

Yesterday was Garden Day in ProfessorRoush's world; a full hot day in the sun to relish the feel of sweat and sore muscles and honest labor.  I cleaned the garage and weeded and watered and mowed and trimmed and mulched and took a break to help a friend load some estate sale dressers and just generally spuddled around from morning to supper.  I stayed hydrated and didn't mind the heat at all.   And yes, "spuddled" is a word, my new favorite word, an obsolete southwest English word according to Wiktionary, that means "to make a lot of fuss about trivial things, as if they were important."   Removing that extra-long holly branch from the path, throwing away old baling strings that I saved for when I needed them (which is never), and combining partial bottles of Grass-B-Gone spray, all of those and more were spuddling at its best.  

I did take time to admire my short row of lavender however, a 10 foot row of several varieties that thrive in the full sun of a raised limestone-edged bed.  They take absolutely no care or thought from me; every winter they stand stiff and brittle, dead from tip to bottom, and then all those dead stems come alive in June and produce luscious light blue flowers with that awesome scent of savory sugar clear through the heat of July.  The bees are flocking to the lavender (photo at left) in masses these days, feasting on the tiny bits of pollen clinging to each flower.  The iron chicken that stands among them finally looks like it belongs, a hen among a lavender forest.

This morning, I was quickly reminded how lucky I am to have a garden at all, a triumph in the face of furry pestilence that seems more prevalent this year.  I knew that there were rabbits about, an occasional admiration for the tiny bunny living in the front garden or a glimpse of the far-off larger bunny in the grass near the lower garden, but I had not realized the sheer numbers of the horde that has descended here.  Looking out the window at breakfast, I spied this lone brave lagomorph in the freshly cut lawn, but after watching a few moments longer, I realized this bunny wasn't a bachelor, but a trio, all within a few feet.  Can you spot them?

In the photo at the left, I've blown them up and added arrows to help you find the half-hidden one behind the iris at the bottom and the long ears of the one hidden in the prairie grass above.   None of these three are the baby bunny that I know lives in the front.   And now I'm wondering what kind of idiot ProfessorRoush is, because it probably is not one, but several baby bunnies in front too.   What exactly am I running, a garden or a feeding farm for rodents?

Thankfully, the rabbits don't bother the lavender, and, truthfully, I seldom recognize any bunny damage beyond some nibbling on the first few daylily shoots that venture out in Spring.  They may be out there plotting to kill off my favorite baby roses, but it's more likely that I benefit from all rabbit manure than they damage something important.  I won't begrudge them their short brutal and timid lives, because I know the coyotes and snakes will clean up the garden before winter.  It's a simple fact of gardening life; where there is a garden, there are rabbits, and where there are rabbits, there are predators, be them wild or man.  Or wild professors.

Plant Pets and Plant Zoos

'Hope for Humanity'

I was stunned speechless, stopped instantly in my tracks last week, by a random statement in a GardenRant.com column by Ann Wareham.  In the column, Ann, a British garden writer, was pushing back against the societal pressure to change our gardens into more ecologically-sound, "pollinator friendly," "sustainable," "drought resistant" or "rain" gardens.   Ann threw the following statement in an early paragraph as one of the many reasons why it is difficult to start a new garden:  "Given that most people treat plants like pets and are reluctant to kill any apart from those rather arbitrarily defined as ‘weeds’, it is truly hard to imagine how any of these clean slate, ethically sound gardens are supposed to emerge."

People treat plants like pets!  Of course!  ProfessorRoush treats plants like pets!   I nurture them, I feed them, and I water them; I'm thrilled when they grow and perform well and I'm disappointed when they crap in their beds.  An epiphany, like so many others, right before my eyes the entire time.   Here I am, veterinarian and gardener for a lifetime, and I've never realized that so, so many of my plants are pets.  The rose, 'Hope for Humanity', pictured above and at left, blooming so perfectly red and bountiful, is a favorite of my treasured plant pets.   So is the 'Blizzard' mockorange below, covered in white and perfuming the garden.  And the fringed and crazy 'Pink Spritzer' peony, a wild Klehm creation, seen at the feet of the mockorange and in the closeup at the bottom of this blog.  Inside the house, a collection of different Schlumbergera and a few pet orchids make up the indoor garden.

'Blizzard' Mockorange

In fact, as I take my new pet-colored vision further, I now realize that I don't have a garden, I have a zoo.  ProfessorRoush's garden isn't about having just a few treasured and well-cared for companions, it's about collecting the uncommon or unusually beautiful, a thousand individual specimens to draw my attention and time.  There are few repeating plants in my garden; repeating families or genus's perhaps, but few cultivars that I divide and spread in repeating waves.   A few daylilies perhaps, particularly vigorous and worthy, and the rampantly suckering 'Dwarf Pavement' rose have multiple locations in my garden, but where some have a single viburnum, I have 6 or 8, all different species and versions.   How many different peonies or daylilies or roses do I really have?   I've lost count. 

'Pink Spritzer'

ProfessorRoush's Garden Menagerie.   Come take a horticultural safari with me, my friends, as we stroll in the evening around the garden.  Knautia macedonia has made the front bed a burgundy pincushion, soon ready to pass the torch on to Orientpet (notice the group name?) lilies.   Roses are fading from their first flush of flowers and peonies are dropping petals everywhere in the back garden, while the daylily buds stretch towards the sky, soon to dominate the scene.  Three different Mockorange's are in bloom now, in three different beds, and the Russian sage and the Persicaria polymorpha are demanding attention from viewers.  Grasses and sedges aim for fall, biding time and withholding flowers until the heat of August forces them out.

Plants as pets.   Gardens as menageries.  Maybe not so socially-conscious, but satisfying and educational at every turn.   That's my style.

Not La Ville de Bruxelle?

Well, it's a pretty rose, but it isn't likely 'La Ville de Bruxelles', now, is it?  In my search for Old Garden Roses and Hybrid Rugosa roses that might have a chance to resist the Rose Rosette virus, I had ordered this Damask from Heirloom Roses in 2019.  Last year, it bloomed just a couple of blooms, a small wisp of a plant, and I was primarily only concerned for its survival.  This year, it's blooming profusely, and whatever it is, it doesn't seem to be what it's supposed to be, at least not yet.

The color is not far off 'La Ville de Bruxelles', a clear deep pink, and the rose only bloomed once last year (and will, I presume only once this year), but everything else about it is wrong.  These blooms are not the tightly packed, fully double blooms of the Damask, nor are they the expected 3-4" size.   The blooms on my specimen are easily 5-6" in diameter, loosely organized and semi-double to double, appearing more modern than any Damask rose I've seen in the past.   They open, as you can see below, to a more flat form with golden center stamens and an often white strip   The foliage of the bush is matte green, and healthy as anything, but the canes are long and sprawling, with small thorns.   Fragrance is strong, with sweet OGR tones, certainly no hint of the spice of a rugosa. 

For someone who likes to know the denizens of his garden, it's a bit frustrating to receive a rose that isn't it's namesake, and it is unusual for Heirloom Roses to mislabel a rose in my experience.  I suppose it's possible that this bush will gain more double blooms as it grows and matures, but that sumptuous color is just far too perfectly pink for an Old Garden Rose, no mauve at all, just pink.  And the size!  These blooms are enormous, bigger than any other rose in my garden.   I considered Hybrid Perpetual 'Paul Neyron' due to the blooms size, but, again, the color is just too perfect and even 'Paul Neyron' is more double than this seems to be; not to mention that my rose doesn't rebloom as a Hybrid Perpetual does.   A cross between something modern and Rosa gallica is, I think, a far more likely provenance for this unknown creature of my garden. 

I shouldn't care, I know, since it shows no signs of Rose Rosette Disease, is cane hardy without protection from a very cold winter, and it has great color and fragrance.  What more can I really ask of a rose?  It will stay in my garden, just another mystery among mislabeled plants and my sometimes inaccurate plant maps.  In fact, I should just close my trap and accept it, because the bees certainly seem to like it.  Nature knows best.