Weather Woes and Wrong Roses

I realize it may be often boring when ProfessorRoush complains about the lack of rain in Kansas in the summer, but bear with me a minute, and I'll let you feel a bit of my pain, and then I'll throw in a gorgeous gratuitous rose picture to end on today on a (semi)-high note.   Down and up, your emotions on a never-ending rollercoaster along with my Kansas blog.

Frustration, thy name is moisture.   Necessary and welcome whenever, wetness in this area of the country is a gift, a blessing from the sky however and whenever it comes.  I'm at the point of happily accepting the 80 mph winds and hailstorms and occasional sheltering in the basement as long as it brings rain.   Since May 30th, we had not any rain in this area, a period of drought that denied daylilies and blackberries any chance for full development.

Worst of all, my weather app had promised a decent chance of rain every day this past 10 days.  You would logically think that if there was a 30% chance of rain each day, it would rain one day in every three, correct?   Well, in Manhattan Kansas, that logic doesn't compute.   Oh, it rained on most days, it just rained all around us.   After watching storms last week go around us, I started snapping screenshots of the radar this week for proof.   I'm the blue dot in these shots, and the top photo is Tuesday, the second Thursday (flooding north, nothing on us), and this one at right is Friday morning.   My weather app actually said it was sprinkling here Friday as I screenshot the radar.   I evidently need a new weather app.   Or my weather app needs to learn from its poor performance and improve.

Finally, Friday night this storm at the left developed in early evening and held true for a half inch of rain and then a second storm rolled over in the middle of the night and laid down another 1.5 inches.   Saturday morning I could almost hear my buffalograss applauding as I stepped outside.   I've now skipped two days of watering new roses and I think the browning grass is already greening up.  If there's a bright side to the drought, the lawn didn't grow at all last week and so I can skip a week of mowing.   That radar-imaged storm you see pictured at the left looked like this as it moved in: 

Doesn't that look beautiful?   I considered dancing naked in the rain, but realized the neighbors might talk.

In other news, I do have a number of new roses growing this summer, courtesy of the Home Depot "Minor Miracle" that I wrote about earlier and this one is one of the new ones, a fabulous florescent orange-red semi-double that screams "watch me" in a exhibitionist display of pride.  On the downside, I don't know what variety it really is.  Two of the labeled Home Depot 'Hope for Humanity' roses look like this and they're obviously not 'Hope for Humanity'.   My best guess is that I now have two 'Morden Fireglow', although the foliage seems more glossy than I remember that rose.  In its favor, the stems are red like 'Morden Fireglow' and the color is so unique, it is hard for it to be anything else.  Certainly, this isn't a reborn 'Tropicana' and time and winter hardiness may reveal its secret identity.   Of similar concern is that the labeled 'Rugelda' I purchased appears to be a 'Hope for Humanity' instead.  The 'Morden Sunrise' and 'Zephirine Drouhin' seem correct, so they're not all labeled wrong, but 'John Cabot' hasn't bloomed and isn't acting like a climber.  Who knows what I've got?

I said I would end on a (semi)-high note, right?   You didn't really expect a fully happy ending from this blog did you?   After all the times you've been here?   My mystery rose is a beautiful rose indeed and certainly provides some color to contrast the subtle daylilies, but is it really too much to expect that if I'm paying $13 or $14 for a big-box-store rose, it would be labeled correctly?   How hard is that?

Hello, I'm Orange....ish

'Kaveri'

While mowing this morning, ProfessorRoush was also assessing the garden.  I've been absent for nearly a week and the garden has gone the way of teenagers who have slipped from parental oversight; in short, chaos and a sense of testing limits is radiating from the garden. We've lacked rain for nearly 2 months, the paltry singular decent rain of a couple weeks back merely a fond memory now.   Summer heat seems to be moving in for an extended visit, like a troublesome relative who doesn't know when to leave.   Weeds are hellbent on world domination.  

Asclepias tuberosa

I can see the buffalograss thinking about dormancy amidst the drought, and the redbud leaves are curled at nightfall, stressed and sullen.  The first rose flush has fled to the past, accompanying the peonies and lilacs along into memories.  Oriental and Asiatic lilies are budded up, but yet to color.   The garden is green, but not the green of early spring, it's now the deep green of late summer, spotted here and there by a hint of yellowed or browned foliage that has been burnt by the hot sun.   One has to look hard to see color, but it's there, hidden in shade, the early daylilies and lilies and perennials vying for attention beneath the shade.

You have to look closely beneath this volunteer Redbud in back of my house, but deep in the darkness there are small fires burning.   The prolific 'Kaveri' lilies are in full bloom, orange and rust-red in ostentatious display.   Lower, a self-seeded Asclepias tuberosa (Butterfly MilkWeed) has escaped from the prairie into my border and I happily provide refuge for it in exchange for the spectacular play of sunlight and shade on its blooms and for the butterflies it attracts.    Another neighbor under the tree, the daylily 'Spacecoast Color Scheme' exerts its own orange-red theme on the venue.  Floral fires in my landscaping are, this week, the pride of my garden. 

'Space Coast Color Scheme'

Beyond these, I welcome the daylily season that's just getting started and the Knautia macedonia taking over my front landscaping, and the Shasta Daisies blooming and all the other minor garden players who contribute to the daily symphony.  There is, however, no rest for this gardener in the foreseeable future.  The second flush of roses is coming and I noted today the first Japanese Beetle on a 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup', a find that extended this weekend's garden chores with the necessity (in my view) of a good spraying of all the roses.  I am still in last year's mindset of all-out Beetle genocide, and so I sprayed and poisoned a good portion of the roses in the first preemptive strike of the season.   And then I rushed in and showered them pyrethrins away, leaving the garden to find its own way for another week.  

2023 Manhattan EMG Garden Tour

I'm not sure, in these days of 5G cellular and massive bandwidth, whether anyone needs the warning anymore, but I suppose there are those still out there on 26K modems, so Warning:  picture heavy!  Click on the individual pictures if you want to see them in more glory then these small blog photos!

Yesterday, June 10th, was our annual Manhattan Area Garden Tour, and Thursday, June 8th was the "pretour" for the EMGs, so ProfessorRoush was on picture duty.  I took about 290 pictures on Thursday evening and over 600 hundred on the Tour and kept 836 for the homeowners and EMG's to view.  A handful are here for your enjoyment.   Each garden on the Tour gets a commemorative stone like the one above. I'll bet, however, that unlike this homeowner most of you don't think about painting stones to look like ladybugs in your gardens!   The rain prior to the Tour was a little tough on the flowers, but this 'Peach Drift' seemed to take it in stride.

This year's Tour was cloudy and took place after a hard rain the night before, while the pretour was pre-rain and sunny, which made for some gloomy tour photos that were challenging.   The photo above, my favorite of the entire set, was taken at the Thursday pretour, and the evening light through the redbuds was a happy accident which I tried my best to recreate on Saturday.   It's just impossible, however, to follow good photography principles when the light doesn't cooperate (tour photo at right).   This pair, taken of the same area in different light, is quite illustrative of the importance of good filtered light in photography.

The Garden Tour had the usual distribution of features and focal points around each garden.  One house had both a running water feature and a koi pond.   The artificial heron at this water feature looks at home in the environment but is perpetually disappointed at the lack of prey in this short waterfall.

I always make sure I get photographs of the views through garden gates and at entrances to gardens.   The gates that lead us into the garden are often as beautiful as what lies beyond them, and they often reflect the character of the garden to come.

A couple of houses had deep enough features to support water lilies, but on the actually cloudy day of the tour, it was difficult to find one blooming.  I struggled just for you, however, taking multiple exposures to grab this photo for your enjoyment.

There's always a potting bench here and there among the houses, and this Tour featured two of them tucked away from sight.   This one is my favorite of the two, although it's a little too tidied up to be believable among the garden!

The garden containing the potting bench above really needed it, however, since it contained a vast multitude of container plants in a shady sitting area.  I loved the garden but I'm glad I'm not the one who has to keep all the containers watered there, containers including wall pots and window pots and porch containers and hanging pots.

Live fauna were lacking on this year's Tour, the cloudy and cooler weather keeping bees and flies and butterflies all suppressed.  In the pretour sunny evening I was able, however, to catch this swallowtail indulging in a large planting of milkweed.  He left me a little frustrated even then because he wouldn't climb up to the top of a bloom but kept hanging off the bottom.

Garden tours are always learning events as well, and at this one I learned that my iPhone 13 can identify almost any plant and completely free of charge.  I overheard a conversation between a gardener and a visitor complaining that his ID app needed an expensive upgrade and so my world just became a lot easier.  If you haven't discovered it, take a picture, like the one at the right, and then open it in Photos.  At the bottom, you'll see an information icon "i".   Click on the "i" and it gives information about the photo, but it also has a link to "Look Up--Plant" which correctly identifies this picture as "Veronica". 

Some gardeners, as always, are really good a creating vignettes and themes in their gardens.  Bunnies and Beatrix Potter held sway in the garden containing this bench.

I finished off, as always this year, at the K-State Gardens where plants and expensive bronze statues mix as one perfect unit to show off the things that grow best in Kansas, like Mr. Crane here in the fake swamp with milkweed beside it.   Yesterday, my thought here was that if I survive the Apocalypse, be it zombie- or diety-driven, I'm coming here soon after to make sure these bronze statues have a good home and are well cared for, especially the "Rose Girl" statue who graces the entrance to the rose garden and who would make a good companion to the cement maidens in my own garden.

I bid you, at the end of this long post, adieu, until we meet again, with Old Glory as it proudly flew over one of the gardens yesterday, gardens and gardeners alike expressing their freedom of expression and the beauty of creation on the 2023 Extension Master Gardener's Manhattan Area Garden Tour. 

Purple Poppy Pain?

The little devilish side of ProfessorRoush sometimes enjoys asking the uncomfortable questions, just to watch the answer-maker squirm a little, to make them question themselves.   I'm not at all above playing devil's advocate either, espousing opinions with which I don't agree, just, once more, to draw out that philosophical moment of realization.

So I ask today, how many of you would give up the beauty of a nice stand of Purple Poppy Mallow (Callirhoe involucrata) in order to attain that perfect thick sheen of uninterrupted blue-grass of fescue that seems to be the suburban ideal?  Purple Poppy Mallow is a sprawling wildflower in my lawn, a smothering thug which makes it hard for the buffalograss to truly compete with it for light and water, but one which blooms in drought and in rain, reliably opening to sunshine and shutting down at night.   Yes, many, myself included, weed out the dandelions and thistles from our lawns, and some even fight a continual battle against clover, and many readers here would be horrified at the stand of Goat's Beard (Tragopogon dubius) that I'm letting grow in the "rain gardens" of taller grass in the side yards, but I believe we should and would all draw the line at purple mallow.  

One of the benefits of simply mowing the prairie grass and not starting a "lawn" when we built our house is that I've always had a long section of Purple Poppy Mallow (left) near the driveway, which is slowly expanding across the cut lawn and has jumped this year into adjacent areas.  I suppose I'm selecting for it by mowing high, and this year I'm mowing higher than ever with my new lawnmower.   Right or wrong, my old lawnmower, set at 4 inches, mowed a lot lower than the new one at 4 inches, and I'm taking advantage of the high cut to conserve moisture and to try to help the buffalograss to spread.   The mallow seems to like being mowed high as well, the sprawling or "reclining" stems surviving each mowing.

Despite the almost-complete perfection of Mrs. ProfessorRoush as a spouse, she does lack in her environmental awareness and has in the past complained about the mallow as a weed in her vision of lawn perfection.   We'll see this year if she notices as the Purple Poppy Mallow achieves June dominance in my blooming landscape.   Although she doesn't or rarely gardens, she's not above lodging complaints with the Gardener-In-Residence if she believes something doesn't measure up to her standards.

Are you squirming at the site of the mallow stand, pictured above?  Feeling a contentment that the world is still okay, or having a little discomfort or pain?   To Purple Poppy Mallow or not, that is the question!

Beauty Pageants

'Marie Bugnet'

ProfessorRoush, at the beginning of a new gardening year, believes he has hit on a new theme that will at least temporarily increase his post frequency and simultaneously provide you with fitting flower pornography to fill your fancy.  As things bloom, I am simply going to run a series of beauty pageants of each grouping, leaving you to judge the winners for yourselves.  I'm optimistic that minstrels will indubitably hereafter sing songs of this season and look back on 2023 as, "The Year of the GardenMusings Beauty Pageants." 

'Marie Bugnet'

This week, as a start, we'll set aside any accusations of color bias and go with a simple "White Rugosa Pageant."   So, you get to look, you get to salivate, and you get to choose;  which one is the "Miss Gardening Universe" of the years' white Hybrid Rugosas?

'Blanc Double de Coubert'

First up this year is, as always, 'Marie Bugnet', she of shy nature and short form, blooming first for me in the annual garden race, nearly 2 weeks ago.  Marie struggles annually a bit, lacking vigor but persistent nonetheless, and I think she's doing better now that I'm pampering her with a little extra water and care each year.  She holds perfect white blooms without a spot of pink or brown on healthy foliage.  Is she your choice to win the double crown this year, the race to be the first to bloom AND the most beautiful?   Just look at that delicate center above, golden pistils held in perfect pristine order surrounded by stately stamens. 

'Blanc Double de Coubert'

Marie was followed quickly a week later by my 'Blanc Double de Coubert', a rather stocky gal of medium height, as round as she is tall.  Blanc has obviously bloomed out of her bloomers, as you can see from all the petals on the ground, although there are plenty of bountiful flowers left to fall.   Gertrude Jekyll, as I've noted before, thought Blanc was the whitest rose in existence and I won't quibble over that title when this rose is blessed by sunshine and heat as she blooms.  Sadly, a little rain and she turns from the purest virginal bride to the browned wilting and damaged unfortunate that fate decrees, turned out and soiled by the fickle weather of spring.  I'm a little biased, but isn't the pistil area in Blanc a little messier than Marie's?   And what a mess she leaves on the ground!

'Sir Thomas Lipton'

Tall and stately 'Sir Thomas Lipton' has recently joined the ball, the perfectly white blooms of the 123-year-old gentleman (introduced to commerce by Conard-Pyle in 1900) held higher than my head atop the lean and thorny canes.   I like Sir Thomas more than most rose aficionados seem to (particularly Suzanne Verrier who called him "ungraceful...with the nastiest thorns imaginable"), but I think he probably does better in my arid Zone 5 climate than elsewhere in the US.   As a gentleman, he perhaps shouldn't be part of the pageant, but I'll choose not, in this moment, to be sexist and deny him an equal chance for pageant glory.  After all, a rose is a rose and their flowers contain both male and female organs, whatever gendered moniker we chose to hang on them.

'Sir Thomas Lipton'

Those are your contestants for the week.   Hybrid Rugosa 'Polareis' has started a few meager blooms but the night chill keeps them more pink than white, so I'm leaving her out.  And some of the Pavement roses that are near-whites are blooming, but I'm holding them for inclusion in a Pavement Rose Pageant.  Of the three presented here, which is your choice, my gardening friend?  Will you stand against the opinions of well-known garden writers and go with 'Marie Bugnet'?  Disdain the Canadian-born and stick with 'Sir Thomas Lipton'?   Or follow the herd supporting the strumpet, 'Blanc Double de Coubert'? 

Grand Opening

Come one, come all, to the 'Prairie Moon' Ball!
White and cream petals closed at each morning,
Exposed golden stamens are shining each noon.

Pistils and purpose are packed in the center,

Surrounded with silk and recalling the moon.
Bumbling bombers target the larder, 
The stored sun on tap each new day of the world.

My hopes and my dreams are caught in its glory,

The promise of love in its petals uncurled.

ProfessorRoush was perfectly pleased to see all these early peony buds survive three days of wind tightly wound and undamaged and was even more thrilled when they all opened together, virginal and coyly greeting the sun this first fine windless morning.  'Prairie Moon' was a whim purchase several years ago, a decision made based on a thought.  "Its named 'Prairie Moon' and was born in 1959, and here I am, ProfessorRoush, and I was born in 1959 and I live on the prairie."   I had to have it, don't you see, since each of us is sixty-three?

Often, this peony blooms sparingly and fall quickly, but oh, this year, those white blooms shine over the prairie like the glow of a lighthouse, drawing man and insect into adoration.  The bumblebees were all over this peony today, collecting precious pollen as fast as the plant can make it, the very air vibrating with their humming admiration of the blossoms.

The pictured peony above left and here at left, was captured around 7:20 a.m., the sun just risen and the peony still cold and closed.  Below, the midday sun has worked its magic, opening 10 or more smaller suns against the shiny, healthy green foliage. The harsher sun at 1:00 p.m. whitewashes the petals, chasing away the earlier blush and creams of their undersides.  Now open, the warmed pistils and warmed bumblebees compete for the pollen, the former fertilized, the latter loaded with food.  These blossoms will last until the rain predicted two days from now, moisture desperately needed and desired in our drought, but temporarily unwelcome to me as long as 'Prairie Moon' blooms.

There is nothing quite so joyful to me as this simple enormous peony; white as pure as a bleached cotton sheet, blooms as big as a hand, petals thick and impervious to the sun.  My impetuous purchase a decade and more hence has paid its value back in splendor a thousand times over, the debt forgiven anew each May when it briefly blooms the flowers of heaven inlaid with gold. 

Magnolias in Mind

'Ann' Magnolia

 ProfessorRoush is trapped indoors once again today, by wind and cold in the boorish 4's; 40 mph wind gusts and 40º temps.  The temperatures are quite a change from the 80º temperatures of the middle of the week, but the wind has been ravaging the countryside all week.  Thank heaven, however, that the cold was accompanied by some welcome rain Friday night and Saturday morning, and the forecast shows more rain coming this week.   Needless to say, it's about time.

'Ann' in the garden

The warm temperatures of the past week, however, made the magnolias suddenly pop.   Feast your eyes on my magnolia harvest for the year, both 'Jane' and 'Ann' going into full bloom almost overnight.  Now if those thick petals can just stand the wind for a few days so I can enjoy them!  'Ann' pictured here first, is the darker pink of the two, while my 'Jane' is a little older, larger, and less vibrant. Particularly in the photos of 'Jane' and 'Yellow Bird', you can appreciate the storms swirling around in the Kansas skies.

'Jane' Magnolia

'Jane' and 'Ann' are two of the so-named "Little Girl" series bred at and released by the National Arboretum.  The vision of Dr. William Kosar and Dr. Francis de Vos, they were were crosses of Magnolia liliiflora and Magnolia stellata cultivars and were released into commerce in 1968.  They are cold-hardy to -30ºF and were flower about 2 weeks after Magnolia stellata, giving northern american gardeners a chance to enjoy some of the fragrance and beauty that the south takes for granted.  They also are said to tolerate "heavy clay soils and dry areas", so they were seemingly tailored for my Kansas environment.    

           

'Jane' in the garden

I first wrote "fragrance and grace" in the sentence above, but upon further thought, "grace" hardly describes the thickness and weight of the magnolia petals.  The fragrance of most cultivars, also, is less than graceful and more like being hit with a sledge; hardly subtle at it's best moments but I am happy to get lost in it every spring, overdosing on the sweetness that is so strong it's like inhaling honey.

'Yellow Bird'

There were actually 8 "Little Girls", but I never see 'Betty', 'Judy', 'Randy', 'Ricki', 'Susan', or 'Pinkie' offered for sale.   As much as I enjoy and appreciate 'Ann' and 'Jane', I should search out the others.  'Betty' seems to be the darkest pink-red, and 'Pinkie' almost white, but the images of the others are almost indistinguishable to me.

'Yellow bird'

And out there in the garden, just beginning to bloom, is my beloved 'Yellow Bird' Magnolia.   Normally about two weeks later than my other magnolias, 'Yellow Bird' is opening at a slower pace, but it also was stirred into action by the warm winds.  It normally opens it's blooms aloneside it's foliage, but this year the flowers seem to be in more of a hurry than their green backdrops.  And the first few are a little frost-damaged or rain-damaged, or something.  Ah well, they are still so perfectly, so lightly, yellow that I can hardly breathe in their presence. 

P.S.  In the "Jane in the garden"  and "Yellow Bird in the garden photos, the blurring of the backdrop was a happy accident, created by placing my iPhone camera in Portrait mode and then selecting "Stage Light" as the lighting filter.   Pretty neat, eh? 

Pack Rat Purgatory

(fair warning;  long and lots of pictures and links to previous blogs)

If there is a Hell, ProfessorRoush is convinced that it is populated primarily by pack rats, and somehow I must have gone on into the afterlife, because I am living right in the midst of it, a pack rat purgatory.  I know, I know, my war on these little furry demons is a recurrent theme on this blog, but this is serious, this is Armageddon with rats riding the 4 horses.   You all know that I nearly lost my farm tractor to the fiends, that I've burned out a juniper and a spruce and eliminated an entire hedge of boxwoods in major tactical moves, that my 'Red Cascade' was overrun by the vermin in one skirmish, that I've created an alliance with local rat predators in a failed attempt at pack rat genocide, and that, at times, the evil hellions even attempt to invade the house and porch.   Heck, I have had to cement the base of every downspout where it meets the drainage tubes because the little monsters were chewing into the plastic drains and ruining the runoff from the house!

A couple of years ago, I even allowed myself to dream that I was winning the war, but I either let my guard down recently or the malignant spirits of my garden have simply outflanked me.  It all started last fall when I noticed that my wire tower of Sweet Autumn Clematis, so beautiful in its youth, was looking, pardon the pun, a little ratty (top right).  It was evident that the pack rats had built a nest in it, hidden by the vining clematis and the wire, and had established a beachhead in my back yard again.   I resolved initially to deal with it this spring, plotting to burn out the nest at the time of our spring burns.

But I had not anticipated the damage they've caused this winter.   Just look, above left, at the damage the little bas@#$ds caused to the Juddii viburnum next door.   And look close, here, at the tunnel leading underneath the clematis tower, doubtless to an underground condominium filled with rat feces and urine and young vermin.

At the same time, last fall and all winter, small piles of rat turds began building up each week just to the right of the front door on the porch. It was definitely an "in your face" move if ever I saw one.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush and I were disgusted and angered. We tried traps and killed several, I have rat poison out everywhere, and I was spraying commercial rodent repellants in the area by the gallon.   And still the turds came, deposited at night, silently and blatantly right near the welcome mat.

As the past two days and one day last weekend were nice enough to work in the garden, I've been outside, clearing and cleaning the garden, planning a nice summer with flowers and calm.  Here, in a gentle scene, is the walkway leading to the front door, flanked by two 'MoonShadow' euonymus that I really adore.  Isn't it lovely, even before the growth flush of spring?

That euonymus on the left?   Here's a closeup.  Another new pack rat condominium, right under my nose and in one of my favorite evergreens!  Now I know where the rats were living!

Worse yet, this hole you see at the left  is just to the left of the last two stairs into the house, just a few feet from the rodent bathroom area and 6 feet the other direction from the euonymus.   You can't see it, but the hole leads right into the drainage tube from the downspout cemented into the stairs.   They not only created a tunnel from their house to mine, they connected the tunnel to the downspout, their own Autobahn in my front garden! 

The last thing I did today was tear apart the rat home in my euonymus, fill the rat hole with a plug and then soil (dumping a few cubes of rat poison in first), and then I doused everything with the rodent repellent and I added a special brew of my own that has been effective in repelling deer.   If they're going to pee on my house, then I believe I have the right to pee on theirs.   I feel that I'll win this round, but I'm reacting defensively and likely losing the war, like the Spartans against the Persians at Thermopylae, or, more recently, Ukraine against Russia.  I need to think about offense.   Miniature intelligent robots, or an army of hyperaggressive terriers, something has to work, doesn't it?

I will never surrender.  This is only a setback.  Keep telling yourself that, ProfessorRoush.....