Sedum Seasons and Blog Trauma

So, if you think this blog entry looks messed up, you're correct.  Google Blogger made a "new" blog interface and it took me hours to figure out how to wrap text around photos...and it still ain't easy.  And I can't figure out now how to just left align the fourth paragraph.  I can center it, right align it, and justify it, but can't left align it.  Who makes a text editor so bad it won't do that?  And now, if you click on a photo to enlarge it, you can't get back to the post by "esc".  Google needs to fire its Blogger staff because it probably, based on the feedback I've seen, just ruined this portion of the business.  Time will tell if I can stay here or need to start over.

ProfessorRoush surrendered his garden to the fates yesterday.  It is time, past time, that cold weather comes in and puts a stop to this madness, the tangles of Knautia macedonia, morning glory vines, and stiff daylily stems, the decaying leaves of summer clinging desperately to the trees, and the creeping crabgrass trying vainly to slip past the gardener.  I've grown tired of 2020 and dream of renewal, of the clean slate of snow and the crisp air of winter.  My garden remains only in spirit and the color of a few futile sedums, vainly trying to seek the last rays of a dim sun.

These sedums, two among many, caught my eye yesterday while mowing, a shorter bright pink foreground Sedum spectabile 'Brilliant' against the backdrop of a taller sedum that I have on my garden map as Sedum telephium 'Arthur Branch'.  Although the latter lacks the reddish-leaves characteristic of the variety, I don't doubt its identity; it's the right height and early enough in the season that the red coloration is yet hidden.   Both are long-term garden survivors for me, 'Arthur Branch' planted in 2000, the second summer of my garden, and 'Brilliant' in 2001.   I already knew, even in those early years on the prairie, that sedums would stand the test of time and carry me into winter, and so they have, each year.  I have 8 or 10 varieties that take the flowering place of the fickle fall mums in my garden.

It seems easy enough to understand how 'Brilliant' got it's name, but I'm at a loss to explain 'Arthur Branch'.  It seems sure to be named after a gardener, but Google has failed me in my quest to find an origin, providing only a criminal in New York and the fictional Law and Order character played by Fred Thompson, the latter possible since Law and Order first aired in 1990, but neither very likely or satisfying as provenance for a plant name.  My library isn't helping either, Alex Pankhurst's Who Does Your Garden Grow? and other sources failing me.   If anyone knows of the naming source, please let me know so I can add it to the other useless brain tracks in my ever-active curiosity center.  

Sedums aside, I essentially put the garden to bed yesterday, removing peony stakes and garden markers, draining and putting away hoses, sweeping out the garage for winter, pulling up weedy grasses in the garden beds, and finishing last-minute chores such as repainting some peeling trim on the barn.  If it snows tomorrow, I'll be unperturbed, my garden secure and ready for the moment.

In fact, I think all of us, brother and sister gardeners on the planet, are ready for 2020 to end.  The pandemic, the endless election twattle and sports much-ado-about-nothing, all combining to create an early fatigue, this year preceding the color change of leaves.  The death of RBG this week can only make it all worse, the din of both sides in an endless cycle of accusation and reprimand.  Even the sun has dimmed here in Kansas, yielding to the pollution from the relentless California wildfires, 1500 miles away.  Normally, ProfessorRoush laments cold and snow, dreading the onset and the duration, but right now, a little brisk, clear Artic blast seems like just the right prescription to put 2020 out of our misery.

Ravishing Madame Hardy

Over forty posts into this blog and I am remiss by not admitting that while I don't, as a general rule, pick favorites for most things, I do, however, have a favorite rose.  I confess publicly that I love the delectable purity of Madame Hardy.


Madame Hardy

'Madame Hardy' is an 1832 Damask rose that is probably one of the most unique and recognizable roses of all time.  The first indication of her delicate nature is the unique fringed sepals that surround the developing blooms. The blooms open flat and completely, normally revealing a fully double rose of pure white petals around a central green pip, but  in cool weather Madame Hardy seems a little embarrassed about revealing so much of herself at one time and there will be a slight cream or pink blush when she first opens.  Those perfectly formed blooms are held above a light matte green foliage on a bush completely unlike that of modern roses.  Instead of coarse, thick-caned, thorny and stiff legs, Madame Hardy has a perfect vase-like form, with thin long canes that seldom branch, but run from foot to head, and her thorns are reserved and ladylike in their lack of aggressiveness.  And the fragrance!  Sweet honey with overtones of lemon, Madame Hardy has a perfume that is strong and at the same time light upon the senses.  She doesn't beat you with fragrance like an Oriental Lily, she entices you, she lures you, and finally seduces you into worship.  If I were to chose a single word to describe this consummate lady, it would be "elegant."  She blooms only once a year, Madame Hardy, but when she blooms the angels have come to earth and blessed us with a glimpse of heaven. 

Madame Hardy was known to be a special rose from the beginning.  Her breeder, Monsieur Jules-Alexandre Hardy, was the Superintendent of the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris and an acknowledged expert on fruit trees, dabbling in roses on the side.  Some references, including Michael Pollan in Second Nature, a Gardener's Education, state that Monsieur Hardy was the head gardener for the Empress Josephine's rose collections at Malmaison, but the timing seems a bit off to me since Monsieur Hardy was born in 1787 and would only have been 25 years old by the time Josephine died in 1812.   All sources agree that Monsieur Hardy named this rose after his own wife, a testament to his devotion for eternity, and if that was his intention, he couldn't have chosen better.  One source states that the original name for this rose, after his wife, was 'Félicité Hardy', while another source gives the wife's name as Marie-Thérèse Pezard, but regardless, the rose has come to us down the ages as 'Madame Hardy'. According to Alex Pankhurst, in Who Does Your Garden Grow?, "by 1885 there were over six thousand varieties of rose available....that year a French rose journal recommended 'Madame Hardy' as one of the best..."  More recently, the celebrated British rose expert, Graham Thomas, wrote, “This variety is still unsurpassed by any rose.”

Alas, for all rose fanatics, Madame Hardy remains chaste in the garden and won't form hips or contribute pollen to other roses.  She would have undoubtedly been a great source for breeding a line of fantastic modern roses, but leaves us with no rivals, only her own beauty to be admired.