Wee Bit O' Wind

A week or so back, I was awakened at 2:00 a.m. by the rising wind outside my window and, seconds later, the patter of rain against the pane.  Knowing that we desperately needed the rain, I smiled, relaxed, and went promptly back to sleep.  

Okay, okay, that's an understatement at best, if not a complete misrepresentation of the incident.    If I am fully disclosing what happened, the wind suddenly began to howl, there was a thunderclap that sounded simultaneously with a lightning flash that seemed to strike right above the bedroom ceiling, and I instantaneously levitated two feet off the bed and vertically onto the floor.   The rain began to pour like the Second Flood, and the nearby lightning and thunder continued for two hours while I lay awake and fretted that the house would explode into flame at the next bolt.  We haven't seen a lightning storm like that in years.

There were no  storm warnings on the TV or radio or Internet for our area, and so I didn't think much more about it (except to be happy about the 1.9" rain) until I got into the garden this weekend.  There, I saw the true nature of what must have been a straight line gale or downburst during the storm.  My Purple Martin houses were leaning and the bird feeders were askew (picture above, left).  I also lost a portion of a trunk off the Smoke Tree as illustrated (at the top, right).  Worst of all, the wooden post that held up my 'American Pillar' rose snapped off at the base (photo at right).  Replacing it will be a difficult and painful task due to the nature of the prickles on this rose, so keep me in your prayers.

 On the bright side, I recently salvaged a piece of Baltic Brown granite from our kitchen island during a remodeling of the kitchen and I made it into a wind-proof garden bench which, despite its unprotected placement to the north side of the house, stood up well to the worst the storm threw at it.  I think it provides a really nice formal touch to this area.  The new bench also proves once again that gardening in Kansas is often a simple matter of over-engineering and weighty solutions.  So now all I have to do is apply that knowledge and create a cement post for the 'American Pillar' rose, anchored down about forty feet into the bedrock.   That shouldn't be too hard, should it? 

An-ti-ci-pa-tion

Scilla siberica

ProfessorRoush is haunted today.  Haunted by a 1971 top-twenty song by Carly Simon on the album of the same name.  Do you remember it?  Outside today, in a static landscape held hostage by the last gasps of winter chill, the lyrics played over and over in my head, Carly's syrupy tones warming the damp air around me.  Anticipation is said to have been written by Ms. Simon during her wait for a date with the formerly-named Cat Stevens, who is now called Yusuf Islam, although he was born Steven Demetre Georgiou.  Whatever the name of her date, Ms. Simon missed her calling because instead of pining over a wandering minstrel, she could have been writing for Spring-hungry gardeners.  Look at the beginning lyrics:





"We can never know about the days to come
But we think about them anyway
And I wonder if I'm really with you now
Or just chasing after some finer day."



Rose 'American Pillar'

Is that not a perfect description of the gardener's thoughts in late Winter?  Visualizing the garden, not brown and stiff and dreary here at the end of Cold Days, but green and glorious in the coming Summer?  When I walked through my garden today, I wasn't really there most of the time.  I wasn't really talking to those naked rose canes, nor were my finger's caressing the soft bud of that magnolia.   I saw only the rose that will bloom here tomorrow, only the sweet-perfumed magnolia that will soon welcome the warm rains. 





 

'Mohawk' viburnum

And the repeating chorus of the old hit song keeps bringing us back to the present:

"Anticipation, anticipation
Is making me late
Is keeping me waiting"









 

Sedum 'Matrona'

Why, Scilla siberica, are you keeping me waiting?  It's time to open those pale blue buds and color the old gray mulch with the reflection of the sky.  Come on, Viburnum fragrans 'Mohawk', come blow me away yet another year with that otherworldly sweet fragrance.  Daffodils, bring forth the sunshine that hides in your heart and release Spring with your joyful trumpets!

 


Sometimes, I wonder that old gardeners bother to enter their gardens at all during the dark months.  I know, right now, the glorious tulip that will bloom in this spot.   I know that from these tiny thick green leaves, a magnificent Sedum 'Matrona' will bloom to close the door on the Fall garden.  I know...I know...and yet I must see it again.  Or, as Carly put it: 
 "And tomorrow we might not be together
I'm no prophet, Lord I don't know nature's way
So I'll try to see into your eyes right now
And stay right here, 'cause these are the good old days." 



  Thank you, Ms. Simon.  These are indeed the good old days.



Showoffs!

'Carefree Spirit'

The last few roses to bloom for me are streaking into full display right now, so I thought I would take a few moments this morning to look through this year's pictures and identify those roses that I think really made a spectacle of themselves this year.  Not those roses that just bloomed well and often, but roses who literally bloomed so freely that you "couldn't stick a finger into them without hitting a bloom."  There were several of those, and it also struck me that most of the overachievers are also peaking right now, later blooming than most of their cousins.

'Carefree Spirit' is a relative youngster, in its 2nd full summer for me, but already it is living up to its promises. Carefree blooming and with a willing spirit, those are traits we all love in a rose.






The biggest overachiever in my garden may be my miniature climber 'Red Cascade'.  I took this picture this morning and its quality suffers as the eastern sunrise gives it an unnatural orange tint, but take a gander at a rose that is very well-named; a waterfall of bright red flowing over the limestone blocks.



'Red Cascade'

'Ballerina'

Hybrid musk 'Ballerina' is a timeless rose and provides me a more pastel-colored vision to salve the burns on my cornea, but she is still blooming like a champ right now.

'Jeanne Lavoie'

It is not so unusual for classy blooming miniature  'Jeanne Lavoie' to have a first bloom as flush as this one, but once again, she proves that she is a beautiful lass and a workhorse in the garden.  Five feet tall and growing, she should top that trellis by next year.

'American Pillar'

I always look to rambler 'American Pillar' to finish out the show for the first bloom cycle, and again this year, it isn't disappointing me.  This picture, taken this morning, reflects the fact that I didn't properly trim it and tie it up this year, but, regardless, this monster of a rose certainly has its ostentatious side.

'Hunter'

Among the more double-flowered and larger-flowered roses, I have to give special recognition here to red 'Hunter' on the right and bright pink 'Morden Centennial' below, both of which are now fading.  'Hunter' stands proudly among the young Monarda seedlings in the picture, and 'Morden Centennial' is now far past bloom, but they bloomed their heads off in their own times just to make me happy.  Both are always dependable roses for me but their early exhibition this year was more spectacular than I remember ever seeing either of them.  Thank you, girls, for adding a special splash to my rose season!  

'Morden Centennial'

As I scroll through my photos, there were many other well-blooming roses this year, the expected visual bounty from roses such as 'Champlaign' and 'Chuckles' and others, but the roses above were the cream of the crop in my rose parade.  What roses outdid their usual beauty for you this year?  What roses were your showoffs this year?

An American Pillar

For this Labor Day of the year of our Lord 2010, I'd like to highlight a now infrequently seen but delightful rambler, the rose 'American Pillar'.  'American Pillar' has been variously described as being a cross between  R. wichuraiana and the native prairie rose, or R. wichuraiana and an unknown hybrid perpetual, but regardless of its parentage, the result was a once-blooming cold-hardy and disease resistant rambler.  In bloom, it's covered with hundreds of small (1 inch) five-petaled carmine pink flowers with white center eyes and golden stamens. Although it's once-blooming and lacks discernible fragrance, it blooms for a long (3 week) period towards the end of blooming of the other roses, and then leaves behind a number of small orange-red hips for winter interest.  It was introduced by famous rose-breeder Dr. Walter Van Fleet in 1902, so this rose has its centennial well behind it. 

Here in the Flint Hills, 'American Pillar' is unfailingly healthy and makes a monster of a rose.  I've read stories of it rambling around to 30 feet and smothering everything in its path, but here in Kansas new canes reach about 12-16 feet by the end of a season and I seldom grow a cane into year two. In my garden, I train the rose by spiraling it on a ten-foot tall four-by-four post and it regularly threatens to pull the post over under its bulk.  Many new canes arise annually from the base, and since those canes are said to provide the best bloom, I trim out the two-year old canes in favor of the new canes in late winter.  This annual cleaning improves air flow to the otherwise clogged center and gives me an occasion to collect and tie up the new canes which have sprawled over several 'Rugelda' roses, a "White Profusion" buddleia, two rustled cemetery roses and a number of daylilies in the near vicinity.  It makes, as you can see at the right, a stunning display in my garden to highlight the end of the first summer bloom cycle of the roses.  

'American Pillar' is a long-lived rose as well.  Plants set in the ground almost a century ago at the Pierre du Pont estate (now Longwood Gardens) are still climbing over metal arches in a courtyard.  I've grown 'American Pillar' for 9 years now in its present position and it shows no signs of weakness and never needs spraying for fungal disease. 

In the interests of full disclosure, I might not mind it if the rose would weaken, at least a little.  Those vigorous 1/2 inch thick canes are armed with exceedingly vicious thorns and I try to do the annual pruning and lashing up of 'American Pillar' on a particularly cold day so my skin doesn't feel the pricks so much and so that all the blood stops flowing and freezes quickly.  I've had bouts with this rose that leave me looking like I'm one of the victims in a slasher movie, but I wouldn't have it any other way.  Those incredibly thick blooms are simply too gorgeous to turn away from.