Christmas Conspiracies

While ProfessorRoush is usually a reasoned and contemplative individual (please pay no attention to Mrs. ProfessorRoush's cackling in the background), I am not ashamed to admit that the occasional attractive conspiracy theory does obtain some small foothold of territory in my mental processes.  In contrast, however, to those crackpots who insist that there was never a moon landing or those who maintain that the earth is flat, despite all the growing evidence against either view, I feel compelled to reveal, here for the first time, a real, personally documented, grand conspiracy. 

I'm positive that all of you, all gardeners and shoppers, all homeowners and plantspeople, have been experiencing a great sense of unease as Thanksgiving approached and local store aisles filled with holiday decorations and unwanted unnecessities, yet you've all likely been unable to pinpoint the cause of your disquiet.  I'll admit that I shared that underlying apprehension with you, until suddenly a great revelation appeared to me last week and, to my eternal shock I became aware, you might say "woke", that one of the great mysteries of civilization had been developing right in front of my eyes; a mystery I shall now reveal.

WHERE THE HECK ARE ALL THE CHRISTMAS CACTUSES THIS YEAR?   Normally, by this time, every checkout aisle and every floral display area would be filled with wilting but blooming $6-$9 pots of colorful red and white and pink and fuchsia Christmas cacti raised especially to capture your whimsy and your excess cash during your vulnerable moments of holiday shopping.  This year, there are none available, not one anywhere near Manhattan Kansas, a fact which I confirmed by personally visiting every big box store, grocery store, and hardware store in the area this week.  

I started out on this conspiracy track innocently, merely wanting to see if a new color or variety was available to add to my collection and brighten Mrs. ProfessorRoush's windows, yet the absence of the cacti became more evident with every store I searched.  Querying the internet for an explanation has been similarly unsatisfactory.  There have been no media reports of mass destruction of Christmas Cactus nursery facilities, nor scientific papers on sudden mutations of fungal wilt that threaten the extinction of the cacti group.  Asking Google the simple question "Where have the Christmas cacti gone?" is rewarded only by 10,591,251 occurrences inanely explaining how to make a cactus bloom, and it undoubtedly results in one's name being added to some secret list somewhere as well as causing your mail and social media feed to fill up with hundreds of ads for plant sales and fertilizer.  

We will call it the Great Missing Christmas Cactus Conspiracy of 2022, or "CCC-22", and later generations will remember this blog entry as the initiation of the movement alerting the world to their loss.  It is a fact that Government officials are completely silent on the issue and appear to be taking no action to investigate the mystery.  This is surely an occasion for Congressional inquires and appointment of special prosecutors if ever there were, don't you agree?  The President, Dr. Fauci, or at least the Illuminati must be behind the disappearance.  No, wait, it's COVID-19, isn't it?   SARS-CoV-2 was not developed to destroy democratic societies, save Medicare, and unleash the New World Order, nay, the ultimate goal by some powerful fiendish billionaire Christmas-cactus-hater was for the virus to wipe out annual production and commerce in Christmas cacti, wasn't it?

If you don't hear from me again, you'll know I touched a nerve somewhere.   Wake up, everyone, before it's too late to save the cacti!  Write your Congresspersons, call your Senators, and let's make our Christmas-cactus-loving-voices heard!

Guilty Gardening

ProfessorRoush is embarrassed, embarrassed I say, by his own recent display of poor taste.  I blame it on perfect product positioning, I blame it on a weakness for impulse purchases, I see it as a culmination of  poor life choices.  No, forget those, it is surely all due to the coronavirus quarantine.  Wants have replaced needs and frivolities have replaced necessity in the service of boredom.

For whatever reason, I have twice recently succumbed to the wiles of blatant consumerism.  The first was when I spied this plastic Zen Flamingo during a grocery run for milk and eggs.  I did not ask myself why a large grocery would be selling garden statues in the middle of a pandemic.  I did not ask myself where I would place it in the garden or more importantly WHY I wanted it.  I did not remind myself that I hate fake flamingos in the garden and in the past have poked fun at every pink plastic abomination I've seen.   I simply looked for the price and, of course, found it on sale, marked down to acceptably-priced luxury from its original fictitious retail level.

And then, later, there was this over-adorned solar garden lantern that I came upon while dodging the gauntlet of coronavirus-ridden zombies at Walmart.  I picked it up and put it back thrice before my weakened soul surrendered to its siren song and I came back to my senses as it was being placed into the back of the Jeep.  It is rather unique and a focal point in the garden for those moments when I choose to admire the garden while stumbling around in pitch darkness, but its rechargeable solar nature does not outweigh its garish construction, nor that I suspect it will barely last a season before disintegrating into worthless rust and plastic.  I apologize in advance to the Seventh Generation.

The worst part of these narcissistic indulgences is that my guilt for breaking every self-imposed rule of tasteful garden practice has not yet caught up with the internal endorphin release from their purchases.  Fresh from the damage of late spring freezes and snowfalls, a dispirited gardener has no apparent limit to shame.  I would argue that the garden lantern is, after all, quite pretty in a faux-Vegas-glitter sort of way.  Moreover, the Zen Flamingo makes a fitting partner to my long beloved Totally Zen Frog, don't you think?  Two small echoed passages joining in the symphony of my garden?

Alternatively, I could just own up to a complete collapse of any sense of decent garden style and refinement and place all the blame on COVID-19.  Surely, that sounds much better than "I lost my mind during quarantine."

Interesting Times

I was mowing the other day, my commonplace first mowing of the year that consists more of whacking down precocious weeds than cutting actual green grass, and as my mind was wandering during the interminable yard laps, I was mulling over the COVID 19 pandemic and my mind recalled the phrase "May you live in interesting times."  We've probably all heard that backhanded blessing in the past and not thought much about it, but right now, in the midst of "stay-at-home" and global economic and human catastrophe, my immediate thought was "What adrenalin-junkie, world-class ADHD nutball authored that statement?"  Benjamin Franklin?  Edgar Allan Poe? Rasputin?



Curious, as I'm sure you now are, I stopped the mower, whipped out my trusty iPhone, and quickly google-searched my way to the conclusion that "may you live in interesting times" is widely regarded as the English translation of a traditional Chinese curse.  Isn't that just all kinds of ironic, given how and where this pandemic started?






I don't think I need a national poll to find out that none of us really want to live in interesting times.  We don't really want to go through pandemics or 9/11 terrorist attacks or foreign wars or Recession or the Challenger explosion.  I'm pretty sure we just want to live our lives, love our parents, spouses and children, be productive and kind to others, and leave the world a little better.





I've been so engrossed in the "interesting times" that it took me until yesterday to realize my Redbuds haven't bloomed this year.  Last week it appeared they were getting close, but they have done nothing yet and my other magnolias have also not followed up on the beauty of my Star Magnolia this year.  Tonight, I took a closer look at the flower buds on the Redbuds and saw, as you can see from the two pictures above, that the cold dip into the 20's of last weekend has killed the buds, all but a very few who will likely get smashed by the cold snap and late snow coming this weekend.  This 'Jane' Magnolia was also quite damaged.  She's struggling to come back, but if you click on the picture and look closer you'll see three brown buds for every mangled blossom that has managed a little color.  I'm not even going to talk about the damage to her sister 'Ann'.

I don't know how I'm going to tell Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  She might not even notice the magnolia didn't bloom, but the redbuds are special in her heart and their bloom a special time for her and she will miss them dreadfully this year.  Daylilies and hollyhocks, beautiful as they are in mid-summer, just won't fill that void for her.  Interesting times?  No, she will just see it as disappointment.

I'm really concerned at present that the flowering crabapple blooms at top, and my just-opening Red-blossomed Peach, will be walloped this weekend, further victims of this lost springtime.  Interesting times, my posterior patootie.  Oh yeah, and these wormy web-things are now active.  Why doesn't the intermittent freezes kill them?  I want a beautiful garden, not one of "interesting times."