Turnabout Transgression

Turnabout IS fair play, isn't it folks? "Any eye for an eye?" Or is it "all is fair in love and war?"   Whichever the case may be, my post today is a sweet and long-awaited revenge on Mrs. ProfessorRoush, who regularly steals my photos from this blog for her Facebook page and whom, I might add, seldom gives credit for the artful photography she pilfers.  I'm, as you might say, "returning the favor" with my photo-heavy blog today.  Today's words are mine, but the pictures are all from HER Facebook.  Ha!

In my own defense, I couldn't help but download these beauties from Mrs. ProfessorRoush's Facebook because she's really upped her photo game.  Many of these photos are not merely the pictures of pretty flowers that she usually captures, they were COMPOSED, artfully arranged according to classic principles such as placing the subject by the "rule of thirds" and using depth of field.  

Look at the beautifully photographed white Columbine above.  Mrs. PR got it perfectly right, with the most focused bloom precisely placed in the upper left third.   But then, as in the second photo, she incorporated depth of field with the same subject, placing the columbine in perspective against the house and cloudy sky behind it.

A few steps back, a shift of a few degrees, and yet another view echoing the first, but a different subject, this time the 'Batik' irises filling the foreground, framed between the evergreen to the right and the distant River Birch to the left.   She resisted posting the 'Batik' head-on, but instead showed off its abundance, its proliferative nature at bloom time.  I was impressed as well by the framing between the evergreen to the right and the distant River Birch to the left

Here, another example of photographic value of thirds, this nice double-flowered purple columbine, it's unblemished foliage in the lower left third balanced by the out-of-focused green foliage in the upper right and contrasted against the bright flowers on the left of center.   The grounding weight of the columbine foliage at the base of the photo is almost palpable.
  

Mrs. PR has even evoked emotion with her photos!   Can't you just feel here the loneliness of the single native Baptisia australis (Blue Wild Indigo)  among the new prairie grasses, my garden shade house far in the background?   Hear it calling "here I am, here I stand, fragile yet defiant."   What a nice composition and what a vivid message.

 

And what of the contrast of the rustic look of the old trellis that stands attached to my gazebo, here with the newly blooming 'Ramona' clematis?   That trellis is a decade old, weathered, splintered, and, in truth, probably held up only by the young, beautiful and vigorous clematis.  Somehow here, in the back of Mrs. PR's mind, there may be some semblance to the old weathered ProfessorRoush and his eternally young and beautiful bride.  Or is the similarity sitting in the back of my mind?

Gaze for a moment on the perfect pinkness of this 'Scarlett O'Hara' peony in silhouette, all life and color among the healthy green foliage.  Since 'Scarlett O'Hara blooms early and brazenly, I refer to her as Scarlett the Harlot and so I might title this "Silhouette of the Harlot".    Titles are fleeting, but beauty eternal.

We might have had to admonish Mrs. ProfessorRoush this lapse into  the "Oh, Wow" centered composition of my massive and spreading 'Harison's Yellow.'   In her defense it is difficult to ignore the sheer floriferousness and vivid yellow of this Hybrid Spinosissima when she's in full bloom.   But even here, as you can see in the photo below, Mrs. ProfessorRoush suddenly redeemed her artwork, stepping back to use the 'Harison's Yellow' as a mere color spot in the line of the bed connecting with the Cottonwood of the background, framed within the confines of the nearer Purple Smoke Tree to the left and the American Elm to the right.  Bravo! Belisima! Magnifica! Mrs. ProfessorRoush!  

My garden, through another's eyes, through a lover's eyes, is new again.

Photo Thiwivery

Effective immediately, ProfessorRoush is instituting a new policy to combat the theft and illicit use of his photos by extremely unscrupulous life partners (alias; Mrs. ProfessorRoush) for the sole purpose of falsely enhancing the perpetrator's Facebook feed. It's not thievery by strangers, it's thievery by wife, hence my coined title "Thiwivery."   From this point on, I will add a watermark to my better photos BEFORE I give in to the puppy eyes of Mrs. ProfessorRoush and send her copies of them.  Spousal privileges are one thing, but posting your husband's garden photos is just a step too far! 

Under normal circumstances, I don't mind at all if others download and use photos from this blog for their own purposes.   I've given explicit permission to some readers for their use of photos in the past, and, frankly, if I find one of my pictures being used elsewhere on the vast internet, I find it flattering rather than infuriating.  I just draw the line at seeing my own photos pop up on my own feed from HER Facebook page before I get a chance to post them myself.  I suppose I could unfriend her so I don't have to see her posts, but that seems a step in the wrong direction for good marital relations. 

Case in point, the gorgeous captures of orangey Morden Sunrise pictured above, the rose in full bloom in the evening sun as at the top, and just opening up in the morning dampness as above left.  I took them.  They are fabulous captures, if merely iPhone quality, are they not?   How maddening to see them first displayed on Facebook above comments from her followers over how wonderful HER garden must be.

In her defense, my larcenous spouse is always quick to respond to these comments and shift all credit to me, although at that point her diversions sound a bit disingenuous.  Since the photos are brazenly displayed on her page and the evidence is clear, those weak excuses are not admissible in court and hardly sway the jury. Verdict delivered, the court finds the defendant guilty of rapacious photo pilfering in the first degree.  The sentence is final and the punishment of being provided watermarked photos will be carried out immediately.

Mrs. ProfessorRoush also begged shamelessly for the luscious photos here of a purple columbine that self-seeded itself years ago into the garden and they have since also found their way onto Facebook.   Hey, lady, I know these photos are second only to your own beauty and grace, but take your own photos!  Mine are for my blog readers.  You can steal them later, just like everyone else!

And....I'm Caught Up.

Just like that, a perfect weekend of weather, and ProfessorRoush has caught up with spring.   There's always something magical about Easter weekend that brings the spring garden together.   Early or late, the plants seem to follow Easter's timing and so, evidently, does ProfessorRoush.  

Other than a few hours low of 25ºF one morning this week, spring has been a lamb this year, gradually warming up to today's 82ºF high and full sunshine, with few frosts or, even worse, late snows to set the plants back.  My Star Magnolia (Magnolia stellata) bloomed perfectly this year, not set back once by the weather and I'm already missing its warm scent.   All of the bulbs are up and out, with daffodils at their peak and the beautiful blue Scilla siberica and blue and white Puschkinia scilloides pictured above and the grape hyacinths to the left have delighted me for a couple of weeks and are just beginning to fade.  Both the Scilla and Puschkinia self-seed and spread here, and I now have Scilla in most of the beds around the house after planting them in only two little spots.  Thankfully, Scilla is easily controlled here, an unusually well-behaved and hardy plant in my garden.   Most plants that thrive in Kansas are rampant thugs, seemingly surviving on an overwhelm-and-kill-the-neighbors' philosophy.

To catch up this weekend, I purchased, transported, and spread over 70 bags of mulch bark in front and back, cut down all the ornamental grasses, fertilized everything  already green including over 100 daylilies, put up new Purple Martin houses, mowed around some early fast-growing edges, cut down the decrepit last-years-thrip-stricken Emerald Gaiety euonymus and sprayed them so they could rejuvenate, removed a 3-year-old dying Japanese maple from the front, spread another dozen hay and straw bales as mulch, sprayed the columbines to prevent Phytomyza aquilegivora (leafminers), planted 50 new strawberry plants and set up the system to water them, and probably did a few smaller chores I can't even remember. 

The photos above and left are of my now cleaned and mulched back bed from two sides, spoiled only by the serpentine hose I used to wet down the mulch (high winds are forecast here for Tuesday.  The prairie is still brown, but you can see the life beginning in my garden beds.  Notice the daffodils blooming here and there, the clumps of daylilies frantically growing, and the peonies coming up?  I can hardly wait for this coming week.   Sometime in the next two days, I'll entertain you with pictures of my 'Ann' and 'Jane' Magnolias, both just coming fully into bloom, and maybe, just maybe, 'Yellow Bird' will show it's pretty face this week.   The several days of recently warm weather has the entire garden growing on steroids right now, with redbuds, lilacs, and tulips all starting to break bud out there as I write this.  My soul is on vibrate mode, excited for a so-far normal spring.  

Let There Be Columbines

Last night, letting the vivacious Bella out the front door for her evening attempt to apply liquid fertilizer to the buffalograss, I was taken by surprise to see a previously-barren corner turned green.  This particular corner of my front border is almost entirely shaded with the house and garage on the south and west sides, and it was previously occupied by a boxwood, whose massive overgrowth and cat pee stink every spring right outside the dining room finally induced me to eliminate it in April.  You can see the stump of the boxwood at the upper center of the picture below.

Earlier this summer, I had tried to replace the boxwood with a rather expensive willow, one which promptly got eaten by rabbits or pack rats or some other such ravenous rodent and then, encased in chicken wire (too little, too late) its fragile regrowth shriveled in the late June heat.  Resigned, I decided to wait until fall to try it again, and I promptly put this space out of sight and mind for the summer that has past.

But here, last night, I found that the dry sterile mulch had brought forth baby columbines!  "Behold," the Lord said "Let there be columbines, and there were and it was good."  Well, columbines and a couple of thistles, which might not be so good, but I can take care of that bristly interloper. And a common dayflower or two which will take a little more effort to eliminate.  I'm still grateful for the gift, however.  All that time that the boxwood grew and dominated the area, these seeds collected and hid in the mulch and waited until the day they could grab enough sunlight and nutrients to grow.   A miracle of three-lobed glory.

I'm thrilled to see the columbines.  You know that I'm partial to the self-sown blue and purple columbines that dot my front landscaping, and I can't wait to see what these bring next year. There is no chance whatsoever that I'm going to scratch these out.  Next year, I'm going to have a sea of columbines and the joy of a wave of blue to ride into a new gardening year.

Columbine Collage

I do not recall ever blogging about my columbines, my beautiful beloved columbines, but I won't miss the opportunity now as they bloom out their season.  Some of you who are familiar with their favored habitat may even be surprised that they survive here in the annual Kansas drought and heat, but what they lack in fortitude, they seem to make up with proliferation.  In fact, I think they self-seed better on bare dry ground then they do in mulched and shady areas.  Wherever they seed, I smile and think about blue skies and happy children.

I assume my columbines are some form of Aquilegia vulgaris, but I've had a number of cultivars in my garden over the years and the entire Aquilegia clan is notoriously self-fertilizing.  The dark blue columbines at left, for instance, might have had some genetic influence from a named double-flowered cultivar, 'Black Barrow', that I once had.  Columbines are no trouble at all, however.  They cheerfully self-seed around my northern exposure, in the partially shaded beds on the north side of the house, and I simply weed out the colors that I don't like and root out the clumps that spring up in the wrong locations.  I'm partial to whites and blues, as you can see, and the occasional wine-purple flower is also allowed to grow uninhibited.  But it is the blues, the rare bright-sky-blue flowers, that I favor the most.

I do have an occasional maintenance issue with "Granny's Bonnet", as these are sometimes called.  Here on the prairie, they often become infested with "columbine leafminers" (Phytomyza sp.), a fly larvae that lives and lays eggs in the leaves, leaving unsightly trails behind as they migrate and feed.  The  Internet provides scant useful advice regarding control of these pests, with one prominent page suggesting only to ignore them or to pick off diseased leaves.  If I followed the latter advice, I'd only be left with a bunch of completely defoliated columbines by early June.  Similarly, I ignore written suggestions to cut them to the ground and start over.  Older sources suggest the use of DDT, a chemical that likely would do the job, but which I suspect is a bit difficult to obtain these days.   Occasionally, I've resorted to spraying with less lethal insecticides or even to tossing down some of the commercial fertilizer which contains systemic insecticide, all in an effort to keep the leaves unblemished and healthy.  Other years, as some of these photos this year demonstrate, I let the leafminers alone to do what leafminers must do.

Columbine folklore is rife with tales of love, attraction, and betrayal.  Columbines were held to be sacred to Venus, but were often associated with folly and cuckoldry.  At one time, giving a woman a bouquet of columbines was an insult since they were only presented to women suspected of loose morals.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush, however, thinks they are fabulous little flowers and takes no umbrage to my growing them near our main entrance,






Aquilegia belongs to the Ranunculus family and many sources say the entire plant is poisonous, including the seeds.  Of course, the skeptical gardening professor scoffs at the warnings about its toxicity, warnings that seem to mirror those of many, many other plants, and I wonder if it actually toxic at all, particularly when Wikipedia tells me that a dose of 3000 mg/kg is not fatal in mice.  

While skeptical, however, I'm not an idiot and I most assuredly won't use myself as a test subject.  It is said that Native American men crushed the seeds and rubbed them into their hands because the scent was so pleasing it was thought to attract a mate.  Perhaps Mrs. ProfessorRoush would appreciate the gift of a new fragrant soap if she believed it would rekindle the marital fires?

Too Much Mulch

As I sit around on my hiney this winter, staring out at the bleak Flint Hills landscape covered by snow and thinking about changes that I need to make in the garden next year, one change the I know that I need to make is to use less mulch in certain parts of my garden.

"WHAT?" the avid mulchers and composters scream, "BLASPHEMY"!  The xeriscapers dryly ask "What are you going to do about conserving water during the arid, hot Kansas summers?"  And the weeping organic gardeners query "What will happen to the soil structure?" 

Calm down everyone.  I said "in certain parts of my garden."   You see, it finally occurred to me that, by keeping the entire plethora of my garden beds heavily mulched, I've eliminated the self-seeding of many annuals and short-lived perennials that I've enjoyed in the past.  They are slowly disappearing from my garden over the years, or they survive up close to large roses and shrubs where the mulch isn't quite so deep.  My pink-salmon Poppies, descendants of a strain given to me by a friend years ago, are popping up less often to delight me with their surprise locations. My beloved blue and purple Columbines, that I have carefully monitored to weed out any pastel or pale interlopers, are dwindling away. My self-spread, unknown-origin Brown-eyed Susan's are fewer and farther between.  Beds with six inches of cypress or prairie hay mulch are now barren of these lovely flowers. 

   

So, I'm going to reinstitute some haphazardness into my garden.  A few areas of ground left bare here and there, scuffed up to improve the germination of the Papaver somniferum and Rudbeckia hirta clans.  Some shady, lighter-mulched areas to encourage the Columbines.  Perhaps an entire garden bed lightly raked and thinly mulched in the Spring to encourage the self-sowers to proliferate with Darwinian abandon.  And overall, less of the expensive, imported cypress mulch and correspondingly more quicker-degrading home-grown grass clippings that will allow sprouting annuals to reach both soil and the sunlight.

I'm already looking forward to the chaos.