Sunny Satisfaction

ProfessorRoush did just exactly what he said in last week's blog as he skedaddled last Sunday out into a rare, warm early February.  I chose to tackle the back garden bed surrounding the patio, a choice made on the basis that it is the south-facing bed and was bathed in sunshine all afternoon.  I wanted those golden rays on the back of my neck all day and blessedly received it!


On a day where the local temperatures reached 70ºF, I quickly shed first a down sleeveless vest and then a flannel shirt, baring maximal skin for Vitamin D production within minutes after starting.  Short sleeves in February?  Oh, yes and loving every minute, as was the grass-rolling and sunshine-crazy Bella, joining me in the joy of a pseudo-Spring.  Sheetbarrow II and I launched into full antic mode, respectively holding and pulling load after load of daylily debris, rose cuttings, and other leavings down to the trimmings pile, to be burned along with the prairie when spring really arrives.

Before

After

It was a great weather day for great accomplishments and at the end of a few hours, I had cleaned up the entire back perennial bed and the smaller daylily and peony bed near the deck.  I know that some fastidious and flaky gardeners  don't consider this "clean," as it is certainly not raked to bare ground, but this is as close as my garden ever gets to spring tidiness.  ProfessorRoush removes the vast overage of last summer's growth and if a few leaves and old mulch are left behind, so much the better to put new mulch upon.  At least nothing is impeding the sprouts of daylilies and daffodils as they push up from the cold earth.

Before

After

The rebirth of life is, in fact, already starting in my garden, the tranquil and healthy daffodil sprouts in the first picture above uncovered from within the dried remnants of last years leaves.   You can see before and after pictures of both beds both above and here.  Pick over them to your heart's content, because the next time you see pictures of these, the edges and debris will be covered in green.   Since winter returned this week, with the highest daytime temperature only reaching the 50º mark and that on a brisk windy day that felt 30º, I can only pray that it will come soon.

Super Sunday!

Don't get mislead; ProfessorRoush cares not even a minuscule portion of his bones that it's Superbowl Sunday.  Well, perhaps a few deep cells of his bone marrow care that it is the last REAL football game until August, and it is one of the two sports I still watch enough to know who's on top (tennis is the other), but only when I'm entirely bored and stuck in front of a TV (which seems to be "never" these days, by choice).

No, what I do care about is that it is the second day of February, it is beautifully sunny outside, and my local temperature is predicted to be 66ºF at 2 p.m.   Right now, writing this, it is 57ºF outside and the back yard looks like the photo above, taken a few minutes ago, so I'm only here for a brief second.  Garden beds and sunshine are calling my name.

 
As you can see from the temperature reading on the second picture on this page, the temperature this winter hasn't always been nearly so nice, but that didn't keep the critters away.  I looked through the winter's selection of game camera photographs today as I removed my old game camera, and among other deer, there was a pretty nice stag rambling around at some point.  I'll have more fauna-captured photographs this spring and next year since I replaced my old camera with two newer and better game cameras.

Today is another milestone perhaps more important than the Superbowl to those of a superstitious bent. Today is, of course, 02/02/2020, a rare global palindrome and the only one of my lifetime.  The last such palindrome was 909 years ago (11/11/1111) and the next is 101 years away (12/12/2121), so forward or backward, I can't really hope for a life expectancy of 161 years to see the next one.  02/02/2020 is also a palindrome day of the year (the 33rd day) and a palindrome of the days left in the year (333 since it's a leap year).  And evidently, Las Vegas is promoting marriages today on the basis that if you married today, your 2nd anniversary would be 2/2/22, all symbolizing the pair-ness of monogamous marriage.   Myself, married some 37 years already, I'll just say goodbye to date palindromes like this deer turned tail and said goodbye to my game camera.

In other notes, I spent some time this morning searching for a word to describe the group of people who are over-stimulated by math like today's palindrome and along the way I was sidetracked by the discovery that there are "weird" numbers  (of which 70 is the first) whose proper divisors sum to greater than the number, and "happy" numbers, of which 1, 7, 10, 13, and 19 are the first 5 happy numbers of base 10.  Interesting to know, but none of this made me happy in base 10 or any other numeric base because I couldn't find the word I was searching for.  Anyone know a word to describe "math nuts"?  I'd spend more time looking myself, but I, and the lovely Bella, are out of here!   

Bright Days

It's a very cold winter day here in the Flint Hills and while I was searching my phone for inspiration, I kept stopping at the bright, the cheery, the flashy photos.  Many of these were photographs of last summer's daylilies, still beaming the sunshine of July into the freezing aura of January.

I had saved the picture above of 'Southern Wind', a 2003 introduction by Stamile, for just such a blog-worthy occasion, however in true keeping with my poor-recording nature I had mislabeled it as 'Summer Wind, which it obviously is not.   Mislabeled or not, it certainly catches the eye doesn't it.  Every new daylilean thing that one could desire is there; the crinkly edging in yellow, ribbed lavender of the thick main petals so resistant to drought, the clearly marked throat.  My 'Southern Wind' is placed in back of the house with a direct southern view, exposed to all the burning sun and southern winds it could ever desire.

'Heavenly Flight of Angels'

'Southern Wind' and the rest of my newer daylilies pictured here are not your father's daylilies, as the saying goes.  I'm too parsimonious to pay for all the newest and brightest, but even the divided clumps of daylilies sold each fall as a money-maker for the Flint Hills Daylily Society suffice to show how much the field of daylily breeding has changed the "ditch lilies" into queens of the garden.  I do supplement my cheap daylily bargains with the occasional commercial purchase as well.  I couldn't, for instance, resist the aptly named 'Heavenly Flight of Angels' displayed on the left. I described purchasing it and dividing it last year. A newer spider, the bright yellow is softened to perfection by the cream edges.

'Sonic Analogue'

I won't try to name the rest of these daylilies on this page.  After some process of elimination and searching records, I could, and I've labeled a few that I'm reasonably sure of, but it would take too long today to label the rest.  I'll just leave you here with these beautiful but long-fallen daylilies, in hopes they brighten your day as much as they did mine today.

'Julianna Lynn'

Sunshine is Life!

Well, that didn't take long, did it?  The second day of 2020 and ProfessorRoush has already blogged twice!  I simply couldn't restrain myself from a quick entry, given what I found on a walk outside after yesterday's blog.

The temperature reached 50ºF yesterday around 1:00 p.m. and the sun was shining, so despite a brisk wind, I took the lovely Bella out for a walk.  Well, I walked.  Bella ran around like the world was brand new, sniffed the cold earth for awhile, and then rolled in the sunny buffalograss like the puppy she still is.  We sat for awhile, there in sunshine's embrace, me on the low granite bench in my front yard, and Bella on the warm grass, and together we contemplated how much trouble we would be in from Mrs. ProfessorRoush when Bella dragged all that grass back into the house on her fur.   We discussed running to the nearest Greyhound terminal and heading for Florida, but Bella finally convinced me that was a ridiculous overreaction to the moderate scolding we would undoubtedly get later.



I didn't think that I yet displayed my granite bench to you, the granite salvaged from our kitchen island when we remodeled, but I was wrong, so wrong.  I'm not shocked that I forgot about blogging about the bench, but I was chagrined  that the linked blog entry was clear back in 2014.   It seems like the remodeling project was just a year or two back.  Where does the time go, and why does its passing speed up as we age?  I wish, sometimes, I were more like the granite, impervious to time, ice, and burning sun, but then I remember that granite doesn't really get much accomplished year over year.



Showing you the antics of my energetic and loving Bella, however, was just a cheap ploy to draw you in for the real reason that ProfessorRoush is blogging again so quickly.  Worked, too, didn't it?  No one can resist a perky beagle!

I really wanted to share the photograph at the right and announce to the world that SPRING IS COMING!   Yes, only 9 or 10 days past the beginning of winter, the first daffodils are foolishly pushing stems above the frozen ground out there in my garden.  I was shocked to find them, even here in this bare patch of dark earth disturbed by some digging critter last fall.  Early?  I'd reckon so.  But I'm happy to see them all the same.  It's tempting to cover them up and tell them to go back to sleep, but instead, this old gardener will bow to their wisdom and leave them be, impertinent spring-rushers that they are.


 

Sunrise,Scenery, and Sunset

All right, how's this for a morning photograph?  I took it on the morning of December 24th, at 7:25 a.m. looking out my south window.   It's a frozen wasteland out there but the partial clouds make for a glorious sunrise, don't they?  This photograph is completely unaltered, with the exception that I took the picture below first, and then touched my finger to my Iphone on the garden garden area to change this second exposure to see more of the garden and a brighter sky.  

Which do you like better?  I was partial to the top photo with the contrast of the colors and the frozen ground, but the sunrise is more beautiful and the colors more vibrant in its "natural" exposure.  The first brings out the cold and frost of the brutal Flint Hills, the second displays the promise of the morning.  

Sunrise isn't the only time the colors of the Flint Hills help brighten my garden.  The russets of the bluestem and the oranges of the Indiangrass and switchgrass on the prairie are amplified anytime there is rain or moisture.  The buffalograss in the foreground and invading into the paths that I mow, stays the buff of this grass in winter, surrounding the house and biding time through winter.  

These two photos, taken during the rainy day of 12/29/2019, are more subtle in their coloring and hues, but nonetheless quite an improvement over the normal tan.  I cut the prairie low between the house and lower garden during winter for the purpose of deterring rodent migrations to the warm house and aiding the hawks that control them, but here the colors aren't nearly as amplified as in the taller mature grass in the background.  It's a trade-off I make every year as a tactical strike against the ubiquitous pack rats.

And then, there's the color of sunset on the prairie.  This panorama, taken at sunset on Christmas, 2019, shows the barrenness of the prairie in winter, yet the promise from the fleeting sun to return someday and green it all up again.  This garden, this gardener, hibernates until those first days of spring return.

In the meantime, I seem to be on a scenery sideline for this blog and I think for the next few weeks I'll return to the pictures of summer.  I've got quite a few "starter" blogs saved from last year's beauty that I want to share before "Gardening 2020" really gets rolling.  

Beauty Abounding

There are so many facets of a garden's beauty; bountiful blooms, flourishing foliage, silent solitude, love and laughter.  Seasons change a garden, and the garden changes with the seasons and even within the seasons, from frosted to flooding, sun-baked to Siberian.   During the majority of my winter, my garden is dominated by tan, exasperating ecru, bland and banal, uninspiring and forgotten.  The beauty of some days are left to sunshine and endless skies, bathing a garden that is a mere memory of the gardener's mind.

The garden also, can change the seasons themselves, signaling senescence during the bounty of summer or hope in the midst of frigid death.  Last week, it was snow bringing hope, thick and wet, turning tan to white in an hour, leaving behind a frozen, windswept tundra to greet the next dawn.  Hope is hard to find in such a scene, but I know, deep within, that a few days, a few weeks of this slumber, and the garden will awaken, refreshed with the moisture it was needing so badly.

This morning, this happy Sunday before Christmas, it was fog, cloaking the garden in mystery and calm, evoking the remnants of the color and joys of summer for a brief moment.  I awoke to this solitude, neighbors vanished behind curtains of mist, a shy sun vainly attempting to assert its influence from behind the curtain, masked in glory.  Could there ever be a more peaceful scene, a more expectant pause in the harshness of winter?

The garden, she sleeps, damp and warm within the clouds today.  My strawberries, my beloved berries, wait for spring beneath a blanket of straw, in the arms of the shade house above them.  And around, all around, the prairie itself hums with life hidden deep in the soil as roots hoard resources and renew, at the ground where chickadees search for the last seeds of summer, or in the air above where the hawks ceaselessly hunt.  Life in the deer that sample the shrubs, or in the mice that tunnel under the snow, the prairie is thriving despite the cold.

All of us, the strawberries, the garden, the fog, and me, we all know that today is a respite from reality.  Winter is officially declared and must have its time before spring pushes it to memory.  There will be more snow, more shoveling to come before the Triggering that wakes up the earth.  The snow last week passed in a few days, my temperate climate as always freeing the roads and soil to the rays of the sun.  Me, I'm just thankful this season for this morning between, for this muted sunshine, for this life of plenty, this life in the garden.

This Incredible Place

I do not know what changes that retirement, ever more imminent and ever more imagined as my clock winds relentlessly down, will bring to this life, but I was struck tonight, and related to Mrs. ProfessorRoush, that whatever the future holds, I don't think I can ever move from this place, this piece of earth that I know so well.

I know its moods; its sunny overbearing exuberance, its threatening and yet beautiful summer storms, its winter icy blizzards, its fall foliage kaleidoscope, and even its few cloudy, dreary days.  I can sense the rains coming hours away and predict when the officially-predicted storms will go around us.  I curse, sometimes, at the fickle nature of this land, like the thousands before who washed up on these prairies, but I love her always.

This morning started with the wall cloud pictured here, moving over us far earlier than the weatherpersons had predicted, delivering just enough moisture to wet the grass and suspend my mowing, but not enough to drive me in.  I puttered, I weeded, I fertilized, damp throughout, but happy in the garden.  The periodic clouds later afternoon became a drizzle, and then a smidgen of wetness, not enough to grace the ground deeply, but carrying some badly needed cooler temperatures.

Then, late evening, as I was passing through the kitchen, I noticed the setting sun and golden skies in the clearing west shining into the drizzle continuing to the east and thought to myself, "that means there is likely a rainbow to the south."

Wow.  I mean, wow was there ever a rainbow!  The most glorious double rainbow I've ever seen started just at the next hill south and arced completely over the house to the northeast, enveloping my house and world in wonderment.  The first photo above shows the view at the north corner of the garage, the photo at the left follows the rainbow as it rounded the south corner of the house, heading towards the neighborhoods of Manhattan.


I'll leave you here tonight, at the southwest caress of the rainbow onto the prairie.  You can click, if you wish, on the perfect iPhone panorama below of the complete double rainbow and enlarge it to full glory.  Stare in awe as long as you like, just as I did on first sight of it.  This rainbow tonight has welcomed the sunshine back to the prairie, chased the heat of summer from the Flint Hills, and reminded ProfessorRoush that life is more beautiful and precious with the passing of each moment.

Noel, how am I doing?

7/18/2019

A few weeks back, I read a blog post of Noel Kingsbury's titled "Mind the Gap," a very interesting read about the evolution toward ever-increasing plant density in garden design.  Kingsbury, whose blog I follow and whom I believe is one of the best of current garden writers and researchers, tries at least, to stick to some science-proven basics in gardening.  I find that his blog entries often break through the dry and compacted surface of homespun garden wisdom to provide some fresh nourishment to garden practices.

In his blog, Noel was sharing the results of a seven-year experiment in planting density published in the April 2019 Plantsman. and he related how "delighted at how little time I spent on this (weeding), only a few minutes per plot per year."  Despite the naturalistic planting methods he was investigating, he was able to conclude that, unlike previous widely-held gardener expectations, the plots did not become a monoculture of a dominant plant; "no one species took over."  At least in Herefordshire, about as far from my Kansas environment, in terms of sunshine and moisture, as a garden can probably get.

5/25/2019

As a gardener, ProfessorRoush is by no means so focused on a garden design plan or even a logical planting sequence as the eminent Mr. Kingsbury, but my inner farm-boy hates to see bare ground.  So my front landscape is essentially a hodgepodge of crowded plants developed over a period of now almost 18 years.  I started out with some nicely spaced plants, but my gardening has evolved and the plants in the border have undergone an intense Darwinian thinning.  When something dies, or gets crowded out, I replace it or remove it with something else, with the result of a dizzying mess of plants that I very rarely need to weed and only then usually with a quick tug at an errant solitary stem as I pass by.

The photo at the top of this blog was taken just this morning facing east at sunrise, and in a quick glance, you can take in blooming 'David' phlox, three varieties of daylilies, some bright red Monarda, and a white oriental lily.  Faded away are the Paeonia tenuifolia and Iris, and waiting in the wings you can discern some garden sedum biding time until fall.  Like Noel's experimental plot, I simply clear the dead foliage every spring and weed every third week for a few minutes.

Another view 7/13/2019

The second photo above shows the same area from a slightly different viewpoint taken in late May, with voluptuous herbaceous peonies, iris, and globe aliums predominant, while more subtle yellows are added in the background by the variegated foliage of Forsythia 'Fiesta' and Euonymous 'Moonshadow'.

Another perspective of the bed, taken recently from the front, shows the opposite end of this bed, which I fully admit is mostly a morass of Knautia macedonia that is successfully outcompeting most of the daylilies and irises of this area and pushing the red Monarda to the edges of the Knautia empire.  Next year, I need to remember to thin back the volunteer Knautia seedlings.  I certainly don't want to eliminate it; Knautia macedonia was one of the first plants I sought out that was specifically recommended for the brutal Kansas climate and it survives the droughts that have killed off other groundcovers in the area.

Turning around from the previous perspective, facing west, the opposite bed is a mass of Orienpet lilies, and daylilies, with a rose or two thrown in.  There is also a pair of barely visible panicled Hydrangea up against the garage here, planted just last year and yet to reach full growth.  Some asters to the left are overgrown this year and yet to bloom.




So my obvious question now is, "Noel, how am I doing?"  Aside from perhaps allowing the Knautia to self-seed a little too exuberantly (in defense of its neighboring plants, it seems to have been over-stimulated this year by the excess rain), am I approaching the new crowded-planting conception? Is there anything else you think I can crowd in here?

Timeous Turtle Trek

"Arf, Arf, Arf;" the neighbors dog, Huck, was barking incessantly last night as I traipsed around the garden, trimming dead canes off a rose here, transplanting a rose or two there, and watering seedling, just-purchased roses.  Eventually, Bella and I sought him out, curious as to what he had found on the prairie, 20 feet off of my neighbor's driveway.  I was betting snake, but as it turned out, I was quite wrong.  The dog had found a large turtle, probably a quarter mile west and above our pond, heading straight as an arrow towards my neighbors pond, across the blacktop driveway and another quarter mile down the next draw.




This seemingly ancient creature is a
Snapping turtle, Chelydra serpentina, identified by its long tail and ridged shell.  Yesterday evening, that turtle's tail was as expressive as any dog's, flipping angrily whenever Huck got too close.  Hunkered down for the photo here, he just wanted to be left alone on his journey, presumably in search of more abundant food or agreeable mate or both.  As always, when I run across such creatures, I do a little reading, and found out from Wiki that the folklore about snapping turtles biting off fingers and toes is just a myth, with no confirmed cases.  Although they can certainly apply a painful bite, and while you shouldn't pick one up by the shell because their necks can stretch completely around their armor, they actually have less bite force than a human.  They often live 20-25 years, with a maximum reported age of 38 years, so I wonder what the chances are of this being the same just-hatched turtle that my daughter found during a 2014 burn?  Probably not a likely coincidence but it's fun to think about it.

Up until the turtle, it was a peaceful evening in the garden.  I had spent some time admiring the first blooms of some dark red Asiatic lilies (photo at the top) that I planted as summertime filler among the viburnum bed.  There used to be other colors and varieties planted in the bed, but the only long term survivors seem to be deep red.  Not that I'm complaining, because I swoon over that dark rich color against the green of rose and viburnum foliage.


I have and encourage other fillers in these beds, but I count on serendipity and Mother Gaia to supply the most important.  Everywhere that the Butterfly Milkweed,  Asclepias tuberosa, (left, above) decides to show up as a "weed," I let it remain in all its orange glory.  In a similar fashion, I'll allow any Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) (right) to grow unmolested in any bed.  The fantastic fragrance of these wildflowers, especially the Common Milkweed, are an early gift to me, and their value as a food source for caterpillars and butterflies make them all keepers in my gentle garden.

Turtles and milkweed were the sendoff last night for me to seek satisfied slumber with dreams of butterflies and blooms.

In the Garden, At Last

Weather report:  High 55ºF, blustery, overcast with the look of winter coming back.   However, ProfessorRoush just doesn't care.  He's back from a relatively short vacation and, while it may not be a great day to kneel on the wet and cold ground to clear the winter debris from beds, there are still things that can be done.  Done if the will to garden is strong enough and the gardener's soul has enough fortitude.




 And besides, I have a Dutch crocus blooming!  And Scilla!!! One single crocus so far but I'm sure that more will come soon.  In my records going back to 2005, I don't specifically note the first Dutch crocus every year, but in only one year, 2014, was my note of the first crocus later (3/25/14) than this date.  In 2006 and 2012, I saw these blooming on 3/6 and 3/8 respectively.  So, right now, I'd estimate spring at around 2 weeks later than normal.

If crocus and scilla are the first signs of life in my garden this year, they are not alone.  Today, as you can see from the pictures posted here and below, early peony buds are breaking ground, and the ornamental Alliums are up and healthy.  I must get the Alliums protected from the deer soon!

I can already see that there are one or two minor drawbacks of my plan to post more often  so that you can experience my garden activities with me  each time I garden:  some of the posts are going to be long!  And the photos will be smaller to account for space concerns, but if you click on them, you'll be able to see the detail you desire.   Today, I spent about 4 useful hours total in the garden.  And what did I accomplish?

I started by planning to mow down my "rain beds" of prairie grass near the house so that they will green up faster and allow some extra sun to the early prairie forbs.  Mowing, however, was a longer chore than I anticipated as I started with a "surprise" flat rear tire on the tractor that had to be fixed first.  You can see Bella, above, running in the taller grass, but here is a photo of the back yard before mowing:

 And after:  Already I feel better!  One spring chore off my checklist!

Then, I moved on to clear debris from the asparagus bed and weed it.  I'm sorry, I didn't think to take a picture until I was halfway through clearing, but the photo at the left will give you an idea of what it looked like when I started.







And the photo at the right will show you where I finished; the asparagus bed is mulched with around 2 inches of aged straw that sat out all winter.  That should help suppress the weeds!  The next green things I should see in this bed are some delicious asparagus spears rising above the golden straw.

Other than the usual puttering around that includes picking up the occasional down limb or blown-in-city-trash, my last major accomplishment of the day was in keeping with my goal to garden smarter this year.  For the benefit of others who have the same problem, this is my solution to "pole-migration" in my shade-house over the strawberries.  You see, my shade house is on a slight slope from front to back.  I've noticed over the last couple of years that the long poles that run on each side, and to which the canopy is stretched, have a tendency to slowly slip from their sleeves out the lower side, extending sometimes past the electric fence and out of the garden.  Up until now, some occasional pounding with a hammer every few months would shift them back into place.  I noticed today, however, that one pole was very very far (as in 8 feet or so) out of the canopy sleeve, leaving it in grave danger of ripping off in the next wind.  So, I got a length of good old, stiff #9 baling wire, made a hook in one end to place into the pole, and then wound it around the upright so the pole...hopefully...won't be able to migrate.  A minor brain-storm to fix a now-minor but potentially major problem.  Let's hope it works.

Sorry about the long post, but it was a good few hours in the garden today!  I'll leave you with the promise of these deliciously burgundy-colored herbaceous peony buds, just breaking ground.