Blue Draperies

The slothful side of ProfessorRoush unabashedly slithers up in late August each year.   As September slowly slides in, I tire of mowing and weeding and trimming, all too ready for the garden to frost over, to die away and let me rest.   It's now that the morning glories seize their chance, rampantly growing over everything in sight and transforming the garden into a blue oasis of heaven. 

In point of fact, I don't know if my ubiquitous morning glories are the 'Heavenly Blue' cultivar of the species or just the wild Kansas Ivy-Leafed Morning Glory (Ipomoea hederacea), but they are everywhere.  They invade quickly when I stop weeding in July, when I am weary of the gardening battle, and they take advantage of my weakness to drape every plant within reach.  And I let them, for I treasure that light sky blue shade above all hues in my garden.

I was struck recently by the combination of the morning glory with the Canadian rose 'Winnepeg Parks' (above), the surreal, otherworldly blue morning glory jarringly visible against the pink rose, clashing across the color wheel to a striking contrast.  'Winnepeg Parks' is a Parkland series Canadian, unfailing blackspot free in my climate and a reliable periodic bloomer.   Growing into another rose, chaste 'Morden Blush', Ipomoea blends much better, a companionly match of color for a calming scene.

Even the tired foliage of variegated euonymous 'Moonshadow' is improved by a little "morning glory."   This picture at the right, suitable for framed artwork against the right light blue wall, just pleased me to no end as I took it.  I missed capturing, however, the bees that were darting in and out of the blossoms, the bumblebees every bit as appreciative of the morning glory as I am.   In the early morning right now, two plants draw the bees;  morning glory and caryopteris; both blue and beautiful.   However early I join the garden, the bees are already there.

Two or three weeks after I took the first picture above, the morning glories and caryopteris are still going strong, now lending their gentle contrast to the tall sedums, neighbors by location, opposites of plant physiolgy.  You have to get up pretty early to catch the sky blue delicate blooms, as they close when the sun begins to shine with any vigor, but the tougher sedums that support them continue on each day, oblivious to the sun, "feeling the burn," as it were.  ProfessorRoush enjoys both lives, early to rise and walk, thriving in the sun, and resting at night in preparation to bloom yet another day. 

Webs in the Mist

ProfessorRoush was surely not planning on this topic for a blog as he woke and schemed the day ahead, but opportunities arise and their urgency cannot, sometimes, be denied.  I woke early, more so to enjoy the predicted cool morning and was not disappointed.  So long, we've waited for the onset of cooler morning and the feel of fall and here it was, at last manifest and perfect, 61ºF as I rose.   Bella and I woke and stumbled out to a paradise dampened by recent ample rains and more.

I was caught and mesmerized by the industriousness represented in the spider's web above, this dew-bejeweled engineering marvel stretched between the stiff dead stems.  The web is tiny, no bigger than my hand, but yet perfectly designed to catch an unwary small insect.   Not so this nearby web pictured at left, a chaos of construction, haphazard strands of spider goo placed at random angles and spacings.   What meaning, I wonder, in the diversity?   Is one spider so more industrious, more meticulous in its intent and implementation, the other a mere slob, unconcerned for convention and fashion?   Was the second spider distracted from his chore or merely indifferent to the task at hand?  Or am I simply wrong, imposing my own judgments and ignorance on the task?  Is the second spider the genius, the creator of a chandelier of new artistry and evolution, its value unrecognized by the half-witted human?  Why does order seem more perfect than disorder, entropy aside?

Regardless, neither spider will be fed this morning, the morning dew defiling the web's purpose and unsticking the sticky strands, no harvest to pluck from the traps.  And both illustrate a new ecosystem in my front beds, an opportunity created from the tall brown stems of Knautia macedonica, an unforeseen profit of its profligacy and a monument to the natural order of nature.      

It is not only grass and plant heavy with dew this morning, the very air is saturated, the warm ground giving back the recent rains we've had to the cool air.   My back yard above, the photo facing south, and front yard below, the photo facing north, are both cloaked in fog, hidden from the world and blanketed with quiet.  The sun is up, but nearly invisible, shuttered by the mist, no wind to clear a path for it to reach us and the world another world away.   I give you a perfect moment of the beginning of fall weather here in the Flint Hills, brought to you by mist, dew, and the lens of my iPhone.  

Spiritual Prairie Union

 "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth his handywork." Psalm 19:1.  

If a gardener knows any scripture at all, it should be this phrase.  ProfessorRoush has been witness to the wisdom of this Psalm every morning this past two weeks as I drive past a gorgeous heavenly display of two common prairie forbs sharing the same space, purple Western Ironweed (Vernonia baldwinii) and white and green Snow-On-The-Mountain (Euphorbia marginata).   There are few times when I see such showy native plants so wild, yet so perfectly sited to contrast and enhance each other that I can only stand and marvel, jealous of the Gardener who arranged them in combination.

Western Ironweed

I took the picture above in the worst possible conditions for photography; sun setting behind the subject, light rain on the horizon, dusk settling into the valleys.   And yet the beauty of the prairie shines forth from this chance clumping, this union of the blooms of August each drawing in their late pollinators, offering last seasonal meals in exchange for stirred chromosomes, the dance of wildflower and insect continued in another year.

Snow-On-The-Mountain

Neither of the colorful perennials above are rare on the prairie.   Western Ironweed, so drought tolerant and tall in the heat of summer, is a common pasture weed on the Flint Hills and difficult to eliminate from my garden beds.  This member of the Asteraceae is shunned by cattle for its bitter taste, who thus help it to spread in overgrazed pastures, eliminating its competitors while letting it grow.  Snow-On-The Mountain, a poinsettia relative, is also found here in nearly every disturbed spot of ground, popping up randomly in my garden beds next to grasses and roses, and anywhere else it can find a bit of moisture and sunshine.  In contrast to the ironweed, this euphorbia pulls easily from the ground with bare hands, and although it's bitter, milky sap is said to be as irritating as poison ivy, I seem to be impervious to its toxic nature.

The ubiquity of these wildflowers might suggest that their serendipitous adjacency has occurred by mere statistical chance, but I refuse to tempt disaster by agreeing.  ProfessorRoush, not normally disposed to quote scripture, nonetheless feels here a higher design, a greater Hand in this natural combination.  Maybe you have to be here, at this spot, with the waning sunlight and smell of rain in the air to appreciate this moment.  Better yet the sight is simply spectacular every morning with fresh sunlight and cool breeze and living prairie all around as I drive to work.  All I know for sure is that these two plants, every day, brighten my morning, the gift of living made manifest as my day begins.  And I am thankful for it and for my life shared with the prairie.

The Surrender of ProfessorRoush

When the detailed annals of twenty-first century gardening history are collected and indelibly written to the internet, today will be noted as the day that ProfessorRoush grudgingly conceded his unwilling submission to the Japanese Beetle horde.   I have lost my solo battle here on the Kansas Flint Hills, completely and irrevocably, crushed by the sheer prolific mass of beetle fertility.  How many beetles do you count on the single 'Hanza' flower at the upper left?  There are at least 14 engaged there in disgusting Caligulan debauchery by my count.   

Poor 'Hanza'

I wave the white flag at last, an unworthy descendent of the heros at Thermopylae, Masada, and the Alamo.  Despite twice-daily rounds of the battlefield under the searing summer sun, hand-picking and crushing the chitinous slobs as they fornicated in their own frass, and occasional mass desperate dispersals of chemical weapons, I can no longer pretend to be winning and must face defeat.  I know the war was lost long ago in the eastern and southern United States, but the battlefront continues its westward move.  The closely-cropped beetle mass at the top is only the most visible today.  Looking at the greater picture (at right) tells the true story, with smaller numbers of beetles on all the nearby blossoms, foreground and background.  At night, I dream now only of the crunch of the beetle masses as they feast on the roses, of their laughter during coitus in the bright Kansas sun.   

Beetles on 'Martin Frobisher'

I blame my defeat on many factors, not the least of which is lack of a national sense of emergency.  Forget the concerns of ecology and species diversity, Japanese Beetles hold no value to the world.   The extinction of these lazy disgusting creatures would make no measurable impact on the world's ecology.  They have no enterprise, no natural predators, no redeeming virtues to promote their preservation, seemingly existing for the sole purpose of consumption, defecation, and procreation.  Where are, I ask, the chemists to create a poison aimed directly at the demise of this sole species?   Where are the enterprising engineers to envision a fleet of affordable micro-drones capable of capturing beetles to transport and release in the fires of  Hell?  Where are the biologists to create infertile clouds of male beetles to slow their spread, or to genetically manipulate a lethal virus specific to Japanese Beetles ?  Where is, Lord Darwin, the evolution of the insectivore who views beetles and beetle frass as a delicacy?   

Today's pyrethrins and insecticidal soaps are worse then worthless on adult beetles.  Yesterday I drenched these beetle clumps directly in modern insecticidal death and an hour later, they still moved and defecated on poor virginal white 'Blanc Double de Coubert' at abandon. I dream, at times, of finding and deploying an old bottle of DDT.  Would it be worth a Silent Spring or three to rid the earth of Japanese Beetles?  I hear now only, in my mind, the Beetle Voldemort laughing at poor Professor Dumbledore; "You've lost, old man."

Daylily 'Sonic Analogue'

Future minstrels will not sing ballads to the losing effort of ProfessorRoush, but upon reflection I take solace that I am a true descendent of those at Masada and the Alamo. After all, despite their valiant and principled stands, they lost too, surrounded by enemies too numerous to count, without aid from the greater world.  If there is hope for the gardening world, it is in Old Garden Roses, resistant to Rose Rosette disease and too early to be ravished by Japanese Beetles, and also in daylilies.  I leave you with this 'Sonic Analogue' daylily, seemingly immune at present to the beetle appetites.  I may have laid down my weapons, but I keep hope that beetle predators will evolve faster than beetle defenses and these daylilies will remain to brighten the rest of my summer days.

Unsettled Skies

This morning, as I was walking from the bedroom to let Bella out, I glanced out the southern windows of the house, seeing dawn slowly bringing the landscape to life, and noticed that the tree branches were swaying.  Pleased that a predicted cool morning would also bring some cool air into the house, I opened the garage door, stepped out, and was greeted with this odd sight of a column of pink blessing the hills to my west amidst a gray sky.

I turned around to look at the rising sun and, of course, it was there shining as always, ready to wake the earth and all its inhabitants in Manhattan, Kansas.  The breeze, however, was still shifting and I could only conclude that a either completely unpredicted but likely gentle rainstorm was upon us from the northwest or that aliens were beaming up my neighbors in a pink column of happiness.




The answer of course, was available on my phone radar app, and just as I downloaded this image, the sky began to growl as well.  Not thunder, not visible lightning, but an audible low growl.  I sedately followed Bella as she bolted for the house from her morning mid-squat stance.  Bella is afraid of thunder, but rain is always welcome to me and I am ever pleased when I don't have to defend against an alien horde before I've had breakfast.

Unsettled skies have been the norm all summer, likely a metaphor for society's woes this year if I were only bright enough to connect it.  Unpredicted showers, winds that sweep across without a storm behind them, clouds come and gone without warning.  I really shouldn't complain because, thankfully, there has been enough rain to keep the grass growing all summer, it has never reached 100ºF in Manhattan yet this year, we haven't had a single tornado warning in the area all season, and fall is clearly on its way.


It unnerves me, however, after years of watching the local radar and weather patterns, to see the skies tossing about in disorder.  The other night, I watched two rainstorms as they split around us from about an hour to the north-west, one gentle moving to the east and south, the other, a nasty little blob of purple, moving forcefully south-west.  I commented to Mrs. ProfessorRoush that, in all these years, I had never seen that happen.  Storms don't move to the south and west here and I watched it with some trepidation until it was obvious it wasn't going to change direction.








I'm not unhappy, however, about the beautiful skies of this summer and I'm thankful for every morning to wake with the sunrise.  The panorama above is my view to the south three mornings ago, sun rising in the east, storm moving in from the west.  The panorama below is my north view just moments later, unsettled skies from the west moving back to the gentle protective light from the east.  Who couldn't feel comforted by skies like these?  Well....me.

Color Echoes and Garden Dramas

Basye's Purple Rose

While mowing yesterday, ProfessorRoush yesterday that he had accidentally and serendipitously planted a "color echo" side by side in the same bed, unrecognized until both bloomed at the same time.  Everyone who has spent time on my blog knows that I am a fan of trouble-free Basye's Purple Rose (top, right).  It's blooming sparsely but steadily right now, preparing, I hope, for a big fall show.

Buzz™ Velvet

Basye's Purple is in the foreground of the picture to the left.  Just across the bed, in the background of the photo, is its color twin, a dwarf butterfly bush that I planted in 2014.  This one is Buddleia davidii 'Buzz™ Velvet', a rich copy of Basye's deep magenta color if ever there was one.  'Velvet' is one of the series of Buzz™ buddleias hybridized by Planthaven Int’l, and he survives well in my garden, one of only two that have returned for more than 5 years running ('White Perfusion' is the other one).



Buzz™ Velvet may be a "butterfly bush," but it wasn't drawing any butterflies yesterday in my garden.  No, the butterflies were all running to the Joe Pye Weed (Eutrochium purpureum) that sits near the feet of my 'Jane' magnolia.  I have a single specimen of Joe, and he's as coarse and weedy as his name suggests, but at least he's fragrant, and fragrant in a good way.  Dull pink is a charitable description of his complexion, but in contrast the fragrance is to die for.







Joe Pye Weed does, however, beckon insects from all over the garden, just as it did the Painted Lady butterfly I photographed on it, and it has a delicious, sweet and light fragrance for ProfessorRoush to enjoy as well.  Sometimes even a weedy plant has a few positive attributes.

Wheel Bug 

Like many gardening stories, however, this happy meeting of a fragrant plant and a beautiful butterfly is not without cautionary notes.  Just two feet in front of the butterfly, another of life's little dramas, was playing out on the Joe Pye Weed.  This Wheel Bug, Arilus cristatus, has grabbed itself a bumblebee for it's evening meal.  I've also written about Wheel Bugs, and this largest of the assassian bugs (Hemiptera) is a common predator in my garden, if a nonselective one.  Mr. Wheel Bug, can you please, in the future, leave the bumblebees alone and concentrate on Japanese Beetles and June bugs?  Or are they just too tough for you, you coward?

Baptisia Musings

Baptisia australis

One of the most common and visible flowers on the spring and early summer Flint Hills prairie are the Baptisia sp, otherwise known as the wild indigos.  If you look at the picture of one of my hillsides at the bottom of this blog entry, taken just two days ago, you can get an idea how common they are.   I watch for them every year, heralds of spring on the prairie and my own personal seasonal time-clock for the onset of warmer temperatures.  I've noted the Blue Wild Indigo, Baptisia australis, as early as April 26 (in 2004) and as late as May 20 (2013) over the years.  This year, I saw my first on 5/10/2020.   As I've noted before, I'm not sure what all my "first sightings" mean in relationship to climate change. 

Baptisia bracteata

True indigos, from which indigo dye is derived, are a different genus (Indigofera tinctoria) and are not native to the prairie, but the Blue Wild Indigo is so named because it's sap turns purple on exposure to air.  Another very common false indigo is the Plains Wild Indigo, Baptisia bracteata, which is earlier to flower and lower to the ground than its blue cousin.  Where B. australis stands tall and stiffly resistant to the prairie winds, B. bracteata is seen hugging the ground, creamy and bright against the ground.

Baptisia var ProfessorRoush

My real Baptisia interest this year was in the color variations that I happen across on my prairie walks, and in particular, the return of this pretty pink Baptisia, which I first noticed in the same spot last year.  I marked the spot to see if it returned true to color this year and here it is again, pretty and pink on the prairie.  This year, I'm going to try to collect seeds from it and hope that I can grow them and propagate this color.  I doubt I can become rich off of introducing a pink Baptisia to the market, but B. australis var. ProfessorRoush doesn't sound half bad, does it?

Baptisia alba

Finding one unusual Baptisia, of course, initiated a quest for others.  This beautiful white Baptisia alba grows not far from the pink one in my backyard and I've also marked its location for seed collection.  There's just no substitute for pure white in the way it can stand out from the emerald green prairie, is there?

Unknown NOTBaptisia

I thought I'd hit the Baptisia jackpot with this pink and yellow flowering plant on a neighbor's acreage and I got all excited about its subtle shadings, but on a second look, I don't think this is a Baptisia.  A vetch, perhaps, or some other member of the Bean family, but there are so very many legumy-things on the prairie that I can't keep up.  Alas, I'll have to count on B. australis var ProfessorRoush to lend my name to gardening prosperity.  And I'll end here, wallowing in my delusions of Baptisia grandeur here in the Flint Hills on this blessed Memorial Day.  Stay healthy, everyone!

Catchweed Annihilation

Occasionally, mundane gardening chores, such as weeding, watering and spraying, impolitely intrude on the more interesting tasks of pruning, deadheading, and the really barn-raising "watching paint dry" feeling Professor gets while waiting on that new rose or peony to flower.  Such chores are easier if one imagines they are on search and destroy missions deeply behind the front lines, engaging and destroying the enemy wherever and whenever found.  While distasteful, the slaying of garden invaders cannot be long-delayed, else a gardener finds oneself overrun and demoralized, and subsequently retreats into the shadows of the house.

My enemy this year seems to be a world-beating crop of Galium aparine, commonly called bedstraw, catchweed or goosegrass, that is spreading like a wildfire on the prairie before a wind.  I tried to ignore it, then placed it on my list of "Things To Get To" rather than confronting the shiny horde, but there came a time when I could no longer turn my head from the onslaught.  I've always seen a little of it around, wisps here or there trying to hide beneath daylilies or consorting with cosmos, but this year it seems to be searching for its own Lebensraum, living space, poking up through every green perennial or shrub in a bid for world domination.

Like many gardeners of my era, when I want to fight back against Mama Nature's most recent attempt to return my garden to an evolutionary laboratory, I hear the wise words of Hannibal Lector to the fledgling Agent Starling in the movie Silence of the Lambs, Anthony Hopkin's voice in my head, quoting Marcus Aurelius, "First principles, Clarice, Simplicity...Of each particular thing, ask What is it in itself? What is its nature?"   With catchweed, its simple nature is to stick; to the plant it seeks to smother, to the gardener, to itself.   ProfessorRoush, ever the aspiring garden Ninja, recognized this year that the destruction of catchweed lies in its own innate velcro-ey nature.  

My weapons; a simple pair of cheap cotton garden gloves.  You'll notice the difference between the right faded and left, newer glove?  Not surprisingly, as a lefty, I wear out several left gloves before the rights, with the result that I have a surplus of decently intact rights and the surviving left gloves are usually full of holes and ready to disintegrate.  But they all still work as allies in catchweed obliteration.  I simply start pulling up a clump, the catchweed grabbing onto the soft glove, and then, keeping the catchweed in my hands, I let the catchweed pick up and tear out its fellow soldiers, massively clumping together in a lemming-like rush to removal. 

It's satisfying watching that stringy, clingy weed disappear from my garden.  I cleared it two weeks ago and I'm only just now seeing a few wisps from stragglers try to stealthily emerge from the shadows.  I find it much less daunting to reach down and pluck out a few stems here and there as I pass by a bed than it is to confront a vast multitude of creeping contagion.  Take it from me, attack your weeding head on, because Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement doesn't work any better in the garden than it did in history.  Better for us, now as before, to follow Churchill's advice, "....to wage war, by sea, land, and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us...(our aim is) victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be."

Lessons in Tenacity

When it comes to survival, our cultivated gardens and the wilder nature around us can, if we watch for them, provide many lessons in hanging on.  I was reminded of that this week when I passed by this incredibly tenacious tree, seemingly growing out of the bedrock.  It stands on the edge of a ridge leading from my backyard to the pond.    The primeval seabed of the Flint Hills is exposed by erosion and time on these ridges and, in places, the rock itself becomes porous with holes as the lichens eat them away.  Often, those holes become pots for the germination of wind-blown plants who trade the inconveniences of the cramped position for protection from prairie fires.  This tree has been growing here for a decade, untouched by fire after fire, until it has now filled the hole that birthed it.

I feel, in this time of quarantine, a kinship with this tree, a bond forged by the urge of life to grow and expand despite the constraints around it.  My adherence to stay-at-home edicts from local "authorities"  suffers from both my lack of paranoia about catching the virus and my lack of faith in those authorities.  I do wear a mask in public, despite knowing the science and all-the-time wondering why I bother.  Running "crucial" errands, the number of which expands exponentially with my cabin fever, I often think of the quote on my office refrigerator at work, purportedly from Marilyn Monroe, which reads "Ever notice that 'what the hell' is always the right answer?"  Yes, I recognize that subscribing to guidance from a woman who tragically passed away in the fullness of life may not be the wisest choice. It is, however, more satisfying, and soul-serving than listening to nonstop gloom and doom from the news.  

Yes, I'm running risks daily, but I, like this tree, know instinctively that every day of life brings risks that we must face in order to flourish.  A deep core of fatalism helps me in that regard. I might catch coronavirus today and die next week. I might also get broadsided by a semi-truck on my way home from work.  Neither is really that likely.  I've watched this tree, an elm, grow for years, steadfast in the face of wind, fire and storm.  To have grown this tall, this broad, it must already have once pierced completely through this layer of rock, allowing the roots to reach more fertile soil around it.  Now it faces another challenge and I'm intrigued by what happens next for it.  Will the tree die, girdled by the constraints of its environment?  Will the rock yield, split or dissolved by the irrepressible forces of life? 

Time will tell, both for the tree and for us.  Will we wither now, paralyzed by fear of the world outside our holes, or will we grow on, breaking the barriers and pushing against the sky?  Me, I'm betting on life and the spirit of this tree.  Staying in the hole is not an option.  

Back to Winter

And.....winter again.  Just as ProfessorRoush was hoping to put the seasonal losses behind us, spring whimpered out of the way and let winter's lioness roar back in full bloodlust.  We had two very unfortunate anti-garden nights this week; a hard freeze on Monday following a strong north wind that shook the house and then a dusting of snow and another brief dip to freezing temperatures Thursday night last.  Only this fake steel rose near my front walk seems to be impervious to the damage.








If you can't bear to look, then turn away quickly, but let me show you what a hard freeze does to asparagus.  I looked at these growing, stiffening spears on Sunday and thought about picking them, but decided another couple of days would get me a more filling harvest.  Now here they are, limp and broken, their tumescence and potential gelded by an icy maiden.  I'm sure this picture is an apt metaphor for some other issue that vexes old gardeners, but I can't recall anything like it at present, just another incidence of déja vu that will come to me later.







What will become of the snow-kissed peonies, like the ones pictured at right?  Or the daylilies and young roses, prematurely coaxed by the warming sun into rapid growth and now slapped down for their exuberance?   I have hope for the peonies yet, frost-resistant as these sensuous beauties can be, but some were beginning to bud, and I may yet harvest only a crop of small black buttons from the early peonies.






 In the two days since the snow, I've re-examined the daylilies and most may recover; leaves wrinkled and a little brown on the edges, but they may recover.  ProfessorRoush, however, is retreating for a time back into his COVID-quarantined lair, suckling his thumb in the darkness.  I'm tempted, knowing that the lowest forecast temperature for the next 10 days is 47ºF, to uncover the greening strawberries, but I just don't trust Kansas.  If I lose the strawberries, I lose all hope, and so I will change the oil in the lawnmower and sweep out the barn, and nurse the surviving onion starts, but I will not offer the strawberries in sacrifice to please the fickle gardening gods.  Hear me, Priapos, god of vegetable gardening?  You will not get my strawberries!

Behold the Lamb

Easter arrived at last, a rebirth of spirit and earth that is long overdue this year.  March came in like a lion, went out like one, and winter continued into April here in Kansas, more overnight freezes in the forecast and a chance for snow predicted tonight.   The closest thing to a Lamb evident in my garden this week was the small, peaceful concrete fawn that graces my viburnum bed.  I found it last week, half-buried under a year of debris, and laid it on this nice new bed of straw for comfort.  There perhaps, watched over and aided by the last daffodils of the season, it can tempt the weather to act more like springtime before the furnaces of summer fire up.

We began to at least pretend it was spring here this week by burning the prairie, our annual ritual here of welcoming warmer weather and clearing the fields for growth.  My neighbors and I got together Friday and burned in mass, teams spread out on the periphery to protect the town from our exuberance and teams within to protect our homes from ourselves.  This year's burn started out on a cold morning at 35ºF but rose to 60º temperatures by midday and it was a fine burn, windless when we were burning the edges and a mild breeze when we wanted the fire to sweep across the barren grasses.  You can see the result here, a few piles of donkey dung continuing to smolder long after the fire was out elsewhere.  Donkeys repeatedly pile their digested offerings in discrete places rather than sprinkling it over the area like bovines, so theses piles often burn slowly into the night, appearing as stars glowing on the dark prairie during windy times.  Sometimes we combine the prairie burning ritual with a sacrifice, usually of a random shrub, fruit tree, or 4-wheeler caught in the fires, but this year we got away almost clean, with the only casualty a late-afternoon singeing of a bridge at the neighboring golf course.

I was pleased, during my rounds of the grounds after the fires, to see that my secret small grove of redbuds in the bottom had not suffered the late freezes of the ones adjacent to my hilly home.  This little group sprang up volunteer a few years ago in a low area protected by the upwards slope to the south and the temperature-moderating pond just to the north.  I encourage them yearly by mowing down the grasses to limit competition and very controlled burning of the area to eliminate the cedar invaders.  Despite their precarious exposure to the elements, the deer, and rodents, they've done well, and I appreciate their kindness by blooming here in this little hidden world of my heart.



Within the house, spring is at least trying to overcome winter.  Appropriate for Easter, this white orchid began to bloom in our sunroom this week.  I apologize for the reminder of winter in the still-blooming Christmas Cactus behind it, but the purity and beauty of the orchid embraced by the warmth captured by the south-facing windows tells me that Easter, as always, foretells rebirth and the arrival of more tranquil days to come.

Apricots and Pack Rats

One might think that apricots have little to do with packrats, however both are currently pressing subjects on the mind of ProfessorRoush.

This is the shining annual moment for my apricot tree, a 'Sunglow' variety.  Always the first tree to bloom, it often beats the redbuds by a full week or two.  I enjoy it most in the evenings, when it is back-lit by the Western sun as viewed from the driveway, although mornings when the sun lights up the front of the tree are also satisfying.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush thought so as she messaged me at work early one morning this week with a picture of the tree, asking if it was an apple.  No, apricot, honey, APRICOT.  I can't say, however, that I ever get much fruit from it.  Fruits are small at best, though colorful, and the yield is devastated most years by late frosts.  It is a nice ornamental, however, adding some soul-needed color above the still-dry prairie grass, while admittedly not very life-sustaining as a nutrient source.

On the other hand, as evidence of the trials and tribulations of gardening on the Kansas prairie, I give you these two pictures taken of our small corner deck with its two-seater glider and gas grill, along with this newly formed pile of greenery.  The pile of semi-green sticks and leaves are the recent activity of a pack rat, endeavoring mightily to make a home right beside the back door.  I suppose it is a nice spot for a damp cool spring, roof above, sheltered from the north and east winds, the brick behind it warmed by the sun in the afternoons. 






Astonishingly, however, if you look closely at the greenery, you'll see that it is mostly holly, Japanese evergreen holly to be exact.   I do have holly in the landscape, but the nearest bushes are all on the exact opposite corner of the house from here, around two walls and on the north-east corner.  One by one, this industrious little rats (or family of rats) has trimmed these off and pulled them completely around the house, exposed to attack either during a long trek of 30+feet across the cement garage pad or an even longer trek across the back stamped-cement patio, up a few stairs, and into the corner.  To get here, the rat has also trekked numerous times by at least three poisonous bait traps, but I guess when you don't have a home, gathering food may be low on the priority list.


However long the construction work took, I demolished this semi-erected rodent domicile in the blink of an eye, letting a brisk wind last Sunday carry the debris to the four corners of the world.  As an added measure, I also purchased a large spray bottle of rodent repellent and used it.  I've never thought the pungent pepperminty spray was worth using, but I do believe in hedging my bets against my de-hedged neighboring rodents. 

My forsythia is finally blooming forth today, bright, yellow, and only a few days later than average.  The specimen pictured is 'Fiesta', one of the better varieties in my garden.