Red, White, and Blue all over

On this Fourth of July, in the year of Our Lord 2023, ProfessorRoush is going to let the pictures (mostly) speak  for themselves.   I went out to take just one photo of each color, hoping that I'd have anything blue blooming at all, and I was yet overwhelmed by the abundance of red, white, and blue in a garden now brimming over with oranges and yellows from the daylilies.  Okay, I cheated a little on the blue since most of the species that are currently blooming with blue flowers are native plants; all weeds in my garden.   My apologies to my British readers for the insufferable reminder of the loss of your colonies.  Warning,  picture heavy!  

First the Red:

Pelargonium potted in front of the house

'Spiderman' Daylily

Hybrid Rugosa 'Linda Campbell'

Canadian Rose 'Hope for Humanity'

Then the White:

Phlox 'David'

Shasta Daisy 'Alaska'

The impossibly delicate Argemone polyanthemos,
 or Prickly Poppy

Rose 'Marie Bugnet', not at her best

Hibiscus syriacus 'Notwooodtwo' 

Hydranga paniculata

And last, but not least, the Blue:

Clematis 'Romona'

Salvia azurea; Blue Sage
Nothing is bluer!

Hisbiscus syriacus 'Blue Bird'

My nemesis; Commelina communis

Fringe-Leaf Ruellia; Ruellia humilis

Not bad, eh?   Not bad at all for a garden that currently is dominated  by daylilies and looks like this everywhere:

  HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY TO ALL!

Bee-Musings

ProfessorRoush doesn't have a nice, neat patriotic theme for you on this July 4th.  I suppose I could walk out the front door and grab a few pictures of the pure white phlox 'David', and the bright red 'Wave' petunias at the foot my of driveway, add a snapshot of a bit of Russian Sage or lavender from the other side of the house to approximate the blue, and then I could contrive a nice rousing image of a celebration of independence with those pictures, but my writer's muse just won't cooperate today.  The country's mood, and my mood, doesn't seem to be one of celebration this July Fourth, but of turmoil and division, uncertainty and strife.  Or maybe that's just me.

I'm thinking a lot about bees this year, and on this 4th day of July, for some subconscious reason that I can't yet name, I'm thinking of them again.  I"m photographing bees on flowers everywhere, I'm reveling in their presence in my garden, and I'm rejoicing in every little buzzing busy bee that I find, and I don't know why.  For whatever reason, bees are reaching my happy center this summer, spreading joy with wings and all their six legs.  Everywhere I look, there they are, crawling over the delicate petals and flying from each ripe blossom to the next. And every time I find a bee on a blossom, out comes my camera and a picture is born.

I'm always happy that there are bees in my garden, but this year their presence seems more special to me.  Have I somehow internalized my concern over their well-being, over the very-real threats to their survival?  Am I searching for saneness, for certainty and assurance that the world is not on the verge of collapse as it sometimes seems?  Does the world make more sense with bees in the picture?

Why, on the 4th of July, are bees my subject?  It's quite a stretch to connect bees to a patriotic holiday, notwithstanding the existence of the "Patriotic American Flag Honey Bee T-shirt" and its clever superimposition of a bee silhouette over an American flag.  And I must admit, I chuckled over another Amazon-sold T-shirt emblazoned with "All Hive Matters."  Bee-keepers are a society unto themselves, I guess.  But other than noting these shirts as possible surprise gifts for the beekeepers in my life, I can't consciously make a case for Patriotic bees. 

Perhaps, deep inside the quirky recesses of my id, bees DO represent normalcy.  Maybe I'm secretly craving this year a unified society where each has a role for the good of all.  The queen, the drone, and the worker, all working as one, in one direction, as one strong society.  Don't, I beg you, take that sentiment as any calling for communism or socialism.  ProfessorRoush tries to avoid political subjects on this blog and flowers only mix with politics when the flowers are in a politician's lapel hole.  Bees should matter, but I'm not going to say so, or wear a shirt that says so, because who knows who one might offend these days.  People aren't drones, and while many of us are worker bees and a few of us may be royalty, we have choice and we should exercise it and grow each to our greatest potentials.

Well, I'm far afield in my ramblings and rants on this day, Independence Day 2020.  You can just enjoy the bees, along with me, and forget all about the rest of this.  Or we can all gather a little pollen today, a little goodwill for all, and take it back to support our hives, working separately but together, all to survive from this year into the next.   God knows, if we don't learn to work together, we're going to get a little hungry this winter.          

Sucker for Stripes

At any given garden store, there are two plant characteristics that will nearly always guarantee a sale to me.  The first is any flower that approaches the sky blue pigment characteristic of the Blue Himalayan Poppy (Meconopsis betonicifolia).  The second is nearly any red and white striped flower.  I'm a complete sucker for all of them, particularly roses, whether it's 'Fourth of July', 'Rosa Mundi', 'Scentimental', or one of a hundred others.  Modern breeders have caught on and increased the numbers of these beauties recently so other gardeners must be bitten by the bug as well.

One of my favorite roses has long been the well-known Bourbon 'Variegata di Bologna'.  A consistent performer here in my Zone 5B garden, 'Variegata di Bologna' often reblooms in the Fall, but I really don't care because the Spring bloom alone is enough to carry me through a year.  Probably the most scented rose in my garden, this beauty has a nice consistent vase-like shape. It grows to about 6 feet during a season and has a little winter tip-kill back to about 4 feet, but it doesn't need special winter protection here in Kansas.

Last year I added a particularly beautiful striped herbaceous peony, 'Pink Spritzer' to my garden. I saw the famous Roy Klehm give a lecture at the National Arboretum during a trip to Washington D.C. two years ago and I had picked out 'Pink Spritzer' as one of the "must-have" additions during the lecture.  Subsequently, I ordered it straight from Klehm's own nursery, Song Sparrow Farm (http://www.songsparrow.com/), and planted it during the Fall as suggested.  This year, it gave me the first blooms, an unusual and beautiful single peony of red and white and a little green that makes a splash in the front of my peony bed.  Song Sparrow Farm doesn't offer it online right now, so if you can find one and plant it, guard it carefully.  Gardeners are gentle folk but they aren't above the sin of envy and a little pilferage in the pursuit of beauty.