Caution, Barn Ahead!

Pipevine Swallowtail on Purple-leaf Honeysuckle

So, has the anticipation built enough yet?  I've stayed away from my blog because it is too cold here to even think about gardening.  The world is not  imposing any gardening musings on me either, since I've only received two seed and bulb catalogues in the mail this year.  Is the lack of catalogues a sign of the garden economy?  Next, will I hear that more mail order nurseries are cutting back or out of business?  I hope not.

I have been forced to brave the cold however to plan and keep track of my huge winter project.  I previously wrote about the home farm sale and my trip back home to gain some tools, but one of the biggest tools is yet to make it to Kansas;  a small tractor with all the trimmings for cutting pasture and garden cultivation!  And before it can come, I've got to have storage space built, so I've finally begun construction of an outbuilding/toolshed/barn which will house the tractor, implements, lawn mowers, hoses, and all the other gardening paraphernalia that Mrs. ProfessorRoush blames for dirtying up her garage.  In short, I'm building a big gardener's playhouse and being banished to it.

In my area, outbuildings have to match the design and roof line of the house according to the local homeowner's agreement, so, to limit the amount of brick I have to buy and to decrease the visibility of the structure, I decided to bury it in the hillside just east of the house, pictured above and below, with the 3-bay entrance facing the pasture.  This hillside was too steep to mow, and years ago I planted it with a dozen seedlings of purple-leaf honeysuckle, which spread rapidly to adequately cover the rocky hillside and provides me plenty of pleasurable perfume each spring.

One day, a couple of weeks back, it was an overgrown mass of honeysuckle, lifeless in winter, and infested with pack rats and snakes.  The next day it was a hole in the ground, exposing the rocky soil profile to the world as I noted in my last post.

So, goodbye to the honeysuckle, hello to the barn!  Well, at least temporarily adios to the honeysuckle because although I've never heard her mention it before, Mrs. ProfessorRoush has made me promise to replant "her" beloved honeysuckle that she now claims she enjoys so much.  I agreed in principle to keep some of the honeysuckle, but primarily for the benefit of the Pipevine Swallowtail butterflies and not at all due to the wailings and tongue-lashing from Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  Tomorrow or the next day, I'll show you the walls that have gone up this week.  One good thing about concrete walls;  they go up fast!

Closet Occupations

I'm wondering this morning how many other MidWest closets and basements have become, in this season of our gardening discontent, a place for accumulating spring additions and surprises to our gardens.

Take me, for instance.  In my basement storeroom last week, the iron obelisk-like thing pictured at right suddenly apparated, begging me for a spot in my garden this spring.  I entertained the thought for a few moments and decided to concede that perhaps I could give it a good home as the centerpiece of a daylily and iris bed, but I admonished the rusty creature that it was going to have to spruce itself up a little before being placed into the garden.  And lo and behold, two coats of rust-preventing light blue paint have appeared this week, brightening up the obelisk in just the right shade (I hope) to make a nice background for a flimsy annual vine or smaller clematis that wants to help me provide an interest point in that particular bed.  Just for your enjoyment, it consented to have its picture taken in the snow if I did it quickly, but it has asked to be brought back inside for the remainder of winter so that it doesn't have to experience the weather extremes of the Flint Hills until spring.  The iron scrollwork and details are such that I might not be able to keep my promise very long, as the pictured obelisk and its shadows on the snow are stirring something in my soul.  

I'm sure that, as I browse garden stores in a desperate search for green coloration over the next 2 months, there will be other garden items that decide to inhabit my closets, garage or basement, biding their time until spring.  Already, out in the garage, a new pole for the purple martin gourd houses has moved in, and it will soon be joined by bags of cement needed to pace it firmly in the ground against my Kansas wind.  I'm thinking it may not be long before it is joined by a sack or two of summer bulbs, some seed packets, and maybe a new birdhouse or two.    

What, perhaps, is stirring in your closets or garage this winter, begging to join the garden?