Arachnophobic Angst

On general principles, I'm a "leave-me-alone-and-I'll-leave-you-alone" kind of gardener (except, of course, when it comes to snakes).  Spiders, insects, newts, and crawly things of all kind get a pass in my garden until they cause me bodily harm or inflict horticultural havoc on my plants.  I haven't, as I recall, used a single dose of insecticide, organic or otherwise, in my perennial garden all year (although I'm not quite so innocent when it comes to my vegetable garden).  You can see the evidence for my benevolence frequently in this blog, since many rose photos hide an insect or two visible only for their protruding legs or antennae. 

But truth be told, the situation is different when it comes to the domestic side of the household.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush and her diminutive clone have an irrational fear and hatred of spiders in and around the house.  I've been summoned from as far as a mile away by screams emanating from trapped female humans in showers, laundries, and basements.  Sometimes, I can't even hear them but I see the dog startle at the hypersonic pitch.  Consequently, as free as my outer garden perimeter is from insecticides, inside my house there exists a toxic chemical wasteland of armageddic proportions.  If it scuttles, it gets sprayed.  If it hides in corners or along baseboards or in the ceiling, it gets sprayed.  Sometimes I think the spraying commences at the merest extrasensory wisp of a chitinous thought of invasion.  I'm expecting the EPA to declare my house a SuperFund site at their first examination.

I naively thought, with the development of long-acting insecticides promising "year-long" residual activity, that at least my own fears of neurologic side-effects might be alleviated, but alas, after spraying only a couple of months ago, I was recently informed that the spiders have returned.  Not in live form, mind you, but as crinkled skeletal remains. Evidently, dried carcasses with eight appendages are viewed as evidence of a marauding population and mass genocide is immediately implemented.  My feeble attempts to point out that dead spiders are an indication that the toxins are working are for naught.  The Huns are at the Wall.

That's why I feel sorry for the little fellow pictured on this page.  I'm no entomologist (or is it an arachnologist?) so I can't identify this individual other than lumping him as a "house spider who spins webs," but I doubt he intends any mischief other than catching a few random flies above the barbecue.  Unfortunately for him, he chose to set up shop, as you can see at the right above, in the window above our kitchen sink, where Mrs. ProfessorRoush has to stare at him daily as she tries to appreciate the view of the valley towards town.   If he'd asked me, I could have told him that such "in-your-face" politics were not a wise move when there's a madwoman nearby with her finger on the nuclear trigger.  This guy's days are numbered and I'm sure he's going to disappear soon to rest next to Jimmy Hoffa, with only me to mourn him between my bouts of spastic twitches.

Sedum Smorgasbord Served

ProfessorRoush, why do you grow sedums as an edging plant?

Because, my Dear, they are drought-resistant and make nice tidy foliage clumps and they have disease free foliage and they bloom brightest and best after the roses are tired and also because the deer leave them alone.

But ProfessorRoush, why then have you clipped off the blooms on all your sedums this late in the season?

Because, as you so often make me aware, Mrs. ProfessorRoush, I was wrong.  Again.  I didn't clip them, the deer ate them.  The deer love them.  Indeed, if you search the Internet or books, there will be any number of websites that list sedum as a deer-resistant plant (including a pamphlet from a local gardening store that I based my decision on), but many of those were written by evil gnomes and are dead wrong.  As usual, I should have looked to the Universities of this fine land for definitive information.  Rutger's University has a very well laid-out webpage that lists sedum as "occasionally severely damaged."  North Carolina State Extension has a nice pamphlet as well, listing them as "occasionally damaged".   As a Extension Master Gardener, I should have known better than to trust a non-research-based source.  I am expecting a hit squad of Mossy Oak®-camouflaged EMG's to show up at my door at any minute, demanding my trowel, Felco's and my EMG name badge.

I don't wish to be full of sour grapes, but what the heck kind of a term is "deer-resistant" anyway?   I understand the evolutionary advantages for Lamb's Ear, for example, to have developed a fuzzy surface that is distasteful to deer, but the plants don't really resist the deer, the deer just resist eating certain plants. Until, in the midst of a drought, they're hungry.  After that, Watch Out, Nellie, because the stupid large furry rats won't even leave the junipers alone. 

Lesson learned.  By edging a nice rose bed with 'Matrona' (Sedum telephinum) divisions, I have merely set out a smorgasbord of sweetly-flavored succulents during a drought.  HEY THERE!  DEER!  LOOK OVER HERE!  Don't bother with all that tall dry grass, come get these velvet-lip-wetting candy treats I've set out for you.  And please, nibble on the roses on your way through, pretty please?   To quote Charlie Brown, "Good Grief!"

Greggo's Gasser

According to Mrs. ProfessorRoush and my children, I am almost impossible to buy gifts for.  And they get no argument from me in that regard.  In the first place, I'm a man of few wants.  A little land, a little rain, a few plants, a little rain, a little peace and quiet, a little rain, and a little attention from Mrs. ProfessorRoush are about all I ask for. Anything else I want, I usually either buy before I've expressed the thought that I want it or else it is too expensive to buy and so I reason that I really don't want it.  When asked, I can occasionally come up with a book I'd like to read or a new shovel I need, but nobody seems to like to give a gift when the giftee knows exactly what choices the gifter has.  I would have said its an efficient use of time, but others claim that it isn't any "fun."

My fellow blogger and friend Greggo, however, he really knows the way into the cracks in a gardener's psyche.  This week, I had the honor of an in-person visit from Greggo and his wife to my garden as they happened to be passing through Manhattan.  It is a rare pleasure possible only in this Internet-driven world when two people with so much in common can connect and share experiences like they had known each other for years.  Greggo has read enough of my blog and remembered enough to be able to ask about the outcome of some "trial" plants and to ask to see other plants he was interested in that he knew I grew.  It was a great visit.  Greggo collected seed from my Centaurea macrocephala, so I hope to see it growing in his yard next year.

As icing on the cake, Greggo came bearing gifts as well!  In my basement window right now are the potted starts of a sedum he had gathered during his travels and was kind enough to share with me.  They will eventually become Greggo's Sedum in my garden.  The sneaky devil one-upped that nice gesture however, with his gift of the gas-can pictured here.  An antique Eagle-brand can with "The Gasser" printed boldly on its side.  Just feast your eyes on it, a real, honest-to-god, non-leaking, non-California compliant can to replace the precious one that my daughter and her boyfriend destroyed and that I wrote about earlier here.  To me, it was like giving a gift of gold bullion, a gift of pure friendship, a delicious combination of knowing that I could fill a gas tank without the "no-spill" spout spilling gasoline over everything in a 10 foot radius, and also knowing that I am being a little bit defiant to our political masters.  Take that, you meddling bureaucrats, I've got an old-style gas can again!  That Greggo, he sure knows the science of gifting.  Thanks again, Greggo!

I've already filled it and filled up the lawnmower with it, but between gas trips, it will stay hidden, safe from Mrs. ProfessorRoush and the thieving children.  I know how they are; they see a good tool or gas can and too soon it is gone, spirited away never to be seen by the gardener again.  Just ask my Dad about his favorite green-dipped adjustable wrench that he hasn't seen for the almost 30 years since it relocated itself to my tool box.

Beetles! Get'cher Beetles Here!

Hey, You! Yeah, you, Fella!  Take a look at these!  Japanese Beetles for Sale!  These little green friendlies would love to hitch a ride into your garden and fornicate in it and make babies.  Cheap!  End of the Year Sale! Don't wait until they reach your area on their own!  Get'em NOW!

This morning, on a trip out of town, I innocently stopped at a large regional nursery about 60 miles east of Manhattan.  This nursery sells each Spring, among other plants, the largest variety of potted roses for a radius of 100 miles.   Being who I am, I could not help but stop to view their sale on the few remaining potted roses, hoping particularly to find a 'St. Swithun' marked down to a price that even a curmudgeonly rosarian would like.  And there, I saw them.  Japanese Beetles!  Fornicating in 'The Wedgwood Rose'!  And, looking around, they were on all the roses!  And the perennial hibiscus! And the daylilies (insert primal scream here)!  I took the pictures displayed here with my Iphone, to dispel doubting Thomas's and the likes of government types who claim that UFO's do not exist.

To understand the full depth of my horror and the stream of curses I uttered, you should be aware that Japanese Beetles are not yet endemic just 60 miles west, in Manhattan, Kansas, and I was unaware that they had been seen in anything but temporary outbreaks west of Kansas City.  You East-Coast rosarians should imagine, for a moment, an idyllic garden where you had never seen a Japanese Beetle, but you had heard they were massing at the seashore.  That is the fear that I've been living with for 5 or 6 years now, viewing the pictures of destruction at other gardens on the Internet and waiting for the beetle-induced Armageddon.

Fellow Gardeners, I am irate, nay, I am INCENSED at the callous disregard of this nursery for the public.  Questioning a worker at the store, "Yes", they did know that they had living, breeding Japanese beetles on the premises.  "They've been here for two or three years."  And "Yes" they had notified the authorities and were being monitored.  Why then, I wondered, were their embeetled roses and other plants still for sale?  How was it that they felt it was okay to participate in spreading these things around? I understand a conscientious gardener sticking to their organic principles and refusing to spray, but surely a commercial nursery wouldn't hesitate to nuke every inch of plant and soil.   One thing for sure, I wasn't buying any roses today.

Friends, this whole issue puts me deeply into an ethical and moral dilemma.  I have a vocal libertarian streak, distrusting authority of all kinds and advocating that petty little government dictators, (like Michael Bloomberg, currently trying to regulate the size of soft drinks at the movies in NYC), be exiled to Elba.  But I wished instantly and fervently on the spot that there was a government agency that would step into this void, tell this nursery they have to put up signs warning unknowing customers, and curtail sales to western customers.  Or better yet, depopulate and burn the nursery to the ground, as they have done in the past to farms with tuberculosis and brucellosis in their dairy herds.

I know, I know, eventually beetles will reach Manhattan Kansas on their own.  But I had a small hope that the Flint Hills would be a 50 mile-wide barrier to westward expansion; a no-beetle-land of poor food sources for their migration and extensive annual prairie fires to wipe out early scouts.  Little did I know that a nursery on the infested side of the zone would blatantly offer to sell me a potted plant with either beetle larvae in the soil or, in my case today, some actual beetle couples who would have been happy to have intercourse in my back seat during the Jeep ride home and then quickly disperse into my Beetle Eden of 200 rose plants.  Just as bad, I've bought plants from this nursery every year, my latest being a peony last August during a sale.  It has been long planted in my garden, all last Winter and this Spring, far too late to grub out now.  Until now I've tried, myself, to be a no-spray gardener, mostly faithful to the organic cause, but within seconds I was contemplating which insecticide I should use first.
  
I drove speedily home, calling friends and local nursery owners on the way like a Paul Revere of horticulture, spreading the word that the beetles were coming.  Local nursery owners were unaware and surprised at the disclosure.  Flashes of Kevin McCarthy screaming "They're here already! You're next!" at the ending of the classic movie The Invasion of the Body Snatcher's were running through my mind.  I came straight home and ran into my rose garden, inspecting every bloom for insects lounging in post-coital bliss, finally collapsing in relief as I determined that I'm still free from infection.  And then I took a long hot shower in disinfectant soap and burned my clothes.  You can never be too careful.

Warning; Zealots Crossing

We've all seen them.  The bulging eyes moving frantically from side to side seeking an exit. Antic feet sliding sideways in a fruitless attempt to escape.  The dazed expressions that signify aural and mental overload.  Saliva pooling and drool overflowing as the higher cognitive functions are beaten down and dulled.  All of these and more the signs of a normal person trapped in a zealot's snare, unable to fly to freedom against the onrushing tide of words and enthusiasm.

Such was the lot of a few poor souls this week when I gave a Tuesday Talk at the K-State Rose Garden sponsored by The Friends of the KSU Gardens.  I'd been tapped several months ago to talk about the Garden and rose history in general during a walk around the rose garden and my anticipation had built up to the boiling point, but at last the scheduled time had arrived.  A half-hour came and went in an instant as I poured forth a partially coherent stream of information about rose classes and the AARS and the Gamble Fragrance Award and rose breeders and anti-Knock-Out-ism.  No one actually ran from the venue, and no children were permanently scarred by the lecture, but I'm concerned that several attendees will require some recovery time before they can again look at a rose as a simple lovely flower.

Zealots and fanatics can both be defined as being "marked by excessive enthusiasm and often intense uncritical devotion".  Synonyms for the words include "rabid", "bigoted," "phrenetic," and "mad."  Winston Churchill is quoted as saying "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."  All right, I hear all that, but I still don't understand why zealotry is seen as a bad thing.

I put to you that little progress would be made in the World without a zealot or three or four challenging The Man. Yes, the world might be a calmer place and there might be fewer wars, but without a little irrational enthusiasm, little gardening would be done.  Who among us would garden if we didn't conveniently forget annually that every year the quail would come to eat the corn before it sprouted, that a late frost would nip the first tomatoes we put out, and that a drought in August will always cause us to carry water daily for the pumpkins?  And if some fanatic doesn't pick up the torch of rose snobbery and defend the Old Garden Roses, who among us will stand to speak out against scentless and bland 'Knock Out'?  

Somewhere out there, I hope I planted a seed at the lecture.  A seed that will grow and cause someone to shun the Big Box Stores and their 'Knock Out's in favor of a real rose.  Perhaps an English/Austin hybrid, or a mail-order Gallica, or a hard-won Griffith Buck-bred 'EarthSong' or an EarthKind-recognized rose?  A rose worthy of the name rather than just another colored flowering shrub.  Such incremental changes are the lifeblood of a zealot and I'm proud to be so labeled if I can cause yet another 'Knock Out' to dry up on the shelf, unpurchased.  And, somewhere along the way, provide a little aid and comfort to the Friends of the KSU Gardens.   

(Author's note;  The picture above is of the "Rose" statue in front of the KSU Rose Garden, surrounded, ironically in light of this blog entry, by 'Livin Easy' roses).

Snakes Ahoy!

One never knows, do we?  Last Friday started out as a normal day, but it certainly ended with a bang.  After my workday, Mrs. ProfessorRoush and I slipped away for a bite to eat, and then she went on home to walk our ancient Brittany Spaniel while I stopped back to check on a resident doing a surgery. 

I can testify that Mrs. ProfessorRoush was entirely normal when we parted, but twenty minutes later when I pulled into the garage, I was met at the door to my car with a disheveled, shouting caricature of my wife and a very excited Brittany.   At least I think it was my wife for she was moving so quickly her outline was blurry.  It seems that on their walk, they had encountered the first of this summer's snake denizens.  

Scotophis obsoletus, Western Rat Snake

As I listened and tried to calm Mrs. ProfessorRoush, all the while wondering if the garage and car windows were going to shatter from either decibel level or pitch, I understood clearly what detectives and FBI agents are up against when they discuss the unreliability of eyewitnesses.  If I had taken Mrs. ProfessorRoush's account as gospel, this particular snake had coiled up to a height approaching ten feet, threatened to strike at my Brittany with bared fangs, and then chased them out of the yard. 

I know that I've led many of the readers of this blog to believe that I'm also scared of snakes, but that is not entirely true.  Yes, I don't care to have them pop up at my feet or strike at my shovel from underneath a perennial I'm transplanting, but my panic episodes at such times are temporary and only rarely results these days in running clear past township or county borders.  I have been so desensitized by the number of reptiles on the Kansas Flint Hills that I certainly still jump, but then I calm down while I'm waiting for gravity to reacquaint the earth with my feet, and I rationally determine the type of snake and the relative danger to my garden visitors (pet or human).

This particular snake was (is) about a six foot long and 2 inch diameter Western Rat Snake, Scotophis obsoletus (or is it Elaphe obsoletus? Or Pantherophis obsoletus?), and it is a constrictor, not a biter.   I did not, as counseled by Mrs. ProfessorRoush, "get a shotgun and blow it to smithereens."  I have a strict species-ism hierarchy in my garden, hating rodents more than snakes, so I welcome any of the latter benign hunters.  Additionally, I have yet to see a poisonous snake in my garden and I have theorized that if a nice, big rat snake is clearing out the hunting grounds, I have less chance of hearing a rattle next to my feet as I trim the roses.  A snake this big will also occasionally catch and give a rabbit a love hug, so this guy may even help me to raise some lettuce this year.  Besides, according to my references, the Western Rat Snake has a home range of approximately 30 acres, so I'm not very likely to see him again soon.

All of the proceeding thoughts weave a nice rationalization, but it doesn't wash at all with Mrs. ProfessorRoush, who prefers all slithering insects and reptiles to be in the process of decay.  Not even the chance for fresh lettuce can dissuade her, and I now have some work to do to restore my gardening knight in shining armor image at home.  C'est la vie.   

Stealthy Garden Ninjas

Recently in my garden, I've noticed occasional evidence left by large furry rats with white tails.  These incursions into sacred territory seem to have increased during the recent dry spells.  Although I have seen no more footprints, I have noticed an increasing frequency of tender rose buds nipped off just before they bloom, and always from the same bushes.   I am also aware, as an enlightened modern man, that special cameras, called "game cameras," exist for the sole purpose of identifying the nighttime marauders and improving, for hunters, the rate of harvesting them.  I put all these facts together a couple of weeks ago and decided that it would be nice to know exactly the who, what and when of the perpetrators visiting my garden at night.  Sort of like having a night watchman without all the overtime pay.

Alongside installing such a camera comes a little trepidation.  What if I find that some hitherto unknown creature is drawn by the beauty of my roses?  Perhaps female Sasquatch are harvesting the roses to brighten up the cave or brush pile they live in?  Such pictures could make me rich at the same time as scaring the bejeesus out of me.  What if I find evidence of a mountain lion, rumored and occasionally spotted within Kansas and Nebraska, prowling in my backyard?  Such knowledge would completely spoil my plans for a nighttime-highlighted "white" garden bed. 

All such fantasies aside, it seems that I've been punked by whatever devious creatures exist on the prairie.  If I am to believe the evidence, the only creature visiting my garden in the past two weeks is me.  Well, me and maybe the neighbor's dog.  I've got 169 motion-activated pictures taken over a span of 2 weeks and from two different locations in my garden, and I appear in almost all of them.  There are also a number that are absent of mammalian life, likely initiated by wind moving the plants, or cloud movement or, in one case, a nighttime lightning flash.  It is either that or I'd have to conclude that the deer can sneak around my garden in ninja suits, performing snatch and grab operations before the camera can activate. 


I'm going to keep moving the camera until I locate the secret path of invasion.  Until then, for those who also think this sounds like a good idea, I can wholeheartedly recommend it.  These game cameras are relatively inexpensive now and take good quality pictures, both daytime and nighttime, without flash.  They have the added benefit of adding automatic information to the picture;  date, time, temperature, and phase of the moon. There's an intense feeling of anticipation every time I remove the flash memory to view the pictures, a hope of surprise and discovery.  It might be really neat to focus this on a bird house or nest or something more dependably interesting than a random garden path.  And it would be useful to identify which garden tour visitor is taking cuttings from your treasures, or which neighborhood child is using your back yard as a shortcut from school to home.  Depending on your garden activities, you'll at least get some nice candid shots of yourself working in the garden, because you quickly forget it is there.  The latter lapse of memory could also, if you think about it, be the danger of having it around, again depending on what nongardening activities you enjoy in your garden.       

Techno-Teasing Trauma

I was out running errands around town yesterday and, entering a large home improvement box store that will remain unnamed, I was captured, as usual, to look over the entry display of various bagged up bulbs and perennials. As a general rule, I try to avoid spending any time in front of those racks because I know that most of these plants and bulbs will be dehydrated with little chance of survival and also because they are very common perennials and thus below the standards a real gardener should hold for themselves. Since I'm not a real gardener, however, I nearly always leave with a bag of something or other. Talk about your impulse purchases.

Anyway, today, it was a bag of Tigridia, the tiger flower, that caught my eye. Having never seen them before, and seeing that they were promoted as "Sun Lovers" (see the package below), my first thoughts were a) "That would be good for a novelty," and b) "I wonder if they are hardy here?" The packaging didn't list a USDA hardiness zone, but it did have one of those wonders of modern convenience, a QR Code, pictured here at the right. And I, being ProfessorRoush and of an early technologic bent, have just such a code-reading app on my Smart Phone.  Go ahead, try it out.  It works on the screen too. 

So there are the Tigridia, on sale at Home Depot, and here you are, the technically-proficient and thoroughly modern gardener.   The package QR Code links you for more information to the Longwood Gardens website. And what do you find? The message"LFGinfo.com spring bulbs coming soon." To quote the Peanut's character, Charlie Brown, "Aaarrrgggh!"

HELLO! STOP TEASING ME WITH YOUR PROMISES OF KNOWLEDGE!  It's already Spring, almost past it, in many parts of the country.  I'm a poor, uneducated common gardener just looking for help.  Do you think it is about time to post the necessary information up?  Why put the QR code on the packaging if it is not even active yet?

I've since found out that Tigridia pavonia is only hardy to Zone 8, and further more, is short-lived, each flower blooming only for a day.  Wonderful.  I just purchased an annual daylily. Of a truly ugly magenta coloration.  Just what I wanted.

Well, such runs the disappointments of our gardening lot.  Doomed forever to take a $6.98 chance on twenty dehydrated, decrepit bulbs that I now find will, in fact, likely not survive winter in my Zone 6 climate.  Tigridia  is noted on one website to grow in Olathe, Kansas and Lincoln, Nebraska, if, like dahlias, you are industrious enough (or crazy enough) to dig them up every fall and replant every Spring.

I don't grow Dahlias for just that reason.  As I've noted many times, digging and replanting bulbs in my stone ridden soil is a Sisyphean recipe for a broken back and a broken gardening spirit.  But I will try to enjoy the Tigridia for this summer, fleeting as they may be.  Those few flowers, at least, whose bulbs survive their dessicated state in my drought-stricken Kansas soil long enough to grow and bloom.

Dear Santa, Bring Christmas

Dear Mr. Claus,

I'm having a little trouble getting into the Christmas spirit this year, dear Santa, and someone suggested that writing you a letter might open up my floodgates to holiday cheer and goodwill towards marauding deer and nibbling rabbits.  However, I feel I've got to be truthful to you here at the outset, since I'm, after all, writing Santa, and trying to be good for goodness sake and all.  I need to acknowledge that I feel a little awkward writing to you as a gardener searching for Christmas, because, abiding up there at the North Pole, Santa, you're not exactly the patron saint of gardening.  I mean, I'm sure you've got a nice warm greenhouse nearby, and I'll bet the elves can create spectacular topiary, and all that reindeer poop must result in some fabulous compost.  But I suspect there's not much green in your landscaping and that red roses are hard to come by as a gift for Mrs. Claus.  Come to think of it, it is a good thing I don't live near you, because I don't know what I'd do without the roses I grow to help me beg forgiveness for the many trials and tribulations I create for Mrs. ProfessorRoush. 

My malaise is probably just that the Kansas skies are clear and blue and the sunshine is overwhelmingly bright, like the August sun except that it doesn't last as long every day.  I look outside the windows and I think, "What a nice sunny day to go work in the garden," and then I step outside, and my toes start to blacken and my fingers grow icicles and I remember that Spring is a long time away.  A little bit of brief warm wet snow or a few more days of heavy frost would actually go a long way, Santa, towards getting me into that holiday spirit, but I suppose that weather miracles actually are a little beyond your powers and more in the realm of the real Child of Christmas.

I've been a good boy this year, Santa, and I think even Mrs. ProfessorRoush would grudgingly allow that I've tried hard to toe the line of good garden principles and to be a moderately-tolerable husband.  I confess that I should have deadheaded a whole lot more and that I didn't get that viburnum moved, and that I should have trimmed back those forsythia last Spring.  And I admit that I could have brought more roses inside for Mrs. ProfessorRoush to enjoy and that I could have raised better tomatoes and peppers so that she could make more of her prize salsa.  I know you don't like excuses, Santa, but I do feel I did the best I could despite the late Spring freezes and the Summer drought and heat.

So, if you could see fit to sprinkle a little Christmas cheer my way, Santa, I'd appreciate it.  I'm not asking for much in the way of presents, maybe a gift certificate from the elves promising they will trim back the roses for me this Spring, or even just a little bottle of cougar urine to repel the rabbits.  Or, if you could see fit, a 10X12 foot greenhouse placed just to the south of my vegetable garden would go a long way towards improving my holiday spirit.  Just let me know and I'll stake out the area and get the water line run down the hill for it.

Yours truly, ProfessorRoush

Winter Gardening Reading

In Winter, my reading about gardening takes the place of my gardening, so I'm already in that phase where I'm accumulating things to read for the winter.  There are times I like serious gardening texts and times that I'd rather vegetate in what is the garden equivalent of a summer read.  You know what I'm talking about; those mostly mindless novels that have a little gardening, a little mystery, and a lot of relaxation.

Along that line, I know of two authors with a plant-focused novel series that other readers might enjoy.   Just last week, I learned of a series of around eight or ten mysteries written by author Kate Collins.  Of course, I just had to find one immediately to see if I liked it and was able to purchase the first book of the series at a local bookstore.  The series is called The Flower Shop Mysteries, so named because the main character, Abby Knight, is the busybody owner of a flower shop, "Bloomers", and is a former flunked-out law student.  Abby is constantly involved in some kind of trouble, and the series seems to be popular since it makes it onto local bookshelves. The first book of the series is titled Mums The Word, and it's a fairly decent tale of a local murder and Ms. Knight's investigation of it.  The other books in the series follow on the first, and all have clever titles like Slay It With Flowers, and Dearly Depotted.  I so love a good pun.

To be frank, I think Mums The Word was an engaging read, but I don't know how many of the rest of the series I'll be reading.   Don't get me wrong, they are good, but they are definitely written for a female market, and (as a middle-aged, hopelessly archaic, male) I'm just not the prime demographic.  In Mums The Word, the villains are easily recognizable, the women are often victims of bad dates and bad men, and there is a gratuitous hunk named Marco who makes several appearances as Abby's rescuer and heartthrob.  Being male, and hoping for a twist in the plot, I kept expecting Marco to turn out to be one of the bad guys, but, no, he just stayed a sweaty, bodice-ripping savior.  Really didn't do much for me since I never could understand the pirate-lusty maiden genera.  Carrying the book around bothered me a little as well, because, as you can see above, the cover is designed a little frilly and pastel-colored for my tastes.  Maybe I can put a plain book cover over the next one?

I thought I had already blogged about the other author, Ann Ripley, whose series I finished long ago, but it turns out that I haven't. I guess I'll make this week a "two-fer" on that front so stay tuned in a couple of days for that review.  And in the dead of winter, when you're staring out the window at a snow-covered landscape, Mums The Word could be just your ticket.  If you are a middle-aged or older female who likes pirate novels.  Hey, come to think of it, Mrs. ProfessorRoush might like this one.

Reminiscences

I'm musing far from the garden today, prompted by random recollections that refuse to be ignored.  Although I made a quick trip into my garden today in the chilling temperatures and dim light of early morning, Memory Lane beckoned later and took my thoughts on a detour.

It's Mrs. ProfessorRoush's birthday, and one of my presents to her, (yes, I'll take credit for anything I can) was to relieve her of dropping her smaller clone off at school.  The smaller clone normally could drive herself but temporarily has lost her keys for the umpteenth time.  Later, sitting in the line of cars at the High School, it suddenly struck me that the gaggles of giggling girls, even the older ones, just seem so...teenagerish.  

It was not that way in my far ago youth.  The female Seniors of my High School were sophisticated and cool and so...unreachable.  Ingrained into my soul is the time that I spent in typing class as a 9th grader, the first 9th grader in my school to be allowed into the class (and yes, it was a TYPING class, pre-computers and computer keyboards).  I was placed into the back row of typewriters, seated between the polished and refined Prom Queen (a senior) and the voluptuous senior Pom-Pom Captain (who actually, at that tender age, had Breasts and occasionally displayed glimpses of them even back in those pre-Madonna-influenced times!).  To communicate the experience to another gardener or rosarian, I can only compare it to being the spiky Echinops planted as a companion between the damask 'Madame Hardy' and the extra-large-bloomed Hybrid Tea 'Dolly Parton'. The entire atmosphere in that vicinity was charged, as I recall, with electricity, feminine perfume, and the essence of hyperstimulated nerd.  In hindsight, it is probably easy to understand how I, a 9th grader and the lone male, won the typing award that semester amidst a class of Senior girls.  The practice of touch-typing is immeasurably enhanced when the attention of the typist is everywhere but on the keyboard.

This all brings up a question I don't want to face, though.  Is it the eighteen-year-old females, and our society, who have changed so radically since the 1970's, or is it the ancient and wise gardening (former) nerd?  I cannot provide a defensible answer in fear that the passage of time has colored my view on the matter.  I will only say "Thank You" to 'Madame Hardy' formerly on my right, and 'Dolly Parton' on my left, for providing in my life the beauty and wonder so otherwise lacking in my pre-gardening years.  And, since it's her birthday, I will also hold up and celebrate the even more beautiful Mrs. ProfessorRoush for turning a hopeless nerd into a puttering and partially-useful husband with a modicum of socially acceptable behaviors.  It was a hard road you chose, Honey.

Best Laid Daylily Plans

My, how often the best-laid plans of mice and gardeners succumb to the realities of life!  I really thought I had it set up perfectly this year, my latest attempt at the acquisition of cheap, perfect daylilies, but alas, I failed again miserably in the execution of said plan.

I always look forward to the first weekend of September, because it promises the Daylily Society sale at the local farmers market. Thus it appeals to my miserly gardening pocketbook.  But in the past, I've come to the sale completely unprepared, choosing daylilies because the name sounded nice or because the description of the color seemed promising, only to later find myself disappointed once again that "melon" was orange, and "peach" was orange from more than two feet away.

But this June, I made a special effort to visit the local indoor mall during the annual Daylily Display, an event at which the local Daylily nuts...err..uh...enthusiasts display their prettiest daylilies during the height of the season.  These people are pictured in the dictionary next to the term Addict Enablers, in this case the addiction in question being my incontrollable need to grow the newest daylily varieties.  Several of the evil Hemerocallis pushers are local breeders who also exhibit their latest creations at the Display.  Unlike my previous visits to the Display, however, I came prepared with pad and pen, writing down the names of what I considered to be the choice 15 to 20 varieties. 

When I got home, I even went one step further and typed up the list while my memory was fresh, in lieu of my usual policy of relying on my mostly illegible handwriting and failing memory come September.  I also purchased, for the bargain price of $10.00, an annual membership in the Flint Hills Daylily Society, which entitled me to attend a pitch-in dinner and have first choice at the daylilies for sale on the night before the big public September sale.  I couldn't miss this time.

Well, I did miss.  Work intervened and I didn't make it to the pitch-in daylily dinner, nor to the Extension Master Gardeners bimonthly meeting on the same night.  Desperate, I went first the thing Saturday morning to the sale, armed with my list of delicious names such as "String Theory", "Red Hot Mama" and "Bella Donna Starfish".  And they didn't have any of those varieties for sale.  Oh, some of them had been in the sale the night before, but they had all been snatched up by my fellow FHDS fiends.  So I resorted to looking at the pictures compiled by color of each variety, a time-consuming activity, and I missed several other beautiful cultivars while doing so.  There was even a special table of "expensive" daylilies, some divisions as high as $10, and I failed there as well, looking at the names and then looking at the pictures, and then finding the ones I wanted snatched up before I could decide about them.

But, I guess I did okay in the end.  I came away with 12 or 15 varieties (see the picture above), generous clumps for $5 to $7 dollars apiece that were actually often three small divisions in each clump, leaving me with 35 or 40 new daylily starts for $99.  And such pretty names and colors too. 'Apple Tart'.  'Butterfiles in Flight'.  I'm just sure that the highly touted melon and peach daylilies I purchased won't look orange this time.

Charity, Wisdom, and Snooty Gardener-Husbands

Someone said it ages past; "Charity begins at home."  "Charity" in this reference means either its second definition in the free online Webster dictionary, "generosity and helpfulness especially toward the needy or suffering", or in its fourth definition, "lenient judgment of others."

I'm referring in this instance to charity extended to poor, misguided Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  We were out for a meal the other evening and leaving the fairly new Olive Garden's restaurant together, when she looked down near the sidewalk and stunned me momentarily speechless with the words, "Oh, those are pretty, are those geraniums?" 

She was referring, of course, to the heat-damaged Knock Out roses lining the sidewalk of this new commercial development.  Faded and sun-burnt, but Knock Outs nonetheless.  My regular readers know full well my opinions of Knock Out, but for those who don't, I'd refer you to my earlier blog titled Anti-Knock Out Cultivarist. 

I was only mildly surprised that she called them geraniums (to give her the benefit of the doubt, they were quite misshapen and discoloured from 10 days of plus-100 temperatures), but I was highly offended that she called them "pretty." Various retorts tumbled around in my brain for awhile, ranging from those which were merely pitying of her tastelessness to the beginnings of a profane rant, but my husbandly instincts thankfully kicked in and slowed my tongue from answers that would have resulted in a myriad of possible spousal sentences ranging from silent pouting to banishment to the couch for upwards of a week.  After all, Mrs. ProfessorRoush and I have been married nigh on 29 years and even a slow-witted, opinionated and socially-untrainable husband will develop some rudimentary survival instincts in that lengthy time period.

I choked back any offending thoughts from coming to the forefront and said only "No Dear, those are Knock Out Roses."  And I resolved, after a little reflection, to maybe give Knock Out a little more credit.  After all, I now have personal proof that there may be a significant portion of the population who thinks that Knock Outs are "pretty."  And for me it is a portion of the population who is both pretty, and pretty nice to have around, so keeping my mouth shut is a tiny price to pay.

Hi! We're Here!

Imagine that your doorbell is ringing early on a Sunday morning when you are just trying to start the day quietly and calmly with the newspaper and a little quality time with Mrs. ProfessorRoush (okay, not the actual latter person, but somebody else close to you).  And it turns out to be your persnickety insert here (parents, brother, sister, mother-in-law, cousin etc.) arriving unannounced for their visit several weeks early.  And you haven't cleaned the house or made up their room yet and the yard needs mowed and the dishes are piled in the sink and the dog left you a present on the dining room rug.

Think about all that for a while and you'll have a small inkling of how I felt yesterday when Mrs. ProfessorRoush called to tell me that my new roses had come in and asked me what I wanted her to do with them.  Yipes!  Like many other rose-lovers, I had jumped at the 50% off sale that Heirloom Roses announced a week or two back and I ordered seven rose bands at that time.  Yes, I knew that it was the wrong time of the year to order roses for planting in Kansas.  I was counting on slow order processing in a time of increased demand, and on the promise by Heirloom that "once my order was reviewed by staff, I would receive an updated confirmation with details on the expected shipping date and the official order number."  I planned to follow through on their offer to make adjustments to the shipping date, if necessary, once they informed me of the likely time of arrival. 

There was, however, no followup email confirming the order, and now I've got to figure out how to keep seven baby roses alive indoors (which I'm not very good at) until the +100F heat wave breaks here in Kansas (which may take until the end of August at this rate!).  Planting these greenhouse grown plants outdoors right now would be approximately equivalent to applying a blowtorch to their tender leaves.  I would expect their survival time to be numbered by hours, whether I placed them in shade or in sun and regardless of watering schedule.  So, indoors they are and indoors they'll stay for, at the least, several weeks while the calendar moves closer to the Autumn Solstice. An incredibly sunny window, an old aquarium, and, I'm certain, some chemical fungal preventatives will be required.   On the plus side, these are incredibly vigorous and healthy looking plantlets, perhaps the best that I've ever received by mailorder from any nursery.  Even with that, I'll be lucky if the seven innocent little green creatures aren't seven brown sticks before I get them outdoors.

The names of my new roses, for the interested, are 'Amiga Mia', 'AppleJack', 'Chorale', 'Gentle Persuasion', 'Fruhlingsmorgen', 'Scabrosa', and 'Souv du President Lincoln'.  Yes, I'm still on a Griffith Buck rose kick. Thank God I showed some uncharacteristic restraint and narrowed my initial list down from 25 roses or so to just these seven infants.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush would have been quite unhappy if her entire kitchen cabinet space had been converted into a nursery once again. 

The DripMaster

I'm proud to announce to gardening civilization that I have joined that adventurous set of gardeners who have created actual irrigation systems all on their own. Yes, I am a newly-minted and self-proclaimed DripMaster. I have taken that first step onto the ever-downward path of water conservation and without so much as an "Obi-Wan" to guide me.  Before you know it, I am sure I'll be buying Birkenstocks and tie-dieing my old gardening shirts.

This past Sunday, in the early morning hours before the heat rose high enough to fry bacon on my landscape rocks, I opened the RainDrip Landscape Kit that I had purchased on sale and on a whim a couple of weeks back.  Breathless in my fear of the unknown, I laid out the myriad of "T-connectors" and "pressure-reducing" valves and "1.0 GPH drippers" and  quarter- and half-inch tubing and began to sort through the foreign language of the manual.  Like all "how-to" manuals, this one started with a suggestion to carefully plan the layout of the drip irrigation system on paper beforehand.  At that suggestion of course, like every good do-it-yourselfer, I laughed and tossed away the manual.  Who's got time for planning?

  

To experiment with drip irrigation, I chose a bed new to my garden this year, one that Mrs. ProfessorRoush and her smaller sidekick had complained was a step "too far"  in my secret plans to take over the yard.  This one currently has a few 'Matrona' sedum divisions and about nine new Griffith Buck roses that are struggling in the Kansas sun.  I've been hand-watering this area all spring and summer, turning aside my usual policy of letting my garden plants live or die on their own in the certain knowledge that it has been way too dry this spring to give the tiny roses a fighting chance.  Knowing that I've got 8 or 10 other roses already ordered to add to this bed, I thought setting it up for irrigation might save this gardener from withering in the coming August alongside the new roses. 

  

 
About an hour or so after starting, I had the entire system finished and dripping away, just before the temperature hit the 100F degree mark and I started dripping away alongside it.  The starter kit was quite sufficient to create the system for this small bed and yes, I planned for expansion to the new roses once they are planted.  In fact, the 50 foot main tubing in this kit was enough to start a system in another bed, but I ran out of drip heads before I could finish that one.  The bricks in the picture above are temporary until I can purchase stakes to hold the curves in place.  I think I'll be smart and not bury the thing under mulch until the new roses come in and are planted. And, since I know that you are wondering, No, I did not run drip irrigation to the 'Matrona' sedums in the bed.  I know that they'll do fine on their own without the extra watering and I am, after all, the DripMaster. 

Vindicated

Thank you, Associated Press. I know that I haven't talked about it here, but I've secretly spent the past month or so feeling like a complete gardening failure because of the lack of fruit set on my orchard trees and other fruiting plants.  Strawberries were first, lousy this year in both number and size.  Two cherry trees in my yard bore nothing.  The blackberries were a mediocre crop at best.  And, looking at the peach and apple trees, I've got one apple tree ('Winesap') with about one-third the normal number of apples and my 'Jonathan' and 'Gala' trees are completely apple-less.  And I can count 6 peaches on three trees.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush is quite upset, particularly at the loss of the strawberry crop, and I have caught her sneaking in produce from afar.

I have been trying to assuage my guilt about not harvesting a decent fruit crop by blaming it vociferously on our late frost this spring and the on dry fall and winter of last year. I have been avoiding entry to the part of my garden that includes the orchard. And I've been avoiding talking to other gardeners about their fruit harvests, fearful that I'll be proven inadequate by comparison and laughed at.  I was considering, for a time, wearing a scarlet "G" on my chest, the very symbol of gardening shame. Recently, the gardener's refrain of "it will be better next year or the one after that," has been constantly running through my head.

But this weekend the local paper ran an Associated Press story out of Lawrence, Kansas, and there it was in black and white; "A few days of subzero weather in late February has decimated the fruit tree crops in northeast Kansas, sharply reducing the apples, peaches...."   Ahhh, thank you Experts. near and far, for making it all better for the amateurs. They've officially blamed my lack of fruit on a phenomenon called "winter kill," below-zero temperatures that destroy the developing ovaries.  More importantly, I now know that everyone around here is in the same boat and we are all now free to commiserate and moan and gnash our teeth together, rather than hiding the knowledge of our insufficiencies in the closet with the family's eccentric Aunt and the funny Uncle. 

In the same article, the Experts blamed the strawberry loss on a different mechanism; a cool and wet spring followed by a sudden heat that scorched them just as they were ripening fruit.  Me, I don't care why it happened anymore, I just care that something or somebody other than the garden caretaker was to blame.  And I can tell Mrs. ProfessorRoush that it wasn't my fault and show her the article.  She'll believe that, won't she?

Almost Anonymous Lilies

Wow, talk about your mental anguish!   You see, first of all, I recently lost the thumb drive that contains the list of my 2011 plant acquisitions and my recently updated garden maps.  I was sure I had backed it up, but have been unable find the backup anywhere.  Secondly, I can recall getting a bulb order in this spring from a mail order nursery and I know it contained some Naked Ladies and some other less common bulbs, but I could not remember exactly what else I ordered.

Oriental Lily 'Yellow Dream'

And then this beauty has popped up in my front landscaping and not only was I unable to put a name to it for several days, I couldn't remember planting it this year at all.  Actually there are two of them, very tall (3 1/2 to 4 1/2 feet tall) and floriferous, with about 8-10 buds on each one, just starting to bloom. They are too yellow for Madonna Lilies. They're too late and too large to be Asiatics. They're not strongly scented as near as I can tell right now and they're much more robust than I can usually get an Oriental lily to grow here in dry Kansas.  And they're big blooms, bigger than 'Stargazer'.  And so many blooms on each stem!  Gorgeous!  It is extremely frustrating to me, though, when I can't provide the proper name for a plant (except for the umpteen zillion orange daylilies).

So I searched and I searched my notes and scraps of packages.  I searched electronically through my plant lists for "lily" and "lilium".  I found nothing.  I finally vaguely remembered that I had planted a yellow Oriental lily in my Hydrangea Bed several years back.  And there, buried in my plant maps, comes this note from 2009:  "Oriental Lilly 'Yellow Dream', 8 scattered in Hydrangea Bed and in Front Bed."  The feeling of relief I had was as welcome as a July rain storm in Kansas, even though now I'm a bit chagrined that I can't spell "lily" correctly in my notes.

I do, however, know who is really to blame for my angst.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush particularly likes lilies; it doesn't matter if they are Asiatics or Orientals or daylilies.  And so I resolved last year to plant more of the Asiatics and Orientals to extend the lily bloom period in my garden.  And what do I get for my efforts to be a good gardening husband?  Mental angst and the self-doubt which comes along with aging, the inability to remember the name of something, and the anxiety over whether Alzheimer's disease has begun to set in.

You know what they say, though, about old gardeners and Alzheimer's disease: Forgetting the name of a plant is not a symptom of Alzheimer's disease, it is finding that you planted it in your neighbor's garden instead of your own that indicates you might have a problem.

Opposites Do Attract



'Slender Lady'

 I know I mentioned recently that I have lately taken a liking to spider-type daylilies.  It's main daylily season here now and my spiders are blooming like crazy;  big beautiful flippy blooms that really bring a smile to my face. I don't know why, I just like them.  Just take a gander at the recent spidery blooms on this page.  Who could ask for prettier daylilies?  Certainly we couldn't ask for bigger daylilies; 'Slender Lady' is almost 10 inches across. 





'Flycatcher'



I was reminded again a few nights ago, however, that there is no accounting for taste. I hadn't realized until recently that I was essentially alone in my household regarding my admiration of spider daylilies.  That realization came when I took a walk with Mrs. ProfessorRoush and we were discussing the many blooming daylilies in the yard and she mentioned that she didn't like the "long-flimsy looking ones." 

Mrs. ProfessorRoush and I have a long-term and wonderful marriage, but every day I thank my lucky stars that she doesn't interfere with, or try to join in, my gardening.  Because it turns out that the daylilies she really likes are the brassy orange ones, like 'Tuscawilla Tigress' (Hansen, 1988) for instance, pictured below.  This is the exact color of daylilies that I like the least (I prefer mostly pinks, light yellows, reds, and purples, except for 'Kwanzo'). The orange daylilies are the ones that give daylilies a bad name, in my opinion. In fact, all the orange daylilies I grow were accidents that happened when I didn't realize how much the pukey color of a particular new daylily would resemble 'Stella de Oro' in a bigger bloom.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush is lucky that I've been too lazy to eliminate the ones I have and believe me, I'm trying hard not to acquire any more.  I stay completely away from the "orange" table at the local Daylily Society sale.  What kind of a name is "Tuscawilla" anyway?  It's not even a valid Scrabble word.  Yuck, Yuck, and doubleYuck.

 

'Tuscawilla Tigress'

What can I say?  I prefer to view our differences as the spices of our marriage and as proof that opposites sometimes really do attract.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush does have her redeeming points, even if her choices of garden perennials would get her kicked out of any respectable local gardening venue.

Say, come to think of it, Mrs. ProfessorRoush and my daughter are both afraid of spiders (the arachnids) and they force me to keep an EPA-registered chemical-hazard zone inside of my house to repel the hairy little invaders.  You don't reckon, deep down, that I like spider daylilies because of the unsettling feeling they invoke to keep the female members of the family out of my garden do you?  Nah, couldn't be :)

Horticultural Gettysburg

Regular readers of this blog will recall my intention to refrain from mowing the prairie grasses that make up our outer lawn and may also recall Mrs. ProfessorRoush's not-so-subtle resistance to said intention. For new readers, you can catch up here and here.   

While the end to this horticultural civil conflict is nowhere in sight, I am happy to report that the first skirmish has been won by the ecologically-enlightened Native Faction and its allies, and that Mrs. ProfessorRoush has conceded that the particular unmown strip pictured below might possibly have some redeeming qualities. I believe it was the cheery faces of all the Black-Eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) peeking above the grass that has temporarily quieted the dogs of war.

Please don't tell She Who Likes Manicured Lawns, but this area, about 15 feet wide by 50 feet long, laying between the driveway and the unbearing fruit trees that I euphemistically call my orchard, was always my secret weapon; my personal Manhattan Project to bring a swift and decisive end to the conflict. This spot was my best hope for a quick victory and it paid off.  I had previously mowed around a few volunteer R. hirta's in this area last year, preserving a couple of 1 foot by 3 foot strips for a few weeks,  and the cute little yellow buttons obviously procreated and self-sowed themselves above and beyond the call of duty for my benefit.  The lesson here, as always, is that overwhelming numbers are often a key component of victory, horticultural or otherwise. 

The tide of battle has also shifted because the Supreme Commander of the Mowing Faction has not yet encountered any snakes on her walks with the dog, nor has there been a noticeable increase in ticks and chiggers along the mown paths.  The Primary Rabbit-and-Snake Chaser has cooperated by keeping any information that reptiles and rodents are present in the demilitarized zones on the down-low.  

I won't try to pretend that all my unmown areas, now all approximately one foot in average height, have anywhere near this degree of accidental beauty, but I'm hoping other forbs seed themselves around by next year to enhance those areas which are currently less floriferous.  In the meantime, the growing grass itself may aid the General of the Native Faction and his allies as the prairie grass develops its usual red and buff coloration in September and October.  I am aware that Mrs. ProfessorRoush likes the autumn colors of the prairie grasses and, as always, accurate information about the weaknesses of your enemy often determines the outcome of the war.  God-willing, an Armistice will soon be signed and freedom to escape the tyranny of a carefully-manicured suburban utopia will belong to myself, the Primary Rabbit-and-Snake chaser, and the collective prairie flora.

Leaves of Three, Should I Grow Thee?

Everyone, please be a little careful looking at the picture on this post;  I don't want to be responsible for anyone breaking out in a rash.  I'm aware that its not polite in open forum to brag, and I'm sure my karma will be affected for days by even posting this blog publicly, but I happen to be one of those lucky gardeners who seems immune to the evil oils of Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron radicans).  "Leaves of three, let it be" is not a mnemonic that I've had a lot of personal use for. 

Poison ivy immunity is a gift bestowed, in a genetic way, on about 15% of the human population.  My mother and, I think, my maternal grandparents were all immune, while my father breaks out at a rash at the mere thought of poison ivy, so in this instance, Thank You Mom.  In my garden, I prefer to weed bare-handed, and I pull up random stray poison ivy weedlings, like the one above, frequently with absolutely no ill effects. One summer, as a young boy, I spent a week building a wood fence for my father deep in a pure patch of poison ivy, and for my trouble received about 5-8 little spots of rash by the end of the week.  I'm not even sure if they were poison ivy-induced or were mosquito bites.  I was thus a dangerous friend to have as a child.  Being immune to ivy meant that I could romp at random in the woods and fields near my house without a care in the world about the particular patch of foliage in which I was playing. That also meant that I was accidentally prone to lead more susceptible and less horticulturally aware friends deep into thickets of poison ivy to their detriment.    

There are a number of interesting little factoids available out there about poison ivy along with some pretty bad advice for treating or avoiding the skin lesions. None other than Euell Gibbons, he of Stalking the Wild Asparagus fame, recommended eating poison ivy leaves daily for the month of May to build acquired immunity. Yes, that's right, eating three of the tiny leaves (one leaf with three leaflets) while they were still red in color "every day for the month of May." While snake handlers use mithridatism (the practice of inoculating onesself with small amounts of a poison to build up resistance to it) with some success, Euell was promoting a highly dangerous and unproven method for avoiding poison ivy.  Don't try it, please.

As a plant, poison ivy can be a vine, groundcover, or a shrub.   It is not a true ivy, any more than poison oak (Toxicodendron pubescens) is a true oak.  It is related to mango's and cashews, both of which can cause reactions in very susceptible people. The caustic substance produced by the plant is an oil, called urushiol, and there's a lot of information available about the chemistry of the oil if you want to look it up, but I don't see how it's useful to a susceptible gardener to know that the more unsaturated the urushiol molecules are, the greater the bodily reaction invoked.  We don't go around with chemistry sets measuring the number of double bonds to decide if we can safely touch a particular specimen.  
 
But, setting all that aside, I'm starting to wonder if a well-cared for specimen wouldn't be a nice horticultural accent to my garden.  Just think about it.  If poison ivy was a benign plant, the white berries would be coveted by gardeners, and poison ivy is a completely stunning plant in fall when its leaves turn the most wondrous shade of bright scarlet.  A large specimen would have the dual purpose of punishing burglars and keeping other interlopers out of my garden, providing privacy for me in my garden as effectively as surrounding the garden with a moat.  I think my children are immune, having tested both with a little rub of a leaf in their younger days, but I don't know about my wife.  I don't really want to keep her out of my garden, but I suppose it's an option if she gets too uppity about me not mowing the prairie grasses and forbs this year.