I Told Them So

I tried to warn them. I really did.  You heard me just a week or so back, right here on this blog.  "Hush little darlings" I said, "Go back to slumber, it's too early."  Well, see them now, regretting their decision to open up quite so early.  Mother Nature strikes once more.  Now that I think about it, I believe I have taken a picture of daffodils covered by a little snow every year I have lived here. The impatient little devils!

I was hopelessly praying that my Magnolia stellata would hold off, but alas, this latest cold spell and bit of snow hit just when its display was at its peak.  I so wish I had taken a picture of the shrub yesterday before the blossoms browned and withered, if only for bragging rights.












Even worse, the musky scent is gone, vanished, without a trace from the flowers reduced to brown tissue.

I can only still hope that the few remaining unopened buds of the Magnolia keep their beauty and their fragrance hidden until better days appear.





And this apricot will certainly not be a producer this year.  There is a reason that Kansas is not a major exporter of apricots and you are witnessing it.

Still, however, the apricot blossoms and snow make a really nice photo composition, don't they?  Click on the closeup photo of the apricot blossoms and blow it up in all its splendor.  Wow, what subtle pastel colors!











And then there are the Scilla and the Siberian iris, peeking sky blue and purple out above their snowy feet.  Good gracious, can we just start spring over again?











I say again, "Garden, go back to sleep".  There will be time later for all this foolishness.  Let sleeping gnomes lie.

Seeds of a Revisionist Garden

In my "revisionist" gardening mode, for the first time in years, I am attempting some indoor seed-starts.  Normally, I'm a dismal failure at indoor propagation, failing both at getting the seeds to sprout (I tend to keep the soil too moist), and in the hardening-off transition to the outdoors.  It is the latter failure that I most dread.  I occasionally get some decent seedlings going of this or that plant, only to see them crash and burn outside because I put them in too much sun and then forget to water them.  I actually feel pity for most seedlings placed in my hands.

I was spurred into action by a colorful rack of organic seeds at the Selby Botanic Gardens last week (more on that soon), when I came across an open-bred zucchini named 'Dark Star', which listed its attributes as drought-tolerant and open habit.  Dare I hope that it might also be a little more resistant to my ubiquitious squash bugs?  With nothing to lose, I purchased a package, transported it into flyover country, and planted half the packet (10/20 seeds) last Saturday.  This morning, lo and behold, there be zucchini seedlings here!

Somewhere, I've missed the zucchini breeding revolution that resulted in 'Dark Star'.   Bred by Bill Reynolds and Donna Ferguson of Eel River Farms, and released by Seeds of Change in 2007, 'Dark Star' is a less variable selection of 'Black Eel', the latter a cross of 'Black Beauty' and 'Raven'.   Really, it's quite a story and you can read about it at the Organic Seed Alliance.  Truthfully, however, knowing nothing of the story behind it, it was the seed packet that lured me to an impulse purchase.


I also have an itch this year to do a better job at growing flowering sweet peas than my previous efforts.  Rather than just throwing them into the cold March ground, praying that the rabbits leave them to grow, and then hoping they flower before the hot Kansas sun fries them into oblivion, I chose to try to start them indoors.  Hopefully, that will give them about a month's head start over normal growing conditions and I can likely transplant them within just a couple of weeks into a much nicer, manure-enriched bed than my regular alkaline clay-pot soil .  I just hope my new seed setup, in a direct southern window supplemented by a pair of daylight-frequency LED spots, is up to the task.

Oh, and if you liked the term "revisionist gardening," stay tuned because I might just copyright it and continue to write in that mode.  It comes from a deep place in my gardening soul right now.

Remembering David

Sometimes, in a routine moment previously and otherwise unremarkable in our hectic lives, we are thrust suddenly into a surreal experience and forced to ponder the unthinkable.  ProfessorRoush experienced such a moment last week, a moment where our vast-beyond-comprehension Universe shrunk to human dimensions and pace, and then reached out and slapped me into awareness.  An awareness that I want to share with everyone and anyone who comes across this post.  It's a message that you've all heard before from a Greater Being;  Love one another, because our time here is all too short.  No other words carry such importance for our daily lives and yet I fail, every day, to keep that thought at the front of my mind.  A gardener, a man, should be better.

Three months ago I found, on Linked-In, a lost friend from my college days.  I had searched before, periodically, but never crossed his electronic Internet trail until now.  His name was David Sonita and for those first few years of college we were as close as brothers, supporting each other past boring professors and changing lives and homesickness.  We weren't in the same professions or in many classes together, but our evenings were filled with rabid racquetball matches, brutal chess and backgammon games, and lots of laughter and gab.  We simply lost touch near the end of college, me preoccupied with a growing romance of a female form that eventually consented to become Mrs. ProfessorRoush, and David seeking to redefine himself in a paradigm shift of career and focus.  

So, there we were, thirty years later, catching up in a few emails on life and family and thoughts and it was as if the intervening years never existed.  We wrote of losses and dreams and my philosopher-friend was gray-haired and likely wiser, but just as alive as in my memories, wry humor confronting life head-on.  We poured out our souls, started a correspondence chess game, and looked forward in time despite the old bodies housing our still-young minds.          

And then, last Thursday at 6 a.m. while I was frantically packing for a trip to the wedding of a former resident, I received an email from his wife and learned that David was gone, 56 years young, stolen away without warning by a massive heart attack the previous week. 

Friends, ProfessorRoush stumbles mostly around life as a happy fool, but I know when I've been touched by the hand of God or Fate or whatever Higher Power you choose to call it.  I was clearly meant to reconnect with David at this time and juncture, to touch an old friend's life and learn that I am now the last keeper of those memories of his life. There are so many lessons here for us; to appreciate always those in our lives, to cherish time spent together, to recognize the signs of God's influence in our lives, perhaps just to go see our cardiologists.  I know, for one, that I've again a little more aware of what I eat and militant of my exercise.  But most of all, I'm left remembering David, a pod bursting with promise, returned again to grace old ground, a gentle angel on the wind.

In Pursuit of Beauty

'Wonder Blue'

In need of solace this morning, I turned to my iPhone photos, in likely company with millions of my contemporaries but not, however, in a vain search for selfies.  In my post-hail apocalyptic milieu, I wanted only to recapture the stillness before the storm, the serenity of the unaware.  I desired the reflection of my soul and found it, gazing back from lilac panicles.  And then, lost again, I wandered into thought, my muse a lilac of unusual color but only moderate constitution. Allow me to introduce you to 'Wonder Blue', the so-called bluest of lilacs. This pale variety of Syringa vulgaris is renowned for its compactness and the unusual "blue" hue of its blossoms.  

I thoroughly enjoyed her brief show this season, a spectator to her splendor, yet she is a pretender, a false idol for lilac worshipers.  To my knowledge, there is no true blue pigment in Syringa vulgaris, just as there is no blue pigment in roses, but against the deep purple backdrop of 'Yankee Doodle', this lavender lass suffices for blue in my border.  Shorter than many of her cousins, however, she also is weaker, the least vigorous of all the lilacs I grow.  Compactness, in lilacs, may not be a virture.  Year-to-year, I'm happy to keep a few leggy canes growing to gift me these soul-mending tresses, but its survival always seems a little tenuous, as if beauty's cost were frailty.

Why is it that, in our quest for the quixotic, our pursuit of the perfect, we accept less for a close piece of the prize?  Is a beauty mark really the shining crown of a supermodel, the completion of a beauty such as Cindy Crawford, or is it merely a mole that we tolerate to bask in otherwise near-glory while knowing that melanoma lurks around the Darwinian corner?  Did Father John Fiala, its hybridizer, perpetuate 'Wonder Blue', fully aware of all its flaws but loving it still, merely for a pigment combination?  Is Man now the sole judge of evolution, the unnatural selector of the weakened unique?  Are we mere flawed assessors of beauty who lack a broader view of its true meaning? 

'Sensation'

If all were beautiful and perfect, if Man returned, through science and sweat, to Eden, would we be satiated at last or merely full?  Would we be Adam, languidly accepting the gifts of life, or still Eve, restless and impulsive?  When I bring bouquets of lilacs to work, it's not beautiful 'Wonder Blue', or healthy 'Declaration' that draw the most attention, it's the sensational 'Sensation', itself another weak performing shrub of only mild fragrance that is valued solely for the unique picotee of the petals.  Is 'Sensation' the Kim Kardashian of the lilac world, 'Wonder Blue' the Bachelorette of the season?

Cast out these false idols, I beseech thee.  Do not follow the weak-minded, superficially-oriented ProfessorRoush into the gardening wilderness, content to oversee the mere survival of the odd and unique. Seek out true beauty, the beauty of strength and resiliency against all.  You'll be a happier gardener for it, albeit deprived of the bluest of lilacs.

Distractions

There was a repeated melody on the old television show Hee Haw whose refrain went "If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all."  Well, I can  now sing that melody to "If it weren't for distractions, I'd get some real work done."

You see, last Saturday was a day filled with distractions from my gardening goals.  In the midst of achieving my primary objective, putting out the 56 or so bags of landscaping mulch that I had purchased, I was pulled off task by a seemingly endless stream of diversions.  First, there was this gorgeous clump of wildflowers (above left) surrounded by still dormant prairie grass.  The native flower in question is Sisyrinchium campestre, also known as "White-eyed Grass", a member of the lily family.  It occurs all over this prairie, although perhaps in less striking clumps in most places.  Oddly, you may find the species under the name "Prairie Blue-eyed Grass", although the "eye" or center is yellow and the flower petals are definitely pure white in this area.

Another momentary interruption from task was my sighting of the first yellow sulphur butterflies of the season, floating over the prairie sea from island to island of this plant displayed at right, the Ground-Plum Milk-Vetch (Astragalus crassicarpus).  You'll have to imagine the butterflies, because although I spent 30 minutes trying to get one fleeting photo of these flitting ground-plum fans, I was unable to produce even a single blurry yellow blog of them on an image.  The majority of the butterflies that day were yellow, although there were also a few white sulphurs.  Astragalus crassicarpus is a legume and supposedly an ancient food source, although it holds no major claim to human food chains today.  My minor nibbles of the "berries" suggest to me that a better description of the plant is that it is perhaps edible, but not palatable. 

While unsuccessfully searching for still butterflies, and before returning to mulching, I came across this hideous nest of Eastern Tent Caterpillars (Malacosoma americanum) in my 15 year old 'Royalty' crabapple tree.  I hate those nasty caterpillars with passion rivaled only by my disdain for pack rats.  Immediately upon spotting this budding metropolis of leaf-consuming spineless larva, I froze to avoid alerting them.  I slowly and quietly reached to my back-pocket for pruners, in fear that the creeping crawlers might startle and move a few micrometers in an effort to get away.  There, I grasped and smoothly produced my Felcos (slow is smooth and smooth is fast as in the best traditions of gunfighting), and I removed the offending branch from my eyesight, grinding it into the grass under my heel some distance away from the crab tree. Wild Bill Hickok, himself, would have been proud of my resolve and lethality. 

My quest of mulching completion was then further delayed for another half-hour while I examined every tree in the immediate vicinity of the house and dispatched two more disgusting nests in similar fashion.  The 'Royalty' crab survived the necessary amputation and will live to display its sickeningly muddy-purple blossoms yet another season.  'Royalty' is not a crabapple that I'd recommend to other gardeners.  While some texts describe the tree as "particularly loaded with dazzle...covered in such rich, deep-pink flowers that it will literally stop traffic,"  I would describe the tree as a dull-purple blob with dull pink-purple blossoms framed by dull purple leaves and not worth any substantial cost outlay.  Not my favorite crabtree, but I'm still not willing to throw it to the non-mercies of the Tent Caterpillar.

All this and many more yet un-disclosed diversions, and I managed only to empty and spread approximately 30 bags of mulch before exhaustion and larval caterpillar hatred took their toll.  Still, as you can see in the photo below, I think the front landscaping looks better with its new makeup foundation base, ready for the finishing touches of rose rouge and dark green holly eyeliner as the season rolls along.  A garden, as a woman, can certainly be naturally beautiful, but a little foundation and highlighting nearly always help improve the allure.  With the exception, of course, of Mrs. ProfessorRoush, perennially perfect in complexion and grace. 

Night Burn

In the midst of a night burn I stand; enchanted, enraptured, and elated at the sinewy and fluid life of a prairie fire; spellbound by the fleeting, floating fear that comes in waves with the billowing smoke.  As flame flickers over the ground, former life morphs to black dust, light flares out from darkness and then retreats, over and over again, up and down the hillsides to leave behind black earth and burned stems, reminders of days once lived.  The fire moans and hisses, secrets of past lusts and whispered goodbyes left to the silent stars.   I stand mesmerized, fire so close my feet grow hot, oblivious while I freeze the scene to memory.  Would I burn for the right photo, the photo that preserves the moment perfect?

You cannot stand before a fire on the prairie and feel not the life held within it.  It breathes, it grows, it moves and sighs, it eats and flickers and withers and dies.  Wind at its back, nothing resists it, the relentless hunger for fuel and air stops for nothing and no-one.  Behind it lies the ashes of victims and the curiosity of those safe, a clean slate for regrowth and fertile ground for life.  You cannot control a fire; you coax it, tease it, guide it or turn it.  Properly lured and fattened, it will follow a docile trail but turns at the slightest distraction, always at the sharp edge from lamb to lion.  Disloyalty is the inherent nature of a prairie burn, ready at any moment to turn on master and home, caring not if its fingers chase and wrap friend or foe in grasp.

With each burn, one wonders; have I started renewor or destructor? Will this be the demon burn that makes tomorrow's headlines and villains, or the meek and orderly angelic means of resurrection?  Fire responds wildly to touch, the touch of wind and radiant heat at its back arousing the response of a sailor on shore leave.  It runs quickly across dry ripened brome, fed on clean air and stored passion.  Fronted with younger and damper fuel, it turns again contemplative, licking gingerly at the margins, slowly drawing the next blade or clump of grass to its pleasure.  It hurries or waits, dependent on the eagerness of the fare, the endless fuel of the prairie, to submit to its desire of consumption.

Near fire, one moves or else is cornered, a reluctant beau captured in the arms of a lover.  A stumble here, a fall there, and I would know the fire closer, beyond warmed face and feet, joining blackened prairie in the next rebirth.  A philosopher might contemplate the choice and hesitate but I place a diligent foot, concentrating on the present path.  Each step through the darkness and haze offers the choice of tomorrow or forever and I feel it as I tread lightly amid the pyre of old life.   Through smoke, cross ash, lies safety and home.  I move there through the embers, joining clear cool air, a single step from peril to possibility; like the prairie, a single line of fire separating yesterday from tomorrow.      

Bed Measures of Man

Saturday last was a glorious, windless, sunny day of almost 70ºF here on the Kansas prairie, a premature peek at the spring season before winter rallies once again.  ProfessorRoush took advantage of the good-natured weather to begin his spring chores and he bounded madly out with shears, sprayer and sheetbarrow to work for a few cherished hours.

As I removed vast tons of brown winter debris, trimmed a few roses, sprayed the fruit trees with dormant oil, and puttered here and yon with gleeful abandon, I also spent some time in general pondering, mulling once more over the beginning of another year in an aging but happy life.  And it occurred to me that, other than merely making my muscles sore and strained, the measure of my accomplishments on this Saturday could be calculated in beds.  In all, I cleared the debris from 7 beds, or about 3 of the 4 sides of the house.  It was thus a record day, a 7-bed day, in the annals of my gardening life.

It seems to me that one can ultimately measure one's health, aging processes, and perhaps even the advancement of one's wisdom by keeping track of the number of beds one can clean on a first day of spring.  I was certainly pleased on this Saturday that there was no measurable decrease in the number of beds I was able to clear from last year.  In fact, I was even more productive than ever, a gain that I would like to attribute to working wiser, not harder, as I age.  Certainly, I surprised even myself by finding that the abrasion of time has yet to seriously cramp my gardening agenda.

While mulling, my thoughts also turned to how many of the decades of man can also be measured by a number in beds.  As a child, happiness is roughly equivalent to the number of warm and safe beds into which one has been snugly and tightly tucked.  Active pre-teen and teenage males often measure their vitality in the number of uncomfortable but adventurous beds they make in tents or under stars.   Young adult men of my post-hippie generation (and likewise those of all generations reaching back to the Babylonians), measure their victories in the number of strange beds in which one spent a night, a contest that I gladly surrendered to others after I discovered the joys of repeated moments in the embrace of Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  Here in middle age, I'm happy counting in gardening beds, but I recognize that life by garden beds can only last so long.  Old men, too, have a different sort of measure by beds; the measure of how many hospital beds one either avoids or is forced into.

The latter, though is in the future for this gardener.  Today is the feel of sunshine, the buttery yellow of the first snow crocus, warm mulch beneath my knees, and sharp shears in my hands.  

A Glimpse of Spring

Ssshhhh.  There it is.  Do you see it?  Be careful, don't spook it!  Yes, I'm referring to that pinkie-sized little burgundy-red bullet poking up from the cold, unforgiving ground.  Poor, brave little thing, the first sign of Spring 2016 has appeared in my garden.

I have almost forgotten the feel of warm wind on my face, the warmth of sunlight on my now dry and chapped skin.  It seems like an eternity since the last lightning graced the sky, since the Earth welcomed hot liquid rain to quench thirst and still dust.  You may have noticed my absence from this blog over the past 6 weeks.  My garden and I are strangers now, dreaming to be reacquainted like lost lovers torn apart by war, a civil war begun anew between North and South; only except this North and South are points of the compass and prevailing weather systems rather than quarreling political divisions.  

It's been a dry winter, the last rains ended before the ground froze. Afterwards only frequent frost and hoar to coat the ground and dormant grass.  We've had one snow, a few days of six-inch deep stillness, melted everywhere now except for the deepest north-faced exposures.  I've been lazy this winter, involved in work and in pursuit of hibernation, neglecting the colorful catalogs, unable to rekindle desire even from the most voluptuous and bountiful images of new roses.  The ennui of winter reigns my soul, sapping interest and energy.

But there, in the cold, Paeonia 'Sorbet' rises, slow and stiff and silent.   Somewhere, within the gardener's chest, a slow beat begins.  Lub...........Dub.............Lub...Dub...LubDub, LUBDUB.   Echos of the life without begin again within, a quickening ember fanned to low flame.  It will be weeks, yet, before the fire burns high, but at least I know now that it lives, that wish and thought and action will soon join again to dig and plant and nurture.

Mistgloved Christmas

The garden greets me from a shroud of mist on this quiet Christmas morning and I couldn't ask for more from the world.  Delicately diffused light covers the garden in a blanket of down, softening the harsh lines of winter, cloaking the blemishes of age.  There is stillness in the garden, mist muting the sounds of highway and neighbors, an oasis of rest and silence.  This blessed morn has given me a gift; a gift of oneness and peace with my garden and the world.

Outside, the cold ground meets the mist and coats the earth and plants with frost.  Grass flowers present as delicate sculptures and sparkle with mirth, turning slowly to and fro in the scant wind.  A frozen lilac hides its promise from the wiles of winter, protected within a damp icy blanket and staid among its fellows.

Today's gift of Christmas is the very definition of "hoarfrost," a maladroit moniker for the beauty it reveals.  Hoarfrost has its origins in Middle English and Old Norse from "hoary," something gray or white with age.  Uttering the name, one hears the low ancient mutters behind the name; old, decrepit, tatty, cold.  The synonym "rime" is no improvement, too near its rhymes of grime and crime to suggest any positive enhancement of the dreary winter world.

For future use, I'm going to suggest the word "mistglove" as an improved name for this natural phenomenon.  As I carry no ancient memories of predatory cave bears or saber-toothed tigers, the term "mist" holds only peaceful and comforting connotations, and "glove" amplifies that warm and protective image, making me just a calm and comforted ProfessorRoush on this Christmas morning.  Yes, "mistglove" it shall be.

And a very Merry Christmas to all, mistgloved or not wherever you may be!

1!$@%!^ Time to Change

$@%&^#$&% ...time change.... @1!51%$!$% ....dog awake....   A pox on all politicians, State and Federal, who persist in messing up our schedules, our lives, and our very cellular metabolisms.

I woke this morning at 4:48 a.m. Standard Time, which was 5:48 a.m. just yesterday, the latter normal for me on my sleep/wake schedule.  I laid still for a few minutes, wondering at the time, but Bella came creeping up the bed to remind me that it was high time to get up and start the day.  Bella doesn't know that nameless bureaucrats have imposed an arbitrary time schedule change, decisions based on an America engaged in the Great War, the War to end all wars, about 6 or 7 wars ago or a hundred years back depending on how you want to count.  Bella doesn't care, it was simply time to get up and potty and eat and play.

The sun didn't know that it was back on standard time either.  The sky was already starting to lighten shortly after I woke, and it rose at 6:54 a.m, an hour earlier than it did yesterday.  The idiots we keep electing don't seem to have the same power over the sun that they do over my life.  Now I'm back to driving into the eastern sun during my morning work commute, endangering cars and walking students, blinded by the glare four times yearly instead of twice.

The bee, above, doesn't know that the time has changed.  It probably only knows that winter is nearby and it needs to grab whatever nectar and pollen it can, while it can, even this aging pollen from this blown blossom of a miniature rose that I know as "Little Yellow Beauty".  I can't find any official record of this rose, but that's how it's labeled in the K-State Rose Garden.  The g'vernment has forgotten to inform this bee and flower that the time changed.  The flower is probably thankful that it doesn't even appear on a government census.

As you know, I try to avoid politics on this blog like the onset of the plague, but, I'll state here and how that I pledge my vote for any candidate, even The Donald or Bernie Sanders, if they're the sole supporter of just staying on one time.  I'm a single issue voter on this one.  Daylight Savings Time would actually be my preference, but I really don't care, either Time is fine.  If, like me, you want this madness to stop, please visit and sign this petition to Congress, or this petition to the White House, or if you're like the rest of America, at least spend time "liking" this idea on Facebook.  Politicians, being the dolts what they are and an election in their future, they'll probably listen to Facebook better than anything else.  Grumbling over, soon back to your regularly scheduled program.

Life Imperative

Here, at the onset of Autumn, the garden slowly slips from life to death, from ardor to apathy.  Peonies are stiff stalks, brown and cracking with every breeze.  I must remember to remove supports and mow them soon back to dust.  Likewise the daylilies and irises, green at their base but yellow-tipped, bent and beaten by wind and sun and insect, begging, almost eager, to move gently into the cold nights.  These and more have budded and flowered and seeded, the annuals among them filling their need to make new life from old, to be reborn with Spring into the next generation.  Perennials also have prospered, storing summer's sugars in roots and stems for another season, casting seed onto earth, future offspring to watch and treasure, children at their feet.

Some in the garden, however, have not yet satisfied that primal itch, late to the game, slow to the plate.  Roses still bloom, unnatural remonant freaks that never understand there is a time for rest, a time to reflect, and a time for rebirth.  They will soon freeze for their troubles, energy wasted on buds unborn.  Helen's Flowers shine on, reflecting back the months of gathered sun into the heavens, lanky and tall before they finally bow to Winter.  Asters abound, white and blue and purple to reflect the autumn sky and coming snows.  

A few fight forward still, faith given to provenance and strength, rushing to beat deadlines of frost and freeze.  I recently discovered this bedraggled sunflower blooming in a bed near the house.  If it is indeed, as I believe, an ox-eye daisy (Heliopsis helianthoides) or false sunflower, then it has evaded weeding gardener, incessant sun, late-summer drought, and an army of insects to flower now in a hardened clay bed, late but insistent, desperately trying to add its hardy genes to the future.  Stunted, oppressed, and humbled, fighting the nearby daylily for every nutrient atom and molecule of water, still it lifts its face to the heavens, stretching for the ribbon at the race's end.

Ox-eye's are perennials here, so I choose now to leave this one and await its return.  Every gardener plays God in his or her own garden. and the lord of this garden is happy to accept this survivor into the gene pool of his garden.  Such are the beginnings of new species and new promises, these pioneers pushed to the edge of death and pushing back with life.  Such are the lessons of the garden for their gardeners.

Magic Mornings

There is no morning more pleasing for me than to wake up early and find the house silent and cloaked in fog, harsh rays of the rising sun diffused into gentle radiance.  Combine that with the clean air and glistening landscape from a previous evening's rain, and I'm in heaven, or at least as near as I can get with my feet still on soggy ground.

These are magic mornings for me. Magical moments that I steal to watch the world stir and wake, to wait without worry and simply to be.  On most other mornings, I'm fully awake as my feet touch the floor, leaping into my life with jobs to finish and errands to run, lists to complete and chores to get done.   On these mornings, however, I pause, knowing that rain has dampened the urgency of outside work, and wanting to preserve the quiet and peace of a still-resting household.   While Mrs. ProfessorRoush sleeps soundly in the silence, Bella and I slip outside to capture the scenes, small or vast, that wait just a wall away.

On such mystical mornings, if you wait and watch, seek and search, you can pierce the veil and glimpse, if only briefly, the canvas of life beneath the colors.  Hues of blooms and leaves and grass seem brighter, stems and stalks stand surer, and birds sing sweeter as the sun slowly dawns.  On this morning, I found the cheerful buds of 'Betty Boop' bound together by industry, support stays for a small spider's larder.  Raindrops glistened on perfect new leaves, each drop a jewel of a sequined cover, each leaf a dark green factory of life itself.  The tightly woven petals, scarlet and yellow patterned into perfection, pushed back the darkness and reflect the warming sun.  The whole drama, a merry microcosm greeting the greater world in grace and glory.

Soon, I know, the sun will burn back the damp and break the fog's embrace.  Sound and action will pour in with the sunlight and send the silence slinking back to the shadows.  I'll start coffee for Mrs. ProfessorRoush and butter her toast to better our marriage.  But I've had my rest and quiet, my moments of wonder and awe to revitalize my energies and soul.  Another day beckons with jobs and errands and lists and chores.

(P.S.  I was so pleased with the photo of Betty Boop that I'm entering it into the Gardening Gone Wild 'Picture This' photo contest.  See the contest at http://gardeninggonewild.com/?p=28687)

Bursting with Promise

No, this is not a photograph of a psychedelic alien landscape from a light-lifetime away, nor is it a scene from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  I promise that neither Gene Wilder nor Johnny Depp is going to pop up from those hairy green pillows and sing to you.  And for those who were young adults in the 70's, you should not worry that this is a flashback from an old LSD trip.  This candy-colored scene is brought to us by way of a 1956 single-flowered peony introduction by Falk-Glassock, the aptly named 'Scarlet O'Hara'.

I'm not intentionally trying to imitate Bob Guccione, but these are, in fact, the....ahem....sex parts...from one of my earliest and most favorite peonies.  And what a brazen display Ms. O'Hara is giving us!  She has erected bright red walls to enclose and protect the participants in today's drama.  Inside the scarlet petals, tall golden stamens loaded with pollen are crowded around the shockingly-pink stigmas atop each pistil, a beacon to beckon the bachelors forward.  The swollen pistils beneath the stigmas are already soiled, basking in the afterglow, their hairy buxom surfaces dusted with the golden packages of chromosomes.  I'm not even going to mention the presence of the white foam at the base of the pistils.   But can't you feel the excitement in this photo, the promise of new seed forming and new life beginning?

'Scarlet O'Hara' is a peony that should be in everyone's garden, She stands right now about 3 feet tall, and wide, a crimson beacon shining across my garden.  There is no other scarlet red flower blooming right now for me, and certainly nothing to match the size and vivacity of these 6 inch diameter blossoms.  The photo of the whole plant at the right displays the usual poor reproduction of red tones by a digital camera and it doesn't adequately communicate the true brilliance of color of this peony, but it does give you an idea of the impact of these flowers in a landscape otherwise filled only with green Spring foliage, the blues and golds of irises and the white clusters of a few remaining viburnum blossoms.

Perhaps a  recent wide-angle view of my "peony bed" will emphasize the importance of 'Scarlet O'Hara in the garden.  There she is, at the top of the photo, glowing ahead of the hundreds of bulging buds of other peonies, all aching to follow her lead and explode into 2015.  'Scarlett' O'Hara' exposes promise for us on a microscopic level; the promise that reproduction will always go on, au naturel and without shame for appearance or wantonness.  The other peonies of this bed show their own macroscopic promise of a massive display a year in the making, a spectacular future fireworks created from sunshine and rain and chlorophyll.  Over it all, a concrete cherub urges the peonies to turn their bacchanalia into a more quiet party, to turn a pretentious display into a coordinated and respectful celebration.  Behind the camera, ProfessorRoush, garden voyeur extraordinaire, breathlessly awaits the chorus to come.      

Promise within and promise without.  Of countless such moments, a garden made.

Begging On My Knees

Even the strongest relationships have to dig through rocky ground from time to time, and the bond between my garden and I has been similarly strained to the breaking point.  I admit that I have neglected her over the winter, lavishing my attentions on other interests, and, in turn, she has given me only cold and brief bitter love for the past few months.  She, too, has turned to others, allowing deer to roam over her surface at will, letting pack rats and rabbits nibble her most delicate stems, while showing me only unmade beds and unkept tresses.  Here, in early March, I've experienced weeks of cold beds and stony silence and we are, understandably, no longer on good speaking terms.

Yesterday, I sensed a slight thaw to the distance between us, and I took advantage of the first warm Saturday in eons to shower my darling with attention and patch up our difficulties.  Although my enthusiasm was low, I put on a brave face and began cleaning up the front landscape, removing the blemishes of winter, kneeling at the feet of the Goddess Gaia and freshening her couture.  Out went the flattened peonies, the rattling Babtista seed pods, and the hollow stalks of long deceased lilies.  I wrestled with dead thorns and desiccated clematis, shaped willow and arborvitae, and trimmed iris to flattering fans.

Yet still, beneath the warm mulch, her ground is frozen and hard.  There is little life there, little stirring in her heart.  Oh, a few infant sedums are hiding deep in the mulch and the snow crocus pictured here are trying to lure me back, but Spring is far away and the daffodils have just broken ground and the peonies are absent and tardy.  Other years, I would have been planting seed by now, planning for the ripeness of early June.   This year my garden is making me earn back her love, making me beg for forgiveness, demanding penance for my neglect.

I had a quiet conversation yesterday with  my young, 'Emperor 1' Japanese Maple.  I scratched his bark to its green core and assured myself of his survival, and we agreed between us that the love of a Garden is often fickle and fraught with communication issues and wandering attentions.  Consoled with the companionship of another lucky winter survivor, I put my tools back away, biding my time while her affections thaw, another patient suitor who hopes that time and attention will heal the bonds of love.

  

Basil Indicator

ProfessorRoush is, at times, an incredibly bad gardener of houseplants.  I am usually able to keep them alive, but, with the exception of an occasional Pothos sp., they don't often thrive under my care.  There is, for example, an infamous episode some years ago during a period when I had approximately 20 thriving orchids and 10 Christmas cacti, all of which would even occasionally bloom.  I adjusted the thermostat when we left for a Christmas vacation and we came home a week later to find that I'd accidentally shut the heat off and the house was hovering at 33ºF.  Not a single orchid survived the episode.  The Christmas cacti sulked for a bit, but eventually decided to give me a second chance. 

I restrict myself these days to Zygocactus and Pothos.  Occasional gifted houseplants and the annual poinsettias are held prisoner and then offered as sacrificial lambs to the houseplant gods to curry their favor in the direction of my Christmas cacti.  In place of the ceremonial altar and a flint knife, I have substituted benign neglect and the arid, desert-like humidity of the natural Kansas environment, watering only when I see signs of wilt.

That practice has not been kind to the mandarin orange and lemon tree that Mrs. ProfessorRoush insisted I add to our floral menagerie.  Both trees spend their summers outdoors on the porch, where it is moderately humid and I frequently forget to water them. They spend their winters indoors where the humidity is very low and I frequently forget to water them. 

Recently, I noticed that my fairly spindly orange tree was wilting at the top (above).  "Wait a minute," I thought, "orange leaves don't wilt; they yellow and fall off."  And indeed, on a closer look, I recognized there was a second stem in the pot; a spindly sun-starved basil that presumably was an offspring from one of our herbs, which also spend summers in pots on the back porch.  You can see the second stem better here at the left.

I'm certainly not going to root up this volunteer.  If a weed is just a plant in the wrong place, this "weed" is in the right place.  Mrs. Basil has done me a favor by going to seed and placing an offspring here in this pot to be nurtured.  The rest of the winter, I think I'll just watch the basil as an indicator for watering this pot and the lemon tree next to it.  Maybe both trees will now have a better chance to live to see another spring.  Besides, the basil smells so good.   

 

Happy Surprises

Gardening is full of surprises.  Although I've just said it, I think most gardeners already know that.  I've been both pleasantly surprised and unpleasantly surprised,  however, by the notion that the longer I garden, the more surprises I get.

This "Surprise Lily", hidden behind a dwarf Alberta Spruce and in front of a struggling clematis, is an example of the mixed benefits of garden serendipity.  I love Surprise Lilies because they pop up and glow at a time of summer here when everything else looks tired and worn out.  I also enjoy the slightly naughty feeling that this old man gets from having "Naked Ladies," as they are sometimes called, randomly showing up in my garden.  I didn't get any titillating joy out of finding this clump, however, because I'm pretty sure that I never planted any bulbs here.  And I've never heard that they can self-seed and spread themselves around a garden, other than by lateral bulb-lets.  So that leaves me the choice of either accepting another bit of evidence that my memory is fading, or that I've witnessed a garden miracle of reproduction.  Because neither of these are likely explanations, I think I'm going to settle the mystery and tell others that a squirrel dug up some bulbs and transplanted them here, even though the nearest tree large enough to support a squirrel is over 1/2 mile away.   

I've also been surprised this summer by the performance of a pair of $5 misnamed roses purchased at Home Depot.  As I mentioned previously, I saw this striped rose mislabeled as 'Love' back in May on a "two for $10" sale, took a chance, and bought two.  Both bushes have settled in, are repeat blooming their heads off, and have no blackspot at all.  I don't know what they really are.  I initially thought they were two different striped cultivars, but now I think they are the same variety.  Their rebloom cycle is too rapid for any of the remonant old garden striped roses I've grown.  They're fragrant but not as tall nor as fragrant as 'Honorine de Brabant' and they are also shorter and more Floribunda-bush-form than my 'Ferdinand Pichard'.  Regardless, if they make it through winter unprotected, for $10, I've got two great garden roses that I will always enjoy.  Now there is a surprise without any reservations to spoil it.

The Earth Laughs in...Milkweeds?

Almost every gardener has surely read or heard the famous quote of Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Earth laughs in flowers," lifted from his 1847 poem Hamatreya.   Most of us equate this line with a calm and loving Mother Earth, gently expressing her warmth and love.  Within the context of the poem, however, the Earth is laughing at the silliness of man, who believes he is master and owner of the Earth, but who will nonetheless end up beneath the earth, pushing up daisies.  Whatever his good qualities were, Emerson was also a cynical old fart.

The tallgrass prairie laughs at me, I suppose, also in flowers, but they are the flowers of milkweeds.  This area of my pasture (see, there I go, believing I'm the owner instead of a temporary part of the scenery) is the area we used in construction of the barn, first to pile all the dirt from the excavation, and later scraped clean again as the dirt was used to fill in around the foundation.  Somewhere, deep in the soil of the prairie, an infinite number of milkweed seeds must be waiting, biding time until the stubborn grasses give ground.  

This milkweed is Common Milkweed, Asclepias syriaca, a member of the Dogbane family and poisonous and inedible as forage.  I've always viewed it as a two-foot-tall weed in my pasture, tolerated by me because of its usefulness to monarch butterflies, but it does have some other positives.  A couple of years back I found it was growing in the K-State Native Plant Garden and didn't recognize the magnificent five foot tall, very fragrant plants.  I was embarrassed when the director told me what it was.  Seriously, a mass of Common Milkweed has the same affect as an Oriental lily on the air in its vicinity, but the milkweed fragrance is far sweeter and somehow less smothering.  I've also learned to my surprise that Asclepias syriaca is a perennial.  If I'm going to be laughed at anyway, I need to allow a few of them to grow in MY garden.  I might as well make them feel welcome if they're going to be lurking around anyway.

I hope Ralph Waldo Emerson (why do we always use his middle name...how many other famous Ralph Emerson's are there anyway?) doesn't mind me calling the garden, "MY garden."  I may be borrowing the soil and sunlight and rainfall and the air, but I maintain nonetheless that the garden is mine.  I arranged it, I defend it against all marauders floral or faunal, and when I go beneath it, it will soon also cease to exist.  For a while, I suppose, to become a milkweed patch, but eventually the milkweed will lose too.  This is the prairie, and on the prairie, the grasses always win.   

Positional Vistas

I am a gardener that spends most of my garden time looking down at the level of my feet, peering into the depths of each flower in search of beauty, examining each leaf closely for evidence of insect damage or fungus, standing fast against the tiny advance guard of marauding weeds.  I rarely take the time to glance up into the greater world and appreciate the wider views of my garden.  I could probably blame my approach to gardening on my surgical training because of the similar approach when I concentrate on a surgery.  In one moment, in a surgery, the world is small, the length of an incision or of a bone fragment.  The work completed, I take a breath and suddenly there is a bright room, with people and beeping anesthesia machines and the clank of instruments thrown back onto the table.  My innate focus on the activity at hand, however, is probably not training but is simply my nature and perhaps why I enjoy both my vocation and my hobby.  Anyway, the lesson for the today is to try not to be like me.

I was struck recently, walking Bella and passing by the northeast facing "entrance" to my back patio (shown above left), that a tall pillar rose on the left and the house on the right frame an almost good vista, the fake path stones leading one's eye to the patio and the statue and steps at the other end beckoning onward.  I was also struck by the fact that I know the view from top of the steps at the other end, shown to the right here, is not quite as artful, no frame to draw the eye and the satellite disk rudely imposing on the scene.









But those observations did serve to lead me into a search for other pleasing vistas in my garden and I learned once again that finding beauty is often simply a matter of one's perspective.  A frontal view of this peony bed, with peonies, mockorange, and honeysuckle in full bloom is not nearly so interesting as the "long axis" view at the left, with the curved line of the bed drawing our eyes down it.  It was a fabulous Spring morning, that day I took this photo.











And likewise, my lavender border, frozen back and beaten down by a harsh winter, looks like forty miles of bad road until the gardener or visitor takes a position to look along the bed, focusing on the upended limestone rock at the center.  The light blues, purples, grays and greens are so soothing that I could sit and look at this picture all day long.













I need to remember to look up far more often.  I live in a place where the sky and the land meet sometimes to form a fantastic view, a vista that only needs to be carefully framed to release the magic within it.  Two steps to the right and several feet forward and the picture at the left, of the low clouds, distant fog and my neighbor's house, could have been an even better memory of a special early morning.  We merely need to always remember to look for the beauty, frame it, and file it away, in a picture or in that collection of neural paths called a memory.  Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, but it is certainly enhanced and improved by the perspective of the beholder.