Serendipity Failure

Well, this topic wasn't what ProfessorRoush had planned to blog about next, even if I'm due for a blog, but I'll take serendipity as a motivator for a blog entry.  Or at least I'll try to "take" serendipity, although sometimes the latter is often reticent to be captured in an optimal manner.

I was out at 6:27 a.m. this morning, watching Bella as she went about her morning bodily functions, when I saw the bumblebee above feasting on this newly-opening bloom of 'Beautiful Edgings'.   Immediately, I thought "wow that would make a great picture" and I quickly reached into my pocket and grabbed my iPhone, opening it to the camera app as I moved closer, focused, and...bingo!...got the picture above.

It was at that point that the perfectionist inside took over the agenda.   I knew I'd gotten the bee's best side in good focus, but I also knew instantly that I had clipped off a corner of the daylily in the frame and I so wanted the perfect photo.   So I tried again, waiting until the bee lit upon another nearby blossom, taking the photo at left. 

And, as you can see, just as I pushed the button to take it (is it still a "shutter" button when it's an iPhone?), the bee took off.  Drat, nice action and now I have the whole flower in the frame, but my "shutter speed" wasn't fast enough for a "sports-action" shot.   So I waited for it to settle again and went in for another shot.   

Once again, before I could snap a photo, it was taking off into blurred flight!  And with that, it was gone for good.  Those of you who take a lot of photos in your garden can, I'm sure, sympathize with the frustration of getting decent pictures of bees and other creatures, even if you can't sympathize with the "it could be better" attitude of the pathologic perfectionist.   As an orthopedic surgeon I practically live by the motto "the enemy of good is better," a self-reminder during fracture repairs that trying to make it perfect is often counterproductive to efficient surgery and good bone healing.   If only I could learn to apply that same sentiment to my photograph efforts!

But I can't.  I tried to redeem myself later while mowing later this morning when I spotted a gorgeous big swallowtail on a purple butterfly bush, but, despite 5 minutes of trying while the mower idled and contributed each second to my carbon footprint, I was unable to even get a poor shot of the swallowtail sitting still.  Such are the trials of an amateur trying to live up to a perfectionist's world-view.  

Accepting Miracles

The title is the subject for ProfessorRoush today, a meme on my mind for all this past week.   My week of miracles started a week ago on a warm Saturday as I was engaged in lots of late Fall work in the yard, mowing, trimming, bushhogging, putting up hoses, and fully engaged in the activities I lump into "Fall cleanup."  My first glimpse of the miracles to come was this late crocus, Colchicum autumnale, a single, annually reoccurring survivor of the few toxic bulbs of the species that I planted years ago and long forgot.   Old age and fading memories sometimes provide unexpected benefits to old gardeners beyond our creaky knees and grumpy exteriors. 

And then, the same day, sitting down outside with Mrs. ProfessorRoush while we chatted with our grandsons, I spied this little sprig of life, a baby juniper bravely growing in the middle of a clump of River Birch, shaded from the sunlight it so desperately wants but also kept moistened and protected in the embrace of the birch.   Can't see the miracle for the tree?   Look closer!

If I left it here, to grow in the rotting organic debris gathered in the birch clump center, will it survive?   Choke out the birch?   Wither eventually, starved for light?   The young scientist in my mind still wants to know so I'm going to leave it growing here in the true sense of "letting nature take its course" while I observe.   A good gardener should always know when to accept miracles when miracles appear.

The sun and earth also conspired in the parade of miracles this week to give me these views of home and prairie as I came home late Tuesday.   Sometimes the light on this corner of the globe overwhelms me, although perhaps poorly captured in these photographs, as it did on this day.   The right angle, the right moment, and the grasses and trees and house were all shining left and right of me as I opened the mailbox and I just couldn't let the miracle moment go uncaptured.

Thursday, another miracle presented to Mrs. ProfessorRoush and I as we came home from supper, a moment of marriage so like many others until we pulled onto the garage pad and I noticed this unexpected bit of Spring transported to Fall, a blooming sprig of common lilac, isolated and alone among a dry and beaten hedge, but full of fragrance and hope for the next Spring to come.  I robbed the bees by taking it indoors where, for a few days, I could smell lilac before it faded into time again.

And was Saturday again, a Saturday like so many others but as welcome as rain on the prairie after a summer of drought.   My Saturdays are miracles every week, miracles brought by a dog wanting only love and a little game of frisbee to break up its long days of napping.  Bella has lots of gray now on her muzzle but her soul is still that of a puppy and her love waits only for me.   I'm convinced this dog counts the days of the week, knowing when it is Saturday and our weekly drive to McDonald's occurs and that I'll stay home and play instead of disappearing until darkness.   This last miracle, Bella in my life, is one I treasure every day, a daily reminder of all the beauty and love and happiness that the world can hold.

The Bee-holders Eye

Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder.   Well, at least maybe someone once said it.  ProfessorRoush certainly can't take credit for the ungainly phrase, obviously espoused as an argumentative gauntlet to those who hold that there are objective standards for beauty upon which all living creatures would agree.  Such arguments often trend to discussions of symmetry and purity and perfection, and inevitably dissolve into fisticuffs and sometimes wars that involve hollow wooden horses, and I know better than to blunder into such an argument  in my garden.

Take, for example, my impressions this morning during the weekly chore of making the grasses and weeds all conform to one height.  I would have said that the most beautiful view of my garden this morning was at the corner of the bed pictured above, where Hibiscus 'Midnight Marvel' dominates the view with massive bright red blooms, accentuated by the pink-purple panicles of the neighboring Buddleia 'Buzz Raspberry.'   I've spoken before of my admiration for 'Midnight Marvel', a reliable and iron-clad perennial that makes its own statement in the garden, but I have said little about 'Buzz® Velvet,' the only remaining Buddleia of my garden, still reliably returning while others eventually withered or outright died in their prime.   I'm not fond of the color of this buddleia itself, but beside the cardinal red of the hibiscus, it certainly adds to the scene, doesn't it?

The bees of my garden however, honey and bumble alike, do not agree with my assessment, as they were busily buzzing over volunteer natives, the Argemone polyanthemos, or Prickly Poppy, growing nearby and they didn't touch the hibiscus or buddleia.   Every delicate white (papier-mâché, as Wikipedia and the French refer to it) flower was being visited nearly continually by one species or another, and a continual symphony of bee noises was evident even over the noise of the nearby idling lawn mower.  This is the very reason that I allow this ungainly and thorny plant to grow randomly in my garden; for the selfish reward of happy bees and the illusion of my own contribution to bee survival.

I was certainly not going to be stupid and argue with the bees over their perceptions of beauty today, as my photographic interruption to their gluttony had already upset the buzzing minions and I suspected they were forming ranks and preparing to counter my intrusion and biased human opinions.   No, I removed myself from the battlefield, ceding the question of beauty to their ageless wisdom.  Heck, I even somewhat agree with them, for the pure white of the Prickly Poppy is certainly as beautiful and perfect in its own way as the red Hibiscus.   Beauty in the compound eyes of another.

Both myself and the bees, however, would have been in philosophic conflict with the Japanese Beetles who are still plaguing my garden and dining on their own candidates for "beauty", the roses and early crape myrtles.  I sprayed the roses again day for beetles, praying that the bees stay on the Prickly Poppy and don't try for any rose pollen.   I will spare you a photo of the vile fornicating beetles today, and instead merely show you how close the Prickly Poppy is to 'Buzz Raspberry' and 'Midnight Marvel' in this bed.  I apologize for the poor tonal quality of this picture taken in the full late July sun of Kansas and for the crabgrass and weeds visible, but sometimes beauty is hidden by its environment and a little lighting and makeup can make all the world of difference in a photograph as well as in person.

2023 Manhattan EMG Garden Tour

I'm not sure, in these days of 5G cellular and massive bandwidth, whether anyone needs the warning anymore, but I suppose there are those still out there on 26K modems, so Warning:  picture heavy!  Click on the individual pictures if you want to see them in more glory then these small blog photos!

Yesterday, June 10th, was our annual Manhattan Area Garden Tour, and Thursday, June 8th was the "pretour" for the EMGs, so ProfessorRoush was on picture duty.  I took about 290 pictures on Thursday evening and over 600 hundred on the Tour and kept 836 for the homeowners and EMG's to view.  A handful are here for your enjoyment.   Each garden on the Tour gets a commemorative stone like the one above. I'll bet, however, that unlike this homeowner most of you don't think about painting stones to look like ladybugs in your gardens!   The rain prior to the Tour was a little tough on the flowers, but this 'Peach Drift' seemed to take it in stride.

This year's Tour was cloudy and took place after a hard rain the night before, while the pretour was pre-rain and sunny, which made for some gloomy tour photos that were challenging.   The photo above, my favorite of the entire set, was taken at the Thursday pretour, and the evening light through the redbuds was a happy accident which I tried my best to recreate on Saturday.   It's just impossible, however, to follow good photography principles when the light doesn't cooperate (tour photo at right).   This pair, taken of the same area in different light, is quite illustrative of the importance of good filtered light in photography.

The Garden Tour had the usual distribution of features and focal points around each garden.  One house had both a running water feature and a koi pond.   The artificial heron at this water feature looks at home in the environment but is perpetually disappointed at the lack of prey in this short waterfall.

I always make sure I get photographs of the views through garden gates and at entrances to gardens.   The gates that lead us into the garden are often as beautiful as what lies beyond them, and they often reflect the character of the garden to come.

A couple of houses had deep enough features to support water lilies, but on the actually cloudy day of the tour, it was difficult to find one blooming.  I struggled just for you, however, taking multiple exposures to grab this photo for your enjoyment.

There's always a potting bench here and there among the houses, and this Tour featured two of them tucked away from sight.   This one is my favorite of the two, although it's a little too tidied up to be believable among the garden!

The garden containing the potting bench above really needed it, however, since it contained a vast multitude of container plants in a shady sitting area.  I loved the garden but I'm glad I'm not the one who has to keep all the containers watered there, containers including wall pots and window pots and porch containers and hanging pots.

Live fauna were lacking on this year's Tour, the cloudy and cooler weather keeping bees and flies and butterflies all suppressed.  In the pretour sunny evening I was able, however, to catch this swallowtail indulging in a large planting of milkweed.  He left me a little frustrated even then because he wouldn't climb up to the top of a bloom but kept hanging off the bottom.

Garden tours are always learning events as well, and at this one I learned that my iPhone 13 can identify almost any plant and completely free of charge.  I overheard a conversation between a gardener and a visitor complaining that his ID app needed an expensive upgrade and so my world just became a lot easier.  If you haven't discovered it, take a picture, like the one at the right, and then open it in Photos.  At the bottom, you'll see an information icon "i".   Click on the "i" and it gives information about the photo, but it also has a link to "Look Up--Plant" which correctly identifies this picture as "Veronica". 

Some gardeners, as always, are really good a creating vignettes and themes in their gardens.  Bunnies and Beatrix Potter held sway in the garden containing this bench.

I finished off, as always this year, at the K-State Gardens where plants and expensive bronze statues mix as one perfect unit to show off the things that grow best in Kansas, like Mr. Crane here in the fake swamp with milkweed beside it.   Yesterday, my thought here was that if I survive the Apocalypse, be it zombie- or diety-driven, I'm coming here soon after to make sure these bronze statues have a good home and are well cared for, especially the "Rose Girl" statue who graces the entrance to the rose garden and who would make a good companion to the cement maidens in my own garden.

I bid you, at the end of this long post, adieu, until we meet again, with Old Glory as it proudly flew over one of the gardens yesterday, gardens and gardeners alike expressing their freedom of expression and the beauty of creation on the 2023 Extension Master Gardener's Manhattan Area Garden Tour. 

Magnolias in Mind

'Ann' Magnolia

 ProfessorRoush is trapped indoors once again today, by wind and cold in the boorish 4's; 40 mph wind gusts and 40º temps.  The temperatures are quite a change from the 80º temperatures of the middle of the week, but the wind has been ravaging the countryside all week.  Thank heaven, however, that the cold was accompanied by some welcome rain Friday night and Saturday morning, and the forecast shows more rain coming this week.   Needless to say, it's about time.

'Ann' in the garden

The warm temperatures of the past week, however, made the magnolias suddenly pop.   Feast your eyes on my magnolia harvest for the year, both 'Jane' and 'Ann' going into full bloom almost overnight.  Now if those thick petals can just stand the wind for a few days so I can enjoy them!  'Ann' pictured here first, is the darker pink of the two, while my 'Jane' is a little older, larger, and less vibrant. Particularly in the photos of 'Jane' and 'Yellow Bird', you can appreciate the storms swirling around in the Kansas skies.

'Jane' Magnolia

'Jane' and 'Ann' are two of the so-named "Little Girl" series bred at and released by the National Arboretum.  The vision of Dr. William Kosar and Dr. Francis de Vos, they were were crosses of Magnolia liliiflora and Magnolia stellata cultivars and were released into commerce in 1968.  They are cold-hardy to -30ºF and were flower about 2 weeks after Magnolia stellata, giving northern american gardeners a chance to enjoy some of the fragrance and beauty that the south takes for granted.  They also are said to tolerate "heavy clay soils and dry areas", so they were seemingly tailored for my Kansas environment.    

           

'Jane' in the garden

I first wrote "fragrance and grace" in the sentence above, but upon further thought, "grace" hardly describes the thickness and weight of the magnolia petals.  The fragrance of most cultivars, also, is less than graceful and more like being hit with a sledge; hardly subtle at it's best moments but I am happy to get lost in it every spring, overdosing on the sweetness that is so strong it's like inhaling honey.

'Yellow Bird'

There were actually 8 "Little Girls", but I never see 'Betty', 'Judy', 'Randy', 'Ricki', 'Susan', or 'Pinkie' offered for sale.   As much as I enjoy and appreciate 'Ann' and 'Jane', I should search out the others.  'Betty' seems to be the darkest pink-red, and 'Pinkie' almost white, but the images of the others are almost indistinguishable to me.

'Yellow bird'

And out there in the garden, just beginning to bloom, is my beloved 'Yellow Bird' Magnolia.   Normally about two weeks later than my other magnolias, 'Yellow Bird' is opening at a slower pace, but it also was stirred into action by the warm winds.  It normally opens it's blooms aloneside it's foliage, but this year the flowers seem to be in more of a hurry than their green backdrops.  And the first few are a little frost-damaged or rain-damaged, or something.  Ah well, they are still so perfectly, so lightly, yellow that I can hardly breathe in their presence. 

P.S.  In the "Jane in the garden"  and "Yellow Bird in the garden photos, the blurring of the backdrop was a happy accident, created by placing my iPhone camera in Portrait mode and then selecting "Stage Light" as the lighting filter.   Pretty neat, eh? 

Still Life w/Surprises

There are so many ways to read that title, eh?  "Still Life w/Surprises" merely as the title of a captured moment in art, an assembly of natural things that aren't moving?  Or do we have a "still life" photograph that also has elements that don't belong? Or is the photographer (i.e. ProfessorRoush) trying to say that life still has surprises? Today, it is all of the above.

Take for example the photograph above, a simple iPhone capture last weekend of my back garden bed ringing the house.  In among the debris, the observer can pick out the dried remains of Morning Glory vines, the multiple seed pod remnants from a Baptisia that grows nearby, the rotting pieces of last year's hardwood bulk mulch, and some dried daylily leaves.   All the leftovers of last year's growth desiccated and done, beyond regrowth, it's stored sugars and starches and energy transferred back into root or invested in seed.  And yet, if one looks closely enough, among the shades of brown, gray, black and tan is the green of next year's daffodils, the first sprouts pushing up from the soil in the first week of February, 2023.   Life's promise to go on.

Or, beside this paragraph, the reigning clump of Calamagrostis 'Eldorado', the nicest green and gold form of Feather Reed Grass I can grow.  In a four season climate, every season has its place and value, whether it is the promise of rain with the coming of spring or the sunshine of high summer to provide the energy for food production.   Even winter, at least to a gardener, has value as it exposes the bones of a garden, the structure of a branch or a shrub, yes, but also the interlopers of the garden, vigorous natives and non-natives hell-bent on taking over the space and serenity.   Here, it's the short Eastern Red Cedar, Juniperus virginiana, that grew stealthily last season in front of the grass and right before my eyes, but is de-camouflaged and exposed by the cruel fingers of winter.  I've marked it now, marked it for destruction when I make a first secateur pass during Spring cleanup.

The most exciting display of hidden surprises in my garden, however, is seen in the photograph at the left, a full view of my almost-Jelena Witch Hazel backed up by the massive leavings of a white Crepe Myrtle.  Can you look closely and find it, the surprise jewel among the worn branches?  Look very carefully, look at the base of the Witch Hazel for the surprise here.  Look for red among the brown in the picture at the right and the one below.

Somewhere, somehow, a volunteer rose has sprung up near the Witch Hazel, standing over 7 feet tall and like no other rose in my garden.   This one has the appearance of a short climber at present, nearly thornless, and with delightful red stems.  In my garden, only a few roses, mostly Canadians, have red thorns in winter, foremost among those my multiple bushes of 'Therese Bugnet' but Trashy Therese, who is admittedly prone to sucker, is nowhere near this bed and would have many more thorns.  The canes of Griffith Buck rose 'Iobelle' resemble these in color at the moment, but 'Iobelle' is 40 feet away, only reaches 3 feet tall, and never suckers. 

So, I think I have a seed-derived new rose, planted here by birds as a gift to the gardener, and the excitement is rising in my deep rosarian soul.  Will it survive the remainder of winter, proving its hardiness in this harsh dry and cold climate.  Will it flower this season, white or pink, single or double?   Will it continue to grow, a new climbing rose of my very own?  Will the canes turn red again next season and will it stay nearly thornless or become more thorn-covered as it ages?

These and other questions are why I garden, for the calm of a good life lived with the soil, for the gifts of nature that grow my soul, and for all the surprises out there, in the garden, that keep life interesting.

Fine Firmament

 ProfessorRoush is going to make an unusual post this evening.   A post nearly without words.

On August 29th, I noticed the light change in the windows at sunset and sensed a special moment rushing into my life.   I'll let the firmament of my western and northern views speak entirely for itself through completely unedited pictures and time-lapse movies.  I took all these over a 10 minute span with my iPhone as the sun set in the west and the wind roiled the clouds.   Click on the movies (the last 4).   Make them full screen.  Don't forget to breath; I don't want anyone passing out from the sheer beauty.

2022 EMG Manhattan Garden Tour

Today, June 25, 2022, was the Extension Master Gardener tour in Manhattan.  Yours' truly, as usual, was the unofficial photographer for the group, so I spent the morning taking 814 photos in 4 hours, and 720+ turned out to be pretty useable.  I'm pretty proud of the fact that despite the heavy daylily bloom today (and at least one of the 7 gardens on tour claimed to have 800 cultivars), I only took around a dozen closeups of daylilies.  Of the other photos, I've selected my favorite dozen for you to view, my selection based on what I viewed as the most "artistic" photos. Without further ado, enjoy.   Click on the photos if you want to see them full size.

The light this morning was fantastic.

I thought this was the best daylily picture that I took.  It's not the prettiest or most unusual, but I liked the way the leaf draped across the blossom.

One of the gardeners is doing a great job recreating a prairie meadow planting.

At the same garden as the prairie above, lived this good girl.

Sometimes, a little woodland serenity goes a long way in a garden photo.

I don't know who Rex and Bogie were, but this homeowner loved them very much.

I'm calling this one "Stairway to Heaven".   That blue Kansas sky just kills me.

Oh, the colors here are just fabulous!

Had a serendipitous moment with this butterfly.

Again, Color!

Is it an entrance or an exit?   Only the homeowner knows!