Morning Musings

ProfessorRoush owes his readers an apology.  You see, I tried to blog yesterday, but I couldn't find my muse anywhere.  I have so much to tell you, two days spent in the warm embrace of my garden and yet the words just wouldn't come tumbling out.   Wait, that's not right; words were spewing forth from the keyboard but they were missing a certain je ne sais quoi, missing a theme, missing a purpose, missing a soul.  Sometimes, if I wait, if I keep pecking away, if I have the right photo or subject to write about, inspiration strikes, but yesterday evening I was at the keyboard for over an hour and the passion just wouldn't come.  There was no blood in the writing, no lyrics in the language, just three unconnected pictures left unpublished and disharmonious random paragraphs that didn't sing to me.

But it was waiting for me, my muse, waiting to gently guide me into the prose, the spirit of the garden biding time until I saw it.  Did you see it, waiting still in the photograph above?  Two inches of rain last night and I was out at 6 a.m., checking the rain gauges and allowing Bella to continue killing grass in "her spot".   And there it was, right in my front bed, surprised at my early intrusion, a shy muse hoping that I wouldn't notice her, moving just enough so that I would.   

My senses are not nearly so attuned as Bella, but Bella was oblivious that she wasn't alone in her mandated morning micturition and was being watched from fifteen feet away.  Dogs, and especially pampered mongrel Beagles, are triggered by smell and sound, finely tuned to things that normally escape my notice, but I'm reminded again that Man is a hunter, "motion-activated" as it were.  Our eyes are forward, binocular vision judging distance and speed in an instant, always ready to flee or fight as only a savannah-born hominid can be. I don't know how many times that I'm watched in stealth and silence in my garden, but senses born from millennia of being stalked in the tall grass, of movement in my peripheral vision, always grabs my attention.  The fauna I find in my garden are nearly always moving; the long-tailed lizard darting away, the slithering prairie garter snake alarmed by my presence, or the running rabbit unpetrified by my nearness.

This one, this quiet rainy-morning rabbit, didn't stick around for my questions after posing for the photo.  I don't know what it was up to, hopping among my landscape, and it didn't want to be asked why it insists on eating my young roses or the early daylilies, nor wanted to be challenged for shunning the catchweed and the catmint.  I give it a home here, safe cover and quiet places to nest and grow, and is it really too much to ask that it limit its diet to the flora I call "weeds"?   Some gardeners, secure in their castles with armies of hired help, philosophically hold that weeds are just a plant growing in an unwanted place, but I realized this morning, fresh from two days spent weeding garden beds, that timid rabbits are still smarter then some garden writers.  Even rabbits have plant preferences, choosing the delicious and defenseless over the bitter and barbed.  My lesson from the garden this morning is that taste in plants, literally as well as figuratively, cuts across species.  That is not to say that I am ready yet to see this rabbit's admiration of my garden as an affirmation of my own good taste, but at least I can now allow that it has love for my tasty garden, rather than malice, in its rapidly thumping heart.

Vainly Searching

By "vainly searching", ProfessorRoush means that he is searching futilely, fruitlessly for spring, not that I'm boasting or conceited or vain about my search.  We had the largest snow of the year last week, on March 9th, 5 inches of snow that fell overnight and melted completely away under the 69ºF temperatures of today.  At least we received the moisture, badly needed moisture that will start the prairie grasses under the path to summer.  But most things are buttoned up tight, the lilacs showing no hint of green under their hard buds, and even Magnolia stellata, pictured at the right, shows no signs of spring, the fragrant flowers still tightly cloistered within the hairy buds.

In the garden, I had to search a long time for any sign of spring at all.   Not even the snow crocus have yet made any appearance that I've detected.  I can only share these first sky-blue buds and yellow shoots of Scilla, just breaking the surface on the sunniest and warmest slope in my garden.  There are a few brave daffodil fronds pushing up here and there, but no peonies, no Dutch crocus, no Puschkinia.  Nothing but the squill to assure me that spring is coming or that the Earth has succesfully made it once again all the way around its star.

All of this is to say that I think spring will be late this year, or at least start up closer to average.   In 2012, I found the first Scilla blooming on March 7th.  In 2016 it was March 6th and the Star magnolia was blooming along with it on that date.  We are going to be later this year than earlier, compared to my notes of the past two decades on this spot of ground.  

So, I have only the garden of my mind at present, and this week it was outwitting squirrels.   No, I don't mean I have a squirrel infestation here at the end of winter, I am referring to Anne Wareham's Outwitting Squirrels (and Other Garden Pests and Nuisances).   I learned of the book on Garden Rant, where it was noted that it's not available in the US at present.   But, Amazon, came through with a paperback copy for me last week and I've been learning about "Weeds You Don't Want", and ridding my garden of cats.   Anne, thank you for a delightful, humorous, and easy read, short quick chapters in an older text of yours (2015), but new to me.   It brought me one week closer to spring.

(Not) Killing Peonies!

A few weeks ago, on a partially random internet purchasing foray, I came across How Not to Kill a Peony; An Owners Manual, a 2018-dated paperback by a fellow Hoosier, Stephanie Weber.  Consistent with the wonders of modern shopping, a simple "add-to-cart" click made sure that I wouldn't forget it, and I included the book in a recent order of other items.

I've read several garden-oriented books this winter, but none better than this one.  Ms. Weber wrote a simple and entertaining narrative of her experiences growing and selling peony divisions in Indiana, the rural Indiana of my boyhood home, and she is true to the frank and plain spoken nature I expect of Hoosiers.  Early in the text, she detailed the important factors she used to choose among varieties of peonies for growth and sale, and then related how she and her husband planted 1200 peonies of roughly 40 different varieties in 2006 on a half-acre of good Indiana farmland  to create a "drop-in" peony nursery.   TWELVE HUNDRED PEONIES!  Now that, my friends, is taking a leap of faith reminiscent of Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade!  Well, except for the Indiana placement of the nursery, because I'm well familiar with the productivity of northern Indiana soils.  Borne in them, you might say.

'Red Charm'

How No to Kill a Peony is a delicious, straightforward, and sometimes snarky 98 page read that quickly brought me to understand the many useful things I never learned about peonies from Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall's massive Peonies sleeper.  Ms. Weber quickly explains why heirloom P. lactiflora peonies flop, describes the contributions to peony genetics of each of the 4 major species that led to modern peonies (including the contribution of red pigments from P. officinalis), and she sprinkles valuable information on planting, care, harvesting, and storing peonies through the book.  Every important fact about growing peonies is covered, and covered in straightforward fact.  And the most important advice?  Plant peony varieties that don't flop!  Who knew?

'Scarlett O'Hara' in 2019

 As a testament to its engaging prose, I read How Not to Kill a Peony in a single setting, learning more in an hour about how to choose between peonies than I did in my previous lifespan. As a testament to its entertaining nature, one need only skim section titles such as "How Floppers Infiltrated the Landscape,"Days in May That Cause Dismay," and "The Importance of Eye Candy."  There are hundreds of beautiful peony photographs, and lurid descriptions of popular varieties.  Popular 'Red Charm' receives a proper promotion, and 'Prairie Moon' gets her due attention. Coral-colored 'Flame' is described as "like the quiet, nerdy girl in your math class who you one day realize is gorgeous."  Red single 'Scarlett O'Hara', one of my personal favorites, is "a sleeper, like a granny car with a turbo engine."  Bicolored 'Mister Ed' "has been on acid since the 1950's."

Need I go on?  For early and experienced peonyists (a self-coined term that sounds vaguely lewd and improper but it is the best I can think of), I've never seen a better presented "How-To" that will help you grow peonies that are the envy of the neighborhood.  Now, darn it, where did I leave that Song Sparrow Farm and Nursery catalog?  I just don't have enough peonies in my front yard....

Pleasant Surprises

Occasionally, we turn a corner of life, and there, there it is, genial and gracious as if it were always there waiting for us.  Soul-thirsty, bone-weary, all exchanged in a single instant for joy and wonder. 

So it was for me this afternoon, trudging along in the hot sun, the lawn mowed, the pots watered, taking a few last moments in the garden for chores that had been neglected far too long.  Loppers in one hand, a bottle of stump-kill in the other, I was intently peering into the depths of every hedge, fighting and losing my never-ending battle against errant shrubs; the rough dogwood, redbuds, and mulberry that spring up unbidden everywhere I turn the soil. 

There it was today, this year's first regal Asiatic Lily, blood red and calm between the cool shade of a towering 'Sir Thomas Lipton' and a viburnum. This is my first lily to bloom each year, harbinger of a flood of Asiatics, Orientals, and Orientpets to come, but always welcome in its own way, vibrant and fresh in the shadows.  Am I amiss to assign voluptuousness to the rich burgundy depths of its bloom, sultry and alluring and eager?

I paused, overcome, in honor of pure beauty in its prime.  A phone photo to capture the scene, a moment of awe, and, refreshed, I moved on to less glorious things, a larger garden ever waiting for the touch of its gardener.

The Rose Rustlers

Surfing Amazon at the end of last year (okay, looking for ways to spend Christmas money on Amazon), I was surprised and excited to find this recent (2017) publication by Greg Grant and William Welch.  I clicked it straight into my shopping cart and ordered it, anticipating an interesting history of rose rustling from the perspectives of the rustlers themselves.  Something preferably as enjoyable as one of my favorite reads, the 1989 page-turner In Search of Lost Roses, by Thomas Christopher.  Has it really been nearly 30 years since the latter was written?

What I got, in The Rose Rustlers, was indeed an interesting historical outlook on the criminal rose enterprises of Texans that lead ultimately to the foundation of the Antique Rose Emporium, but after the first couple of chapters, it was not quite the engaging read I was looking for.  I suppose I'm just being too picky, and I'm biased by my preference for gardening essays that are more about the philosophy and lifestyle of gardening than the practice of gardening.  The quality of the photographs and detail of the book were fabulous, but it was a struggle to get all the way through.  The book did start out well, with chapters on Noted Rose Rustlers, Bill Welch himself, The Texas Rose Rustler organization, and the Antique Rose Emporium, but then it bogged down, for me, into a number of chapters on the favorite roses of the authors and their rose gardens themselves.  These would have been okay if the roses were unknown to me, but many are old friends and I didn't learn much in the remainder of the book that was helpful.  Particularly not much in light of my need to stay with Rugosas here on my home ground while I fight the losing battle against Rose Rosette Disease.

Spend money, if you want, on this book for the great photography, numerous examples of roses in the landscape, or the history behind the movement of rose rustling.  But if you want a nice fireside read, one more difficult to put down and be distracted away from, then pick up a copy of In Search of Lost Roses instead.  Sorry, but as I'm happy to disclose, my favorite gardening books are still mostly essays;  Thomas Christopher as mentioned, Michael Pollan (Second Nature), Henry Mitchell (any of his works), Sydney Eddison (A Passion for Daylilies), Mirabel Osler (A Breath from Elsewhere), Allen Lacy, or Beverley Nichols.  These are the classics that keep me thinking of spring gardens while in winter's grasp.

Petrichor

ProfessorRoush still, occasionally, reads the monthly Reader's Digest.  Not as a regular subscriber, but in a spurious-purchase-at-the-checkout kind of way when I get captured by a headline about an uplifting story.  Sometimes, it jumps into my hand when I just want to get tickled by "Laughter is the Best Medicine," or "Humor in Uniform."  When it is in my hands, however, I always consume it word for word, except, of course, for the multitude of advertisements which I pass over like passing over sinners at the Apocalypse. The standard vocabulary/grammar column is one of my favorites, a momentary diversion in pursuit of a perfect grammar score, or sometimes just to catch a new word wafting around my native language.   

So it was with "petrichor," defined in the 09/2017 Reader's Digest as "the way it smells when rain falls on parched earth."  If there were ever a cromulent word created to express joy and seemingly made just for Kansans, it is "petrichor."  The Oxford Dictionary goes RD one better, defining it as "a pleasant smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather."  The word blends "petra," referring to "stone," with "ichor," or "blood flowing in the veins of the gods."  Petrichor, most simply, is the scent of rain, although I prefer to think of it as the perfectly delicious scent of Mother Earth and the water that sustains her.

Petrichor is one of those words, in fact, whose exact origin is recorded.  It was coined in 1964 by Bear and Thomas in the journal Nature.  Their dry description of petrichor is not nearly so refreshing, attributing the odor to plant oils absorbed by clay-based soils and rocks and released into air during rain with another compound, geosmin, a metabolic by-product of actinobacteria.  In other words, to climate scientists, petrichor is merely the aerosolized combination of plant droppings and bacteria poop.  And we wonder what happened to romance in the garden?

This morning I woke early, in darkness to the pattering of rain on the window by my bed.  Comforting, yet perplexing, no rain forecast nor any seen in quantity since September, I listened and drifted back off, safe in the warm cocoon of covers with the portly lump of Bella pressed against my side.  As I woke later, an early dawn glance out the window confirmed, in fact, that moisture had fallen from Heaven down, enough to dampen the patio and evoke colors from the prairie grasses.

 Close your eyes.  Search your memories for the scent of petrichor.  Does it smell different in the summer, warm rain on warm ground, musk and earth mixed in languid pleasure, than it does in the winter, cool and minty, clean and brisk?  I think so.  The petrichor of high summer evokes joy and dancing, and celebration of new life.  It's a bouquet that tempts me to throw off clothes and feel the warm droplets on bare skin as I stroll through the yard and the neighbors frantically call 911.  Petrichor in summer is the purest caress of nature to relieve all the parched and dusty cracks of living.  In the winter, as this morning, it's still a welcome fragrance, but hardly as comforting.  Metallic and chilling, without the overtones of life and sex, a brief passing promise unfilled.  It has no power to draw me outside, it creates no inner urge to let the cold dampen the inner fire.  It is merely there, stripped of promise, barren of life.  I'll stay inside today, and allow my olfactory memory pretend that it is summer outside, the warm and cloying odor of rich earth all around me. 

Wear Out, Not Rust Out

Those who don't like books, or those who don't like the act of reading books, may not appreciate my recent post on the reading I've been doing, nor will likely have little interest in this one.  If you find yourself however, preferring printed ink on paper to digital projections of words; if you don't feel empathy with the coldness of an iPad, but are satiated by the softness of a simple page or the weight of a binding; if you feel most joyful in a comfortable room surrounded by shelves and stories; then I know a book you'll love.

In my recent blog post, I was waxing on the pleasures of reading Beverly Nichols and garden reading in general and I had just finished Nichols' Laughter on the Stairs.  His next text, however, Sunlight on the Lawn, grabbed my attention quickly, swept by a strong current of language and thoughts straight over the written waterfalls into a pool of garden philosophy and pleasure.

Nichols has a gardener, "Oldfield," a recurring character from his books, full of hard-won wisdom and observations about life.  One example, expressed in Sunlight on the Lawn, occurs when Nichols finds Oldfield training a rose to a wall, sans gloves, and asks him about it.  Oldfield then "...had turned to me with a kindly smile, and had said: I reckon some of the young 'uns would be wearing gloves for a job like this.  But I don't hold wi' gloves.  What I allus say is, a man don't put on gloves when he makes love to a woman.  No more he should when he tends a rose."

I'm with Oldfield.  ProfessorRoush doesn't tend roses with gloves either.  In fact, I would post a picture of my forearms as they appear currently, freshly flayed from a much-needed weekend of trimming rose canes, but I'm afraid that the photo would finish the faint-hearted among you.  Suffice it to say that tending roses is a little rougher on the skin then most sessions with feminine flesh.

Early on, however, in Sunlight on the Lawn, Nichols relates a conversation with Oldfield that has a much broader application to life than his list of activities better done without gloves. The background is that Oldfield is aging, and despite it, still works long days at strenuous labor.  Beverly tries to get him to cut back but Oldfield won't.  Oldfield expresses it, through Nichols, like this:  "I want to wear out," he said very softly.  "To wear out.  Not to rust out."

"To Wear Out, Not Rust Out."  Of the great bumper-sticker slogans of gardening, that one ranks pretty high on my list.  Or, as Beverly Nichols put it further, "to pass on with one's old spade still bright from use."  My spade, upon my demise, won't be bright from use, but it just might have moist clay still clinging to it, if I'm fortunate.   I'm often questioned, by my wife, by family, by friends, of why I stay so active and have so many hobbies.  Sometimes, at my most tired, I myself wonder why there are entire weeks when I haven't sat down until I collapse into bed at night.  Now, thanks to Nichols and Oldfield, I have a good answer.

"I want to wear out, not rust out."

(Aside:  The hoe in the picture above is my paternal grandfather's tomatoe planting hoe.  I can't fathom the years of use represented in this hoe.   Look at the number of nails at the top, multiple repairs to hold the head on.   The sweat-blackened area, halfway down the staff, is worn smooth and a bit smaller by calloused hands, and the hoe balances perfectly if you hold it there.  A relic of a good life lived hard.)  

Rainy Day Reading

Since the weather has chosen to turn cold and miserably wet the past few days (and off and on for the past month), ProfessorRoush has been catching up on his garden reading.  To be truthful, I'm aching to drown myself in a good story, so I'm also watching less television in favor of losing myself in the thoughts of others.   To ensure my enjoyment, I turned back to some garden classics and purchased two of Beverly Nichols wonderful books.

If you have overlooked Beverly Nichols, I'd encourage you to seek out any of his garden-centered books you can find.  Nichols was an English bachelor gentleman from another age, cultured and clever, and his writing is incredibly fluid and floral.   I  read several of his books some years ago from the local library, but I just finished Laughter on the Stairs, and am half through Sunlight on the Lawn, the 2nd and 3rd of the "Merry Hall" series.  

 Laughter on the Stairs is focused on the Merry Hall Estate and the semi-fictional characters of Mr. Nichols' dry wit, but gardening is sprinkled throughout, especially in the last pair of chapters titled The Flower Show; Acts One and Two.  Reading Nichols, I find myself slowing down from my normal speed-reading pace, and savoring his sentences.  For example, the following passage from Laughter on the Stairs:

"I heard a timid voice asking if I would like a glass of elderberry wine.  Yes, I said, I should like it very much.  Which was quite untrue, for though elderberry wine is a most melodious title, though it has a music which would have delighted Keats, it is, in practice, like extremely disgusting invalid port.  However, I drank it with a will, on this occasion, out of a thin and elegant sherry glass, in tribute to a brave little lady who had nobody to care for her."

Another of my readings was encouraged by the recent release of Potted and Pruned, by garden blogger Carol J. Michel, author of the blog May Dreams Gardens and a Hoosier, as I once was.  Carol was kind enough to offer autographed copies on personal contact, and this book therefore fills two spots in my library, both garden-related and autographed.   Books like Carol's, and my own, are probably inevitable extensions of our garden blogs.

 Potted and Pruned is a collection of 36 garden essays, each a gem with something to offer everyone.  My personal favorites were Chapter 4 All Gardeners Are Delusional, Chapter 21 GADS (Garden Attention Distraction Syndrome), and Chapter 29 Time in a Garden.  And for those who care about classification, after reading Chapter 24, Buying Shrubs, I found that I would classify as a Gardener, a category which combines the worst characteristics of Experimenters, Grabbers, Rescuers and Researchers.  Read Potted and Pruned and you'll find out what else Carol thinks about the motivations of plant purchasers.         

Life Renewed

ProfessorRoush had prepared a profound plum of gardening philosophy for you to ponder today. However, the accompanying photo, of 'Yellow Bird' Magnolia, newly displaying a perfect yellow hue and partially escaping from its protective cage, is substantially more appropriate to represent the deliverance and rebirth of the season of Passover and Easter today.  Happy Easter 2017, Everyone.

(PS:  For those of both a Christian and Country bent, my brother-in-law introduced me to the song Outskirts of Heaven by Craig Campbell.  Take a listen on this sunny Easter day.)

Growing, Older

Just last Saturday, I walked into a Half-Price Books and walked out several minutes later and $70 poorer with two sacks of printed pleasure.  Thank God that the greater world has not realized the real value of the written word on paper and the vast majority of tomes have never yet reached the price of rubies and diamonds.

Foremost among the jacket blurbs that I thought would be intriguing was this book, Growing, Older, by Jane Dye Gussow.  I'm happy to report that its 200+ pages lasted only one plane trip, with only ten pages left over to finish after the last plane pulled up to the gate. The memoir, subtitled "A Chronicle of Death, Life, and Vegetables," is a series of thoughts and essays that begin with the story of the unexpected and rapid loss of Dr. Gussow's husband, Alan, to pancreatic cancer, which occurred in 1997.  Briefly glancing at the text in the bookstore, I was captured by her surprise to find that, after 40 years of marriage, she didn't really miss her husband, as she detailed her resultant guilt over moving on.  She found herself happily skipping down a street only a few weeks later and realized that while she would describe her long marriage as a good one, and would never have considered leaving it, she also recognized that an enormous amount of her energy and efforts went into the care of a socially awkward and dependent husband.

Those thoughts were the textual equivalent of "click-bait" to draw me into the book, but most of the memoirs are actually about gardening and living in the smaller space on the banks of the Hudson River, where she and Alan had downsized only a few years before his death.   Finally, here, I found a kindred soul with at least as many gardening trials and tribulations as I often whine about.  Dr. Gussow's garden floods several times a year and she is beset with muskrats, skunks, and other pests, all while she tries to raise the majority of her diet on the small plot of land.

I keep referring to her as Dr. Gussow because the now quite elderly lady is an accomplished professor of nutritional ecology, who still teaches an active university course every year while living what she teaches.  She was a pioneer in the local and regional food movement, perhaps THE pioneer as recognized by Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver, and, throughout this book, she drops a multitude of facts about the real cost of food production into her conversations.  Well into her 80's, she still actively gardens, living mostly off her own produce, although what she terms "2-person and 3-person rocks" now require more help to move out of her garden than in previous years.

Dr. Gussow has another previous text, This Organic Life, that I've run across, but never read.  You can be sure that I'll be searching for it in the dusty bookstores of my life until I find a decent hardcopy to keep next to Growing, Older.

Postscript:  In Growing, Older I found a quote that I really like:  "As long as one has a garden, one has a future.  As long as one has a future, one is alive."  Gussow attributes it to Frances Hodgson Burnett.  I like it enough I may replace the Thomas Jefferson quote at the top of my blog.  What do you think?

Still Here...Until the Icepocalypse

ProfessorRoush hasn't slept in, self-defined as any prone position of my body after 6:00 a.m., for years, but I had plans to make it until at least 7:00 a.m. this first morning of a three-day weekend.  Unfortunately, Miss Bella decided that she needed to protect me against the meanderings of monsters sneaking about the prairie and she moved up from the bottom of the bed to sit on my chest, facing the door and huffing to indicate her alarm, around 6:30 a.m.  When she didn't stop, I got up to prepare defenses against a home-invading horde of Huns and found that my mildly obese mutt was correct in all ways except for the home-invasion.  This particular horde of Huns was perfectly content to keep grazing around the mailbox, undisturbed by the barking Bella behind the glass storm door.  Perhaps they were expecting delivery of a late Christmas package and awaiting the mail truck.

We are expecting an ice storm here sometime tonight, and while I am happily anticipating the enforced solitude and the early garden pruning that the storm will initiate, the rest of Manhattan seems to be fearing that the end of civilization is upon us.  A quick trip to the grocery store for sliced ham on the way home last night revealed that the neighboring population had cleaned out the local supermarket of all bread, milk, sticks of butter, and, to my surprise, every package of lunch meat available.  I came home, amused and complacent in the knowledge that we have enough dry cereal and pasta in the house to tide us over until planting weather.  I'm even more secure that we can make it to warm weather after this morning's sighting of potential food on the hoof.   If they are going to eat my roses, the least they can do is hang around for dinner.

I'm quite serious about hoping that we get enough ice tonight to flatten the garden.  At the end of next week, temperatures are forecast in the mid-50's and I'm in a perfect mood to bulldoze and start over anyway, so que sera sera.  I miss you, Doris Day.  What a beautiful voice and bubbly actress.  Once upon a time, movies and television programming was more interesting than a group of profane idiots arguing over who should or shouldn't be sleeping with whom.  

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!

Secondhand Roses

While I'm off on a garden book tangent, I am pleased to show you one of the many reasons why I browse secondhand book stores and visit every Half-Price Books store that crosses my path.  Last week, I ran across what I think is a first edition of Roses by Jack Harkness, published in 1978 by J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.

Roses is a catalog of sorts, printed in the style of its era.  None of the flashy full-color-photographs-on-every-page of modern book layouts, this one has two inserts of color plates, 16 pictures in each insert chosen from the hundreds that Harkness described.  I bought it, not for the photos, but for this famous rose breeder's prose regarding the hundreds of roses. Summarizing this excellent work, Harkness wrote, "I could truly claim that this story has no end, an obscure beginning, and a heroine who is forever changing."

Each individual rose description is marvelous for their collective gold mine of personal insights.  Take, for example, what he writes about my personal favorite, 'Madame Hardy';  "...one of the most wonderful roses, provided its lax, ungainly growth may be forgiven...a further pardon is required in case the weather sweeps away its intricate flowers.  I do so pardon it....a bloom like that is remembered all your life."


He was not as complimentary of 'Mme Isaac Pereire' and her sport 'Mme Ernst Calvat':  "These two are generally applauded...as examples of the beauty of old garden roses.  I cannot see why....if 'Mme Pierre Oger' is Cinderella, these two are the Ugly Sisters fortissimo....long branches are clad with dull foliage, nasty little thorns and mildew...flowers, revolting in color, frequently ameliorate that sin by failing to open at all"  Grudgingly, he finishes his description of these widely-acclaimed intensely fragrant Bourbons with "...to give the devils their dues, they are both fragrant."  

I certainly agreed wholeheartedly with the opening of his description of 'Blanc Double de Coubert': "This rose has been praised too much...the petals are thin, easily spoiled by rain....If one wants a double white rose, I see no point in planting this one."  And his paragraph about 'Charles de Mills':  "I have had little joy from this variety, which the experts describe as tall....(it) does not grow tall when I plant it and I do not admire its short buds...(but)it improves on opening."

 I especially admired and noted the book's dedication "To Betty Catherine Harkness.  I met her in 1946, had the extraordinary sagacity to marry her in 1947; and we have lived happily ever after, thanks mainly to her."  Should I ever write another book, I must remember to follow his lead and provide some recognition for the long-suffering Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  I believe she also exhibited "extraordinary sagacity" to accept my proposal of marriage, even though she might submit some trivial examples to suggest otherwise during our 32 years together.

Unlikely Lavender Queen

My most recent garden-related read, The Unlikely Lavender Queen by Jeannie Ralston, was a book that I chose hoping I'd get some pointers in lavender cultivation.  Lavender production tips didn't seem like they were the primary purpose of the book, but truthfully, when you buy most of your reading material at Half-Price Books, you can't be that picky about where you get your information.  And I'll state here and now that while it is a great read, you aren't going to learn much more than you probably already know about lavender.  Well, except the factoid of which town was ALMOST named the official Lavender Capitol of Texas before the Texas legislators chickened out. 

As I stated, The Unlikely Lavender Queen is a really good read, published in 2008, by a really good writer.  Jeannie Ralston has an impressive resume of writing essays for multiple famous periodicals like Allure and National Geographic, and her writing style reflects it.  From a reader's standpoint, this is an enjoyable, easy-to-follow autobiographical work and it would make a great "book club" read.

In short, the book is a woman's journey along her life path as she tries to find herself, make a family, and find ways to tolerate the wild whims of her nutball husband.  I confess that during most of the book I constantly wondered why Ms. Ralston didn't divorce the guy.  Please note that last brutal assessment is the conclusion of another eccentric husband (me).  In short, Ms. Ralston was a modern New-York-City-loving feminist who fell in love with a talented National Geographic photographer, marries him, has two boys, and is dragged from New York to Austin and then to 200 acres and a remodeled stone barn near Blanco, Texas, all while her career suffers and she suffers from being repeatedly dislodged.  Although I referred to the husband as a nutball, he seems to be a nice guy, but he has wield impulses, like creating a lavender farm, that Ms. Ralston can't effectively oppose.  So she gets dragged along, and, at the books conclusion, he's also sold their homestead and lavender enterprise and moved her to Mexico with the boys.  Like Jeannie, I couldn't believe that a marriage counselor sided with him on that one.  I also still can't believe Ms. Ralston went along with him.  Seriously, I think Mother Teresa would have told him to hit the road at that point.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush would surely have kicked my butt from here to sundown, provided she hadn't smothered me in my sleep at many prior junctures of this story.

You'll enjoy the read as a bibliophile, but anyone with remotely militant feminist leanings will throw it across the room after every chapter.  Consider yourself warned.

Opinionated Gardening

'Stella de Oro'

Are all gardeners so opinionated, or is it just ProfessorRoush?  Because he has definite opinions about almost everything in his garden.  Sometimes even he tires of his opinions, his interminable rants about disease or weeds or flower color or poor performance that keep him from enjoying the garden.  Is it really necessary to constantly pontificate about whether this rose is better than that one, or how one grass is a thug, sprawling over everything in its vicinity, while another grass adds a really nice structure to the garden?

Take, for instance, his opinion about 'Stella de Oro'.  If you've read his blog for more than a few days, you know he detests the orange-yellow color of 'SDO'.  You've seen him rant about how tired he is of seeing it everywhere, often displayed in combination with a purple barberry or a group of banal junipers. One of the reasons that ProfessorRoush believes in a single deity is that creating 'SDO' as the most reliable, easy to propagate and longest-blooming daylily on Earth is surely a little cosmic joke made while God was in a good mood and resting on the Seventh Day.

'Happy Returns'

There are certainly better alternatives.  'Happy Returns' blooms a little less frequently, but the two fewer shades of orange in 'Happy Returns' makes it a much prettier addition to the landscape.  It is just as healthy and, these days, just as easy to find.  But, I guess it just doesn't contrast with purple barberries as well so it doesn't satisfy the peasant sensibilities of modern landscape designers.  And there are similarly named Stella's, such as 'Purple de Oro', which should be better, but they're less healthy and don't bloom nearly as often, at least for me.  The latter also isn't that purple, but that's another rant entirely.

Don't get me wrong, I grow 'Stella de Oro' in spades.  ProfessorRoush wouldn't, with his unlimited mental budget for plants, but I do.  In fact, a few weeks ago, it was the primary blooming plant in the landscaping in front of my garage, as you can see below.  'SDO's are almost all of the yellow that you see here, with the exception of a single 'Happy Returns' at center left.  In my defense, I'd like to tell you that I was a beginning gardener at the time and didn't know any better, but, truthfully, I grew 'SDO' in a garden before this one and I also hated it there.  Unfortunately, if you want to buy a lot of daylilies on the cheap at big box stores, you get 'Stella de Oro', sometimes even when it is labeled as something else.  And I was working on my budget, not that of ProfessorRoush's.  Thankfully, as I'll blog about in a few days, the 'SDO' are resting now and other, more attractive, daylilies and lilies are center stage.



Some would suggest that ProfessorRoush should strive to develop a more open mind and keep his opinions to himself.  But then what would he write about?  Endless essays about the beauty of every living creature would either cause his arteries to explode from the suppressed inner tensions or, alternatively, he would quickly run out of complimentary English language adjectives and his writing would be as boring as a landscape composed entirely of purple barberries and 'Stella de Oro's.  Writing, and gardening, is so much more satisfying if you can make use of all the options available.

Wall's Owita

Among other activities this Spring, I spent my reading time rambling between several books.  I often find myself with several books open, picking up each one as my mood directs me, reading one of them tonight and another tomorrow, only to come back to the first a week later.   It drives Mrs. ProfessorRoush slightly more nuts, dusting around 3-5 books that are open or bookmarked at any given time.  Would anyone else like to admit here a similar reading habit?

This weekend, I finally managed to finish Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening, written by Mrs. Carol Wall and published early in 2014.  Mrs. Wall was a high School English teacher in Tennessee and Virginia who previously wrote features in Southern Living Magazine and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and she writes as beautifully as you would expect.  I picked up the book with the expectation that it would be a nice essay about gardening and friendships, but if you are looking to learn much about Mister Owita's green thumb from it, you will be sorely disappointed.

Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening is, in fact, two related tales, one of a friendship and a mentor-student relationship developed between two gardeners, and the other a very human tale of hope, longing and loss.  Mr. Owita, the declared subject of the story is a local immigrant who becomes Mrs. Wall's gardening advisor, and later her confidant and friend.  The story is not really about the garden they create, but about their support for each other during the trials of each life.

Spoiler alert;  Mrs. Wall was a breast cancer survivor, who relapses during the book.  Part of the story  focuses on her worries and thoughts as she faces more illness and treatments.  Early in the story, Mister Owita is concerned about a daughter left behind in an unstable country.  Later on his own terminal illness is revealed.  Mister Owita dies near the end of the book.  In fact, I learned while writing this that Mrs. Wall also passed on December 14, 2014, 9 months after the book was published.  I'm sorry for the lost to both families, but I think you understand what I mean if I say that I didn't feel very uplifted after reading this book.

If you're wanting a profoundly moving book, and if you can stand a bit of a downer of an ending, Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening is a good, easy read.    If you're looking for garden or plant information, or if you need or expect an uplifting story about survival in the face of cancer or HIV, then don't make this book one of the many you may already be reading.

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)

Jumpin' Jackpot!

I don't want to interrupt the "every other day" flow of blog posts that I have going, but I also couldn't let my good luck go unheralded, so I'm interjecting this particular post for a short time and then we will go back to the flowers tomorrow.

Aside from gardening and my three or four other hobbies, I am most certainly a bibliophile and I have a modest collection of gardening books, 557 at last count by the Home Library app that keeps track of them and keeps me from purchasing duplicates.  Before you start calculating what 557 garden books must have cost, you should know that most were purchased used or discounted, primarily at my favorite home-away-from-home, Half-Price Books.  Once I've parted with the cash, the value doesn't matter anyway since I have little worry about any one other than a peculiarly nerdish burglar breaking in for my gardening book collection.

I was completely thrilled, on a trip yesterday and knowing that Half-Price had a 20% off sale this weekend, to find this like-new copy of Modern Roses 12 at the store, and marked, as you can see on the cover, at $9.99.  Rose-nut that I am, I didn't own a copy until now.  Additionally, as you can see from the receipt at the left, I got it at 20% off, so with Overland Park, Kansas taxes, my final outlay was $8.67.  A rose gardener can't beat that deal with a stick!.

The real shock, after turning the book to its back cover, was finding out that the original price was $99.95!  Half-Price Books was more like 90% Off Books for me this week!

I have no luck winning the Powerball, but I am quite willing to take advantage of a book bargain when I see one, and almost, well nearly almost, as happy.

Things My Dog Has Taught Me

1.  There should always be time for play.  In the midst of busy days and hectic lives, everyone should find an outlet for release; a doorway to rested minds and exercised bodies.  Bella greets me at the door every night with excitement, her entire body dancing and quivering at the simple joy of the moment.  She demands attention and love, but she has recognized that I subsequently need a few moments to step across the threshold, put down the mail and paper and winter coat, and kick my shoes off.  A minute later, however she'll be at my feet, holding her favorite ball, ready to play with free abandonment of the daily boredom.  If you need a refresher course to remember to live in the moment, watch your dog.


2.  There should also always be time for rest, and our days should align with the Earth's. After spending my early years with dogs who weren't allowed into the house, it is sometimes still astonishing to me that a dog, however well-loved, has become the driver for our household schedule.  Bella makes sure I'm awake early every morning with singular mournful howls of increasing intensity that we will not hear again for 24 hours.   Her "clock" however, is tuned to the sun and this alarm is progressively late as winter rolls on, and reverses as summer approaches.  At night, usually shortly after sunset and sometimes long before I'm ready, she picks up this pillow and then follows us with an expectant look, seemingly surprised that you're not as sleepy as she is.  The switch back from Daylight Savings Time throws her for a loop, and, like me, she still hasn't recovered.

3.  A good morning stretch followed by skin to skin contact is one of the most important pleasures of life and, deserved or not, we should all be able to find a good belly rub whenever we need it.  Every morning, no matter how long I let the howling go on, Bella stretches when I appear; luxurious stretches like she is coming out of a 20-year snooze and just being reborn into the world.  I envy those stretches, that simple re-acquaintment of the mind with the marvelous machinery of muscle and bone.  Afterward, she demands a good vigorous belly rub, simultaneously expressing grateful submission and a plea for a loving touch and warm embrace.  The skin to skin contact with another living being always puts us both in a better mood.  I am less successful in my own attempts to receive a belly rub, however.   I've attempted this insistent pose a few times myself before a sleepy and uncooperative Mrs. ProfessorRoush, and it never seems to work for me.


4.  True love is truly  best defined by the happiness of every moment spent with your love, and the lingering sadness of every moment apart.  My energetic and playful companion mopes when we spontaneously leave, lingering at the doorways until the garage door announces our return.  I find it intriguing that Bella knows the difference between the normal schedule of my leaving for work in the morning and the more spontaneous shopping or errand trips at unexpected times.  The former seems no more than an expected part of her day, while the latter is mourned as time stolen from a lover, precious moments noted by their absence.   As for the readers of this blog, I know I've been away for some time while the wheels of daily life have stolen my attentions, but I promise that the doorway will open a little more frequently and at least a few times each month, until the days grow longer again and sunlight and warmth wake up the garden to be my muse.



  

Fifty Tools

Somewhere in my busy summer, I found time to read this recent tome, A History of the Garden in Fifty Tools, by Bill Laws.  I actually paid full price for this recent release (February, 2014), rather than my usual modus operandi of browsing the used book shops for garden reads.  I tend to like to read about gardening tools and their variations, and I was pretty excited to get hold of it.  

In A History of the Garden in Fifty Tools, Bill Laws covers the history of just about every garden tool you can imagine and some that you probably didn't know about. The history and information presented about each tool was interesting, and Laws covered the development of most of his chosen tools from the Stone Age to modern times. The tools are organized into 5 chapters, the flower garden, kitchen garden, orchard, lawn, and ornamental garden, which sometimes made me feel that some tools were a bit misplaced in order because I use some differently than Laws placed them.  I also have to admit that I was disappointed by the time I finished Fifty Tools.  I think my biggest issue is that the info was dryly presented and began to drag a bit for me a bit as I got used to the format.   I'll tell you this, I didn't count them, but by the time you finish the book, you'll think you've read about more than 50 tools.

I confess that I had built up a lot of anticipation for this book, and to give the author the benefit of doubt, perhaps the problem lies with me, rather than the reading material.   I just never got into it; reading page after page like it was material from a textbook, rather than a summer novel.  It's one of those books I finished, but I struggled to maintain interest, somewhat like I've done  in the past with long Stephan King novels.  By the time I'm too far in to quit, I'm thinking, "God, just let me get it over."  If you're just nuts on garden tools, you may like this book, but my suggestion first would be to read Tools of the Earth by Jeff Taylor and Rich Iwasaki.  I read the latter years ago and it is so good that I will probably read it again soon.