Who's Tired of This Crap?

Seattle, up there with the most snow in 50 years, are you tired of this crap?  Texas, covered in snow and freezing temperatures, how about you?  Upper Midwest, reaching streaks of record subzero days, are you about done shoveling the white stuff?   Well, guess what, ProfessorRoush is not near done.

I'm not near done because, with classes cancelled tomorrow, I can use it as an excuse to pick up groceries and supper and come home still early enough to see the sun cause a snow rainbow at 5:06 p,m.  I took this picture from the window of my Jeep just before I turned onto our road.  How rare to see a partial rainbow here in the dying light of a snow day; rarer still on a snow day where there was no snow predicted at all.  With all our science, with all our computers, we still can't predict snow 12 hours ahead.

I'm not near done with this crappy weather because exactly an hour later, at 6:06 p.m., my neighbor called me on the phone to make sure I looked at the sunset, a sunset with a magnificent pillar of fire leaping from the sun to the sky.  I hung up on him so I could snap this picture on my iPhone camera.  So that, gracious be God, I could capture the heavens and earth in golden embrace as the clouds turned pink in embarrassed glory.  I'll trade a so-so day of 20ºF temperatures for another subzero morning if I have any chance at another picture like these.  

And I'm not near done because I want, frankly, all the global warming fanatics to reap the whirlwind.  I've heard it up to my ears with global warming causing unstable weather patterns and cold days instead of hot ones, and I'm flabbergasted every time I hear that we've only got 20, 10, 5 years left before global warming climate change caused by industrial pollution cow flatulence ruins the planet.  Guess what; the Arctic still has an ice cap and Polar Bears are not yet extinct.  I haven't yet had the July Kansas sun cause blisters on my arms, but I'm pretty sure if I stuck my hand out the door for 10 minutes right now, I'd be pecking at the keyboard tomorrow with fists instead of fingers.  Tell you what, how about an experiment?  Let's all take off our clothes this May and live outside in the back yard for a year and see whether we die of heat or hypothermia first?

Ewwww...strike that thought.  That mental image is not a pretty Kansas picture like the ones above.  How about we all just live and let live, turn down our thermostats and our emotions right now to save respectively a little energy for our neighbors and a little angst for ourselves, and just calm down and enjoy the sunset for awhile?  

Please, Fall, Come.

ProfessorRoush is absolutely, assuredly, positively, unquestionably, and undoubtedly ready for Fall.  Things out there in the greater garden are looking bedraggled and I'm decisively ready for Fall.  I'm tired of mowing the lawn every week without fail and I'm surely ready for Fall.  The lilac leaves are mildew-ing and dropping and both they and I are conclusively ready for Fall.  Everything is overgrown and I'm losing to the weeds and I'm categorically ready for Fall.  Come on over, Fall!

I woke this morning to the perfect hint of Fall, but I have yet to be convinced that we will see it.  There was moderate fog around and I love the fog for its dampening of sounds from town and the sense of isolation it brings.   The view above, straight into the garden and lacking the usual houses on the horizon, takes me back 10 years in an instant, to a time before those houses were built and it was just us and the sky to the south.  Click on it and dive in with your soul.  And the view below, at a slight eastern angle to the first, picks up the longhorn cattle grazing in the pasture and my neighbor's pond beyond.  Serenity at its finest.  Don't you feel calmed by the scene?

It has been such a weird gardening year with the rain and all.  If you knew anything of Kansas, you should know that the garden above should be browning by now, if not completely August-drought-dry.  Instead, the growth is nearly as green as at the beginning of spring, as it has been all summer long, just beginning to show the changes of grass color to the reds of fall. I've never, since moving to the prairie, mowed every week all summer and by this time of year I'm usually able to cut every other week if not just once a month.

I checked on Friday, and through that day, we've had 42.18 official inches of rain in 2019, an increase over average rain of 14.76 inches, or in other terms, 54% more than the average annual rainfall through September 6th!  Climate change or coincidence?  Just for those following the fictions of Al "the Arctic will be ice free by 2014" Gore, the high and low temperatures here for September 6, 2019 were 94ºF and 68ºF respectively.  The records for that date are a high of 106ºF set in 1913 and a low of 42ºF set in 1962.  If climate change it must be, I think I'd prefer the extra rain and today's temperatures versus the high of 1913.  In fact, even 1913 seems to be a weird record since the majority of the high temperature records in this area were established in the Dust-Bowl 30's. 

The strangest part of this year, to me, was that because of all the wet weather, my garden's fairy ring never materialized.  I have an enormous fairy ring in my garden, which I've never written about but have intended to.  In recent years, it has approached more than 50' in diameter, old and growing every year.  Instead, I waited and waited and they almost never came.  These two mushrooms above, the smaller posing for a close-up in the photo below, just popped up in the fairy ring yesterday and are the only two I've seen anywhere in the garden this year.  Since the same official rainfall records note that we are -0.72" behind our annual average rain for September (making the earlier part of the year even more wet in comparison), is it that this fairy ring only dances in drought times?  Inquiring minds would like to know.

Utterly Ridiculous!

All right, who's responsible?  Snow?  On the 23rd of April?  Unheard of.  I have never seen snow this late in the year in the 24 years I've lived in Kansas.   The latest I can remember was the devastating late snow of April 5th, 2007, the year I now refer to as "the year without flowers."  It is 32°F here this morning, heading for a high of 43° and a low tonight of 25°.










I can only surmise that this is yet another predicted calamity resulting from The Sequester.  It's being blamed for everything else right now, why not this aberrant weather?  The Feds must have furloughed the guy responsible for Global Warming.  If not, then I want that guy fired immediately because he's not fulfilling his promises.  At this rate we're going to slip back from zone 6A to 5B.  According to the Midwest Regional Climate Center we are 13 days past our median last FREEZE of 28°F in Manhattan, 8 days past our median last FROST!  Our 95% frost free date here is May 9th.  Will we be extending that this year?  Will we break the freeze all time record of May 27th, set in 1907?  I'm starting to wonder.

The plants here knew what was coming.   Everything is late to bloom, and I've had little reason to blog.  Unlike 2007, not even my earliest lilac has yet bloomed, but it was only a couple of days away, as was my ornamental Red Peach tree.  But they're not delayed enough.  Tulips in the snow?  I've seen daffodils in the snow several times, but never tulips.  My peaches and apples were blooming this weekend, so I can kiss those crops goodbye.  The star magnolia and 'Ann' and 'Jane' magnolias are in full bloom right now.  Goodbye magnolias.  My 'Yellow Bird' magnolia is still in bud phase, but I don't know if those fuzzy buds are tight enough to stand tonight's freeze. 






I stand here in Kansas, rejected, dejected, and neglected, as the snow continues to fall.  The picture below was taken early this morning at first light.  It has since snowed another inch and it is still coming down.  The prairie grass is completely covered now.   I've got 11 new rose bands currently in transit, with delivery expected on Thursday.

There is a predicted high of 81°F this coming Sunday.  Just in time to roast the just transplanted roses.

Roses? April Fools, Not!

'Harison's Yellow'

Whatever this crapola is, global warming or normal climate variation or coincidental heat spell, it has to stop and it has to stop NOW!  I was outside this morning doing routine garden chores for this time of year and I suddenly noticed this:

'Marie Bugnet'

And this:

'Robusta'

And this:












Three different roses blooming on April 1st?  I understand that two of them have Rugosa blood and the third is normally an early rose;  but April 1st?   'Marie Bugnet' is normally the first rose to bloom for me, starting, on average in the 1st week of May.  The earliest bloom I ever saw on that bush was April 21st, in 2009.  The next earliest was April 23rd, in 2005.   April 1st?: preposterous!  'Harison's Yellow' has only bloomed once in April in 10 years; on April 30th, 2005.  This cosmic scheduling is ridiculous.  The lilacs are in peak bloom here.  My earliest peony (Paeonia tenuifolia) and my earliest iris ('First Edition') have just started blooming.  Tulips are starting to open. Clematis montana has just started to bloom.  Daffodils have just slacked off.  And my roses are blooming?  A closer look reveals that rosebuds are developing on most all of my rosebushes, but perhaps in less than normal number.  I'm all for being able to enjoy the scent of roses early for the season, but at this rate, we'll be done with roses blooming by May and their normal abundance may be lessened.

Looking at the odd bloom sequence, I believe what it tells me is that the bulbs and other flowers dependent on ground temperature for growth initiation are blooming closer to their "normal" time, while the plants dependent on air temperature to develop buds are being pushed by the (today) 90F degree temperatures.  That's my theory anyway, and I'm sticking to it.

I know it's April 1st, folks, but this is no April Fool's.  I took these pictures today, April 1, 2012.  God Save the Planet.

Geez Genista!

Yes, I was aware that the weather has been abnormally warm in Kansas this season.  I know that the Bluebirds have stayed put this winter rather than heading south for a month or two.  A Kansas duck hunter told me that this season is the best hunting season he's ever known because the geese are staying farther north this year.  I, myself, was about ready to start pruning roses yesterday (something I've never done in January before since I value the mobility and integrity of my fingers). 

Even knowing all that, I was still surprised when yesterday, on January 29th, I discovered the flower pictured at the right above, giving me this solitary bloom on January 29th in an east-exposed bed next to the house. This is a Genista lydia, a shrub I planted some years back and then promptly forgot whatever was the actual cultivar name.  I planted it originally due to some plant propaganda leaflet dropped upon me that raved about how drought and deer resistant the Balkan native was.  In fact, I've found it so invasive here since I planted it that I've been trying to grub it out for the past 2 years.  Part of the Fabacaea family, it is a low-growing deciduous shrub classified by some as a groundcover and by others as a pernicious pest.  The pea-like bright yellow flowers bloom only a short time, but they bloom thickly, covering the plant. 

I knew that Genista is one of the earliest in my landscape to bloom, but this time it has outdone itself for horticultural confusion.  Blooming on January 29th?  The earliest I've previously noted Genista to begin blooming was March 5th (in 2005).  Based on that timeline, I should expect to see forsythia blooming within the next week and daffodils by mid-February.  This goes far beyond the USDA's announcement last week, that my garden has moved an entire climate zone south, from Zone 5B to Zone 6A.  I must have slept through the move because I don't remember potting things up and replanting.

On one hand, I hate it when WEE's (Wild-Eyed Environmentalists) get any evidence in their favor.  I haven't been a big believer in the idea that Man, however stupid we are, can destroy the Earth, but I am starting to waver in my conviction.  We may be setting record temperatures today, January 30th, when it is supposed to reach a balmy 70F in Topeka, but I always try to keep in mind that the previous record on January 30th was set in 1974, a time when I recall that scientists were predicting industrialization would result in a new Ice Age. If the experts can change their minds, why can't I? 

On the other hand, why fight it?  At this rate, a couple of more decades of global warming and I'll be in Zone 7 and can grow real antique Tea Roses in my garden.  Wouldn't that be something?

Please Turn Out the Lights

Forget about drought, erosion, and Global Warming. In my opinion the real danger challenging the beauty of the Tallgrass Prairie is of Light Pollution, otherwise known as photopollution or luminous pollution.

A mere 14 years ago, when we first bought the land our current house sits on, just outside the Manhattan city limits, my son and I used to just sit and be amazed at the explosion of stars across the night sky of the prairie.  Beautiful and vibrant, it was and is the most obvious evidence of God's existence available to us. 

These days, the stars are dim in that same sky.  Despite the growth of Manhattan in directions away from us, it seems like the big city lights are growing in number at the exponential rate of a bacterial culture in unlimited fresh media.  That glow of Manhattan, a small city in reality, can now be seen more than 10 miles away on a clear night, interfering with star-gazers, lovers on country roads, and all the other higher aspirations of man. Park lights, University lights, Stadium lights, and Commercial Retail lights stay on to the wee hours of the morning, every morning. There's now a street light shining continuously on almost every corner including minor intersections in unpopulated areas, undoubtedly paid for by our increasingly-limited tax dollars and causing me to wake up in the wee hours thinking dawn has arrived. 

Even worse, I've noticed the indoor proliferation of lights all over my house from the now ubiquitous Light-Emitting Diode (LED) on every appliance large and small.  In our bedroom, a sacred, quiet dark place for this old farm boy, there are still no less than 8 LEDs shining every night in the semi-darkness from the TV, radio, mobile phone, charging cords, and other little electronic devices.  Why, I ask you, does the Visio TV in my bedroom need to have a light that comes ON when I turn the TV off?  I don't care if each LED uses a minuscule small amount of energy, billions of them still have to add up to something.  Most alarmingly, the suppression of melatonin by exposure to light at night has even been suggested as a cause for the higher rates of breast and colorectal cancers in the developed world (Pauley SM, Medical Hypotheses, 2004;63:588).  I don't want my tombstone to say "He Saw The Light And Died."   

I'm happy to debate with wild-eyed Al Gore followers whether Global Warming exists (which I question because I am old enough to remember the doomsday cries of pending Global Cooling in the 70's), but I will concede in an instant that I'd also be happy to do without all the artificial night light if the corresponding drop in energy use would help decrease the chances of Warming. For those who care, there is an International Dark Sky Association (http://www.darksky.org/), founded in 1988.

I plead with you to turn off the lights. Let the fireflies and stars take back their dominance in the night. We don't need the light to fend off the evil beasts any longer.