July Drive-By

My, my, how time flies by and leaves us standing in the dust of our best intentions.  I was on track for several months to add bi-weekly notes to this blog, but in the middle of June my resolve ran up against the Kansas climate and melted like butter on a stove. This toadstool photo, taken this morning, is illustrative of our gardening year here.

You see, friends, I came into this gardening year so excited for new life and new growth.  Ample rains in March and April erased our long drought and opened up all the nascent promise of
my garden, a green and growing paradise in my immediate vision.  It was almost perfect right up until we received the hailstorm in the last week of April, a hail that stripped leaf and promise and future.

May was quiet here, quiet except for the few peony buds and roses that survived the hail.  There were few irises, peonies, and roses in my early garden, and as the season developed, it was apparent that there were to be no strawberries, cherries, peaches, or apples to console my feelings.  I struggled even to enter my garden, pained by the lack of bloom and vigor, but I held out hope for my stalwart daylilies.

And then, in late May and through June, the heat struck and the rain stopped.  The garden dried and the ground cracked.  The grass turned brown and even the daylilies slowed their onslaught.  Hemerocallis is a tough genus, but not tough enough for early drought.  They bloomed, but not in their usual numbers or robust cheerfulness.

In late June and early July, it rained again, and kept raining at regular intervals, a unusual pattern for Kansas, and the grass greened up and the weeds rushed in.  Weeds, weeds everywhere, but not a domesticated flower to be seen.  Normally, in July, I can count on mowing every other week and relaxing from the heat.  Not this year, for I have been forced into weekly mowings of the entire yard and weeding at every opportunity.   Roundup is my new best friend.  And the ground is wet, wet enough so that toadstools grow in July right by the front walk.  You can guess that the tomatoes in this area are not performing very well in the wet clay.  Right now, the only crops that look to be decent are watermelons and cantaloupes.

And so I stand, on the brink of August, too busy with other things to garden, too depressed to even look at my devastated strawberry bed, too chagrined to even hope for a colorful fall.  I'll write when I can.  I've saved a few photos of the best of the year.  Maybe I can summon the cheerfulness in August to highlight them.

Until then, adieu.

Resilent Regrowth

I've worried myself to distraction, this past month, concerned about the true costs of our April hailstorm on the garden.  The loss of a year's worth of irises, peonies, and non-remonant roses is disappointment enough, but what of other garden inhabitants?   In all the years I've gardened before now, I hadn't experienced hail that struck at the peak of spring, just as the garden year was beginning.  I knew that roses and irises and peonies would survive decrepit and tired, building sugars from damaged factories until they were reborn next year, but what about other plants?   If I grow tired of shredded iris leaves, I can always cut them off and force a rebirth, but gardens contain other lives that need to persist beyond a single cycle.

Foremost,  I wondered, what would become of the trees, the eternal trees, pummeled just as they opened their leaves, an entire year of stored energy wasted in seconds?  Garden experts wrote fleetingly about possible regrowth on trees and other plants, regrowth that seemed too dependent on this condition or that condition, but I could find little documentation for my comfort.  I wondered how the trees could possibly know if there was enough time left in the summer to try again or whether it would be better to save their resources for next spring?  But I offer these pictures, captured one month after the hailstorm, as encouragement to those searching after me.  For myself, they are lesson again that life can be both fragile and resilient in the same moment.




The first two photos above are of new growth on two different Maples in my yard, the first an "October Glory" Red Maple, the second a Paperbark Maple.  Both display their damage and regrowth at the same time, as do most of my trees that were so foolish as to get an early start on spring, hanging on to damaged leaves for sparse nourishment, but rebuilding with a vengeance.  The third photo is a Redbud, an understory tree, also exhibiting torn and shiny new leaves on the same branches.  Together, they are all evidence that this year is not a total loss, for me or for the trees.

In these lessons about hail, I also learned something about Darwinism and survival of the fittest.  The least damaged trees of all in my garden were the trees that are traditional Kansas natives.  My oaks, walnuts, and cottonwoods are all seemingly untouched, the first two because they kept their buds tight until well after the hailstorm and the latter because it seems that the bouncing poplar-like leaves of the cottonwood either dodged the hail stones or turned aside at the slightest touch, nimble as ninjas in the wind.  There are many lessons here that the Homo-sapiens-introduced maples can learn from.  The particular Homo sapiens also known as ProfessorRoush now understands again that despair is fleeting and hope is eternal.

Healing Time

(Sung to the tune of Closing Time by Semisonic)

Healing time,
I've shut the doors & I've stayed in from the cold hailed-on world.
Healing time,
Waiting for new leaves out for every boy plant and girl.
Healing time,
I need some alcohol so send me your whiskey or beer.
Healing time,
My garden's messed up, but I can't stay in here.

I wish there were buds to bloom right now.
Why aren't there some buds to bloom right now?

I need for some buds to bloom right now.

Bloom right now.


I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but one week after the hailstorm, my parade is certainly characterized by crushed hopes and trashed flowers.  Besides that storm, there have been several others.  Forget the drought in this area of Kansas.  I've had over 10 inches of rain in 6 days and the rose garden is back to swampland.  What is a simple gardener to do?

Wrecked are the irises and peonies.  Well, if I'm being truthful, they are only moderately wrecked.  Irises and peonies who were leeward of the house from the storm or were sheltered by large neighboring shrubs came through largely intact and are still contributing color to the garden, although the blooms are damaged from up close (see the several examples on this entry).  In many cases, the stems were broken but the irises are blooming, albeit closer to the ground. 

Peony 'Scarlett O'hara'

Some roses lost buds, and, as I've investigated the damage further than my brief outside survey last week, the strawberries and blackberries are toast for this year.  Not "jam for toast", they ARE toast.  Peony 'Scarlett O'Hara', normally so beautiful, looks a little beaten up this year, a soiled dove more befitting my personal nickname for her of Scarlett O'Harlot. 

It is actually interesting, setting aside my deep despair, to look around and see what plants did or didn't stand up to the hailstorm.  I should be making lists and writing down names.  Most native plants, of course, like this Asclepias at right, shrugged off the hail and seem completely undamaged.  There are some varieties of peonies who survived intact despite being right out in the open, while others beside them were either shredded or lost their fat buds.  Some roses lost leaves or buds, while others haven't paused. 'Morden Blush' for instance, shown below, went ahead this week to open blooms that were even more blushingly beautiful than normal.  

'Morden Blush'

On the opposite extreme are the alliums.  I had such high hopes for some new alliums I planted last year.  Many broke off entirely and never bloomed.  Others, like this decrepit specimen, survived to rue the day they poked their head above the ground.

Iris 'Roselene'

I must be patient now, patient to wait for nature's repair, patient to wait another year for the promise of some to return.  'Roselene', fair Roselene, how I miss your cheery face and exquisite form.

Shredded Former Garden

My initial inclination was to title this blog entry "Oh Hail No!" but I'm having a little trouble maintaining the required tone of humor today.  Feel free to join me in a simple soul-cleansing wail because I'm at a loss for words.  Following the example of the recently deceased Prince, perhaps I should just refer to this as "The Garden Formerly Known as ProfessorRoush's."

For those easily depressed by gardening disaster, this is your fair warning to move on to the next post.  For the rest of you, those curious souls unable to avoid gawking at car wrecks or fascinated by visits to Civil War battlefields, you can keep viewing this photo-heavy post, but I would caution you to have a barf bag at hand.  Feel free to "click" on any picture you want to enlarge.



We had a little storm here last night.  When I say a little storm, I am, of course, channeling our British cousins to understate a meteorological apocalypse that included a near miss by a possible tornado, a deluge of 4.2 inches in 2 hours, and about an inch of hail the size of marbles.  The photo at the right is a shot of my back patio during the storm, all while the radio weatherman was telling me to take cover.  It's illuminated by the porch light and it's dim and poorly exposed, but if you can see the ice on the ground you've grasped the obvious.






For a little better glimpse of this catastrophe, the proverbial plague of biblical hail, these two photos of the left and right sides of my front walkway, just after the storm, may be more illuminating.

I woke up this morning to a lot of damage.  There was no real structural damage to the house, but the garden has seen better days.  Just yesterday morning, I was admiring this 'Blue Angle' hosta placed right next to the front door; it was perfect then, not a bit of slug damage.  Look at it now.











This 'Globemaster' allium was getting ready to bloom.  I suppose it still might, but I'm betting it won't reach the glory I was expecting.















The Orientpet lily to the left was the picture of health yesterday.  Today it appears to have been through a meat grinder.  Still, it fared better than the Asiatic lily whose photo is at the top of this blog.












I had scores of irises starting to bloom.  I suppose they might still, but one wonders what kind of display I'll have from these.














This was a Sedum.  'Strawberries and Cream' to be exact.  "Was" is the active verb here.











When a tough daylily like 'Alabama Jubilee' gets shredded like this, well, you know you've had a storm.














And these were some gorgeous purple and white petunias that I planted just yesterday.  If I didn't know that, I couldn't even tell you what they were.












I tried to tell Mrs. ProfessorRoush that the remaining cherries would be larger and sweeter since these were pruned away early in the season.  She was neither amused nor consoled.













I'll leave you now, contemplating this abstract artform as it was created in my front buffalograss.  This is not a view of the Appalachians from space.  This is thatch, floated up from the roots of the buffalograss and deposited in waves on an almost level surface by the 4+ inches of rain.  I suppose I should be thankful that the torrential rain has cleared out the thatch for me and I have only to rake it up now.  I am most assuredly NOT thankful, however.  The magnolias were interrupted this year by the late freezes.  Now the irises, daylilies and alliums by this storm.  What's next?  The roses get hit by a meteorite shower?