Back to Winter

And.....winter again.  Just as ProfessorRoush was hoping to put the seasonal losses behind us, spring whimpered out of the way and let winter's lioness roar back in full bloodlust.  We had two very unfortunate anti-garden nights this week; a hard freeze on Monday following a strong north wind that shook the house and then a dusting of snow and another brief dip to freezing temperatures Thursday night last.  Only this fake steel rose near my front walk seems to be impervious to the damage.








If you can't bear to look, then turn away quickly, but let me show you what a hard freeze does to asparagus.  I looked at these growing, stiffening spears on Sunday and thought about picking them, but decided another couple of days would get me a more filling harvest.  Now here they are, limp and broken, their tumescence and potential gelded by an icy maiden.  I'm sure this picture is an apt metaphor for some other issue that vexes old gardeners, but I can't recall anything like it at present, just another incidence of déja vu that will come to me later.







What will become of the snow-kissed peonies, like the ones pictured at right?  Or the daylilies and young roses, prematurely coaxed by the warming sun into rapid growth and now slapped down for their exuberance?   I have hope for the peonies yet, frost-resistant as these sensuous beauties can be, but some were beginning to bud, and I may yet harvest only a crop of small black buttons from the early peonies.






 In the two days since the snow, I've re-examined the daylilies and most may recover; leaves wrinkled and a little brown on the edges, but they may recover.  ProfessorRoush, however, is retreating for a time back into his COVID-quarantined lair, suckling his thumb in the darkness.  I'm tempted, knowing that the lowest forecast temperature for the next 10 days is 47ºF, to uncover the greening strawberries, but I just don't trust Kansas.  If I lose the strawberries, I lose all hope, and so I will change the oil in the lawnmower and sweep out the barn, and nurse the surviving onion starts, but I will not offer the strawberries in sacrifice to please the fickle gardening gods.  Hear me, Priapos, god of vegetable gardening?  You will not get my strawberries!

It Could Be Worse

I just keep telling myself that there are many situations that could be worse than trying to keep a garden alive in Kansas in July.  We've only seen one substantial rain in two months and the temperatures have been hovering near or over 105ºF for a week, but it could be worse.  Lawn grasses have completely dried up and the trees are voluntarily shedding half their leaves, but it could be worse.  Daylilies are yellowing and drying on the ends, despite all the advantages of their fleshy, water-retaining tubers, but it could be worse.  That's daylily 'Beautiful Edging' at the right, not so beautiful at present as it edges my garden bed.

Yesterday, for instance, I was headed into my local Walmart at 10:00 a.m., clawing my way forward through the humid already-102ºF air, when it suddenly occurred to me that it would be worse if I had the job of the Walmart employee who had to round up all the carts.  Imagine the despair you'd feel to spend your day walking to the parking lot in that heat and humidity, bringing back a long line of carts, only to watch them disappear from the front end even as you were pushing them back into the busy store.  That entire job would be an endless, mind-numbing circle of frustration equal to that of Sisyphus ceaselessly rolling the stone uphill only to watch it roll back down.  I say that with every intention of not belittling the efforts of the struggling Walmart cart-person, but in sympathy for them.  

But then again, the cart-person knows exactly what lies ahead and is not endlessly teased with possibilities and relief.  They don't experience rain in the forecast for weeks-on-end, constantly present several days in the future, only to see the rain chances diminish as the appointed day nears. They don't experience what we did last night;  a large storm from the west that dissipates and dies within sight of our gardens, just as it meets the air mass of a large storm north and east that we watched form a few miles away and move away from us.  We received 0.4 inches of rain last night, penetrating only deep enough to nourish the crabgrass, leaving the poor lilac bush pictured here to languish in the oppressive heat.  When thick, succulent lilac leaves start to turn up their heels, you know the drought is bad.  You're from New York and afraid of coming to Kansas and experiencing tornadoes?  We hope to see them for the rain they'll bring in their paths. 

It could be worse.  In July, in a Kansas garden, I just keep telling myself ,"it could be worse."   At least I don't want to trade places with the cart-person at Walmart yet.  And I've got a great thriving stand of crabgrass.

Wee Bit O' Wind

A week or so back, I was awakened at 2:00 a.m. by the rising wind outside my window and, seconds later, the patter of rain against the pane.  Knowing that we desperately needed the rain, I smiled, relaxed, and went promptly back to sleep.  

Okay, okay, that's an understatement at best, if not a complete misrepresentation of the incident.    If I am fully disclosing what happened, the wind suddenly began to howl, there was a thunderclap that sounded simultaneously with a lightning flash that seemed to strike right above the bedroom ceiling, and I instantaneously levitated two feet off the bed and vertically onto the floor.   The rain began to pour like the Second Flood, and the nearby lightning and thunder continued for two hours while I lay awake and fretted that the house would explode into flame at the next bolt.  We haven't seen a lightning storm like that in years.

There were no  storm warnings on the TV or radio or Internet for our area, and so I didn't think much more about it (except to be happy about the 1.9" rain) until I got into the garden this weekend.  There, I saw the true nature of what must have been a straight line gale or downburst during the storm.  My Purple Martin houses were leaning and the bird feeders were askew (picture above, left).  I also lost a portion of a trunk off the Smoke Tree as illustrated (at the top, right).  Worst of all, the wooden post that held up my 'American Pillar' rose snapped off at the base (photo at right).  Replacing it will be a difficult and painful task due to the nature of the prickles on this rose, so keep me in your prayers.

 On the bright side, I recently salvaged a piece of Baltic Brown granite from our kitchen island during a remodeling of the kitchen and I made it into a wind-proof garden bench which, despite its unprotected placement to the north side of the house, stood up well to the worst the storm threw at it.  I think it provides a really nice formal touch to this area.  The new bench also proves once again that gardening in Kansas is often a simple matter of over-engineering and weighty solutions.  So now all I have to do is apply that knowledge and create a cement post for the 'American Pillar' rose, anchored down about forty feet into the bedrock.   That shouldn't be too hard, should it? 

Acquired Yellows

At this early date, there are two and only two blooming plants in the garden of ProfessorRoush; both  falling somewhere into the ugly brassy or chrome yellow range of the flower world.  Adding to my gardening irritation factor, they are also about 2 weeks later than in the average year.  These lovely plants are, of course, some yellow snow crocus and my 'Jelena' witch hazel.   I'm not at all sure that I like either of them, but now, a brief week or two past the snow and in contrast to the tired color of the dried grass everywhere else in my landscape, I suppose I should take what I can get.

My acceptance, nay, my naked lust, for snow crocus is based entirely on the fact that they are the first blooms I see every year.  If they flowered in late April in the wake of larger and flashier tulips and daffodils, I'd never grow them.  If they bloomed in September, just past the burning fires of August, I might give them the time of day but I also still might not grow them.  They're just too low to the ground and small to receive notice.  Still, I'm thankful every year when I see them in March.

Besides, I'm not that crazy about yellow flowers in general.  I was interested to learn recently that yellow is supposed to be the color of the "mind and the intellect," for those who follow the "psychology of yellow,"  whatever that is.  Yellow "relates to acquired knowledge," and "resonates with the left (or logical) side of the brain stimulating our mental faculties and creating mental agility and perception."  It "talks," it is "non-emotional", it is the "entertainer, the comic, the clown."   Poppycock!  The only part of that I agree with is the "acquired knowledge" part.  After years of hard-won gardening efforts, I acquired the knowledge that the first two plants that will survive a Kansas winter and bloom are two screaming yellow plants;  snow crocus and witch hazel.

As for the witch hazel, my devoted readers know that I've struggled with it here on the Kansas prairie.  I've never been impressed with the bloom and its impact on my Spring garden, but for the first time, I'm a little closer to tolerance for it.  My 'Jelena' has finally bloomed with enough gusto that I can see that it is blooming over ten feet away.  That's not much, but it's a worthwhile beginning on the road to acceptance, and what I've seen is enough for me to keep the plant around for another year of growth.  Perhaps, someday, I can hope to see it blooming from the house windows so that I don't have to walk right up to the plant to check on it.    

Gardens of Caligula

This week my garden has been transformed into a den of inequity.

A couple of days past, I was peacefully walking through my garden, virtuous and wholesomely thinking only of the graceful lines of mature ornamental grasses and cherubic cement angels.  Suddenly, I stumbled across a garden orgy sufficient to satisfy Caligula.  Fornication!  Out in the open and here among the flowers!  What kind of brothel am I running?

I have a line of 'Matrona' sedum lining one of my beds, and on the flowers of those sedums were a writhing, panting mass of  Goldenrod Soldier Beetles (Chauliognathus pensylvanicus), most of them in flagrante delicto and completely unaware of my voyeurism.  I had an immediate flashback to a time over a decade ago when I was in Vancouver, Canada at a teaching seminar, exploring the famous Wreck Beach on my spare time, only to find out that the Wreck Beach was famous primarily for its clothing-optional section.  At least the insects on my 'Matrona' weren't playing nude volleyball, an image still seared on my eyeballs now some 15 years later.  One internet source noted that the insects mate "for extended periods on the flowers" although "the reason for their lengthy mating period is not certain."  The source did note that females in the act of mating are less likely to be disturbed by wasps than single females.  To that observation, I say "duh", because by my careful observation, what I presume is the male partner is always on top, his back exposed to the wasp, while the female hides protected underneath.

If these beetles were looking for goldenrod, their favorite food source, to homestead on, they are a little early in my garden, for most of the goldenrod hasn't bloomed yet.  Perhaps they are just getting the essential act of procreation out of the way before gorging themselves and fattening for winter, not unlike other species that periodically visit my garden. More likely, they are just the insect equivalent of pubescent humans, driven into ill-considered acts by overactive glands. The next thing you know, they'll be riding giant insect roller coasters just to impress pretty girls (ask me about that story sometime...). 

Goldenrod Soldier Beetles, also known as Pennsylvania leatherwings, are believed to be completely harmless to the flowers and in fact may participate in pollination.  Their larvae are also predators of aphids and other soft-bellied insects.  Several sources tell me the adult beetles secrete an anti-feedant, Z-dihydromatricaria acid, from 9 gland pairs on their abdomens, a defensive move to keep predatory jumping spiders away.   Their presence in this bed of my roses is thus a positive occurrence and instead of being shocked, I should welcome and encourage all the intercourse that they want to have.  I have concluded, therefore, that my best action is to allow them to continue their wanton behavior, averting my eyes from details of the promiscuous activity all around me with the tolerance of a saint among sinners.


 

Thoughts From The Abyss

Wednesday morning I walked through my garden with trepidation, fearful that at any minute I would slip and fall into one of the drought-created crevasses that lurked everywhere, sometimes obscured by a tuft of bluestem grasses, often hidden by a thin bridge of grass mulch.  These clay canyons, pictured here and just below to the left, are deep, Grand Canyon-style deep, perhaps opening all the way to the bedrock below.  Last weekend I chose to water a few of the less-established roses and I poured water from the hose into one of these caverns for over 2 minutes and never filled it up.  Finally, I gave up and moved on, fearful that the water was just gushing through the Earth to China, where the accumulation of all the moisture might make the Earth lopsided and spin us out of orbit.

I can't fathom how so many of my plants survive, roots anchored into parched soil like this.  If I would slip an endoscope into these cracks, would I see bare roots spanning the abyss like a primeval bridge, or would I see broken roots, snapped off under the tensile strains as the soil dried and shrank?  Are there entire new desert ecosystems growing deep inside the chasms, xeriscopic fungi gardened by thirsty insects with hardened chitin shields?  However the manner in which the soil splits and cracks, the survival of most of my plants right now stands as a testament to the natural selection pressures over the past 12 years in this garden.  It also illustrates just how drought-tolerant established roses can be.  If you want flowers in Kansas, grow roses.

This morning, Thursday morning, there is a mist in the air and the 0.9 inches of rain that fell last night (the first moisture in over a month of hot days) has begun to erase the fissures.  Taken at the exact same spot as the first photo above, you can see in the photo at the right that the edges of the canyons are eroding, and that the soil, although not nearly wet enough to be classified as moist, at least appears softer.  Always the cautious gardener, however, ProfessorRoush stayed away from the rims of the abyss because he knows that the now unstable edges might crumble beneath his feet, sweeping me down into the depths.  I fear that Mrs. ProfessorRoush would just never accept that explanation of why I was calling collect from Canton, China.  

Guilt Trip

I tell you, it's enough to give a guy a complex.  ProfessorRoush spent the early summer thinking that the two-year drought had eased, only to watch June and July turn completely dry in this area.  I can't count the number of storm fronts that I've seen split and go north and south of us, or watched as they came in from the west and petered out at the edge of the Flint Hills.  By Sunday, July 28th, this area was 2 inches below our normal July average, 4.92 inches (22.8%) below average for the year.  Tuttle Creek Reservoir, just north of Manhattan, was at a record low elevation of 1074.49 feet.  I was beginning to feel like a pioneer Kansan of the late 1930's, praying for rain,  not for the crops, but so that the six-year-olds can see water fall from the sky.

Then, last Monday morning, July 29th, I started north at 4:30 a.m. for a business trip to Omaha Nebraska.  It began to sprinkle on me when I was 10 miles north of Manhattan and it rained all the way to Omaha (3 hours drive).  According to the paper, by 7 a.m. Monday morning, it had rained 0.98 inches in Manhattan.  By Tuesday at 7 a.m. it had rained another 2.1 inches.  On Wednesday and Thursday there was minimal rain, but Thursday night there was another 1.89 inches.   I came home Friday night to a 5 inch rain gauge by my vegetable garden that had overflowed.  No more deficit presently for 2013. We now have a surplus of 1.85 inches for the year-to-date.

I'm now feeling a little guilty for not leaving town sooner.  We rarely get Spring-quantity rains here in July and August, and if I'd been here watching the storms, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have rained in any measurable quantity.  Others may have recognized my odd recent power over the weather as well.  I texted a friend late Tuesday, saying "Evidently, all I had to do was leave town," and he replied "well, you can come back now, we're drowning."

The result of all this rain in my garden is a previously dormant lawn that now needs mowed, some very happy roses, and the rising dominance of the fungi.  The large one pictured above, and the others sprouts shown here, have popped up in the location that I usually see them, an unusually damp spot along my "viburnum" bed where the grasses are always a bit greener.  I fantasize that it must be the site of an old buffalo wallow.  Or perhaps there is a subterranean spring lurking just below the surface here;  a "dowser" witched out the spot last year and told me I should drive a well there.  I'd have been more impressed by his abilities if the grass where he was standing wasn't emerald green while the grass 10 feet away was as brown and dry as a paper grocery sack.

I'm now afraid that if the weather turns dry again, I'm going to wake up to neighbors with torches and pitchforks ready to run me out of town.  If so, I plan to use this blog as an emergency beacon, so please monitor it closely over the next few months and be ready to rescue me from the lynching townsfolk.  Or just give me a quick ride out of the area.

Pink Poppy Perfection

During the three short years of existence of this blog and its 520+ entries, I can't believe that I haven't written about or shown you a single photo of one of my favorite garden plants.  At least, I think I haven't, because one sometimes loses track of 500 blog entries and searchable text can only carry me on its back just so far. 

This beautiful salmon-pink pompom is present in my garden as a legacy, a descendant of seed given to my father by the father of a childhood friend of mine, who grew them in a large garden en masse for their "wow" effect every year.  I'm not positive of the exact species, but I suspect that this is a plant sometimes described as Papaver laciniatum, a highly double and deeply lobed variant of the bread poppy.  Notice how carefully I'm dancing around the likely accurate species name?  All I know for sure is that here and there in my garden, when the cold, wet soil is disturbed enough in early spring to allow this annual to take hold and grow, I get these gorgeous flowers back as a gift in mid-summer.  They pop up at random spots for me, often near desirable plants where I slow down my weeding enough to identify what living thing I'm uprooting.  They self-seed effortlessly, and all I have to do is to avoid hoeing them out when they are mere babies.

The plant itself  has a nice blue-green shade and healthy foliage, rarely shows insect damage or fungus, and doesn't care if rain comes often or doesn't come at all.  The leaves are lobed enough to be a mite prickly, although I can pull the plant bare-handed when I need to.  I don't pull them bare-handed though, because if you do, your hand gets covered in the sticky, white sap of the plant.  As they begin to flower, first you see these swelling, drooping buds, which later stand up proudly on their short day of open life.  After the petals fall, the seed head magically becomes a shaker that opens when the seeds dry so that a few seeds are flung by each gust of wind or nudge of a passing animal.  What a perfect plant to place in Kansas; a drought-tolerant self-sowing annual weed that is distributed farther each time the wind gusts get stronger!  Even better, they bloom at the height of heat and summer, as other flowers are fading and before the ornamental grasses claim the garden for their own.

I only regret that I am terrible at sowing them to come up where I want them.  I've tried mass plantings, but I sow them too thickly and they don't thrive, or I sow them too late and then they don't grow, or it is not wet enough for them to get established.  I also suspect that they may need a period of cold stratification to make them start to grow.  Someday, I'll figure out the formula and then I'll have a "wow" factor in my garden too.   Until then, I'm thankful for this passalong plant and the Kansas winds that spread it far.

In Glory, the Sky

There are moments here on the prairie, exhilarating and yet satiating, when the Kansas sky flows deep down into my soul to quench the fires that often rage within.  Summer scorch, drought, floods, grasshoppers, late Spring freezes, winter ice, and tornadoes, all merely are prices we choose to pay in exchange for sunsets like this, golden and tranquil along the western horizon.  This blessing from a particularly merciful Deity came last Friday night after the passing of the storm cell pictured below, a knot of winds and rain rolling first from southwest to northeast as I was lamenting that it was going to slide past us to the north, but then suddenly shifting south under the influence of prayer and anguish and proceeding to drown my sorrows from a thundering heaven.  Before anyone asks, these pictures were taken without a filter, the world presented here as it appeared in, as they say, "living color," the sun and sky conspiring to beauty despite their amateur photographer.

A strange sequence filled the heavens after the storm.  First, an emerald haze formed to the south and east, lightning and thunder chasing the rain and roiling clouds into the darkness of the night.  Then, on its heels, a low bank of clouds appeared in the north and west as in the photograph below, fluffy and solid, a line of marshmallows aglow against the setting sun.  If the Rapture had come at that moment, sweeping across the earth with this silent wall of softness, I would have surely accepted the juncture as a fit beginning to the End of Time, perfectly executed and consummated.

 

The world didn't end, but the evening did as the sun sank into the westward clouds, leaving me not behind after The Rapture, but still in a state of rapture, thankful for the soaked earth and the colorful firmament glowing with glory, a tapestry of oranges and golds and pinks and yellows reflected off the wet ground to bid me a peaceful and restful night, the gardener's soul refreshed and satisfied. 

Vervain Epiphany

Some areas of my Kansas roadside have burst into bloom with one of the most noticeable wildflowers to be found here in early Spring.  This is Rose Verbena, Glandularia canadensis, also known as Rose Vervain.  I first noticed it two days ago on an eroding hillside just around the corner from my house.  It also grows sparsely in my pastures, although perhaps not so noticeable amidst the growing prairie grasses.  Rose Verbena grows about a foot tall here, and my reading tells me that each plant lives only 2-3 years. 

Plants like this sometimes make me wonder what kind of a gardening idiot I really am.  There are a number of Verbena hybrids in commerce that were derived using this very species, a species that literally volunteers to grow in my climate, and yet I don't have any of the hybrids in my garden.  Those finely-lobed gray-green leaves are tailor-created for the dry, hot Kansas summers.  Here I am, staring at proof positive that these plants will likely grow well amidst the Kansas sunshine and the occasional droughts, and yet none has appealed to me enough for purchase. 

Oh no, like other gardeners, I spend a significant percentage of my time and effort growing magnolias and crape myrtles, both at the northern ends of their hardiness zone.  There haven't been wild magnolias and crape myrtles here since before the last Ice Age.  I've got two thriving clumps of Texas Red Yucca, which I've only seen wild in Texas or as landscaping in Las Vegas.  I pamper witch hazel in dry full sun and Salvia gauranitica two full hardiness zones north of it's limits.  It could be worse;  at least I long ago gave up trying to grow azaleas in Kansas sun.

Hybrids of Monarda, Catmint, and Babtisia, each related to native prairie species, all grow dependably in my garden.  My tallest trees are native Cottonwoods, transplanted from wild seedlings.  Redbuds are distributed several places in my garden, healthy and happy after they appeared as weeds in flower beds and were transplanted to more acceptable areas.   I think my morning lesson to myself is to ease back on the fight against Nature and "go along to get along". 

I will resolve this year to try a few Verbena hybrids.  Most are marketed in my area as half-hardy annuals, and they grow a little short for the scale of my garden, but perhaps I haven't given them a fair chance.  There are a number listed as worthy of growing in Kansas in the Prairie Star Lists.  Perhaps one will prove to be a dependable short-lived perennial to worship at the feet of my roses.  If not, perhaps our native Glandularia canadensis can be enticed into my garden.  I wouldn't mind the bright pink, and besides, one never knows when one might need a galactagogue or entheogen ready to harvest from the garden.

Marriage and Magnolias

After years of study and accumulated evidence, ProfessorRoush has reached the conclusion that in an infinite number of universes, there are only three possible gardening relationships between spouses.   First, there are those sad couples where neither person gardens but where one grudgingly assumes the duty of pushing a roaring machine across a postage stamp lawn every week from April through October.  Often, such couples ultimately retire to a high-rise apartment with a potted and dehydrated cactus on the balcony.  Second, there are those mythical unions where both spouses share equally in the garden's triumphs and disappointments, planning and working together in perfect harmony.  The only documented example of such a relationship, of course, ended when Eve gave Adam a bite of the apple.   The third marriage, a land where there is an unequal and uneasy union between an avid gardener of vision and a less knowledgeable but still mildly enthusiastic spouse, is the one that most of us navigate, bouncing between the shores of two visions for our garden.   In these ungodly unions, in the interest of marital harmony, the gardening spouse must, at times, be willing set aside his or her grand vision to accommodate some ill-considered whim of the partner. 

My latest personal sojourn into such a gardening quagmire came last weekend, begun in an ill-considered moment when I asked Mrs. ProfessorRoush if she'd like to accompany me to one of our favorite local nurseries.  Presumably I was feeling a weak moment of the guilty pleasure of a weekend spent alone in the garden, and Mrs. ProfessorRoush was missing human contact, even if such contact occurred only in the presence of a sweaty, dirty, and sore older gentleman.  My punishment came quickly upon arrival at the nursery, where the only visible bloom was from a group of Magnolia 'Ann' and it was announced loudly that I had to purchase one immediately, regardless of my whining protests and the squeak and groans that occurred during the act of prying apart my wallet to purchase the $70.00 extravagance.

As background information, it is important to note that I had long ago considered and rejected the feminine wiles of  'Ann' for several reasons, not the least of which is that my garden already contains her lighter-pink sibling 'Jane', purchased for far less at $10 several years back.  I really don't need the sisterly rivalry to disrupt the ambiance of my garden.  Another deterrent to her purchase was that, although I am fond of magnolias, they are still reluctant participants in my garden regardless of the best efforts of global warming trends.  The more hardy magnolias will bloom occasionally here, but the blooms seldom last long in the strong prairie winds and they are sometimes caught out naked in a late freeze.  Finally, I had no inkling of where to possibly fit 'Ann' into my garden, although I freely admit that such a consideration has never stopped me before.  Thus, I grumbled and gritted my teeth, but Mrs. ProfessorRoush twisted my arm, and home we came with a pot-bound and prematurely blooming 'Ann'.

I have since planted 'Ann' in a site where she is destined to be the centerpiece of a new bed, a burgundy-colored beacon to explore deeper into the garden.  Anticipating a few days of gentle rain and mild temperatures, I lovingly teased out the root ball and fought my way into the anaerobic clay to bed her down, and I've now had two days to fondle her thick petals and inhale her thick musty fragrance.  Tonight, of course, the unpredictable Kansas weather is rolling back the clock with a predicted record low of 28°F and possible snow flurries on the 10th of April.  Tomorrow night there is a similar forecast.  There were evenings, in my younger gardening days, when such a prediction would have sent me scurrying around the garden with armloads of blankets to cover tender plants but I am long past such foolishness.   I have instead bid 'Ann' a reluctant goodbye and cast her fate to the Gods.

Next time, I have vowed to swallow my guilt, stay home, and divide a daylily or three.  Such an action may not provide any traction towards marital harmony, but at least my wallet will be more thick.

 

Lightning Fast App

This afternoon, after a day and a half of strenous garden work, ProfessorRoush quit working and took a number of photos to convince himself, and all of you, that Spring was beginning in Kansas.  I was sidetracked, however, by the quick appearance of a small storm with a negligible offering of rainwater, but a little bit of lightning and thunder.

Many of you will remember how excited I was last year to accidentally capture a lightning bolt while I was taking prairie-storm pictures (if not, it's HERE).  Least year's photo was indeed fortuitous, and at the same time it was likely the end of an era, for this year, there is a new app for iPhone that will  capture lightning, fireworks, gunshot flares, and other flashing phenomena.  You see, folks, some genius has taken the luck right out of it and now everyone will have their own lightning pictures.

I read about the app, called iLightningCam, a couple of weeks ago and the wait since for a thunderstorm has been near unbearable.  Just a few moments ago, as the sky darkened and the flashes began, out I went onto the covered porch to see if it worked...and within 5 minutes, I had the picture above, a bolt of lightning flashing over my slowly greening and newly cleaned south garden beds.  Lightning pictures are now idiot-proof and I have the evidence.

The iLightningCam app is inexpensive (disclaimer;  I get no sales revenue from mentioning it), works on both iPhone 4 & 5, and is simple to use.  There is a trial Lite free version as well.  It claims to use the iPhone light sensor to set off the camera, but I theorize that it is running a continuous loop of video and just capturing some set of frames that were taken just before a spike of light notifies it that there has been a flash.  At least that's what I believe the "15fps" in the upper left corner of my screen indicates.

Once I get over my initial excitement with the app, I'm going to try to get more artistic with garden lightning combination photos, but for now, I'm still a kid in the candy store; a kid with the gift of magic bestowed by an iPhone genius named Florian Stiassny.  As my Jeep tire cover says, "Life is Good."

A Little Work and Pleasure

Some of you may be wondering where ProfessorRoush has run off to the past week, and, truth be told, I've been away from the bleak Kansas landscape on a working trip where I  was scheduled to give 7 lectures (dogs, not roses), and a wetlab.  Let's see if you get a clue where I was from the picture at the left:

No?   How about this one?

And the winning answer is:   Las Vegas!   The conference I was speaking at was the Western Veterinary Conference, held annually in Vegas at the Mandalay Bay.  The topmost photo is of the Bellagio Conservatory, whose theme this year is a bright red-colored depiction of a Chinese New Year celebration.  The second picture, of course, is the famous Bellagio fountain at night.   The recently empty-nested Mrs. ProfessorRoush was able to accompany me to Vegas for the first time (I've been 4 times previously), so I felt it necessary to be on my best behavior and show her the sights and, of course, the shopping areas.  It cramped my style a bit, but hey, a good husband should take his wife to Vegas at least once in her lifetime.  While I worked, she shopped and rested, and at night there was fine dining and we were also able to enjoy the free concert given at the conference.  Kenny Loggins was the featured performer this year and gave a fabulous concert, a perfect end to our time in Vegas.

We returned, luckily, just ahead of the snowstorm that is passing through Kansas, so I woke at home this morning to the winter wonderland in the picture at the bottom of this entry.  It is surely a stark change from the brown horizon that I left.  And while I was gone, work on the barn continued, with the roof trusses placed before the snow drifted into the barn this morning.  I'm thinking now that it is going to be a few days before any more work on the barn gets done!

Rocky Rumblings

So where, Dear ProfessorRoush, have you been?  My email has been ringing whilst my blog has been quiet for over a week, but yet never fear, back again, I am.

I confess that I have taken a short January break, toppled over by the dual effects of a moderately-severe gastrointestinal flu that sapped my energy for a few days and by an attack of the mid-winter doldrums. Even the winter catalogues seem slow in coming this year and my gardening enthusiasm is at the apogee of annual orbit in my soul.   January, you are so cruel and hard, and my spirit is so weak and desolate without the sunshine.

I have been forced into a winter project, however, to pick up my spirits, and I got rid of the flu by passing it on to poor Mrs. ProfessorRoush, who I then nursed for another few days just as lovingly as she had nursed me earlier.  Married life does occasionally justify its trials by providing a little comfort in the form of a cool cloth and a soothing voice while you are draped limply over a toilet.

But you're wondering about the winter project?  Well, I'll keep you in suspense for a day or two, but I will teasingly reveal, for now, that it involves digging.  The picture is a current cross-section of my soil profile from surface to approximately 8 feet deep, provided here in order to gain your eternal sympathy.  You thought I've been kidding about the rocky nature of Kansas soil, didn't you? Well, here it is, about 6 inches of nice organic soil, followed by 4 feet or so of mixed clay and flint rock, followed by a foot or two of dark brown clay with a little less rock, then a foot of red anaerobic clay without rock, then chalk, then limestone.  They don't call it the Flint Hills for nothing.

Now imagine digging through this dry nut-sprinkled mud pie.  Your shovel, no matter how hard you jump on it, penetrates no more than three to four inches until it reaches rock.  Or imagine that you are a root, a baby rootlet reaching deep to stretch your tender fingers between the sharp shards of flint. Ouch!  See the roots, just short of half-way down the image?  Those are from purple-leaf honeysuckle bushes, the most recent inhabitants of this particular bit of soil.

In a few days I'll reveal my new project in it's entirety, but for now, content yourself with thanking your lucky stars that you only have to contend with sticky Georgia clay, humus-poor Florida sand, or perfect Kentucky loam.  Or we could both concentrate on the perfection of that clear blue Kansas sky taken early this morning, peeking from the top of the picture here.  Ain't it pretty?



    

Blowing Wind

West of Salina, Kansas

Every time I make a little trek west on I-70 from Manhattan to Denver, I become more and more impressed by the rapid expansion of efforts to harvest wind energy, and simultaneously more and more amazed that anyone or any organization could be opposed to them.  There are two stretches of wind farms on the route, one west of Salina Kansas stretching 20 miles long and another near Burlington Colorado.  Along a highway of inner America where the landscape is charitably described as stark, where the population is scant, and where the per-acre profit for dry-land farm income and ranching is minimal, I can't imagine a better place to build an industry based on the value of what is above the land, rather than what is beneath it.

ProfessorRoush is part of a generation who were told as children that by now, in the second decade of the 21st century, the world would be completely out of oil.  I admit that I feel it is a testimony to science and human ingenuity that there are now believed to be more oil reserves (and ways to get at them) than were ever dreamed of in the 1970's.  On my most recent trip to Colorado, a radio program celebrated that the United States is again the world's largest producer of oil this year, surpassing even Saudia Arabia.  I'm surely not alone, however, when I say that record oil production is not a positive event for the Earth in the long term.  I say leave it all in the ground. 

Oil is nice. Natural gas and coal are nice. They're known, dependable entities, somewhat like the skanky relatives we'd like to pretend not to know.  But they're not renewable.  Whether it is this decade or this century, they will run out. Even a global warming skeptic, like myself, can admit that we'd be better off if we didn't use fossil fuels in any form.  And the answer is right in front of us, clean, free for the taking and equally profitable right now. Wind. Wind blowing across land whose best use as a Buffalo Commons was once proposed by some meddling Easterners. Wind driven by the energy of the sun across the vast grass prairies, almost free for the taking. I complain about the difficulties of gardening against the wind in Kansas constantly, but I applaud any effort to use that wind for the better. 


The future, stretching into the distance.....

I'm astonished, sometimes, at the opposition to wind energy, but then, I also recognize that "all politics are local", and that most of the groups in opposition just don't want the turbine towers in their back yards.    Heck, I'll take them in mine.   Riley County has several "experimental" turbines of varying heights that are already visible from our home. I think they're haunting and beautiful, clean and statuesque.  Concerns about effects of wind turbines on wildlife and people have either been proven unfounded or have been minimized by design changes.  Wind farms are a source of local jobs and an extra income source for ranchers who can still farm and graze cattle beneath them.   On a per-kilowatt basis, taking into account initial capital costs, maintenance, fuel, and operation, and excluding tax incentives, wind energy is already cheaper than "clean" coal, nuclear, and solar technologies (according to the US Department of Energy), equal to conventional coal and geothermal sources, and only slightly more expensive than hydroelectric power.  Other sources list it as being among the cheapest of all sources of electricity generation.  And it will only get cheaper as the technology develops, and better as we learn to store the generated energy for use when the wind doesn't blow. Take that, oil wells.

I'll fully admit that my aesthetic tastes are often questioned, but I think these clean, white towers are the picturesque equal of the Parthenon or the Taj Mahal.  And they're the best outcome that modern technology can give to the 7th Generation and to the Earth.  I dare you to convince me otherwise.

My Choice, My Climate!

The ample rain two weeks ago was enough to green up the buffalograss and provide some much needed relief to the perennials here in Kansas.  It also brought some relief to gardeners here, not from the sweltering heat which continues to stress my garden and its gardener daily, but the rain at least provided a respite from daily watering chores.  And it was enough to entice ProfessorRoush to order some rose bands for Fall planting.  I like to plant own-root roses, even young bands, in the Fall in Kansas as the cooler weather and higher rainfall gives them a better start next year before the heat hits.

I had a great afternoon in the air-conditioned indoors, choosing rose varieties online and planning the layout of a new bed.  Imagine my surprise, however, two days after placing an online order with "Rose Paradise" (not its real name, but I don't want to single out the real nursery), when I received a return email thanking me for my order and informing me that it would be held until next Spring because "Rose Paradise" had ceased shipping to my area for the  Fall.   When I contacted the nursery directly, they explained that it was getting too cold to ship to my area and the roses wouldn't have time to become established before winter.

AHS Heat Zone Map

I suppose it is a positive development that mail-order nurseries have fully taken notice of the USDA Hardiness Zones and are trying to keep horticultural idiots from planting tropical palms in USDA Zone 2 in September, but it is past time for these nurseries to also begin taking note of the AHS Heat-Zone map.  On it, one would find that my portion of Kansas is currently listed as AHS Zone 7, meaning that it has 61-90 days annually where the temperature is above 86^oF.   And the current AHS Zone Map was based on data from 1974 through 1995 and has not been updated.  Given the changes of the 2012 revision of the USDA zones, I'm probably now in AHS Zone 8 or 9, with somewhere (I'm guessing) around 120-150 annual days of >86^oF highs.  Believe me, please, when I tell you that I've got plenty of time left before Christmas to get new roses established.

Recently, at Walmart, I tried to purchase a fan and had a store employee tell me (on a 102^oF day) that they were no longer selling fans because it was getting too cold.  I gave the customer service representative at "Rose Paradise" the same response I gave that misguided Walmart employee, which is to say that after a moment of silence during which I labored mightily to calm myself, I pointed out that it was still plenty warm here and would likely remain so for some time.  Fortunately, in terms of my future purchases from it, the "Rose Paradise" employee cheerfully informed me that they would be glad to go ahead and ship my order, however the roses would not carry their normal guarantee.  Jumping ahead to the end of this story, in my garden on this day there are 9 new roses trying to survive the predicted 99^oF high.

My point here is a plea to all mail-order nurseries to give consumers the benefit of the doubt, as long as we don't giggle fiendishly or otherwise exhibit latent plant-icidal tendencies, and let us decide when we want plants delivered.  It would also be nice if the AHS would update their Heat Zone map, and if all nurseries would take a closer look at it, but that is probably too much to expect.  Gardeners know our climates best and, in fact, I have similar issues trying to get nurseries to send me plants in the Spring before my climate gets too hot for planting.  I don't need any extensive guarantee because as long as I receive the plant in good condition, I'm never going to claim a death was the nursery's fault three months later after I've forgotten to water the little seeding.  I know full well who deserves the blame for dead plants in my garden.

Broken Record

News reports have now made it official; July 2012 was the hottest July on record in North America.  I don't know about you, the broader audience that is reading this blog, but I expected that the record would be broken.  Certainly the heat and drought here in Kansas have exceeded my usual dismal expectations.  I've found myself taking numerous pictures of rain clouds and judging storm directions on radar to the detriment of the rest of my life, and I've been disappointed in most cases to see the rain veer away from Manhattan.  I can't count the times when I've actually seen actual rain falling down from a quarter mile distant vantage where I remained dry and sun-blasted.  Here, for example, is a photo of a storm that I took on my way into work on July 12th, missing Manhattan about a mile to the east:



Of greater interest to me is what all this means for the future and what it tells us about "global warming."  The previous record we broke in July here in Kansas was set in the Dust-bowl year of 1935.  So we have at least, with the reputed additional effects of global warming, broke a record set some 77 years ago before anyone even dreamed of climate change.  Temperature records in the US have only been kept since 1885, a mere 50 years earlier than the 1935 records.  How can we possibly say that this July was the hottest EVER?  The hottest on record in the short range of human experience yes, but the hottest EVER?  And the "hot" records are being set here in North America.  The same newspaper edition that announced the hottest July ever contained a story about a rare snowfall in Johannesburg South Africa; a place where it snows only once every 20 years on average. 

Certainly, Kansas has had previous, and will have in the future, dry years and windy years and hot years and cold years.  Horticulture in Kansas will always try the patience of gardener and wife.  Isaac Goodnow, a co-founder of Kansas State University, moved to Kansas and reached the Manhattan area in April of 1855, long before official records of temperature and climate were recorded.  His diary from that year states "The nights are exceedingly windy and dusty", a statement that wouldn't shock anyone living here 157 years later.  He also noted that he "have had to spend much time almost everyday in encouraging the young men and keeping them from going home.” I, for one, can easily sympathize with that last entry for there are many times this summer when I've stood in my garden and been tempted to chuck it all and move to a better climate.

 In the meantime, the drought has been bad this summer, but I'm encouraged that the prairie looks approximately the same as it did early in June, as shown in the photo above.  We've had over 40 days of 100F+ degree temperatures and less than a total of 2 inches of rain in that entire period, but the prairie is holding its own, as most of my garden seems to as well.  My assessment of my garden, of course, is still limited by a brief examination at 5:30 a.m. while I run around frantically with watering cans, but I will take "holding its own" as a positive until I see September begin to usher back more temperate weather. 

I Have a Secret

It's a great big Surprise Secret, and by continuing to read this entry, you have to promise that you won't tell Mrs. ProfessorRoush about it.  Because, if She Who Has No Patience finds my secret out, she'll be like a child on a long trip, asking every 5 minutes how long it will be before we reach the destination. 

Okay, here it comes....you promise you won't tell her now, right?   I HAVE PECANS DEVELOPING ON MY PECAN TREE!  A whole dozen of them in fact.  That may not seem like a big deal to readers in Georgia, but believe me, while these might not actually be the first pecans to develop here in Manhattan, they're probably in the running to be at least honorable mention.  I don't know of a single other pecan tree in town.  Most local nurseries don't stock them.  Until a few years ago, a homeowner would have been told that they didn't grow here and if they did, they wouldn't produce nuts.  Well, nuts to that thought.

My pecan tree, a so-called Carya illinoensis "northern strain," was planted in 2003 and now stands at around 15 feet tall.  Pecan trees are supposed to require pollination from another pecan tree, so I've got another seedling about 50 feet away, and even though it's only 4 feet tall, it must have done the job.  Either that or I'm being fooled and these are the biggest gall wasps anyone has ever seen.  You see, I have to confess, I've never seen a pecan outside of the grocery store plastic bags.  I've never seen one actually growing on a tree.  Does anyone out there know how to tell when they're "ripe"?  Or how to process them?  I've got lots of reading and research ahead of me.

Mrs. ProfessorRoush will be very excited if I can surprise her with some fresh pecans.  She might even have to take back some of the mean things she has said about my gardening abilities.  Yeah, right, and I hear that while global warming is happening here on Earth, the glaciers are growing in Hades.  But an old gardener dream, can't he?

Bist du verrückt?

...Which means, "Are you crazy?" in German, according to Babelfish.  That premier internet translator gives me the exact same phrase for "are you nuts?," which I thought would be slightly different, but I guess the English context affects the translation.  "Are you walnuts?" and "Are you pecans?" DO result in a different German phrase so I conclude that "Bist du verrückt?" is the correct question to ask of a befuddled plant.

Digressions aside, the question here is "Why is my 'Yellow Bird' Magnolia reblooming in the middle of Summer?"  The bloom pictured at upper left in a photo taken yesterday is a sunbleached and heat-burnt, but partially open bloom, one of two that I noticed forming a couple of days ago.  'Yellow Bird' bloomed at its usual time this year in my garden, in April, and it is not supposed to be a rebloomer by half. 

Poor thing, it must have been completely confused by the two decent rains we had around 10 days ago.  After a long Fall, Winter and Spring of drought, something in the plant said "Hey, I didn't bloom enough, and there's water to spare now, so therefore it must be Spring again."  A very odd thing, as plant hormones go, isn't it?  There are also seed pods forming on the plant at the same time.  And buds for next year.

We'll just have chalk it up to another strange weather phenomenon in Kansas. Or to alien invasion. Take your pick.  Both make about as much sense to me in a garden where my autumn asters, goldenrods, and Rose of Sharons are all now in bloom, at least a full month early.  What's next?  Witch Hazel in August?  Bring it on.

Striking Serendipity

A second blessed event 0f RAIN (!) occurred Wednesday night.  Short-lived, but a nice little downpour of a little over an hour yielded 2.6 inches of rain.  We may even be wetting the subsoil now!

I had just recovered from a day of clinics, eaten supper, perused the paper, and watched the evening talkies, when I realized that a decent storm front had assembled and was about 20 miles northwest of Manhattan, bearing down on us.  I've been waiting weeks for this opportunity, and, seizing the moment, I quickly donned garden shoes and ran out to spread a bag of alfalfa pellets on as many roses as I could.  I always like to spread the pellets just before a rain so they'll "uncompress", mold a bit, and be a little less likely to draw rabbits and rodents to the base of my roses. 

Now this is what I call lucky!

 After emptying the alfalfa bag, I grabbed my camera and went out to take a few pictures of the developing storm front.  And then, by a "stroke" of luck, I snapped the photo of lightning shown above.  The camera was hand-held and looking straight west, past my neighbor's mirthful sign and over his pasture to the western ridge.  Gorgeous, isn't it? And better yet if you could see it in the non-compressed form.  I've hoped for years to snap such a picture and here it is, mostly focused, straight, and as good as I could hope for.  God, in action, right on the Kansas prairie.

The rock sign, in case you're wondering, is at the entrance to my neighbor's property a few hundred feet to the west of my house, and it carries a slightly altered quotation from "Paint Your Wagon", both the name of a 1951 musical and the 1969 motion picture (Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood) inspired by it. The hit song of the musical and movie was They Call the Wind Maria, with "Maria" pronounced "Ma-rye-ah."  My neighbor, as you can guess, is a little bit of a character to love such a haunting song that he had a rock engraved with it.  I surmise that he didn't know the correct spelling of the song title, but then neither did Mariah Carey's parents, who, according to omniscient Wikipedia, named Ms. Carey after the song.

The actual lyrics are:

Away out here they got a name
For rain and wind and fire
The rain is Tess, the fire Joe,
And they call the wind Maria

This picture was taken looking due north from the front of my house, as the storm came in.