Loss & Acceptance

What is that time-honored saying again?  "If you can't beat them, join them?"  Okay, Lord, I'm beaten down to my marrow and I want to move past it. I'm ready to join up, to "go with the flow," to swim alongside rather than against the current.

If you were wondering what happened to ProfessorRoush and this blog over the past 6 weeks, there is a simple answer.  Mother Nature won.

She beat me.  The abundant, incessant rains that Kansas usually doesn't receive in July and August came despite all expectations, and the prairie grass remains green and rapidly growing, verdant and lush, vibrant even as the end of August nears.  During 27 years living here, on this plot of prairie, I've never before seen the Big Bluestem this tall, the "turkey feet" seedheads reaching above my head in places (photo left). Simply staying ahead of the lawn and keeping the yard mowed has consumed all my free time, and the garden and this blog (and ProfessorRoush) have suffered accordingly.  In a normal Kansas summer, in late July and August, the faucet closes and the flora slows down its growth and browns, reducing mowing chores to an every-other-week (or sometimes even longer) cycle.  At times, even at every-other-week frequency, I normally can barely see the difference between mowed and unmowed areas.

Not this summer.   This summer mowing the lawn was a weekly occurrence and continues to be, the grass so high each week that I am timing mowings between rains merely to be able to keep the house visible.  Okay, that's a little literary sprinkling of hyperbole, but I'm nearing my limits on seeing the bright side of the rains.  In fact, I have been tempted to start mowing twice each week, but I was unable to work in any extra mowing when the grass was almost continuously wet with rain or heavy morning dew.  I certainly have no trouble seeing the mowing lane edges this year and I should be bagging the cuttings lest they smother the lawn. And the mushrooms!  So many huge mushrooms sprouting from the rich prairie soil!

Consequently, my occasionally orderly landscape is a complete shambles, taken over by Morning Glory and Common Dayflowers, the former climbing up everything including the spent yucca seedheads (above right) and the latter (left) covering and smothering any small plants.  I've crawled over my beds twice this summer already, literally on my hands and knees, at eye level with the invaders, literally engaged in hand-to-weed conflict and they've simply outgrown me, outlasted me.  Now, in late August, I simply have surrendered the garden to the heat and my despair.

My grief over the condition of my garden, however, is nearing its end, denial long past, anger spent, bartering for more garden time ended, depression easing as the forecast clears.  I find myself, at last, ready to embrace and accept the chaos of my climate circumstances.  The soft blue Morning Glories have won me over, reflecting the Kansas sky back from the earth.  I am patient now, content to await the return of fall, hoping for better-than-usual red hues in that Big Bluestem. There is ultimately a quiet wisdom in acceptance, a simplicity that allows more sleep, a freedom from outer world concerns.  My new motto; "If you can't beat them, then accept them for all their beauty."   
 

Dazzle Days

These August and September days in Kansas are what ProfessorRoush has always referred to as the "doldrums."   The hot, dreary, drought-ey days of the year when, most years, the garden dries up before it has a chance to really display the colors of fall and not much is blooming or growing.   Days when I badly neglect the garden and frankly don't care if it rains because I'm tired of the weekly care and mowing.   The only time the garden and I see each other right now are every few days when I carry water to a few young roses just to keep them alive until dormancy.  Everything else can wait as the heat dies away and a little rain returns.  Tonight and tomorrow, we have the first chances predicted for rain in weeks, so I'm hopeful and prayerful that its thirst gets quenched.   It probably won't matter to the prairie grass right now, which has recognized the changing season and is drying and storing nutrients for next year. 

Gardeners always seem to ask "what's blooming now?" of each other, and I'll confess that the only truly bright spot in my garden right now is this superb (in my opinion) combination of dwarf crape myrtle 'Cherry Dazzle®' and the 'Heavenly Blue' morning glory that I let self-seed everywhere.  At least, I think it's still 'Heavenly Blue" because it has seeded itself and in-bred so many years that it might just be the wild variety by now.   If you were to see my landscape around the house now, I'd only ask you to please don't criticize me for the rampant vines everywhere, but to wait until morning to pass judgement.  They look like heck at midday but they're a sight for sleepy eyes to behold in the morning!

The 'Cherry Dazzle®', also known as Gamad 1 (U.S. Plant Patent #16,917) is another matter entirely.   Most of the spring and summer I spend worrying that it has survived or isn't doing well, and then here in late August it is the shining red star of the garden.   Right outside my bedroom window, it catches my eye alongside the sunrise every morning, and I'm happy that it has its own spotlight moment.   'Cherry Dazzle®', if you're looking for a low-growing crape, grows consistently 2-2.5 feet tall here in Kansas each year, although described as 3-5 feet height at maturity elsewhere.   Introduced and named  by Professor Michael Dirr in 2006, it seems to be healthy and cold-hardy here, returning reliably from its roots each spring, and its leaves in most climates are reported to be burgundy-red in the fall.   Here, I recall they unfortunately seem to go straight from green to brown and fall off.   Incidentally, check out that link to Dr. Dirr, a University of Georgia horticulturist who has the distinction of his own Wikipedia page!

The busy bumblebee pictured above and at the left has no time for the dazzle of 'Cherry Dazzle®', intent only on darting in and out of the 'Heavenly Blue' blossoms for their nectar.  Taking these photos, I had to wait as it dived in each flower head first, brazenly showing only its backside until it bumbled backward and flew to the next.  I wonder, as I often do, what the bee sees?  The actual vivid colors of both, the shapes of the flowers, the contrast between the two, or something else, with its advanced bee senses, that I can't even fathom?   One way or another, arriving just as I began to photograph the plant, he/she didn't care about the gardener who was clicking the oblong black thing furiously at them as they went from one blossom to the next.  For me, the combination of both plants is incredibly soul-satisfying and I'm not sure if I really prefer the "heavenly" shade of blue or the dazzling cherry-red, but it's clear what the bee prefers.  One thing I am sure of is that I need to remember that the morning glory is not only important to me, but to the ecological health of my garden.

My Blue Heaven

Gardening is, alas, a long series of regrets, hopes dashed, and dreams dimmed.   ProfessorRoush, for instance, remains Meconopsis-less, the Kansas climate rendering him completely unable to grow the Himalayan Blue Poppy (Meconopis betonicifolia) he has desired for so long.  My shriveled soul aching only for a blue flower to match the blue sky, of Kansas, I am forever blocked by 100ºF days and arid surroundings from Meconopsis.

There is, however, Morning Glory to partially fill the void, in this case what are possibly now-wild offspring of a 'Heavenly Blue' (Ipomoea tricolor) I once planted, or it may be the Kansas native Ipomoea hederacea who snuck in as a pretender among the seedlings. I kind of lean towards the native species as the actual imposter here, but perhaps solely because I've been watching too much 'Homeland' on Netflix and have spies on my brain.  It's a little garden intrigue that keeps my interest alive in the waning days of summer and I don't wish to spoil it by resorting to botanical identification.  And so I cultivate the mystery alongside the rest of the garden.

Whatever it's true identity, however, these blue blossoms are otherworldly in the early morning, shining from the shade (here at right) and much less audacious in the bright sunlight (below left).   The sky-blue color does match the Kansas sky and it evokes the calm id, the quiet soul of the poet.  All the while draping itself over every other living thing in sight.  At times, it seems tempting to stand still for a moment, and the gardener himself may disappear, finally part of the garden rather than its master.  Watching the hummingbirds visit these flowers, I wonder if I, just once, could become the visited, if only a prop for the interplay of bird and bloom.  

 I know I shouldn't let this vining villain proliferate freely among the daylilies and roses, but here and there, I stay my weeding, allowing small seedlings to become smothering carpets, to smooth the garden structure into an untextured vista of green and blue. The daylilies don't seem to mind, exhausted as they are from their July rush to bloom, and the roses regardless return each spring.  Morning Glory needs no water, it demands no care, it asks only to be allowed to grow wantonly without interference or intervention.   And each August I indulge that request, letting sun and earth bring forth blue, and harvest pleasure in the process.