Lilacs, Plantings, and Peonies

Oh, it's been an eventful weekend here on ProfessorRoush's home place.  Work, work, work, sunup to sundown, soreness to sunburn.  I'm catching up rapidly on the chores, trying to do the massive and minor garden chores alike before it gets too warm to enjoy.








But first, I must announce a tie this year for "First Rose to Bloom".  'Marie Bugnet' (at left) is struggling in my garden, down to a single stem that I'm going to try to layer and root before it goes, but she still managed to sneak in her perennial virginal white claim to "first bloom."  She was given a run for her money, however, by 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup' (above), who managed not one, but two of these delicate pink blooms to greet the sun on the same day.  The final decision was left to the judge, however, like this year's Kentucky Derby, and I've awarded First Bloom to Marie B. again, handicapped as she is by the meager foliage beneath her.


In the meantime, I've got a massive list of accomplishments this weekend.  1) I finished all the bark mulching and weeding of the beds around the house, which involved a total of around 45 bags of mulch in this round. 2) I purchased and planted 13 daylily starts sold yesterday morning at the Farmer's Market by the Flint Hills Daylily Society.  3) I painted our eyesore of a mailbox, much to Mrs. ProfessorRoush's chagrin, since she will have to find something else to express displeasure over.  4) I painted the pasture gate, which was starting to show rust through the previous 20-year-old paint.  5) I opened up 20 or so bales of straw and mulched several lower beds. 6) I planted the gladiola corms you see at the right; a row of multi-color and a row of bright reds to serve as cut flowers later in the season.  7) I weeded the strawberries, onions, peas, and potatoes.  8) I repotted the indoor Christmas Cacti and Easter Lilies. 9) I pruned back several crape myrtles. 10) I mowed the front and back yards. 11) I planted several small shrubs into empty spots.  12) I put Gerbena Daisies into the pots near the garage. 13) I planted two Miscanthus sinensis ‘Purpurescens’ into two large landscape pots. 14) I filled the bird feeders. 15) I tidied up the garage. 16) I made two trips to box stores to purchase various and sundry needed gardening items including mulch and potting soil. 17) I repaired the vents on the septic bed. 18) I did approximately a seemingly infinite number of "Honey-do" chores for Mrs. ProfessorRoush. 19) Whew...I've forgotten what else. What a weekend!

In other news, I'm very pleased this year with the look of the front landscaping.  Even without blooms at present, there's a fair bit of foliage color visible as you can see at the left, looking from the west to the east across the front.  Ninebark 'Amber Jubilee', Japanese Maple 'Emperor 1', Forsythia 'Golden Tines', Lilac 'Scent and Sensibility', variegated euonymuses (euonymi?)  'Moonshadow' and 'Emerald Gaiety' and many others give some pleasant texture to all the green around them. 

'Scent and Sensibility' dwarf lilac

Speaking of Lilac 'Scent and Sensibility', I'm very happy with this well-behaved addition to the front garden.  Standing at 4 years old and a mature height of 2.5 feet and width of 3.5 feet, 'Scent and Sensibility' is marketed as a "dwarf" lilac and is just coming into major bloom as the Syringa vulgaris types fade out, the former's sweet scent permeating the entire front garden at just the right moment.  I'm very pleased that this 2015 addition to my garden is making her own mark in the landscape.


Last, but not least, in other blooms, my Paeonia suffruticosa Tree Peony continues to survive, a miracle here on the prairie.  Yesterday it had this single yellow bloom and in today's sunshine, it opened up two more.  I mulched around it carefully this weekend, cognizant that last year a garter snake surprised me by peering out of its leaves, just as I was taking a closeup photo of a bloom.  I'm pretty sure the same snake is back, as a couple of branches rustled around when I came close this time as well.  Such a nice peony and I can't enjoy it up close again.  Drat.

Garden of Eden; Complete w/ Snake

What a difference five days can make in a garden!  Mrs. ProfessorRoush and I left for a trip last Wednesday (May 9th), and returned tonight (May 13th).  Before I left, Tuesday night, I took a photo of this Paeonia suffruticosa (Yellow Tree Peony), which had just opened its first bloom of the season that day.  The remnants of that first bloom are visible at about 2:00; tonight the petals of that bloom are already faded and gone, and now every other bloom on the peony is open.   Temperatures went from the 60-70ºF range last week to several days of 90ºF+ this week during our absence.  Wait all season for a brief glimpse of peony heaven, and almost miss it during a five-day trip!





For an added bonus, look closer at the bloom at the 7:00 position in the photo above.  See my little friendly neighborhood garter snake wondering who was disturbing the garden aura?  How about a closeup (at left)?  I had only seen my first snake of the season last Monday as I was cutting down a grass clump and a green snake went racing away too fast for a picture (in its defense, I was racing away in the opposite direction).  Now, already, I've run across my second snake of a still-early season.  Going to be a slithery year, I think.

The entire garden seems to have exploded over these 5 past days, and I think I'll catch up on my blogging and introduce you to the current bloomers at about two day intervals this week.  Tonight, however, I'll leave you with this tantalizing photo of 'Harison's Yellow'.  Before I left, only 5 days ago, not a single bloom was open.  Now, all of them are.  And to think I almost missed it!

Prairie Rapunzel

This blog entry, to many readers, will seem silly.  Pedestrian, pathetic, tired, and trite.  Let me assure you that, however bromidic and banal you see these digitized yellow gems, they represent the song of my soul, the apex of my gardening prowess.  For in my garden I, ProfessorRoush, have a living, blooming tree peony.  For this, I have slaved, suffered, and labored, entrenched and focused on the path to garden nirvana, heedless of setbacks and temporary defeat.  This lemony chrome beauty, this shining yellow, is the reward of my persistence, six years of toil for six immaculate blooms.  Triumphant, the gardener basks in their glowing glory, satiated and content in this moment of recompense.




I know, I understand, that many of you live in climates where tree peonies grown as carefree as dandelions.  You've stuck a desiccated, decrepit, cheap Big-Box tree peony in the ground and forgotten about it until it astonished the neighbors.  Not here, my friends, not here in Kansas.  Until this success of mine, I knew of one living, thriving tree peony in town.  One.  There are loads of Stella de Oro daylilies, purple barberries, junipers, and Knock Out roses around town, but tree peonies are as rare as a mild Kansas day.  The only more rare gardening plant in this vicinity would be a clump of Meconopsis.




To grow this particular Paeonia suffruticosa on the prairie, I've resorted to extreme measures.  Ridiculous, absurd, laughable, ludicrous, you provide the adverb, I've done it in pursuit of this yellow zebra.  The wind, the relentless prairie wind, is my sworn enemy.  Its allies are the intermittent drought, scorching August sun, and nibbling pack rats of my environment.  Although the photographs above are beautiful, the reality of my peony is far less spectacular.  It grows in solitary confinement, placed and viewed behind rows of chicken wire for protection from chewing winter rodent, rampaging deer, and clumsy dog.  It exists in a sheltered spot, shielded from hot afternoon sun by the house and from frigid North winds by a landscape wall of sun-warmed stone.  It is allotted extra helpings of mulch in the spring and frequent water in the summer.

This Rapunzel of my garden, this captured golden beauty, exists and blooms only for me.   There is no waiting prince to rescue her.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush has not noticed its 6 perfect blossoms.  She may have noticed, in deepest winter, that I have a chicken wire cage around a brown stick.  It is sad, somehow, that such a canvas of perfection can only be seen behind the ugliness of wire and steel, but like the endangered captive animals that adorn our zoos, its survival depends on protection and relentless commitment.   And love.  A love  whose name we dare not speak.  The love of a gardener for his tree peony, his princess, forever confined against the ravishes of the prairie.

Yellow and more Yellow

In contrasting fashion to Picasso and his blue phase of painting during years of depression, ProfessorRoush seems to be going through a yellow phase of uplifted spring spirits.  Everything in my garden (well, except for some blue iris and a very splashy pink 'Therese Bugnet') seems to be yellow at the present, all of them a bright cheery yellow sufficient to join me in a celebration of the coming warm weather.  My yellow celebration really began on Friday last, as my first ever Tree Peony (Paeonia suffruticosa) opened up a single bloom just after our rainstorm. The satisfaction of seeing this bloom washed over me like a rainstorm across the prairie.


Tree Peony experts in the audience are laughing, but they don't fathom the difficulties I've transcended to get here.  This is my fourth attempt at a Tree Peony and the fourth year here for this one.  I've lost them to cold and drought and had them toppled by marauding critters and wind.  Growth has been slow, and I thought I'd lost her once, but she is settling in and looks like a survivor.  She is sited in the most protected spot I could give her; walls on the north and west to collect and reflect the sun's warmth, amd open only to the south and east where gales are least likely to topple her.  There is shade in the afternoon and she is protected by chicken wire on all sides, a virtual fortress erected to be impenetrable to man or beast.  Thus, you can understand my elation at getting this far, even though she dropped petals quickly and is now but a memory.

Just finishing up is my prize Magnolia 'Yellow Bird', an exciting bush that I've bragged about before.  It continues to grow and do well, now almost twice the size of when it was planted 4 years ago.  The bloom this year was a delight to see and more prolific than ever.  I can attest now that 'Yellow Bird' must be at least Zone 4 hardy, since that seems to be the degree of winter it has just survived and thrived through.  Rain sometimes dims the brightness of these blooms, but even the soft yellows of a dampened flower are pleasing to the eye.  

The most dependable and brightest yellow on this Kansas prairie comes, as usual, from the chrome-yellow rose, 'Harison's Yellow', just beginning to bloom profusely.  Almost one in every four buds on this rose is now blooming, so it will get better yet, but it's pretty good right now, don't you think?

How long will my yellow phase go on?  Not much longer, I think.  The irises are taking center stage and a whole bunch of pink roses are about to steal the show here.