The Bee-holders Eye

Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder.   Well, at least maybe someone once said it.  ProfessorRoush certainly can't take credit for the ungainly phrase, obviously espoused as an argumentative gauntlet to those who hold that there are objective standards for beauty upon which all living creatures would agree.  Such arguments often trend to discussions of symmetry and purity and perfection, and inevitably dissolve into fisticuffs and sometimes wars that involve hollow wooden horses, and I know better than to blunder into such an argument  in my garden.

Take, for example, my impressions this morning during the weekly chore of making the grasses and weeds all conform to one height.  I would have said that the most beautiful view of my garden this morning was at the corner of the bed pictured above, where Hibiscus 'Midnight Marvel' dominates the view with massive bright red blooms, accentuated by the pink-purple panicles of the neighboring Buddleia 'Buzz Raspberry.'   I've spoken before of my admiration for 'Midnight Marvel', a reliable and iron-clad perennial that makes its own statement in the garden, but I have said little about 'Buzz® Velvet,' the only remaining Buddleia of my garden, still reliably returning while others eventually withered or outright died in their prime.   I'm not fond of the color of this buddleia itself, but beside the cardinal red of the hibiscus, it certainly adds to the scene, doesn't it?

The bees of my garden however, honey and bumble alike, do not agree with my assessment, as they were busily buzzing over volunteer natives, the Argemone polyanthemos, or Prickly Poppy, growing nearby and they didn't touch the hibiscus or buddleia.   Every delicate white (papier-mâché, as Wikipedia and the French refer to it) flower was being visited nearly continually by one species or another, and a continual symphony of bee noises was evident even over the noise of the nearby idling lawn mower.  This is the very reason that I allow this ungainly and thorny plant to grow randomly in my garden; for the selfish reward of happy bees and the illusion of my own contribution to bee survival.

I was certainly not going to be stupid and argue with the bees over their perceptions of beauty today, as my photographic interruption to their gluttony had already upset the buzzing minions and I suspected they were forming ranks and preparing to counter my intrusion and biased human opinions.   No, I removed myself from the battlefield, ceding the question of beauty to their ageless wisdom.  Heck, I even somewhat agree with them, for the pure white of the Prickly Poppy is certainly as beautiful and perfect in its own way as the red Hibiscus.   Beauty in the compound eyes of another.

Both myself and the bees, however, would have been in philosophic conflict with the Japanese Beetles who are still plaguing my garden and dining on their own candidates for "beauty", the roses and early crape myrtles.  I sprayed the roses again day for beetles, praying that the bees stay on the Prickly Poppy and don't try for any rose pollen.   I will spare you a photo of the vile fornicating beetles today, and instead merely show you how close the Prickly Poppy is to 'Buzz Raspberry' and 'Midnight Marvel' in this bed.  I apologize for the poor tonal quality of this picture taken in the full late July sun of Kansas and for the crabgrass and weeds visible, but sometimes beauty is hidden by its environment and a little lighting and makeup can make all the world of difference in a photograph as well as in person.

Red, White, and Blue all over

On this Fourth of July, in the year of Our Lord 2023, ProfessorRoush is going to let the pictures (mostly) speak  for themselves.   I went out to take just one photo of each color, hoping that I'd have anything blue blooming at all, and I was yet overwhelmed by the abundance of red, white, and blue in a garden now brimming over with oranges and yellows from the daylilies.  Okay, I cheated a little on the blue since most of the species that are currently blooming with blue flowers are native plants; all weeds in my garden.   My apologies to my British readers for the insufferable reminder of the loss of your colonies.  Warning,  picture heavy!  

First the Red:

Pelargonium potted in front of the house

'Spiderman' Daylily

Hybrid Rugosa 'Linda Campbell'

Canadian Rose 'Hope for Humanity'

Then the White:

Phlox 'David'

Shasta Daisy 'Alaska'

The impossibly delicate Argemone polyanthemos,
 or Prickly Poppy

Rose 'Marie Bugnet', not at her best

Hibiscus syriacus 'Notwooodtwo' 

Hydranga paniculata

And last, but not least, the Blue:

Clematis 'Romona'

Salvia azurea; Blue Sage
Nothing is bluer!

Hisbiscus syriacus 'Blue Bird'

My nemesis; Commelina communis

Fringe-Leaf Ruellia; Ruellia humilis

Not bad, eh?   Not bad at all for a garden that currently is dominated  by daylilies and looks like this everywhere:

  HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY TO ALL!

Sounds of Sage

Oh, how ProfessorRoush misses the garden.  I wandered out today, warmed prior from indoor exercise and enticed by sunshine.  The air seemed warmer than its measured temperature of 23ºF at 1:30 p.m., and yet it is all still and damp out there, snow drifts melting away to a frozen ground beneath, brown and tan foliage remnants of past plants as far as I can see beneath clear blue skies.  Bella, too, misses our moments of exploration, glued to my side as she sniffs for changes and danger in her garden.

I can only offer you garden pornography today, the photos here taken in the high moments of summer, the prickly white poppy a beacon of delicate lace and yellow pollen and Russian sage drawing in bumblebees frantic to store food then for this month, this season right now.   These photographs of a garden now dead, now stiff remnants and seedheads to mark their passing, these are all I have for you, memories of a world months past.

Where are, I wonder, these bees today, happily buried in warm nests, or dead husks beneath the snow?  I don't know enough about the life cycle of these corpulent flying workers and I should; I should know enough to help them survive and thrive, being that knowledge is power and all that.  I have a "bee house" up, an artful name for a board with 1/4" holes drilled in it, and some of the holes are plugged with mud suggesting the hope of pupae inside, but am I a helper or hindrance?  Truly, in gardening and in our relationships with nature, we can never have enough knowledge about the world around us.  There are surely been enough blunders and unintended consequences of well-meant but unenlightened action.

Oh, what I'd give today to hear the buzz in this Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia), black and yellow busy-ness flitting among the light blue flowers.  The 'Champlain' rose at its feet is shockingly red, screaming for attention, but the honeybees ignore the sterile rose, it  lacks the attraction of the dusky sage above it for the bustling insects.  Here is my Sunday epiphany, this cold Sunday of beginnings and doorways, of Janus: We gardeners, we think of flowers as silent, as colorful or artful elements to arrange over our gardens, but sage is more, sage is noise, the buzzing of a hundred visitors at once, the transformation of color into motion.  Today in memory I can recall the flowers, but I miss the sounds, the sounds of vibrant life now absent in this cold season, the sounds of sage trading pollen for propagation, the garden fertile and fecund. 

Fabulous Fuchsias

Buzz™ Velvet

Standing out, even from a distance, from the daylily yellow and oranges, from the hydrangea whites and green ornamental grasses, are a few eye-catching, awe-inspiring plants that are cheerfully dragging ProfessorRoush with them through the hot weather of late June.  Some might call them pink, some might call them "hot pink," but they are the definition, the epitome of fuchsia.   Fuchsia color without fuchsia genetics, you might say.

The most vivid, screaming at me from far away in the garden as I peer out my window each morning, is Buddleia 'Buzz™ Velvet', a  2014 planting in my garden introduced to commerce by the venerable British firm, Thompson and Morgan.  I've grown a number of Buddleia cultivars over the years, but this one and 'White Profusion' are the only ones that have stood the test of time and Kansas weather.  The latter may survive only because it's southern exposure and protection from north winds from the house behind it, but 'Buzz™ Velvet' is exposed out in the middle of the garden, protected only by some dead ornamental grass in the winter.     

Buzz, if I can use that shortened moniker, stands about 5 foot tall and is blooming its head off at the moment.   A dazzling vision from the house, I'm showing you the opposite viewpoint here, because looking from the deeper garden towards the house and barn, it is the backdrop to Hibicus 'Midnight Marvel' and the blue-foliaged seed-pod-ed remains of Argemone polyanthemos, the white prickly poppy that I allow to grow there.  Yes, I like Buzz™ Velvet, as do the butterflies who are all over it, all the time.

'Moje Hammarberg'

Marking the corner of a nearby rose bed, fuchsia-pink 'Moje Hammarberg' is also a bright bloomer, although a more diminutive one.   I've written of 'Moje Hammarberg' before, and I still have high hopes for this rose as a survivor in my garden.  He's still short, 2.5 feet tall at 3 years old, and he's a little wider at 3 feet around, but those loose fuchsia blooms are plentiful and were moderately untouched by the Japanese beetle invasion this year.  

 'Moje Hammarberg's lack of attractiveness to beetles is most interesting to me right now, almost as interesting as its fuchsia coloring.  He stands only six feet away, directly across from and mirrowing 'Hanza'.   'Hanza', has nearly the same color, the same rugosa foliage, a little larger bush, and the same loose bloom form, but it is a beetle magnet  In fact it is host for the massive orgy of beetles at the top of another recent blog entry.  The primary difference I can see between the bushes is not one of appearance, but of fragrance;  'Moje Hammarberg' has a little fragrance, while 'Hanza' is loaded with a spicy aroma.  Is that the attraction?   Are Japanese Beetles more apt to attack fragrant roses?   Or is the whole thing just one big fuchsia-tinted coincidence this year?   Inquiring gardeners want to know. 

Earth's Bounty, Garden's Beauty

ProfessorRoush hasn't blogged, he knows, for quite a while during this busy June, but while the blog may suffer, the garden is never far from my mind.  Nearly every morning and evening I'm there, watering or worrying, watching and waiting.   Watering the new plants, and sometimes old, as we settle in to a very dry summer.   Worrying about that struggling new Rugosa hybrid and watching diligently for the first Japanese Beetles.  Waiting for the daylilies to bloom, for the rain to come, and for the heat to break.

It's been hot, friends, hot like late July, far too early now in June to see the ground crack and the forsythia wilt.  And a month since significant rain, a drizzle here or there, dried on the cement before I can don my shoes.  I water strawberries and tomatoes, petunias and pots on regular rotation, pouring hope onto the soil carried gallon by gallon from the house to the garden.  But nothing grows at temperatures over  100ºF.  Tomatoes don't bloom, daylilies drop buds, and the roses, oh the roses, pout like the garden prima donnas they are.  The garden is static, in summer stasis, waiting on cool September to save it.

Still, there is beauty in the garden, and bounty to find.  Some plants, like the Prickly Poppy (Argemone polyanthemos) at the right, defy the heat, producing these impossibly delicate blossoms in defiance of the searing sun, the poppies of heaven, set down on earth.  Here is the beauty for me to behold, a wild weed given a home for my pleasure and a grocery for the ungainly bumblebees wallowing in the petals.  That bumble in the top photo, a plump glutton of industry, is surely going to please his friends, bearing baskets of pollen to feed the hive.  The luscious blackberries in the second photo, they're for me, first, and then perhaps Mrs. ProfessorRoush if any of the purple pleasures survive the walk to the house.  It's a dicey thing, showing up at the house with stained empty hands, purple mouth, and a smile, one's life spared only by inches and whim.  But that the photo of the blackberries makes you want to reach into it and fill your hands, doesn't it?  Imagine how good they were out in the garden, fresh off the bramble, warm and juicy, the taste of sunshine in every drupe.   Any just jury would stay my execution on the promise of a future handful.

There is, too, in the garden at many corners, feasts for the soul, saving sights for sun-seared eyes.   My gentleman rabbit comes calling, a cheerful lily over a concrete shoulder.   Blanc Double de Coubert, jealous of the angelic pristine poppy, attempts a second bloom cycle, not quite as white, but more fragrant and visible against the dark green foliage.  Panicled hydrangeas begin to bloom, Russian sage forms a mound of airy blue, and everywhere grasses stretch to the sky.  

Blood-red Asiatic lilies have budded and bloomed, giving way now to Orientals and Orientpets.  And yet, I wait still on the daylilies, the main event of the Kansas summer, aliens become dominant in an unforgiving landscape, every view become a fleeting festival of color, a riot of shapes and sizes.  They're beginning to pop up now, a yellow note here, a purple there, a symphony sure to come as summer has arrived.   

Zen Frog In Winter

Amidst the snow and ice of this ceaseless winter, ProfessorRoush needs to calm down and take a lesson from his Totally Zen Frog statue.  I took this picture standing in a snow drift up to my waist, at the end of a long afternoon digging the rest of our driveway clean from the storm that blasted us earlier this week.  Here, only a few feet away from the roses buried in snow, sits the contemplative frog, floating above the snow, untouched by the cold.   He doesn't care about Winter's fury.  He's imagining Spring, full-blown, golden with daffodils, glowing with sunshine.







In my garden, however, Zen Frog seems to be the only one who doesn't care about winter.  Even the ornamental grasses have lost their regal stature, bowed and broken in places from the heavy snow.  Those that remain standing seem mass-less now, shrunken from their previous Fall glory.  They struggle to keep their heads above the snow, straining to survive for winter's swan song.









The annuals and herbaceous perennials have long given up their ghosts.  This Prickly Poppy (Argemone polyanthemos) left only a dessicated and hollow carcass to serve as a grave marker, a spiny brown contrast to the white snow at its waist.   Isn't it an odd contrast that these lifeless remains represent also the hope of the next season, the missing seed from the pods spewed yon and hither to find earth and moisture?


I tried today, in a moment of fancy, to levitate above the snow drift and meditate with the Zen Frog, but I fell back to earth and snow with a crash of reality.  Encased in layers of clothing and caps, water-proofed to the ankles but wet at the knees, I must instead await warmth and sunshine with an impatient heart, for I cannot become stone and wait out the winter.  My lot now is to shovel, swear, and scowl out the windows until Winter fades back and Spring surges forth.

Unconditional Love

'Unconditional Love'

I have a new youngster in my garden, just a toddler starting to stretch out, and I swear, here, in front of witnesses, to give it 'Unconditional Love' forevermore.  I came across this 2003 introduction (registered as ARDwesternstar) while looking for Paul Barden roses on Rogue Valley's website and, unable to resist a bright red rose, I ordered and planted it this Spring.  'Unconditional Love' is a miniature Moss rose, and it has nice mossy buds to prove it. The first bloom flush, from a rose only a foot tall, was quite spectacular as you can see at the right.  Blooms are small, but very bright red and very double, and the color holds until the blooms drop free.  She's supposed to only grow two feet tall, so I have her placed in a prominent spot front and center of a new bed where she can return my adoration with blooming abandon.   I'll write more about her next year as she comes into adolescence.

(The "thistle" at the lower left, for those who are wondering, is a white prickly poppy, Argemone polyanthemos, that I have successfully gotten to grow from seed in this bed.  I'm trying to get them started self-seeding, so the prickly poppy and 'Unconditional Love' will just have to snuggle up together and get alone this summer).     

June Native Wildflowers III

New wildflowers are blooming nearly as fast as I can keep up with them on these days of warmer weather, but before I move on to flowers that just started blooming, I need to show you the white flowers from last week.

I'm afraid that I have to start with a boast about the voluptuous look of Large Beardtongue (Penstemon grandiflorus), a native prairie bloomer that pops up here and there in single clumps.  I know that the common name doesn't inspire any daydreams, but the species "grandiflorus" name is quite descriptive.  The plump belly of this flower, almost one inch in diameter and 2-3 inches long, makes the popular 'Husker Red' penstemon look anemic by comparison.  Native Americans used the roots of this flower to treat chest pains, so this plant is its own remedy to the swooning gardeners who see it.  It usually doesn't transplant well, but notwithstanding, I had a clump of this in my border for a few years  before it finally petered out.  So, I must learn to enjoy it on the prairie wherever it decides it wants to grow. 

I once had a plant of this Prickly Poppy pop up in the native grass down by the pond, but it never appeared again for me until this year, when it popped up near the road.  Argemone polyanthemos is native to the prairie, but likes disturbed soil so it has become somewhat rare now that the buffalo aren't churning up the tallgrass prairie. The foliage is vicious, but has a beautiful gray-blue-green hue.  The Prickly Poppy  has bright yellow sap that is supposed to be useful to remove warts.  I'd love to figure out how to grow seed for this poppy so that I could keep it going in my garden and perhaps tame it.




Of course, yarrow is everywhere on the prairie, but occurs only in its white form in my vicinity.  This is Western Yarrow (Achillea millefolium), still beautiful, but not quite as colorful as I'd like so I don't invite it into my border.  In fact, I spend a lot of time removing it from my border.  Western Yarrow, however, is a dependable prairie forb during drought years, so I hope that some more colorful yarrow cultivars that I've recently added to my garden have the same trait.

Philadelphia fleabane (Erigeron philadelphicus) is blooming everywhere in the prairie grass right now and it's tall enough to be visible at long distances.  The flowers are small, but usually perfectly formed white rings around yellow centers. The name comes from an Old English belief that it would kill or repel fleas.











 

I've already shown you a picture of the yellow Missouri Evening Primrose, but the white Showy Evening Primrose (Oenothera speciosa) is just as delicately beautiful.  Like the yellow species, however, the delicate look of the flowers of Showy Evening Primrose belie the aggressive nature of this plant.  It self-seeds in my borders, where I treat it as a welcome visitor at times, but I also give it no mercy if it pops up where I don't want it, like in the vegetable garden.  You have to walk the garden in the late evening or early morning to enjoy these flowers that close and hide from the heat of the day.

The Prairie Larkspur (Delphinium carolinianum), pictured at the right, is one of those seedlings that I've learned to recognize as it pops up and then avoid with the glyphosate nozzle.  It tends to like the moister areas of my garden beds, but it seems to be randomly distributed in small numbers over the prairie. In fact, it is a good thing that it occurs more rarely than, for instance, the Western Yarrow, because Prairie Larkspur is poisonous in moderate quantity to cattle when eaten either fresh or dried in prairie hay.

 

There are, of course, other blooms and foliage contrasts on the prairie, but I'll leave those for a post later in the week.  Hope everyone is enjoying my tour of the prairie forbs. 

The White Poppy

Two summers back, I came across quite a surprise in the midst of the tall prairie grass.  I suppose I'm pretty decent at keeping my eyes open for the unusual any more when I walk on the land I now know so well, but I was unprepared for the sudden appearance of a stunning plant I'd never seen here; Argemone polyanthemos, perhaps better known as the "prickly poppy", or "crested pricklypoppy"

This beautiful, delicate, perfect white tissue paper of a flower was growing on my prairie in a single spot down on the slope leading to my pond, and in about as dry and lousy soil as I have. A closeup of the bloom demonstrates both the delicate nature of the petals and the contrast of the golden stamens and red-tipped stigma of the flower, but it really doesn't do the flower justice compared to the real-life experience. The blue-green spiny leaves make the plant almost as attractive as the blossoms, although the white really pops out from the foliage around it.  I've seen the plant before in Colorado, where it seems more prevalent, but never seen it here even though it is listed as a Kansas wildflower. It didn't pop back up the following year (it is an annual) that I could find, so now I'm wondering if it was a fluke or whether I'll see it again.  Because of the long taproot, it is resistant to transplantation and so should be grown from seed where desired.  I'd like to try to save seed and grow it in my garden proper, but I may have to seek seed elsewhere unless I get lucky again.

Argemone polyanthemos may be found blooming on the Tallgrass prairie from June through September, primarily in disturbed areas and along roadsides. References sources state that it may indicate areas that are overgrazed, which I would further take to mean that the plant may have been more plentiful on the prairie in olden days when the praire was less managed and was overrun by massive herds of buffalo. The prickly nature of the stems cause livestock to leave it completely alone and all parts of the plant are said to be poisonous. Even the bright yellow sap is supposed to be irritating to the skin, and was supposedly used by Native Americans to remove warts, but I handled the plant without incidence.

Readers of Garden Musings already know that I'm a sucker for sky-blue plants.  And that I lust after the Himalayan Blue Poppy, Meconopis betonicifolia, which survives about 3 days on average in my Kansas garden (yes, I've tried, even to the extent of putting ice cubes on the ground around it). Now, if someone could just breed Argemone to be sky-blue in color, I might just have a chance to reach Nirvana!