Hello, I'm Orange....ish

'Kaveri'

While mowing this morning, ProfessorRoush was also assessing the garden.  I've been absent for nearly a week and the garden has gone the way of teenagers who have slipped from parental oversight; in short, chaos and a sense of testing limits is radiating from the garden. We've lacked rain for nearly 2 months, the paltry singular decent rain of a couple weeks back merely a fond memory now.   Summer heat seems to be moving in for an extended visit, like a troublesome relative who doesn't know when to leave.   Weeds are hellbent on world domination.  

Asclepias tuberosa

I can see the buffalograss thinking about dormancy amidst the drought, and the redbud leaves are curled at nightfall, stressed and sullen.  The first rose flush has fled to the past, accompanying the peonies and lilacs along into memories.  Oriental and Asiatic lilies are budded up, but yet to color.   The garden is green, but not the green of early spring, it's now the deep green of late summer, spotted here and there by a hint of yellowed or browned foliage that has been burnt by the hot sun.   One has to look hard to see color, but it's there, hidden in shade, the early daylilies and lilies and perennials vying for attention beneath the shade.

You have to look closely beneath this volunteer Redbud in back of my house, but deep in the darkness there are small fires burning.   The prolific 'Kaveri' lilies are in full bloom, orange and rust-red in ostentatious display.   Lower, a self-seeded Asclepias tuberosa (Butterfly MilkWeed) has escaped from the prairie into my border and I happily provide refuge for it in exchange for the spectacular play of sunlight and shade on its blooms and for the butterflies it attracts.    Another neighbor under the tree, the daylily 'Spacecoast Color Scheme' exerts its own orange-red theme on the venue.  Floral fires in my landscaping are, this week, the pride of my garden. 

'Space Coast Color Scheme'

Beyond these, I welcome the daylily season that's just getting started and the Knautia macedonia taking over my front landscaping, and the Shasta Daisies blooming and all the other minor garden players who contribute to the daily symphony.  There is, however, no rest for this gardener in the foreseeable future.  The second flush of roses is coming and I noted today the first Japanese Beetle on a 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup', a find that extended this weekend's garden chores with the necessity (in my view) of a good spraying of all the roses.  I am still in last year's mindset of all-out Beetle genocide, and so I sprayed and poisoned a good portion of the roses in the first preemptive strike of the season.   And then I rushed in and showered them pyrethrins away, leaving the garden to find its own way for another week.  

1004 Mortal Moments

'Cosmic Struggle' early morning

ProfessorRoush had grandiose plans, a year back, to celebrate the 1000th published entry of this blog as he recognized the landmark nearing.  I had such hopes of a deep, thought-provoking masterpiece, complete with photographs of unblemished and vividly-colored blooms and prose fit to stir awe and envy in all its readers.  I resolved carefully to watch, to remain vigilant as the day approached, to portend and celebrate its long-awaited moment.

'Space Coast Color Scheme'

This week, I realized that I had missed it, that 1000th entry, which actually occurred on May 22nd last, the milestone sneaking past in yet another banal description of yet another badly-needed rain brought by yet another terrifying summer storm front.  I not only overlooked the occasion once, nor twice, but 3 times, like Peter denying acquaintance of the Savior, the post today sneaking in as my 1004th, according to Blogger's count.  Caught up in life, caught up in the garden, I lost sight of the broader vision, missed the passage of time and the momentary significance of yet another blog entry.

'Marie Bugnet'

How do I now make up for it, that lost opportunity, the special occasion gone uncelebrated?   I thought long and hard on it since I realized the oversight.  Do I photograph the perfect rose for you, perhaps the virginally-perfect 'Marie Bugnet' to the right of these words?   She is, after all, one of my all-time favorites, the first to greet my hungry eyes most springs, tirelessly blooming the rest of the summer over perfect foliage.  

'Amethyst Art'

Should it instead be a new daylily addition to my garden, heavily-anticipated and fulfilling it's promise, such as the thick-petaled 'Cosmic Struggle' at the top of this entry, or the striking 'Space Coast Color Scheme' to the left of the second paragraph here?   Or the older, yet still splendid, 'Amethyst Art' shown to the right, chosen out of its many, many cousins for its timeless beauty and productivity?   'Cosmic Struggle' is newer to the world and simply striking, as shown above at the morning's call, but these same blooms at the end of the day lack the grandeur of the morning (below).  'Space Coast Color Scheme' has been tremendously prolific this year, a sight to behold, but no matter how bonny the mass, her individual blooms are orange and yellow, the most common of daylily colors.  

'Cardinal de Richelieu'

Should I overwhelm  your senses with the sumptuous purple tones of 'Cardinal de Richelieu', blooming at the time of the 1000th blog? Or should I instead tempt you with a rose new to my garden, yet undescribed here in these pages but healthy in my garden?  Decisions, decisions, so difficult to make and so impactful once made.

Bull Thistle

Wait, would another blog about a native prairie plant interest you?   I've been lately concerned with the Bull Thistles in my pasture, the aptly latin-named Cirsium vulgare.   Another member of the Sunflower Family, it's a noxious weed on the prairie, not, unfortunately a forb to celebrate but one to ruthlessly cut down and eliminate.  It is so hated that folklore has it that merely chopping it down at this stage is not enough as it will still develop viable seed in the pods.  I'm skeptical of that story after looking at the dry remains of mine after 3 days in the prairie heat.  My maternal grandfather always said to chop it down on June 23rd and over time it will disappear from the pasture.  I'll stand by that, having witnessed the effect of the procedure on an entire pasture full of Bull Thistles in my Indiana youth. 

Perhaps, as a 1000th entry should be, I should present here a grand summation of the garden, a broader picture of life here on the Kansas Flint Hills?   My current view from my bedroom window, greeting me cheerfully and colorfully each and every morning when I assess the weather (left)?   Or a vista of the rear garden, daylilies in the back patio bed in the fore, the blue mists of Russian Sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia ‘Filigran’) and white of Hydrangea paniculata ‘QuickFire’ in the midphoto, and the color of daylilies in the rear (below)?  Things bloom in the garden, and my attention follows the blooms as randomly as I weed or keep track of the number of blog posts.   But these photographs were taken as I began this blog, another captured moment in time.

'Cosmic Struggle' late-day

In reaching this paragraph, I have by now realized, of course, that the occasion is past, lost to time and inattention, never to be relived or revered.   The next milestones, at 5000 or 10000 entries, are so far into the future that I can only faintly hope to still be able to write and garden and reach them, the first 1000 taking nearly 12 years to form.  Even 5000 new thoughts are difficult to conceive of, and who would still be reading them if they weren't each new and interesting?  Perhaps I should think in terms of years, blog birthdays, and celebrate instead 15 years or 20 years or 25 years of thoughts and blogs.  July 28th, 2022 for instance, will mark 12 years of blogging.  And yet it seems such an evasion, an excuse, a compromise of virtue to accept  such an altered goalpost as won.  Like 'Cosmic Struggle' (right) losing its cosmic struggle at the day's end, I  give you here a mere shadow of what could have been.   We will all just have to be content with celebrating this, my 1004th blog entry, and each to follow. 

Hope Lost and Found

Hemerocallis 'Blue Racer'

Life, as gardening, is a constant struggle, a process of waning and waxing hopes, heart-breaking failures and all-too-infrequent successes in a never-ending circle.  Without warning, we occasionally slam headfirst into low points, spiritual nadirs that test the strengths of our soul.  A pandemic disrupts our daily routines, throwing the world into chaos with our very lives perhaps dependent on the potential danger of a trip for groceries.  A senseless killing rips apart the fabric of a nation, leaving looted cities and downed monuments in its wake.  In my own world, yesterday, a cousin, a grown man struggling and in turmoil, committed suicide on an impulse, leaving his family devastated and lost.  Hope, at such times, seems a distant mirage, far off and never closer.

Hemerocallis 'Beautiful Edgings'

Gardening mirrors life in its roller-coaster of summits and valleys.   We fight daily against drought and heat and ice and flood, relentlessly watching for enemies, ceaselessly searching for beauty.  ProfessorRoush has been wanting for rain from cloudless skies for weeks, carrying water to quench the thirst of the weakest, ripping weedy competition from the ground, watching for leaves wilting and rolling.  Hope leaks away as the buffalograss browns.

Hemerocallis 'Space Coast Color Scheme' 

In gardening and in life, we must hold faith that the storms pass and calm mornings, like this one, will come.  A heavy rain filled the emptiness of the night during my sleepless tossings, and I rose to find the ground full and soft, and this year's first 'Beautiful Edgings' covered in jewels.  New daylilies, 'Space Coast Color Scheme' (Kinnebrew, 2008) and 'Blue Racer' (Stamile-Pierce, 2011), also greeted Bella and I on our rounds of the rain gauges, rejoicing with us at the modest 1.5 inches of heaven-gifted moisture and the cooler air.

Euonymus Scale

Three peaks and a valley this morning, the latter the finding of my 'Emerald Gaiety' euonymus suddenly covered in Euonymus Scale (Unaspis euonymi) and near death.  Twenty years of euonymus without scale ended in an instant, joy replaced by worry again to begin another cycle.

'Hope for Humanity'

This year, amidst despair, I cling to the thought and the survival of 'Hope for Humanity', the wishfully named Parkland series shrub rose with a prominent position in my backyard.  She has outdone herself this season, blooming with blood-red abandon, responding to my attentions and my efforts to give her more space and sunlight this spring.  I cling to the hope that, if we care for each other and for our world as I ministered to this rose, we can all keep a little 'Hope for Humanity'.  Just a little bright hope to grow with sunlight and push through hard times.  Shaun, I know you liked roses, I wish you'd known hope better, and I pray you find peace.

'Hope for Humanity' (the purple faded rose below and to the right is a nearby 'Dr. Hugo')