August Surprises

In the Kansas Flint Hills, late July and August is a dreadful period for gardeners.  There is often a seasonal lack of rain during those weeks and oppressive waves of heat build and sear plants (and gardeners) on a daily basis, turning leaves brown and suppressing plant growth and melting away any resolve to keep the garden in prime condition.   The roses, in misery, pause their blooms and the daylily season has ended and the landscape is left almost colorless, a bland dull green turning brown and not yet displaying any autumn coloration.

I said "almost colorless", though, because there are some intrepid garden denizens who provide some relief from the blandness.   First, I want to recommend loud and clear that every gardener, particularly if you garden in Kansas, needs to obtain some "Surprise Lilies" because this period of summer doldrum is their preferred bloom time.    One minute there's nothing in a spot, and the next, PINK goodness erupts.  I plodded out to my every-other-morning pity-watering of the tomato pots on the last day of July and saw the miracle pictured above.  A few days later, the buds were all in bloom and it was yet even more captivating.  All this from seemingly bare ground!

I've seldom been able to catch them in actual growth, but here are a few early sprouts in process.  In spring, this is a clump of green grass that appears from nowhere, stays green into early summer, and then quickly dries up and disappears.  You can see their remnants at the base of the stems.  The flower stems appear in the same spot a couple of months later, usually unnoticed until they bloom in just a few days.   Sometimes, I think if I watched them closely enough, I could see them grow before my eyes!

My other life-saving perennial at this time is a native, Salvia azurea, the Blue Sage, which is a moderately uncommon but not rare plant in my region.   The clump pictured here is a volunteer in my front landscape that I allowed to remain as a welcome invader a dozen years past and it gets more bushy and floriferous each year.

I'm simply in awe of the gentle sky-blue color and the drought resistance of the plant.   Flowering in the most in-hospitable season here, there must be some survival advantage in being the sole source, or one of the few sources, of pollen during the heat of summer that led its distant ancestors to flower now.   I'm just thankful for all the bees it draws and feeds here, and for the color it brings during an otherwise drab end-of-summer.  And right now, I'll welcome color in any form, however it wants to appear.

Sudden Lilies and other Surprises

Lycoris squamigera

ProfessorRoush was out early this morning, trying to beat the heat and spread some lawn weed-killer on a particularly rough-looking patch of buffalograss while there was a little dew on the grass to make it stick.   I then switched over to watering pots, and as I puttered around, I came across a little pink surprise that I wasn't expecting.  ProfessorRoush, as a general rule, doesn't like surprises, but this little gift I left for myself is always welcome.  

If there is one plant that I would tell every young gardener to start with, particularly children or young adult gardeners with children, it's a "Surprise Lily."  Uninspiring but also untroubling for 360 days of the year, it's the other 5 days that will make you thrilled to have planted it.   Whatever name you plant these bulbs under, be it "Magic Lily," "Resurrection Lily," "Surprise Lily," or even the titillating and misogynistic "Naked Ladies," Lycoris squamigera is a delightful, delicate treasure in bloom.

The large bulbs are not costly to purchase, and often they're a passalong plant, a gift from a friend or neighbor.  You just throw them into the ground about 5 inches down and then you forget about them.  No worries about insects or disease, or predators.  Each spring, their spot will be marked with a nice, trouble-free clump of grassy foliage, a useful reminder to not plant something else there, and then the foliage will die down and, in my area, blow away.   Then one fine morning in late July or August, you'll be puttering around and they'll catch your eye, suddenly (hey, let's start a new name, "Sudden Lilies"!) about 2 1/2 feet tall, translucent flowers of the most beautiful pink, perhaps tinged with a little orange if you catch them, as I did today, in the early morning sunlight.  The flowers will last 5-10 days and then the neighbor's dog or the wind will knock them down and that'll be it until next year, when you'll have forgotten them and suddenly they'll appear again, heathy, carefree, and joyful.

The only other surprises that ProfessorRoush might consider a close second to "Naked Ladies" is the appearance of new baby calves and that's been a part of my world recently too.   Just this week, one of the Longhorn mama's in the pasture brought this beautiful white-face-mark-on-brown calf into the world.   And last week I was tickled by the gorgeous black-and-white "mini-me" from the similarly-colored cow below.  All leading me to conclude that life is too short without Sudden Lilies and baby calves.  And shorter still, in a word of caution, if you get too close to this little calf because those big horns on Mama aren't just there for decoration!

Taking Stock

Occasionally, during the hum-drum of daily garden affairs (and often, as it happens, while mowing), ProfessorRoush's mind plays a little fantasy game.  A little game called "if I were moving, what plants and things from this garden would I want to take or duplicate?"  It's a thought experiment that can be endlessly repeated based on the size of the retirement garden to which one aspires.  And it suffices to pass the time while mowing.

This week, it was the Surprise Lilies (Lycoris squamigera) that prompted the onset of the mental gymnastics.  They've been in my garden a number of years and they never fail to surprise and delight me, as they have yet again this season.  Sometimes, in the spring, I'll see the daylily-like foliage and have to think a minute to remember not to weed it out, but I've spread these so they now pop up several places in the garden.  Whether my next garden is 10 acres or 10 square feet, I always want these Naked Ladies (their other, less politically-correct name) to pop up and delight me.

'Cherry Dazzle'

What else, from this pre-Fall period, would I want to preserve?  Well, crape myrtle 'Cherry Dazzle' is not maybe the most spectacular crape I have, but it certainly never disappoints with the color and floriferiousness and its under 2' circumference would fit in a small garden.

'Cherry Dazzle'

 I wouldn't want to live without a panacled hydrangea around this time of year, 'Limelight' or some other.  I just enjoy their brazen display when all else is turning brown.  And the Sweet Autumn Clematis (Clematis terniflora) is starting to bloom and by next week it will be perfuming the garden from one corner to the other.  How could I go on gardening without at least one massive tower of C. terniflora?  Unfortunately, with Sweet Autumn Clematis, having just one is the difficult part since it self-seeds everywhere in my garden.

'David'

And then, last but not least on the seasonal list of plants that I would just have to move, there is the phlox 'David', massive pure white heads standing straight and tall, unmarred by sun and rain.  'David' is easily transplanted and easily propagated.  I believe it also comes true from seed, and doesn't revert to pukey majenta like many garden phlox seem to.  There actually may be an advantage to allow it to self-proliferate, because I have clumps that look identical but bloomed more than two weeks apart in the same bed.  I bought one plant of 'David', one time, and now I have 6 or 8, spaced all over the garden beds.  Yes, I divided and moved it once or twice, but it grows now in places I never placed it, where it had to have self-seeded.   

Unless, of course, it grew feet and walked.  Sometimes plants try to sneak past an inattentive gardener.

Happy Surprises

Gardening is full of surprises.  Although I've just said it, I think most gardeners already know that.  I've been both pleasantly surprised and unpleasantly surprised,  however, by the notion that the longer I garden, the more surprises I get.

This "Surprise Lily", hidden behind a dwarf Alberta Spruce and in front of a struggling clematis, is an example of the mixed benefits of garden serendipity.  I love Surprise Lilies because they pop up and glow at a time of summer here when everything else looks tired and worn out.  I also enjoy the slightly naughty feeling that this old man gets from having "Naked Ladies," as they are sometimes called, randomly showing up in my garden.  I didn't get any titillating joy out of finding this clump, however, because I'm pretty sure that I never planted any bulbs here.  And I've never heard that they can self-seed and spread themselves around a garden, other than by lateral bulb-lets.  So that leaves me the choice of either accepting another bit of evidence that my memory is fading, or that I've witnessed a garden miracle of reproduction.  Because neither of these are likely explanations, I think I'm going to settle the mystery and tell others that a squirrel dug up some bulbs and transplanted them here, even though the nearest tree large enough to support a squirrel is over 1/2 mile away.   

I've also been surprised this summer by the performance of a pair of $5 misnamed roses purchased at Home Depot.  As I mentioned previously, I saw this striped rose mislabeled as 'Love' back in May on a "two for $10" sale, took a chance, and bought two.  Both bushes have settled in, are repeat blooming their heads off, and have no blackspot at all.  I don't know what they really are.  I initially thought they were two different striped cultivars, but now I think they are the same variety.  Their rebloom cycle is too rapid for any of the remonant old garden striped roses I've grown.  They're fragrant but not as tall nor as fragrant as 'Honorine de Brabant' and they are also shorter and more Floribunda-bush-form than my 'Ferdinand Pichard'.  Regardless, if they make it through winter unprotected, for $10, I've got two great garden roses that I will always enjoy.  Now there is a surprise without any reservations to spoil it.

Surprising Beauty

Oh boy, was I ever surprised!  I knew that one of the common names for Lycoris squamigera was "Surprise Lily," but when one cropped up in my garden this year, I was stunned speechless by this clear pink beauty. Right in the midst of the recent month-long drought and heat cycle, this plant was developing right under my nose and then it exploded in color while everything else in the garden was looking tired and worn.

 I can't recall now that I have ever planted or purchased a Surprise Lily. I'll admit that I do recall considering the purchase of a Lycoris bulb last Fall, but I also recall rejecting the idea because I'd have had to take out a 2nd mortgage to pay for it since it seemed to be priced by its weight in gold. I even missed seeing the daffodil-like foliage that must have been right there in front of my eyes during the spring and early summer. Maybe I thought it was a clump of daffodils and overlooked the lack of bloom. Regardless, someone obviously has snuck into my garden in the dead of night and planted a delayed present for me. It vaguely worries me that this pink alien plant has been placed into my garden without my knowledge, and I guess I need either a louder dog or I need to install tripwires and claymores in my garden to prevent a recurrence of the vandalism. It certainly can't be that my memory might be showing its age. Nah, I must have had a surprise benefactor. 

For those who haven't grown one yet, there isn't a much easier plant for Kansas.  Buy a large bulb, plant it, forget about it, and up it will come to brighten a dreary August day.  Lycoris is supposed to be adapted to regions with wet springs and long summer droughts and if that doesn't describe the Flint Hills, I don't know what does. The Surprise Lily is also known by a number of other quite descriptive names, my favorites of which are "Resurrection Lily" and "Naked Ladies."  The first of those names seems very appropriate since the foliage of this member of the Amaryllis family sprouts and grows in the spring, dies in June, and then the tall stalk and 4 inch trumpet-shaped flowers appear in just a few days in August.  The second name, "Naked Ladies," obviously refers to the lack of leaves around the solo stems when the flowers appear. Gardeners aren't generally a group of hopeless reprobates, but we do have our little giggles, don't we?

I do have one bias about Surprise Lilies that may surprise you.  Recently, every day as I go to work I pass a yard with a couple of beds filled with nothing but Surprise Lilies (think how differently that sounds than if I said I passed a bed of Naked Ladies).  The in-mass effect of these lilies in the bed doesn't have the effect on me that clumps of Surprise Lilies spread out among other perennials and shrubs do, so I think I'm going to spread mine out in clumps over my beds.  Better to have a little less of a good thing than to overdo it.

I've got to go out this Fall to find more of these bulbs to spread around my garden.  But first, does anyone have any suggestions regarding what I should tell Mrs. ProfessorRoush when the credit card bill shows up in September with multiple entries for "naked ladies?"