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!

Longhorns Ho!

Yesterday was an outside day in ProfessorRoush-land, work to be done, and some exploration in areas that I don't frequently explore.  I mowed and piddled in the garden to my heart's content, the second mowing of the year starting at 9:30 a.m. and then doing other chores until I looked up at last to see it near 5:00 p.m., the afternoon vanished seemingly in seconds.   Most of the work was prompted by the arrival this week of the Longhorn cattle that a friend (actually the son-in-law of a neighbor), summer pastures on our land and the neighbors pasture.  Aren't they beautiful?  ProfessorRoush likes having cows around, even skinny cows with big menacing horns, and they make a conversation piece for neighbors far and wide, creating a little traffic on the road from the townies coming to "Aw" and stare.  

The Longhorn appearance, however, prompts me annually to walk the far fence, the one that I DIDN'T rebuild when we purchased the land, my border line with the golf course.  It's an original, easily over 50 years old, maybe more like 80 years old, with Osage Orange posts that occasionally get caught in the burns, and I often need to hike up the back hill with a new T-post to shore it up.  The picture below is a view of my back garden and the house and grounds from the far hillside.  Yesterday, all was well with the fence and I opened the gate to let the cattle into my pond area.

White-Eyed Grass

Walking that fence line means I walk down through the prairie and cross the woods in the draw and come as close as I get in this area to shady woodland.   This time of year, that means looking at the flora of the prairie more closely.  The prairie is coming alive with its flowers, native Babtisia starting to bloom, and this White-Eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium campestre) blooming everywhere.   White-Eyed Grass is, of course, not a grass but a member of the lily family, a bulb, used by Native Americans to treat stomachache and hay fever.

Garlic Mustard

I also ran across this unusual plant, an invader of course.  Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata) is a biennial weed that came from the Old World and escaped cultivation.  It isn't very prevalent on my prairie, requiring a bit of shade and moisture to thrive, but it seems to have found a spot here in the woods for it's temporary liking.

And speaking of invaders, while on my travels through the pasture, I also came across this unusual plant, seemingly beginning to spread in this area.   This is Purple-Leafed Honeysuckle, an escapee from my landscaping, which I made sure to come back and spray with herbicide yesterday.   I believe this clump was actually transplanted by the bulldozer that cleared it out from a bank where I placed the barn and pushed it into this area, but I surely don't want to see it begin to spread on it's own in the pasture

Poison Ivy

The woodland plant pictured here is, of course, not so desired in a woodland, but it's everywhere, hiding among others and waiting to cause pain and misery in some.  As shown here, among several similar plants, it effectively camouflages itself in early spring and then stands out in early Fall with bright red leaves to match the bright red blisters of the afflicted. Luckily, I'm immune to the toxic effects of  the urushiol in poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans), but I know it causes misery in others.  "Leaves of three, let it be," say some, but I say "Leaves of three, I don't care."  It probably has some place in the ecosystem, a native to North America, so I leave it alone.

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Prairie Moon Rising

ProfessorRoush was forced into the mundane chores of garden these past two days on the prairie.  Rapidly growing grass and weeds meant that I spent most of Saturday's 'free time' mowing the lawn and trimming, and most of Sunday's "free time" weeding and planting.  I planted 22 garden pepper plants and 17 tomatoes.  And I also replaced the watermelon and cantaloupe that I planted and previously mentioned in the Showing the Crazy blog entry.  Not surprisingly, the first two didn't make it.  This time I planted 'Sugar Baby' watermelon, 'Ambrosia' and 'Athena' cantaloupes. 

Remember the song "Bad Moon Rising" by Creedance Clearwater Revival?  Lyrics that include "I hear hurricanes a-blowing.  I know the end is coming soon.  I hear the rivers over flowing...There's a bad moon on the rise."  Well, my 'Prairie Moon' peony is rising (upper left), and it's not a bad moon, even though the rain around here has the ground saturated and some folk in town have water in basements again.  'Prairie Moon' is just a beauty, pure white blooms as big as your outstretched hand and healthy bright green smooth foliage.  What's that you say?  The foliage isn't smooth?  Yeah, that's a volunteer hollyhock in front of the peony that I didn't have the heart to root out.  As long as it doesn't smother 'Prairie Moon', I'll let the hollyhock bloom and then grub it out later.   

Speaking of tomato planting, I had the bright idea to plant Mrs. ProfessorRoush's favorite grape-sized tomatoes in the large pots on the back (south) patio this year.   They'll get major sun there if they can stand the heat.  I was hand-digging a hole in the potting soil and the little gray tree frog pictured at the left about gave me a heart-attack, sitting as still as a postage stamp on the edge of the pot.  I almost put my hand right on him!   Here they come again, those sneaky peeping frogs, watching my every move.  Creeps me out, I tell you.

Bella is in the garden with me most days right now, protecting me and making sure the Texas Longhorns don't cross the barbed wire fence.  There is something that just feels right about longhorns on the prairie, isn't there?  Well, may not right to Bella, who seems a little disturbed by these big dumb things in her pasture.

Longhorn Landscape

My neighbor, a man who has reached that life era where one has fully cast aside any concern for societal approval or disapproval (of which I approve and concur), was bound and determined this summer to find someone to put Longhorn cattle on our adjacent pastures.  Ding and Dong, our omnipresent donkeys, were initially another one of his compulsions, although now they are a regular stop on the neighborhood sight-seeing tours and a joy to others; several neighbors come by daily to bring them apples and talk to them.  I suspect the Longhorns will eventually just be another stop on the tour of the eccentric mini-ranches at the edge of town.  They already seem to be the focus of a few extra slow-moving cars on our road each weekend.

Texas Longhorn(s), as the breed is properly known, are descendants of the first cattle brought to the New World by Christopher Columbus and Spanish colonists.  Having learned and repeated that, ProfessorRoush is not even going to contemplate how politically incorrect some might regard that sentence.  It's history, live with it.  Longhorns are extremely suited to drought conditions, and thus have some advantages here over the Angus and other European crossbreeds common to the Flint Hills.    I suspect the matronly horns of several of the cows in this picture are also quite useful to protect their calves from the packs of coyotes that run this area of the Flint Hills every night.

It is probably just an aspect of my academic streak, but I was fascinated to learn that the Texas Longhorn was almost extinct in the late 1920's, saved by the US Forest Service's establishment of a remnant herd in the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma.  Just like the buffalo, their lease on life has been revised by the increased desire for leaner beef by fickle humans, and by these species ability to thrive in the Plains without man's intervention.  Just like the Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa) blooming profusely despite this summer's drought in the foreground of the middle photo, above, these Longhorns are doing fine without any worry from me.  In fact, the two, Longhorns and Butterfly Weed, seem to belong together in my greater landscape, don't you think?