Splitting the Pot

As a cheap son-of-a-gun frugal individual, ProfessorRoush was not entirely unhappy when the pot containing the  'Heavenly Flight of Angels' daylily that I was purchasing split down one side as I lifted it to carry it to the sales counter.  Yes, it served me with fair notice that the plant was pot-bound, but I also knew I could divide the $10, one-gallon plant and get two decently size plants for the price of one.  I also just couldn't, at any price, resist the combo of a 7" inch yellow spider daylily with white ruffled edges and a fragrance described, in tongue-in-cheek fashion, as "heavenly."   Everyone thinks they're a comedian these days.

And pot-bound it was, in spades.  I normally would divide a plant like this with an old serrated kitchen knife that I purloined from Mrs. ProfessorRoush for just such occasions, or sometimes, as I face a perhaps less dense clump, with simply a garden spade, but in this case I was not going to let pass the opportunity to try out the serrated side of the new Hori Hori hanging right there on my belt.  A few quick strokes of the 6 inch blade and I proved yet another use for the knife and saved myself a trip to the shed for my previous implement of destruction.  I might even surprise Mrs. ProfessorRoush and return the kitchen knife.  

We've been having some blast furnace 100º weather here, hot and sunny, but the beautiful blue skies that accompany the horrid temperatures keep my complaint levels down.  Mama House Sparrow also does not seem to have any complaints, incubating these pretty little eggs in the cool dense shade of our 'Ann' magnolia shrub, about 3 feet off the ground.  I startled the attentive incubatee Mom with my early morning weeding today, but she had returned to the nest the next time I checked, so all is well.

'Ed Brown' (not 'Cream Magic')

I'm actually welcoming the warm temperatures, for once, because we are beginning daylily season and I'd like something to go right this year.  The first few are blooming here now, and I took great pleasure in seeing this beautiful daylily open yesterday, for Father's Day.  My notes tell me it is Hemerocallis 'Cream Magic', although I can't find a picture on the Internet to visually compare it (see addendum below for correction).  The description, however, does match the official "cream flushed pink with greenish cream throat" description, so I'm reasonably certain this is the 1980 cultivar from Lenington-G.  'Cream Magic' is blooming with the 'Stella de Oro's' and a couple of other nondescript cultivars, so she's the "cream" of the ball right now.   Until the next flashy daylily comes along.  Such as my two new clumps of 'Heavenly Flight of Angels'.

Addendum 2018-06-19:  The daylily that I thought was 'Cream Magic', is actually 'Ed Brown', according to the latter's label at the K-State Garden, where I purchased my start and where it was blooming today when I also saw the real 'Cream Magic' blooming.  So much for interpreting written descriptions without photographs.  To straighten out my daylily maps at home is an impossible task.  The real 'Cream Magic' is pictured here, to the left, for Internet prosperity.

Nest Eggs

Like my friend Connie over at Hartwood Roses, ProfessorRoush has been marveling of late at the display of life represented in his garden by its more finely feathered inhabitants.  After spending the early Spring fretting that my self-designed Bluebird boxes had an unusual number of vacancies, the second wave of Bluebirds has hit and every box within easy sight of my garden is occupied by a bright blue aviator.  This picture, taken with my iPhone, was captured one night recently after I saw momma scoot off her nest in the box nearest my vegetable garden.  I'd watched her flying back and forth from the box for about three weeks.  Aren't they just a beautiful shade of blue?  About half the size of the Robin eggs I photographed earlier this year, these four eggs looked for all the world like delicate china just got shipped to me in a straw-padded box.

The very next day, by a happy coincidence, I looked again and those beautiful eggs had already been replaced with these jaundiced, mostly naked and very tired chicks.  Mamma Bluebird was not happy that I was back peering into the nest box.  I'm going to leave these babies alone for a couple of weeks, at least until I'm able to hear them crying for food as I pass by.  Sshhh...they're sleeping right now!









The Killdeer have also been busy feigning injury in an attempt to lure my lawnmower away from a certain patch of grass in the front yard.  They've undoubtedly  been bragging to their friends about their success in that endeavor, because a 6 foot diameter patch of my front lawn hasn't been mowed for 3 weeks now.  In the center of the grass, of course, is the usual clutch of four exquisitely camouflaged white and black speckled eggs.  In actual fact, if this spot looks familiar to you, it's the exact same rocky four inch area where a Killdeer couple hatched four babies in 2011 and I blogged about here.  Amazing, isn't it?  An acre of mowed prairie in my front yard and these parents pick the exact same spot to raise a brood.  Are they the same couple from two years ago?  Are they offspring from that nest?  Are there other factors about this spot that make it so attractive and so different from another rocky spot less than 2 feet away that I, a stupid human observer, would have said was nearly identical? 

All of which leaves me wondering;  Did the Killdeer just start nesting this particular spot since I built a home and started mowing the prairie for them?  Or have there been decades.... centuries.... millennia of Killdeer offspring born on this same patch of earth, in the grazing grounds of ancient buffalo?  I'm just shivering in delight at that thought.


Update 6/29/13, 8:26 am:  Mrs. ProfessorRoush mentioned to me last night that she had seen a "bunch" of little birds and two big ones running around the front driveway.  I checked this morning, and sure enough the Killdeer eggs hatched, sometime between Thursday evening and yesterday evening.  Four little balls of fluff on stilt legs running around being inefficiently herded by two anxious parents who seemed to be dividing their efforts;  one to corral babies and the other to feign injury and lead me away.  How can a 0.5X1.0 inch egg turn into a chick about 4 inches tall and 2 inches around almost overnight?  And we humans complain about how fast our children outgrow their clothes!

Now You See It (or not)

Eastern Meadlow lark nest, exposed

I got another surprise Sunday morning as I was watering a fairly new Acer rubrum 'Autumn Flame' to the west of the house, in an area that I used to mow but have left "long" these past two years.   Practically at my feet, a brown streak exploded and then quickly disappeared into the eight-inch-tall grass about 25 feet away.  Looking carefully near my feet, I found another bird nest filled with 5 brown-speckled eggs.  Using some local forbs as references, I mentally marked the location.

I returned about an hour later to photograph the nest and spent about 25 minutes looking for it, even knowing it was within a 5 foot square area, and I located it only after I got on my hands and knees and slowly combed the brush to find it.

 Can you find the nest?


How about now?  It's like one of those "Where's Waldo?" games isn't it?  Imagine me moving gingerly around the area, expecting every minute to hear a crunch as I accidentally ruin the nest.

Well, I'll make it easy, the nest is in the exact center of the photo below.  In the first photo above, it's in the right third quadrant at the center line, and in the second picture it's at the upper left.  Almost impossible to find even from a few feet up or away.

This is an Eastern Meadowlark (Sturnella magna) nest and although it is laying exposed on the ground for lumbering animals to step on or slithering snakes to seize on, I've got to give the mother Meadowlark extra credit points for care.  This is a much better camouflaged and constructed nest than the matted patches of grass the Killdeer start their families in.  I guess I'm being a little judgemental here, but, hey, I know a dotting mother when I see one.

I won't go looking for this one again because I'm afraid of damaging the brood, which takes about 2 weeks to hatch and another 2 weeks to empty.  And my own inability to avoid a nest that I KNOW is there makes me wonder how these birds ever evolved to ground-nest in an area filled in recent centuries by bison herds and in millennia past by larger herbivores including primeval horses, rhinos, and mastodons.  I would have predicted that the first stupid bird to drop an egg on the prairie would have seen its eggs quickly crushed and its gene pool darwinized to extinction.  Timing the movement of the herds, perhaps?  Sheer numbers?   Certainly. there weren't many other choices for nesting sites, since there were few trees on that virgin prairie.

But this nest does make me even more happy that I let the grasses grow in this area over the objections of Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  Aside from the decreased mowing time and gasoline usage, I'm now seeing the beginnings of the environmental riches that the native prairie can provide.

Magic Number Four

Chipping Sparrow eggs?

It never fails.  Just today, on a day of vacation to work in the garden, I was puttering around as usual, all the while thinking "what should my next blog be about?"  It must be blatantly obvious by now that I could blog ad infinitim about roses, evermore adding one more to the list of roses I've discussed, but Garden Musings already is top-heavy with roses.  If roses were the only thing I ever wrote about, I'm afraid I'd risk alienating some readers.  Believe it or not, I do occasionally try to relieve the monotony here for those who aren't unwaveringly rose-crazy.


Like magic, the answer to my question lay in the 'Carefree Beauty' rosebush I had just trimmed.  There, deep in the heart of this stalwart rose, was a tiny nest, about 2.5 inches in diameter, with four of the cutest little sky-blue-speckled-with-black eggs I've ever seen.  After an exhaustive search through my field guides and the Internet, I believe these eggs are most likely those of a Chipping Sparrow (Spizella passerina).  It is a very common sparrow around here in the summer, and the nest placement, about 4 feet off the ground in a bush, is correct, and the eggs are distinct and resemble the available pictures on the Internet.  Thankfully, these eggs don't resemble one of the many sparrow species in this area that are light blue with lots of light brown spots or I wouldn't have been able to even guess at the origin.  I'll try to confirm the identity with a visual of Momma Bird in the next few days, but it is going to be difficult at best.  I've scared her off the nest a few times today, but haven't been able to discern anything but a quick brown blur darting into the nearby viburnums.
 


Killdeer nest

I also found yet another Killdeer nest today while mowing, also with four eggs.  Why does four always seem to be the number of eggs for birds in Kansas anyway?  This new nest was placed almost exactly where another brood was raised two years ago, on a hillside in very short grass.  I would never find these nests if the Momma wouldn't try to lure me away, feigning a hurt wing.  Today's Momma didn't even bother with that;  she just sat on the nest and fixed me with a baleful eye while I mowed around her.  For the life of me, I don't understand why they don't nest in the taller grass that I never mow, in this case just 10 feet away, but I suppose they have their reasons.  I think they're pretty gutsy to lay these eggs on the almost bare ground.  The wider view below will give you a better idea of how exposed these eggs really are;  the eggs are in the center of the picture.  It must be a tough life to be  Killdeer chick.