Where Are The Butterflies!!?

ProfessorRoush tries to be a good gardener, and a gracious host of garden fauna, but once in a while he is incredibly oblivious to the obvious and dense to the details.  I've been so focused on catching up with spring--weeding, trimming, spreading 80+ bags of mulch, watering and weeding again--that I've been focused on the ground and the work and missing the big picture.  Well, to be accurate, I've missed the fact that the big picture is missing something.



 As my 'Blizzard' Mockorange (Philadelphus lewisii 'Blizzard') began to bloom, however, it finally dawned on me that I haven't seen a single butterfly yet.  Not a skipper, not a fritillary, not a hairstreak, none, on any flower yet this year.  My 'Blizzard' is usually covered with them while it blooms.  Let alone a Painted Lady on the 'Blizzard', like the beauty above that I photographed in 2012, I haven't seen any butterflies at all this year.   My 'Blizzard' is in full bloom as captured two days ago in the photograph at the left and there is not a single butterfly on it. 






What's going on?  As I think back, my alliums have all bloomed and past, and yet I saw no butterflies like this Painted Lady pictured on the 'Globemaster' allium at right, again from 2012.  Honeysuckle, roses, Knautia macedonia, all are blooming now without their usual halo of winged angels.  It's not like I've been puffing the insecticides around this year.  I use a little in the vegetable garden when I'm desperate, but I haven't broke open the carbaryl dust on the potatoes yet this year, and I don't use it in the rest of the garden ever.

Frankly, I'm more than a little worried.  I knew we had a rough winter, dry and cold, because  I lost a number of roses and more than a few long-established shrubs.  But was it really that dry and cold?  We have fallen deeper into drought this spring, with every storm passing just to our east or north, like this one I captured on radar from 2 nights ago, slipping to the east without raining here.  There have been no ground-soaking rains since last September and already the temperatures are climbing to the 100's (today the temperature hit 102ºF in my garden).   My front lawn is beginning to dry up and looks like the browning turf of late July or early August instead of the usual lush green of late May.   Are the timing or sequences of butterfly and bloom off?  My allium and mockoranges bloomed together in 2012, yet this year the alliums bloomed and faded a week before the mockorange opened the first blossom.  Has any of this environmental variability affected the butterflies?  Am I to witness no joyous fritting about of a fritillary this entire year?

Is anyone else missing their butterflies? 

I'll let you know if, and when they arrive here.  Until then, I'm at a loss to know if this is a variation of normal, or an omen of the world's end.

It Could Be Worse

I just keep telling myself that there are many situations that could be worse than trying to keep a garden alive in Kansas in July.  We've only seen one substantial rain in two months and the temperatures have been hovering near or over 105ºF for a week, but it could be worse.  Lawn grasses have completely dried up and the trees are voluntarily shedding half their leaves, but it could be worse.  Daylilies are yellowing and drying on the ends, despite all the advantages of their fleshy, water-retaining tubers, but it could be worse.  That's daylily 'Beautiful Edging' at the right, not so beautiful at present as it edges my garden bed.

Yesterday, for instance, I was headed into my local Walmart at 10:00 a.m., clawing my way forward through the humid already-102ºF air, when it suddenly occurred to me that it would be worse if I had the job of the Walmart employee who had to round up all the carts.  Imagine the despair you'd feel to spend your day walking to the parking lot in that heat and humidity, bringing back a long line of carts, only to watch them disappear from the front end even as you were pushing them back into the busy store.  That entire job would be an endless, mind-numbing circle of frustration equal to that of Sisyphus ceaselessly rolling the stone uphill only to watch it roll back down.  I say that with every intention of not belittling the efforts of the struggling Walmart cart-person, but in sympathy for them.  

But then again, the cart-person knows exactly what lies ahead and is not endlessly teased with possibilities and relief.  They don't experience rain in the forecast for weeks-on-end, constantly present several days in the future, only to see the rain chances diminish as the appointed day nears. They don't experience what we did last night;  a large storm from the west that dissipates and dies within sight of our gardens, just as it meets the air mass of a large storm north and east that we watched form a few miles away and move away from us.  We received 0.4 inches of rain last night, penetrating only deep enough to nourish the crabgrass, leaving the poor lilac bush pictured here to languish in the oppressive heat.  When thick, succulent lilac leaves start to turn up their heels, you know the drought is bad.  You're from New York and afraid of coming to Kansas and experiencing tornadoes?  We hope to see them for the rain they'll bring in their paths. 

It could be worse.  In July, in a Kansas garden, I just keep telling myself ,"it could be worse."   At least I don't want to trade places with the cart-person at Walmart yet.  And I've got a great thriving stand of crabgrass.

Drought End and Storm Tracks

Can ProfessorRoush get a "Hallelujah" from the chorus, please?  Just this week, the National Weather Service (or whatever organization tracks such things) declared the entirety of Kansas to be drought free for the first time since July 13, 2010.  I don't think my specific area has been suffering continually for that long, but certainly the subsoil moisture has been nonexistent for at least 2 years here.  As a matter of fact, as late as 4/12/16, 97% of Kansas was still designated in some degree of drought or another.  The rains of late April and early May really helped us out, even though my garden performed better in previous years with a little drought AND NO HAIL!

On a related note, for those readers who subscribe to various New Age theories, there is a pattern to storms here in Kansas that I'm at a lost to explain.  Storms often seem to follow one or two tracks across the state from west to east;  they parallel I-70 either south of it or north, but they seldom seem to cross I-70 diagonally.  Look closely at this screen shot of the radar on my iPhone on Tuesday morning.  I-70 is the horizontal highway that runs through the dots that designate Topeka and Salina.  This storm touched the highway, it but stayed just north along it all the way across Kansas.  I've seen this pattern very often.  So what is it about the highway that seems to direct the storms?  Geomagnetic lines?  Ley lines?  Ancient Native American pathways?  UFO flight paths?  Will this change as the Earth's magnetic poles continue to weaken?   Inquiring gardeners want to know.

But they'll only get to wonder for a short time.  Because I'm only leaving this post up to head the blog for 24 hours before we return to plant-y things.  ProfessorRoush is far too grounded to worry much about the mystical things.

Thoughts From The Abyss

Wednesday morning I walked through my garden with trepidation, fearful that at any minute I would slip and fall into one of the drought-created crevasses that lurked everywhere, sometimes obscured by a tuft of bluestem grasses, often hidden by a thin bridge of grass mulch.  These clay canyons, pictured here and just below to the left, are deep, Grand Canyon-style deep, perhaps opening all the way to the bedrock below.  Last weekend I chose to water a few of the less-established roses and I poured water from the hose into one of these caverns for over 2 minutes and never filled it up.  Finally, I gave up and moved on, fearful that the water was just gushing through the Earth to China, where the accumulation of all the moisture might make the Earth lopsided and spin us out of orbit.

I can't fathom how so many of my plants survive, roots anchored into parched soil like this.  If I would slip an endoscope into these cracks, would I see bare roots spanning the abyss like a primeval bridge, or would I see broken roots, snapped off under the tensile strains as the soil dried and shrank?  Are there entire new desert ecosystems growing deep inside the chasms, xeriscopic fungi gardened by thirsty insects with hardened chitin shields?  However the manner in which the soil splits and cracks, the survival of most of my plants right now stands as a testament to the natural selection pressures over the past 12 years in this garden.  It also illustrates just how drought-tolerant established roses can be.  If you want flowers in Kansas, grow roses.

This morning, Thursday morning, there is a mist in the air and the 0.9 inches of rain that fell last night (the first moisture in over a month of hot days) has begun to erase the fissures.  Taken at the exact same spot as the first photo above, you can see in the photo at the right that the edges of the canyons are eroding, and that the soil, although not nearly wet enough to be classified as moist, at least appears softer.  Always the cautious gardener, however, ProfessorRoush stayed away from the rims of the abyss because he knows that the now unstable edges might crumble beneath his feet, sweeping me down into the depths.  I fear that Mrs. ProfessorRoush would just never accept that explanation of why I was calling collect from Canton, China.  

Guilt Trip

I tell you, it's enough to give a guy a complex.  ProfessorRoush spent the early summer thinking that the two-year drought had eased, only to watch June and July turn completely dry in this area.  I can't count the number of storm fronts that I've seen split and go north and south of us, or watched as they came in from the west and petered out at the edge of the Flint Hills.  By Sunday, July 28th, this area was 2 inches below our normal July average, 4.92 inches (22.8%) below average for the year.  Tuttle Creek Reservoir, just north of Manhattan, was at a record low elevation of 1074.49 feet.  I was beginning to feel like a pioneer Kansan of the late 1930's, praying for rain,  not for the crops, but so that the six-year-olds can see water fall from the sky.

Then, last Monday morning, July 29th, I started north at 4:30 a.m. for a business trip to Omaha Nebraska.  It began to sprinkle on me when I was 10 miles north of Manhattan and it rained all the way to Omaha (3 hours drive).  According to the paper, by 7 a.m. Monday morning, it had rained 0.98 inches in Manhattan.  By Tuesday at 7 a.m. it had rained another 2.1 inches.  On Wednesday and Thursday there was minimal rain, but Thursday night there was another 1.89 inches.   I came home Friday night to a 5 inch rain gauge by my vegetable garden that had overflowed.  No more deficit presently for 2013. We now have a surplus of 1.85 inches for the year-to-date.

I'm now feeling a little guilty for not leaving town sooner.  We rarely get Spring-quantity rains here in July and August, and if I'd been here watching the storms, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have rained in any measurable quantity.  Others may have recognized my odd recent power over the weather as well.  I texted a friend late Tuesday, saying "Evidently, all I had to do was leave town," and he replied "well, you can come back now, we're drowning."

The result of all this rain in my garden is a previously dormant lawn that now needs mowed, some very happy roses, and the rising dominance of the fungi.  The large one pictured above, and the others sprouts shown here, have popped up in the location that I usually see them, an unusually damp spot along my "viburnum" bed where the grasses are always a bit greener.  I fantasize that it must be the site of an old buffalo wallow.  Or perhaps there is a subterranean spring lurking just below the surface here;  a "dowser" witched out the spot last year and told me I should drive a well there.  I'd have been more impressed by his abilities if the grass where he was standing wasn't emerald green while the grass 10 feet away was as brown and dry as a paper grocery sack.

I'm now afraid that if the weather turns dry again, I'm going to wake up to neighbors with torches and pitchforks ready to run me out of town.  If so, I plan to use this blog as an emergency beacon, so please monitor it closely over the next few months and be ready to rescue me from the lynching townsfolk.  Or just give me a quick ride out of the area.

I Lay Awake...

I laid awake all night and listened to the rain.  I listened as the dry raspy voice of the parched ground was stilled under a steady gentle shower.  I listened as the wind gently caressed the earth, drawing away the stored heat of the sun's furnace.  I listened as the lightning flashed and demanded in a deep, booming voice that the soil bring forth life again.  I listened as the world became right again.

This was the radar view as I settled in last night, the whole area of middle Kansas on the brink of a break in the drought.  The national media has focused here recently, noting that drought has struck the hardest in areas of Kansas and Iowa, calling it "extreme" or "exceptional" drought here in this band of Flint Hills that I've chosen to garden.  Yesterday's newspaper, as always, grimly listed the tally; 14.21 inches of rain so far in 2012, 11.51 inches less than normal.  I was afraid, seeing this radar picture, knowing that I'd seen it several times before in this summer, the promised storms breaking on the shores of the western Flint Hills and leaving us yet dry.  For an hour more I wondered, until the first gentle drops kissed the skylights, increasing in tempo until my anxiety eased at last.

My rain vigils are dependent both on modern technology and on ancient instincts.  I'm addicted to an Iphone app called MyRadar, which allows me to see the rainstorms coming at the touch of a button, direction and severity on full display.  I don't deal in rain chances.  Twenty percent or sixty percent predictions mean nothing in the mid-continent unless you actually see and feel the thunderheads build.  My inborn and farm-bred intuition of when the rain will wither or build, and where it will head and how far it will spread, are still far better than the muddled mathematical measures of local meteorologists.  I recently have come to suspect that authorities have conspired to change the reference colors on radar in the same way they manipulate the Homeland Security threat level.  Storms with orange and red pass over us with barely a dribble where in the past they meant deluges and discussions of cubits.  Forget green and blue, those colors now leave us frustrated and weary.  At the end of any actual rain that reaches the ground, I use simple gauges to tell me if we were teased or fulfilled, but my first knowledge of the volume bestowed is always from a small depression in the blacktop right off of my garage pad.  Filled to overflowing is more than 3/4th's of an inch.  Barely damp is less than a 10th.  My hopes and dreams are raised or dashed with my first morning sight of that puddle.

I laid awake all night and listened to the rain. The patter of the rain against the window near my left ear, and the rhythmic breathing and occasional snores of Mrs. ProfessorRoush in my right ear, calmed me and rested me far better than sleep.  The rain continues now as I rise, with chances for more rain in each of the next three days, God-willing.  But for now, the puddle overflows and I and the prairie earth are renewed.

Dry Times and Desperate Measures

The dry time has come, my friends, when a gardener's principles of xeriscaping and letting plants fend for themselves has smashed into the proverbial hard spot.  As a gardener on this bit of prairie, I try mightily, sometimes seemingly against my better judgement, to have as little impact as I can on my environment.  Minimal extra water use, lots of mulch, pesticides only in emergencies, no inorganic fertilizer, plants selected for the conditions of my region.  I fail mightily as well, harvesting corn drenched in insecticide (growing corn here in Kansas at any time qualifies as an emergency), watering marginal plants in dry times, and choosing some plants because they are unusual or interesting or pretty, even if they are better adapted to Costa Rica than this mid-continental desert.

I understand, however, on some basic level, that an attempt to garden at all must inevitably result in some effects on the environment.  I can't give Mrs. ProfessorRoush a rose garden, for instance, without displacing the native prairie grasses that would otherwise outcompete the roses.  I can't plant a tree on the prairie without shading out some of those same grasses.  I can choose a Miscanthus sp., or select among the excellent cultivars of Panicum, but the first is not native here and the second may not drawn the same insects, or the same birds to its seeds, or provide the same benefits to the soil as the native forms.  As noted by Michael Pollan in the classic essays of Second Nature, ornamental gardening means finding "a middle ground between the two positions of domination of a piece of ground or acquiescence to the natural conditions of the area."

I have drawn the line against nonintervention this weekend while worrying about my trees.  I'm quite pleased, these days, with the growth of several maples and oaks and cottonwoods that I have planted, and I'm quite distressed to see them turn silver leaves to the sky and begin to die.  Go away, Charles Darwin, and stop whispering in my ear.   I cannot stand by and let the pressures of Natural Selection, represented by this extreme and unusual drought, dictate which trees survive in my garden.  I cannot coexist here with a garden of Red Cedars and Osage Orange.  I need my Sweet Gum, my Black Gum, and my 'Patriot' Elm to create the illusion that I have some control over my garden.  I need them to linger here after I'm gone, keeping my presence after the end of days.

So I'm watering the trees today, deeply and individually, with a sprinkler that will cover most of the root extent.  I'm watering them in order of my love for them; my daughter's accidental Silver Maple first, next the native Cottonwood (pictured here) ravished first by ice storms and then drought, the 'October Glory' Red Maple that I hold dear in the Fall was third, and so on to the others.  My apologies to the Flint Hills aquifer, but I'd like someday to see a tree here large enough to support a squirrel or two, maybe to serve as a perch for a hungry owl, and perhaps to provide a little shade to rest from the Kansas sun.  As I water, however, I see that the backlit spray of water just looks like another clump of grass on the prairie, a quiet reminder to me of what God really intends to be grown here.

Broken Record

News reports have now made it official; July 2012 was the hottest July on record in North America.  I don't know about you, the broader audience that is reading this blog, but I expected that the record would be broken.  Certainly the heat and drought here in Kansas have exceeded my usual dismal expectations.  I've found myself taking numerous pictures of rain clouds and judging storm directions on radar to the detriment of the rest of my life, and I've been disappointed in most cases to see the rain veer away from Manhattan.  I can't count the times when I've actually seen actual rain falling down from a quarter mile distant vantage where I remained dry and sun-blasted.  Here, for example, is a photo of a storm that I took on my way into work on July 12th, missing Manhattan about a mile to the east:



Of greater interest to me is what all this means for the future and what it tells us about "global warming."  The previous record we broke in July here in Kansas was set in the Dust-bowl year of 1935.  So we have at least, with the reputed additional effects of global warming, broke a record set some 77 years ago before anyone even dreamed of climate change.  Temperature records in the US have only been kept since 1885, a mere 50 years earlier than the 1935 records.  How can we possibly say that this July was the hottest EVER?  The hottest on record in the short range of human experience yes, but the hottest EVER?  And the "hot" records are being set here in North America.  The same newspaper edition that announced the hottest July ever contained a story about a rare snowfall in Johannesburg South Africa; a place where it snows only once every 20 years on average. 

Certainly, Kansas has had previous, and will have in the future, dry years and windy years and hot years and cold years.  Horticulture in Kansas will always try the patience of gardener and wife.  Isaac Goodnow, a co-founder of Kansas State University, moved to Kansas and reached the Manhattan area in April of 1855, long before official records of temperature and climate were recorded.  His diary from that year states "The nights are exceedingly windy and dusty", a statement that wouldn't shock anyone living here 157 years later.  He also noted that he "have had to spend much time almost everyday in encouraging the young men and keeping them from going home.” I, for one, can easily sympathize with that last entry for there are many times this summer when I've stood in my garden and been tempted to chuck it all and move to a better climate.

 In the meantime, the drought has been bad this summer, but I'm encouraged that the prairie looks approximately the same as it did early in June, as shown in the photo above.  We've had over 40 days of 100F+ degree temperatures and less than a total of 2 inches of rain in that entire period, but the prairie is holding its own, as most of my garden seems to as well.  My assessment of my garden, of course, is still limited by a brief examination at 5:30 a.m. while I run around frantically with watering cans, but I will take "holding its own" as a positive until I see September begin to usher back more temperate weather. 

Survivor Lessons

Last weekend I was puttering around the garden, doing all the usual things, pulling weeds, deadheading roses, sobbing over some drought-stricken perennials, and then, stumbling dehydrated up the cement stairs from the back garden beds, I came unexpectedly face to face with a shining example of eternal truth.  The truth that, as said best by a character in the now ancient movie classic Jurassic Park, "Life always finds a way."

Growing in a quarter-inch deep deposit of wind-blown organic debris, surrounded below, and to three sides by limestone or cement, exposed to the burning southwestern sun, stood a small volunteer lavender plant in perfect health.  Never mind that we hadn't seen any appreciable rain for a month, never mind not a sprinkle for a week, this little baby plant had germinated and grown on nothing but air, limestone, and a little organic dust.  About one and one-half inch tall and wide, its entire time on this planet must have been as precarious as a trapeze artist without a net.  One wrong step by a dog, a too-forceful gust of hot wind, a wandering herbivore, and the time of this plant would have been over. 

There are many lessons here for all of us, lessons both of gardening and of how to live our lives.  I'm sure that others can take their own thoughts from the image above, but I, for one, was struck first by this blatant demonstration about wants and needs; that we must, for our own sakes, find an environment that contains everything needed to prosper, including shelter, moisture, food and sunlight.  And yet the best survivors don't really ask or expect much more than that, as this little plant was telling me.  Lavender is surely adapted well to the Kansas climate, as many Mediterranean plants are, but scratching out a living on my cement steps was not something I would have predicted for it.

The little trooper also shows us a lesson about going with the flow. I don't know how long it has been growing, probably no more than a few weeks, but it started life in the middle of the hottest, driest days of summer and then found the strength and moisture, from dew, from translocation through the concrete, or from the very air, to keep growing. It scoffed at the burning sun and the 110 temperatures. It held fast to the rock despite the searing Kansas summer winds. It protected itself by drawing around it the little fuzzy gray-green coat common in lavenders.

Can we be as strong, we gardeners, we humans?  To grow without over-ambitious expectations, to survive in the face of adversity, to cling to the wonder of life? Are we all ready to take the chance, to take the leap of our lives and then to hang on with all our God-given gifts and just be thankful for the sunlight?  I suppose, for my little lavender friend and for each of us, that time will give us our answer.    

Blinded to Drought

Oops, I made a slight gardening error by taking a short four-day vacation this week.  We've had higher than normal temperatures for a month (one day topping at 110F) and the last significant rainfall was 1 inch on July 14th (this is being written on August 8th).  I knew things were getting a little dry, but prior to leaving, I watered the newest plants and everything else was looking pretty solid. Oh sure, I'd noticed that the clay soil was pulling away from my limestone edging a little bit, but the plants were toughing it out.  Normally, I don't even think about watering plants that have been in the ground over a year. I prefer to practice the tough love xeriscapic approach to gardening.

Hydrangea paniculata 'Limelight'

But I should have listened to the story told by the clay and edging.  Upon my return, it was obvious that my 'Royal Star' Magnolia (Magnolia stellata ‘Royal Star’) and several panicled hydrangea (Hydrangea paniculata ‘Limelight’, for instance) were showing the effects of the hot weather and drought.  And a 'Jelena' Witch Hazel (Hamamelis x intermedia 'Jelena') was practically burnt to a crisp.  Obviously I could have avoided the worst of the damage if I had recognized that the drought was reaching a critical phase and if I had started watching these indicator plants earlier.

Rudbeckia hirta

Happily, nothing else in the garden has yet been blasted in the Kansas furnace.  All the roses go merrily along, although perhaps they are not blooming as profusely in the heat, and the crape myrtles and the Black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) are just laughing at the heat.