Miscellanies

 In his latest attack...er...foray into his second favorite world, the literary dimension of Half-Price Books,  ProfessorRoush came away with an embarrassing number of additions to his "collections."   Of the coveted group, however, I've been most pleased, surprised in fact, by the easy readability of a 2003 text, The Secrets of Wildflowers, by Jack Sanders.  Addressing approximately 74 different wildflowers, one might think initially that this would be a dry field guide, but it instead is composed of 2-3 pages about each species, all common to North America but not necessarily native here, written in what turns out to be entirely conversational style.  It is as if Mr. Sanders was sitting here in the room with me, telling me the most interesting facts about each.

I give you, for example, the first page of the entry about Rudbeckia hirta, the Black-Eyed Susan, as an example.  A little history, a little botany, a little information regarding propagation, and several pages later, one looks up and then is drawn to the next wildflower, Bindweed in this case, in sequence.  I was enticed to purchase the bargain hardback, by the way, by its description of Goatsbeard, page 113, noted for "two kinds of clocks."

Otherwise, it is just a typical lazy Sunday in Kansas.   We had an 80% chance of rain today and didn't get any (thankfully, for once, we don't need any), but I did venture out to snap this picture, taken from my front steps looking northwest, which perfectly illustrates the capricious nature of rain in the Flint Hills.  Somebody on my horizon WAS getting rain, although likely it was only a single property, or group of solo properties in a Northwest to Southeast line.   The small downpour illustrated here missed us, anyway.  Click on the picture to see and magnify the area of rain in the center.

We've had enough recent rain that my yard is sprouting these mushroom caps everywhere.  I'm inclined to leave this group alone, hoping that it is the beginning of a new "fairy ring" that will spread in this lawn long after I'm gone.  Of course, I'd like to know the proper scientific name of this fungus, but I'm afraid that my identification of the above-ground appearances of mycelial colonies is inadequate for the dozens or hundreds of possible fungi that manifest in lawns as "fairy rings."  I'm content to observe it, leave it alone, and certainly promise to not consume any of it.  Additionally, I was horrified enough by finding this pamphlet listing fungicides approved for fairy ring elimination from lawns, that I'm considering starting a National "Save the Fairy Ring" Foundation.  What nature-hating, environmentally-unconscious kinds of people write these things?  Fungi are people too.

Please, Fall, Come.

ProfessorRoush is absolutely, assuredly, positively, unquestionably, and undoubtedly ready for Fall.  Things out there in the greater garden are looking bedraggled and I'm decisively ready for Fall.  I'm tired of mowing the lawn every week without fail and I'm surely ready for Fall.  The lilac leaves are mildew-ing and dropping and both they and I are conclusively ready for Fall.  Everything is overgrown and I'm losing to the weeds and I'm categorically ready for Fall.  Come on over, Fall!

I woke this morning to the perfect hint of Fall, but I have yet to be convinced that we will see it.  There was moderate fog around and I love the fog for its dampening of sounds from town and the sense of isolation it brings.   The view above, straight into the garden and lacking the usual houses on the horizon, takes me back 10 years in an instant, to a time before those houses were built and it was just us and the sky to the south.  Click on it and dive in with your soul.  And the view below, at a slight eastern angle to the first, picks up the longhorn cattle grazing in the pasture and my neighbor's pond beyond.  Serenity at its finest.  Don't you feel calmed by the scene?

It has been such a weird gardening year with the rain and all.  If you knew anything of Kansas, you should know that the garden above should be browning by now, if not completely August-drought-dry.  Instead, the growth is nearly as green as at the beginning of spring, as it has been all summer long, just beginning to show the changes of grass color to the reds of fall. I've never, since moving to the prairie, mowed every week all summer and by this time of year I'm usually able to cut every other week if not just once a month.

I checked on Friday, and through that day, we've had 42.18 official inches of rain in 2019, an increase over average rain of 14.76 inches, or in other terms, 54% more than the average annual rainfall through September 6th!  Climate change or coincidence?  Just for those following the fictions of Al "the Arctic will be ice free by 2014" Gore, the high and low temperatures here for September 6, 2019 were 94ºF and 68ºF respectively.  The records for that date are a high of 106ºF set in 1913 and a low of 42ºF set in 1962.  If climate change it must be, I think I'd prefer the extra rain and today's temperatures versus the high of 1913.  In fact, even 1913 seems to be a weird record since the majority of the high temperature records in this area were established in the Dust-Bowl 30's. 

The strangest part of this year, to me, was that because of all the wet weather, my garden's fairy ring never materialized.  I have an enormous fairy ring in my garden, which I've never written about but have intended to.  In recent years, it has approached more than 50' in diameter, old and growing every year.  Instead, I waited and waited and they almost never came.  These two mushrooms above, the smaller posing for a close-up in the photo below, just popped up in the fairy ring yesterday and are the only two I've seen anywhere in the garden this year.  Since the same official rainfall records note that we are -0.72" behind our annual average rain for September (making the earlier part of the year even more wet in comparison), is it that this fairy ring only dances in drought times?  Inquiring minds would like to know.