Disaster Averted?

ProfessorRoush has a question mark on the title because I'm not entirely sure yet, but the 4 inches of wet snow last Monday seems to have hardly bothered the plants, and any real damage probably came in the next two nights with lows of 27ºF and a really hard frost one of those mornings.  A late snow does make some pretty pictures, however, even though I and this pink crabapple didn't appreciate it like we could have.

I know that you're wondering how all the plants fared, so I'll try to get right to that.  I'm actually pleasantly surprised that anything at all is left, as green and leafed out as things were, but almost everything came through with minimal damage.   Yes, it whacked the 'Ann' and 'Jane' Magnolias, but they were on their last moments anyway.   The variegated iris shown below has not even blinked, if anything, shining brighter today than ever.

I think a lot of the damage was limited by the heavy blanket of very wet snow insulating all the plants and then quickly melting off.   Fantastically quickly as a matter of fact.  The picture at the left was taken around 7:20 a.m. on the morning of 04/20/21.  The picture below of the exact same view was taken at 6:38 p.m. the same evening. 

Fernleaf Peony

Fernleaf under snow

And the plants recovered just as quickly.   The picture on the left is of the fernleaf peony and tulips covered by snow, and on the right, just a few nights later.   That fernleaf was blooming fully beneath the snow and it never looked back.  You can click on them if you want to see them larger.

And the lilacs, the lilacs that I was so worried about?  Well, here are the row of lilacs tonight, and the exact same bloom from 'Declaration that I showed you in the blog entry from 4/20.  I think the cold seems to have lightened the blooms a little bit, but they have retained their fragrance and held up remarkedly well.   Stepping on my garage pad tonight, in the middle of a brisk wind, is like stepping into a perfume factory.  

Last, but not least, I'm sure you're all wondering about my beloved 'Yellow Bird' Magnolia.   Before the snow, I thought it was going to give me the best show yet, the blooms just ready to peak on the exact day of the snow.  Well, I can't say it came through it unscathed, but I think it will survive to bloom another year.   The leaves that opened early are a bit frost-damaged, and the blooms are discolored up close (see below), but it seems to not be nearly so damaged as I feared.  And that, my friends, is my summary for the entire event; a near-heart-attack-inducing late spring snow that wasn't nearly so bad as I feared.   Thank you, God!

'Yellow Bird', today

'Yellow Bird', today.

Oh My P. P.!

Okay, the first rule of 2021 is that we don't talk about "the year prior."  We leave behind here all reference to the misery and chaos of the past few months and any bad feelings or thoughts associated with it.  And, for the record, the title of this blog entry does not mean what you were thinking it did.  You obviously stayed up late on New Year's Eve and have carried over your hangover and mental remnants of debauchery from the closed doors of our locked-down society onto my innocent intentions.  In complete gardening naivete, I meant "Oh my poor peonies."  I can't believe you thought otherwise.  

We won't talk about last year's miseries, but we need to be prepared that our gardening tribulations didn't magically end with an arbitrary agreed-upon calendar change. The photo at the top was taken on Christmas Day last when I realized to my shock that my fernleaf peonies were already birthing into the world, months ahead of prudence and safety. These poor darlings are waking too early, yet another victim of the seasonal time change.  Or  global warming.  Or it could be normal and I've never noticed it.  But it was only Christmas Day and I had peonies breaking ground!  Ridiculous. They should be still sleep, like this reading, dozing old man in my garden, carefree for the cold world around.  My peonies should still be snug under a frozen crust, protected and nurtured by the brown earth around.  Oh, my poor precocious foolish darlings.

And those little red nubbins weren't alone.  Nearby and also coming out were these more-blanched spears of what I think are a Matrona sedum, and doubtless I could find more elsewhere if I looked.  But ProfessorRoush doesn't go looking for trouble when he can avoid it.  If I don't know they're out and about, I can rest easier under the illusion that my garden is also at rest, hibernating against the frigid days still surely to come.  If I stay out of the garden in body and mind, I'm almost positive my garden cannot change without me.  If I don't search out problems, they won't visit me, just as COVID stayed an ocean away last spring while we ignored it, correct?

Well, it was the thought that counts.  I can't change the seasons, nor the cycle of death and rebirth, anymore than I can change the clouds rolling across the Kansas prairie.  I can only await, anticipate, and accommodate to whatever comes in 2021.  It was only a number change, people, the world still moves along its same prior path.  We must perish or adapt, just like these peonies in the coming cold.

Showing the Crazy

 ProfessorRoush has missed posting a couple times this week.  I have not been entirely idle in the garden but there didn't seem like there was much to tell.  Some early henbit needed mowing, so the lawn mower was fired up and the mulching plug put in.  I loaded up the trailer and brought home 16 bales of straw to use as garden mulch.  That seems like a lot, but there will be a lot more this year since I'm mulching everything with straw and putting the lawn clippings on the dusty lawn.  And I noticed my Paeonia tenuifolia is blooming and snagged the bumble picture at the upper right.  Notice how full his pollen basket is and yet, he continues to harvest the bountiful yellow pollen in a bee-frenzied fit of gluttony.

Yesterday, I also did the craziest thing I've done in the garden in ages.  While purchasing the straw at a local garden center, I couldn't resist the swan call of these two plants, a Crimson Sweet Watermelon, photo at left, and the Ball 2076 muskmelon pictured below.

 Normally, I plant these from seed sometime in June, but they begged me incessantly to take them home.  I checked the 10 day forecast, saw no nighttime temperatures below 42ºF, and so decided that this year, if by some miracle they survived, I might be able to beat the local markets for homegrown melons and thus not be too late to gain Mrs. ProfessorRoush's admiration and gratitude.  Previously, by the time my seed grown melons are ripe, she has already bought several at the local markets and is sick of them, leaving me dejected and without praise.

Some of the straw went to mulch the garden all around the melons; at least the ground around them will stay nice and moist and cool all summer and I'll be able to avoid weeding among the vines.  If I'm lucky, the straw will also make it harder for the rabbits to find these melons.

Early bloomers continue to pop up everywhere in the garden since the frost has stayed away for a week or more.  My Red Peach is a bright beacon in the back of the garden, a standout in the evening sun.  Alas, last year in a storm, I lost the red peach tree in front of the house, pictured in the link, but this one is doing just fine.

And, to my surprise, I noticed this iris blooming (here, right and below, left) yesterday.  I have it planted in a corner of the vegetable garden, an experiment from when we just moved to the prairie which I never got around to  transplanting into a perennial bed.  I don't know it's name, but here it is, in a hurry to be the first, several weeks ahead of my other iris.

Viburnums are blooming too; at least some of them, but that's another story for a later time.  Check back here soon and I'll tell you that tale just as soon as I solve the mystery of why some are MIA.

Kansas-Tested, Bella-Approved

Remember the "kid-tested, mother-approved" 1970's jingle from the Kix cereal ads?  Well, my recently blooming, Kansas-tested Paeonia tenuifolia was Bella-approved during a walk yesterday.

I had the exuberant and rambunctious puppy out for one of her many daily jaunts when she spied this blooming peony from across the garden and made a Beagle-line for it.  Since Mrs. ProfessorRoush and Bella have recently confessed to accidental beheading of a foot-tall concrete garden gnome (and I suspect the same irresponsible pair for the recently-broken wing of a small garden angel), I allowed Bella to approach the peony but with some trepidation, expecting her to plop on it enthusiastically like she does on the cats.  Instead of blundering into the clump however, she halted a foot away and tentatively sniffed first one bloom and then another, sampling the plant's aroma like an oenophile assessing a new vintage. 

During the sampling, Bella kept a respectable distance as if expecting the plant to bite, and it occurred to me that the impressions that she and I get from the same plant are likely very different.  I wonder, even, if we could agree on anything about the plant's fragrance?  I haven't spent a lot of time investigating Paeonia tenuifolia for fragrance and I don't recall if it has any fragrance at all.  In fact, I can't even confirm that I've ever buried my nose in it, a deficiency that I intend to rectify tonight.  For me, however, to take a fragrance description beyond sweet, fruity, or musky would be a tremendous leap of imagination.  To a half-Beagle nose like Bella's, for all I know, Paeonia tenuifolia could smell like anything from milk chocolate with a sprig of mint, to a drunken sailor unwashed from a month at sea, to a hungry Cretaceous predator.  The latter may, in fact, be the more likely possibility based on Bella's reticence to get close enough to allow the plant to bite.

Paeonia tenuifolia does look a little bit other-worldly with that finely segmented foliage and single bloom at the tip of each stem, but I haven't observed a similar reaction from Bella towards other plants, so I'm at a loss to explain the behavior.  Come to think of it though, this is one of the first plants, other than daffodils, to bloom at her shoulder level, and it was the first bright red plant to bloom at all this year.  Bella is only a baby and she hasn't experienced the garden in all its bountiful glory yet so this may just be the first of many surprises to come.  I waited for her to go ahead and ravage the plant, but after a few gentle sniffs, she turned her attentions elsewhere, as if to say "Well, I know what that is now and it is not interesting."   ProfessorRoush, however, is left now to wonder just how different my garden looks to a dog's nose.  And what I wouldn't give to experience it like Bella, just one time.

Finely Foliaged Fernleaf

A few years back, I was fortunate to have a friend who offered to trade some starts of his treasured fernleaf peony, the species peony Paeonia tenuifolia, for something in my garden.  I had seen and lusted after these peonies in several catalogues, but each time had recoiled against the listed price, often at $50 for a single start.  In contrast, my friend presented me with an enormous clump that I divided immediately and planted as three plants in my own garden and I also gave two away to others.  All three of the ones I kept are expanding and growing in my garden, now three years after planting. Thank God for the beneficence of gardeners!

The fernleaf peony is a fairly short (1-2 feet tall) herbaceous peony that is by far, the earliest peony to bloom in my garden.  It is blooming today, as seen in the picture above, at a time of year when most of my other peony varieties have not formed buds and some are just barely breaking ground.  Paeonia tenuifolia has crimson flowers (to 3" across) with yellow stamens that rise above some of the most attractive and unusual foliage in the garden.  The foliage is deeply divided and lobed into needle-like, ferny segments, hence the tenuifolia name, which means "slender leaved."  Several varieties and cultivars are on the market, from the single-form of the species that I grow, to a double form known as Paeonia tenuifolia 'Rubra Flora Plena', to a beautiful pink double form not yet commercially available.  The species and associated cultivars seem to be popular peonies in rock gardens.

Paeonia tenuifolia has been known in Europe since at least the 1500's and was described by Linnaeus in 1759.  In reading about this peony, I was interested to see that most sources describe this peony as needing extra water during the year, one source even recommending continually-wet soil, while it seems to be doing well without any extra water in my own garden.  Paeonia tenuifolia is native to the Caucasus Mountains of Russia, as well as areas north of the Black Sea and westward into Romania and Serbia, an area with cold winters and hot, dry summers, so it is actually should be no surprise that it does well here in Kansas.  A description at the Heartland Peony Society website suggested that the usual culprit in this peony's demise is too much humidity, which causes it to succumb to "fungus," so I suspect the recommendation for extra-water is a myth handed down from writer to writer, none of whom actually have attempted themselves to grow the plant in a dry garden.  As a mentor used to tell me, "If I wrote the sky is green in a book chapter, soon the whole world would be repeating that the sky is green." 

I did learn from my reading that Paeonia tenuifolia is supposed to be well-scented, and I'm ashamed to admit that I've never checked it for scent before.  However, after sniffing over my own peony last evening, I can confirm that it has a pleasant light scent, but I wouldn't consider it the assault to my nose that many herbaceous peonies seem to be.