Garden of Glass

ProfessorRoush had to leave home before dawn yesterday morning, but returned home at noon to a sunshine-blue sky and a garden made of crystal.  The view of Mrs. ProfessorRoush's favorite redbud tree and the lilacs lining the garage pad was otherworldly, an alien landscape of architectural glass forms.

The prairie grasses, themselves, were bent low with the weight of 1/2" thick ice, reddened by the strain of winter's fury.  Even the buff buffalograss was transformed, a crackling surface rough on the paws of poor Bella, who decided she really wanted as few bathroom breaks as possible in this mess.

How much the ice must have affected all the wildlife who couldn't rush inside?  At least the overhang from my bluebird boxes seemed to be protecting the precious structure and potential lives beneath it.

And, alas, all the poor shrubs.  Viburnums, lilacs, honeysuckle and sumac, transformed to statues as stiff as the concrete and glass ornaments among them.  Look at the icicle that was formerly my Star Magnolia, brittle branches defenseless to the first cruel wind that arises.  Today's high is supposed to be 36ºF.  I can only hope that the sun comes out before the south wind and clears the branches from their burdens before they shatter and break.

There is hope however, buried within the glass.  No deer will be munching on these Magnolia flower bud popsicles in the near future.  Glazed artwork,  the protected buds will wait patiently and, maybe, just perhaps, decide to put off their spring debut until a more reasonable period of warming occurs.

For right now, my garden is a time capsule frozen by a winter's tantrum.  A freak sudden climate change, a sudden shift to Ice Age, and millennia from now a future archaeologist might be uncovering a garden of magnolias, roses, and daylilies, wondering how they could all survive together in such a horrid place for gardening.  He or she might come across that eternal granite garden bench of mine, an alluring seat in the sunshine of my photo last week, but not nearly so inviting now.  A little more digging, however, and they'll discover the strawberry bed of the vegetable garden, protected behind an electric fence and under a layer of straw, and know that here lived a gardener, one filled with hope for a fruit-filled future and spring.   

Blue Ice

The garden waits, entombed in ice.
Life suspended, frozen time.
Stiff and brittle, brown and silent.
Bowing low to winter's will.

Buried deep, it hides within.
Fire smolders, glazed in rime.
Ice the master, cold its maiden.
Staying spring with binding chill.

Blue the ice, reflecting sky.
Bluer yet, on cobalt glazed.
Crystal water stretches down,
Straining for the frozen ground.

Ice has come, and ice will go.
Sun will shine, new longer days.
Winter trembles, spring will win.
 Melting cobalt's shining crown.

Just a little ode to the ice storm that really wasn't.  Yes, we got some ice here in the Flint Hills, perhaps a quarter inch, more likely an eighth.  Not nearly the shel-icing predicted and simply an expected moment of winter caused by the collide of different weather fronts.  The only bright color in my garden is now the bottle tree, a shining gem with a fantastic multi-faceted coating.  It was for this moment that I cemented the post deep in the ground years past, stalwart against the worst of wind and storm, to shout defiance at the winter's worst.  I could only wish today for sunshine, to make it glisten and shine, if only for the briefest moment. 

Still Here...Until the Icepocalypse

ProfessorRoush hasn't slept in, self-defined as any prone position of my body after 6:00 a.m., for years, but I had plans to make it until at least 7:00 a.m. this first morning of a three-day weekend.  Unfortunately, Miss Bella decided that she needed to protect me against the meanderings of monsters sneaking about the prairie and she moved up from the bottom of the bed to sit on my chest, facing the door and huffing to indicate her alarm, around 6:30 a.m.  When she didn't stop, I got up to prepare defenses against a home-invading horde of Huns and found that my mildly obese mutt was correct in all ways except for the home-invasion.  This particular horde of Huns was perfectly content to keep grazing around the mailbox, undisturbed by the barking Bella behind the glass storm door.  Perhaps they were expecting delivery of a late Christmas package and awaiting the mail truck.

We are expecting an ice storm here sometime tonight, and while I am happily anticipating the enforced solitude and the early garden pruning that the storm will initiate, the rest of Manhattan seems to be fearing that the end of civilization is upon us.  A quick trip to the grocery store for sliced ham on the way home last night revealed that the neighboring population had cleaned out the local supermarket of all bread, milk, sticks of butter, and, to my surprise, every package of lunch meat available.  I came home, amused and complacent in the knowledge that we have enough dry cereal and pasta in the house to tide us over until planting weather.  I'm even more secure that we can make it to warm weather after this morning's sighting of potential food on the hoof.   If they are going to eat my roses, the least they can do is hang around for dinner.

I'm quite serious about hoping that we get enough ice tonight to flatten the garden.  At the end of next week, temperatures are forecast in the mid-50's and I'm in a perfect mood to bulldoze and start over anyway, so que sera sera.  I miss you, Doris Day.  What a beautiful voice and bubbly actress.  Once upon a time, movies and television programming was more interesting than a group of profane idiots arguing over who should or shouldn't be sleeping with whom.  

Ice Time

Rosa rugosa 'Hunter'

Ice, what change thou has wrought on the landscape of Eden!  A night of frozen tears, a dawn of day, and earth seems shackled in a skin of glass.  Breath of North, a frozen gale has bowed brave 'Hunter' down, closing pistil and stamen against the will of the bloom.  It's suitors absent, huddled in their hives, the red flower now becomes a jewel, a ruby amidst thorns.  This glowing center of winter's garden pleases under ice but will fade at the next kiss of a warm breeze.

The view from my southern back window is lightened this morning, the garden itself somehow cleaner and calmed.  In contrast, the front, north-facing windows are opaque with ice, mere light without form in their distance.  Under the weight of solid water, the Sawtooth Oak on the left sighs and spreads, hoping to ease the burden of load.  

I worry for the trees, especially the proud but precarious Redbud to the west.  The favorite of Mrs. ProfessorRoush, a stiff wind could undo it in seconds, cracking it to kindling in a contest of will.  The existing gale already broke the resolve of the garden's photographer, sending him fleeing into the warmth of house, to the fire of hearth. 

There will be no further sticky-fingered tree frogs on my bottle tree, blue cobalt turned death trap for amphibian skin.  Summer is long past, and I pray that whatever moist skinned creatures survived the droughts of August have long burrowed into shelter.

'Carefree Beauty'

'Fru Dagmar Hastrup'

The orange hips of Carefree Beauty are preserved today, cased in glass, but will soon turn brown and shrivel.  So to, the relucent redder rugosa hip of 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup' will dim to dull.  Life in these hips has been stolen by the relentless ice, the seeds yet to spill upon the ground.

The cherub of the peony bed presides over all, calm and quiet, chaste and cool, reminding that this day was anticipated, nay expected, in the course of seasons.  The gardener heeds the stoic stone at last, slowing heartbeat, resting thoughts, reassured that the garden will survive again the orbit of years.