Lavender Days and Rabbit Plagues

Yesterday was Garden Day in ProfessorRoush's world; a full hot day in the sun to relish the feel of sweat and sore muscles and honest labor.  I cleaned the garage and weeded and watered and mowed and trimmed and mulched and took a break to help a friend load some estate sale dressers and just generally spuddled around from morning to supper.  I stayed hydrated and didn't mind the heat at all.   And yes, "spuddled" is a word, my new favorite word, an obsolete southwest English word according to Wiktionary, that means "to make a lot of fuss about trivial things, as if they were important."   Removing that extra-long holly branch from the path, throwing away old baling strings that I saved for when I needed them (which is never), and combining partial bottles of Grass-B-Gone spray, all of those and more were spuddling at its best.  

I did take time to admire my short row of lavender however, a 10 foot row of several varieties that thrive in the full sun of a raised limestone-edged bed.  They take absolutely no care or thought from me; every winter they stand stiff and brittle, dead from tip to bottom, and then all those dead stems come alive in June and produce luscious light blue flowers with that awesome scent of savory sugar clear through the heat of July.  The bees are flocking to the lavender (photo at left) in masses these days, feasting on the tiny bits of pollen clinging to each flower.  The iron chicken that stands among them finally looks like it belongs, a hen among a lavender forest.

This morning, I was quickly reminded how lucky I am to have a garden at all, a triumph in the face of furry pestilence that seems more prevalent this year.  I knew that there were rabbits about, an occasional admiration for the tiny bunny living in the front garden or a glimpse of the far-off larger bunny in the grass near the lower garden, but I had not realized the sheer numbers of the horde that has descended here.  Looking out the window at breakfast, I spied this lone brave lagomorph in the freshly cut lawn, but after watching a few moments longer, I realized this bunny wasn't a bachelor, but a trio, all within a few feet.  Can you spot them?

In the photo at the left, I've blown them up and added arrows to help you find the half-hidden one behind the iris at the bottom and the long ears of the one hidden in the prairie grass above.   None of these three are the baby bunny that I know lives in the front.   And now I'm wondering what kind of idiot ProfessorRoush is, because it probably is not one, but several baby bunnies in front too.   What exactly am I running, a garden or a feeding farm for rodents?

Thankfully, the rabbits don't bother the lavender, and, truthfully, I seldom recognize any bunny damage beyond some nibbling on the first few daylily shoots that venture out in Spring.  They may be out there plotting to kill off my favorite baby roses, but it's more likely that I benefit from all rabbit manure than they damage something important.  I won't begrudge them their short brutal and timid lives, because I know the coyotes and snakes will clean up the garden before winter.  It's a simple fact of gardening life; where there is a garden, there are rabbits, and where there are rabbits, there are predators, be them wild or man.  Or wild professors.

Positional Vistas

I am a gardener that spends most of my garden time looking down at the level of my feet, peering into the depths of each flower in search of beauty, examining each leaf closely for evidence of insect damage or fungus, standing fast against the tiny advance guard of marauding weeds.  I rarely take the time to glance up into the greater world and appreciate the wider views of my garden.  I could probably blame my approach to gardening on my surgical training because of the similar approach when I concentrate on a surgery.  In one moment, in a surgery, the world is small, the length of an incision or of a bone fragment.  The work completed, I take a breath and suddenly there is a bright room, with people and beeping anesthesia machines and the clank of instruments thrown back onto the table.  My innate focus on the activity at hand, however, is probably not training but is simply my nature and perhaps why I enjoy both my vocation and my hobby.  Anyway, the lesson for the today is to try not to be like me.

I was struck recently, walking Bella and passing by the northeast facing "entrance" to my back patio (shown above left), that a tall pillar rose on the left and the house on the right frame an almost good vista, the fake path stones leading one's eye to the patio and the statue and steps at the other end beckoning onward.  I was also struck by the fact that I know the view from top of the steps at the other end, shown to the right here, is not quite as artful, no frame to draw the eye and the satellite disk rudely imposing on the scene.









But those observations did serve to lead me into a search for other pleasing vistas in my garden and I learned once again that finding beauty is often simply a matter of one's perspective.  A frontal view of this peony bed, with peonies, mockorange, and honeysuckle in full bloom is not nearly so interesting as the "long axis" view at the left, with the curved line of the bed drawing our eyes down it.  It was a fabulous Spring morning, that day I took this photo.











And likewise, my lavender border, frozen back and beaten down by a harsh winter, looks like forty miles of bad road until the gardener or visitor takes a position to look along the bed, focusing on the upended limestone rock at the center.  The light blues, purples, grays and greens are so soothing that I could sit and look at this picture all day long.













I need to remember to look up far more often.  I live in a place where the sky and the land meet sometimes to form a fantastic view, a vista that only needs to be carefully framed to release the magic within it.  Two steps to the right and several feet forward and the picture at the left, of the low clouds, distant fog and my neighbor's house, could have been an even better memory of a special early morning.  We merely need to always remember to look for the beauty, frame it, and file it away, in a picture or in that collection of neural paths called a memory.  Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, but it is certainly enhanced and improved by the perspective of the beholder.

Blue Grass Marriages

Sigh....Mrs. ProfessorRoush informed me late last week that my "blue grass" was looking very pretty.  Like many gardeners, deeply engaged into my own vision of the garden, I asked "what blue grass?" wondering if perhaps a long-deceased small clump of blue fescue (Festuca glauca) had miraculously reappeared in my peony bed.  Alas, Mrs. ProfessorRoush had merely noticed and appreciated that the various lavender species were blooming in the rock edging just outside our back door.

It's a broad divide, this chasm between gardening and non-gardening spouses, seemingly as unbreachable as the differences which currently divide the red and blue state mentalities.  Like many such marriages, ours is tested by a constant skirmish between the siren call of the garden and the mundane honey-do chores of changing light bulbs and tightening the screws of kitchen drawer handles.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush has recently offered the preliminary terms of a truce, taking over watering of the windowsill boxes of herbs on the deck and the two containers of annuals near the front door, and I very much appreciated and accepted this initial overture, even though I sometimes notice wilting basil and begonias and am thus compelled to remind her that it is time to water.

Mrs. ProfessorRoush has further offered to help me in mowing and weeding chores, but I have so far rejected both proposals out of hand.  Mowing was rejected for reasonable and practical reasons.  I bag lawn clippings and use them as mulch at this time of the year.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush is unable to repeatedly lift and empty the two 80lb bags, which is actually viewed as a virtue by a gardening husband who sleeps more secure in the knowledge that she would be unable to move and bury a body without help.  There are some parts of my gardening persona that would welcome help with the weeding, but those fools are shouted down by the isolationist gardener in me.  Like the East Germans of the early 1990's, I'm deeply afraid of the consequences of tearing down the Wall.  Comments about our "pretty blue grass" provoke gruesome mental images of a newly-weeded bed, ragweed standing proudly among the uprooted and dehydrating carcasses of irises and daylilies. Oh, the carnage! Oh, the horror!

I am content, at present, simply to accept this unsolicited compliment from a non-gardening spouse and to let the slowly grinding wheels of diplomacy work through the other issues.  As I age, I recognize that I may someday need help lifting the clipping bags myself, and I may also be less reticent about the occasional loss of a few defenseless yarrow.  Aging, however, also carries the dangers of still more conflict.  I might, for instance, expect more help from a similarly aging spouse while Mrs. ProfessorRoush might envision hiring a work force of muscular, sweaty, shirtless young men to trim the roses.  If the latter is my destiny, then I simply welcome the growing gender equality of the workforce and must make sure that I remain in charge of the interview process.

Lavender Lessons

"There’s flowers for you;
Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram;
The marigold, that goes to bed wi’ the sun,
And with him rises weeping; thes are flower
Of middle summer, and I thek they are given

To men of middle age."

William Shakespeare The Winter’s Tale, iv.4

There are not many of these flowers given to THIS man of middle age, but I do GROW some of them.  I don't rightly know of all the places on the six habitable continents where lavender may grow well, but the Kansas sunshine and heat certainly don't hurt its survival prospects here. 

  

I did have some trouble, back in my Zone 5B years, wintering lavender through to Spring, but those troubles seem to be gone now that I've been magically transported, garden and gardener, into Zone 6.  I grow several varieties as a sort of short hedge along a rock wall in a very exposed and wind-swept area, and I've got a couple of other bunches of lavender in my outer garden beds. I am a big lavender fan, but I am probably a poor second next to the butterflies pictured here, in my admiration for it.  I depend on it, after all, for luxury and indulgence, but not for my sustenance.

The majority of my soil is clay, and I was skeptical about growing lavender here since it is supposed to like well-drained, sandy or gravelly soils.  What I believe I have learned from growing it here in Kansas, is that it may not require good drainage if the soil doesn't get wet enough or stay wet long enough to be a bother.  Certainly the soil is solid clay next to the rock wall but it does have decent drainage and anyway, we haven't had enough rain to wet your whistle, let alone drown lavender.

I unfortunately haven't keep track of the cultivars along the wall.  Ten cultivars have lived or died or been divided into a hedge that now appears to be composed of three.  In flat areas of my garden, many of the lavenders I've planted have died out, but the lavender pictured in such blue splendor at the bottom of this blog grows in a clay bed with little drainage and it is the best bloomer of all of its cousins this summer.  I don't know its name either, because its identity was lost when I lost my notes of new plantings last year.  It may, however, be L. intermedia 'Grosso', a memory supported by the vivid color and prolific bloom.  I believe that most of the other survivors in my garden are L.augustifolia cultivars as those always seemed more hardy.

So, Kansans, try some lavender.  Keep it dry and treasure it well. The return in flittering beauty alone makes the effort worthwhile.

BumbleBee Harvest Time

Ornamental grasses are all the rage in the fall garden these days and gardeners also crave any shrub whose foliage turns red, orange, or yellow to light up our fall landscapes.  As we design our landscapes solely to ease us softly into bitter winter, however, we should not forget that while it's harvest time all over Kansas and the Midwest for the grain needed to sustain mankind though the winter, it's harvest time for all the other creatures of Earth as well.

While fall gardeners still value flowering plants for adding color to the garden, there is no better reason to keep fall-blooming plants in your garden than to provide that final fall burst of energy for the many creatures who need nectar for winter stores, whether it's the hummingbirds migrating south for the winter or it is the bumblebee at the right, sipping at the 'Blue Mist' caryopteris.  In fact, take a closer look at that blue-collar workaholic bumblebee; covered in pollen from the many visits, it doesn't have time for a shower or a deodorant spritz, it's just buzz buzz buzz till the cold saps its energy.  Bumblebees store only a few days energy in the nest and each individual must reach a certain weight before entering their hibernation state if they are to survive the winter.  Astonishing efficient and cooperative, they leave a little scent deposit on every flower they visit, a gentle way of communicating to the next bumblebee to come along not to bother wasting time at that particular blossom.  In the fall, they benefit most from lavenders, asters, sunflowers, hyssop, sedums, goldenrods and salvias, which accounts for the activity around my lavenders and for all the Blue Sage (Salvia azurea), goldenrod, and sunflowers blooming all over the Kansas prairie right now.  I've not had a lot of luck with heather here in the Flint Hills, but a dense patch would help shelter the bumblebees in inclement weather so it might be worth a try in a sheltered area. Several sources noted that honeysuckles are also valuable in fall as a rich supply of nectar for bumblebees.  And I noticed just this weekend that my 'Florida Red' honeysuckle was blooming again.  Smart vine, that honeysuckle!

Of course, other flowers and plants are useful for these and other visitors.  The  Buddleia sp. keep up their display to attract butterflies like the late season Thoas Swallowtail pictured at the right.  The milkweeds sacrifice themselves for the greater glory of the Monarch.  And of course, nothing likes the honeysuckle better than the migrating hummingbirds.

Every plant has its favorite pollinator, every insect a favored plant, all synchronized to mix and mingle just at the right time to keep them all going, year after year, eon after eon.  Seems like there's a Grand Plan to all this, doesn't it? 

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.