Maximum Sunflower Power

 Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, dogs and bees, I give you the crowning glory of the Kansas fall prairie, the Maximilian Sunflower (Helianthus maximiliani).   On the prairie near me right now, one can see lots of yellow flowers blooming, foremost being the light-yellow green of the native goldenrods, but nothing outshines or is taller than the Maximilian sunflowers.   Standing out hundreds of feet away, each clump betrays the location of a site of disturbed earth, the sunflower a sure marker of soil chaos.   Bees and humans alike are drawn to it, the screaming color calling across the ocean of drying prairie grasses.

This clump came up near my burn pile.   There's a smaller group in the middle of the unmown area of the back yard (my so-called "rain garden"), but it is this plant at the back edge of the garden that begs for attention.  And, as you can see above, it got attention from this very busy bee photobombing the flower.  It also got attention from Mrs. ProfessorRoush, who posed with it for me, but I will not share the beauty of the former in this blog, Internet privacy and all being what it is.  I found it interesting that the sunflower and Mrs. ProfessorRoush are almost identical in height, 5 feet tall or so.

The bumblebee that attacked these members of the Aster family was fortuitous for my camera, arriving just as I moved in to photograph the flower closely.  In a month these flowers will be bountiful seedheads, full of energy and a good forage crop for livestock and deer.  

You can see here what I mean about the goldenrod.  I'm not good enough at quick identification to tell you if this is Prairie Goldenrod or Canada Goldenrod or another species, but this is as yellow as it gets and the brightness fades quickly like the plants in the background here.  

Between the bad press given to goldenrod, and the happy beaming face of the Maximilian Sunflower, I've got to choose the sunflower every time.   And so, it seems do the bees.  The only insect I've ever seen on goldenrod around here are the goldenrod soldier beetles.

In the Garden, At Last

Weather report:  High 55ºF, blustery, overcast with the look of winter coming back.   However, ProfessorRoush just doesn't care.  He's back from a relatively short vacation and, while it may not be a great day to kneel on the wet and cold ground to clear the winter debris from beds, there are still things that can be done.  Done if the will to garden is strong enough and the gardener's soul has enough fortitude.




 And besides, I have a Dutch crocus blooming!  And Scilla!!! One single crocus so far but I'm sure that more will come soon.  In my records going back to 2005, I don't specifically note the first Dutch crocus every year, but in only one year, 2014, was my note of the first crocus later (3/25/14) than this date.  In 2006 and 2012, I saw these blooming on 3/6 and 3/8 respectively.  So, right now, I'd estimate spring at around 2 weeks later than normal.

If crocus and scilla are the first signs of life in my garden this year, they are not alone.  Today, as you can see from the pictures posted here and below, early peony buds are breaking ground, and the ornamental Alliums are up and healthy.  I must get the Alliums protected from the deer soon!

I can already see that there are one or two minor drawbacks of my plan to post more often  so that you can experience my garden activities with me  each time I garden:  some of the posts are going to be long!  And the photos will be smaller to account for space concerns, but if you click on them, you'll be able to see the detail you desire.   Today, I spent about 4 useful hours total in the garden.  And what did I accomplish?

I started by planning to mow down my "rain beds" of prairie grass near the house so that they will green up faster and allow some extra sun to the early prairie forbs.  Mowing, however, was a longer chore than I anticipated as I started with a "surprise" flat rear tire on the tractor that had to be fixed first.  You can see Bella, above, running in the taller grass, but here is a photo of the back yard before mowing:

 And after:  Already I feel better!  One spring chore off my checklist!

Then, I moved on to clear debris from the asparagus bed and weed it.  I'm sorry, I didn't think to take a picture until I was halfway through clearing, but the photo at the left will give you an idea of what it looked like when I started.







And the photo at the right will show you where I finished; the asparagus bed is mulched with around 2 inches of aged straw that sat out all winter.  That should help suppress the weeds!  The next green things I should see in this bed are some delicious asparagus spears rising above the golden straw.

Other than the usual puttering around that includes picking up the occasional down limb or blown-in-city-trash, my last major accomplishment of the day was in keeping with my goal to garden smarter this year.  For the benefit of others who have the same problem, this is my solution to "pole-migration" in my shade-house over the strawberries.  You see, my shade house is on a slight slope from front to back.  I've noticed over the last couple of years that the long poles that run on each side, and to which the canopy is stretched, have a tendency to slowly slip from their sleeves out the lower side, extending sometimes past the electric fence and out of the garden.  Up until now, some occasional pounding with a hammer every few months would shift them back into place.  I noticed today, however, that one pole was very very far (as in 8 feet or so) out of the canopy sleeve, leaving it in grave danger of ripping off in the next wind.  So, I got a length of good old, stiff #9 baling wire, made a hook in one end to place into the pole, and then wound it around the upright so the pole...hopefully...won't be able to migrate.  A minor brain-storm to fix a now-minor but potentially major problem.  Let's hope it works.

Sorry about the long post, but it was a good few hours in the garden today!  I'll leave you with the promise of these deliciously burgundy-colored herbaceous peony buds, just breaking ground.

Native Rain Garden

Cobaea Penstemon

ProfessorRoush is feeling a little vindicated this summer at the prairie revival occurring in his back yard.  As faithful readers know, three years ago I stopped mowing most of the gentle slope between my back patio and the main garden beds, an area I had mowed for 10 straight summers.  I began to let the prairie heal itself, only mowing once a year in late winter. This action has caused no small amount of angst in the household, since Mrs. ProfessorRoush envisions the house and garden as surrounded by a carefully manicured lawn, and she protests loudly and regularly that she wishes that I would just mow those areas.  Unfortunately for her, Mrs. ProfessorRoush married me, a gardener whose urges towards order and socially-acceptable gardening practices are always willing to play second fiddle to my innate laziness and personal distaste of any work that can't be also be classified as fun.  In defense of Mrs. ProfessorRoush, she has offered to mow the lawn for me, a nice gesture that I declined for fear that she'd scalp the entire horizon.

 

Black-Sampson Echinacea

Mowing the lawn has never, ever been my idea of fun, although NOT mowing has provided me no end of merriment.  For instance, there was the day when the local Prairie Garden club came to view my roses.  These pro-natural-gardening women were horrified at the mere idea that Mrs. ProfessorRoush felt that the Penstemon cobaea pictured above should be mowed along with the grass.  In fact, their reactions were similar to those of another strong Kansas woman, Carrie Nation, when she was presented with the opening of a new brewery.  I was worried for a minute that they would storm the house and stone Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  One after another, visitors to my garden support my decision to allow the garden to grow au natural.   I recognize that asking other gardeners for their opinions on the value of native plantings is a bit like asking Republicans if they favor tax cuts, but perhaps Mrs. ProfessorRoush won't make the connection and then import a group of rampant suburban Stepford Wives to outvote my supporters.

In the droughts of the last two years, I often wondered if I'd have grass, let alone flowers, in this area, but this year a wave of penstemon developed in one area and, several weeks later, the Black-Sampson Echinacea (Echinacea angustifolia) were blooming hither and yon over another area at the same time as the Catclaw Sensitive Briar (Mimosa quadrivalvis) was blooming.  Not a bad succession of flowers, if I do say so myself.  Most recently, the Purple Prairie Clover (Dalea purpurea) has begun to decorate the prairie from horizon to horizon.  I can't wait to see what comes after that.  Obviously, I'm hoping that these native flowers spread over the years and provide me with a free garden full of entertainment.

Purple Prairie Clover

The prairie grasses themselves go on forever here, happily growing with any water that falls with intermittent storms or hoarding the water they capture more regularly from the morning dews.  Entire urban landscape departments are focused on creating and maintaining "rain gardens" to help decrease runoff and conserve natural rainfall, but all I have to do is stop mowing the grass on my slopes to see the ground begin to soak up every drop.  I've got the rain garden to end all rain gardens here. This year the grass is already twice as tall as in either of the past two years, and it threatens to hide the main garden from my sight for the month of August, a good month to ignore the weeds in the rose beds and stay indoors anyway.  By September, I'll be somewhere off admiring my late blooming Sumac, but will someone please send out a backyard search party for Mrs. ProfessorRoush if she disappears?  She's afraid the grass will grow so tall, she might get lost in it, or worse, find a snake.  Either occurrence would be unfortunate for my health.