Near Sunset

Sometimes the "near" sunset on the prairie is more stunning than the sunset itsel

Bedding Down & Tidying Up

 ProfessorRoush accomplished several main fall chores last weekend and during the week. Last Sunday was a windy, but pleasant and sunny day which I took full advantage of in a fit of tidiness.  Of highest importance, I covered the strawberries with a nice thick bed of straw to protect those tender buds from any further frosts and freezes.   Last winter I neglected it as the bed was in poor condition anyway, but this year, with 50 new plants out, I thought a nice golden blanket was in order for the patch.  It looks so nice and cozy and protected now, don't you think?

I also bustled around the yard and ran the mower over some late invasive cool season grass and mulched up a few leaves in the process.   I do like a lawn with a nice even trim, don't you?   I also realized there were a couple of hoses that needed draining, the purple martin houses needed to be cleaned out and brought indoors, and my pack rat-bait stations near the house were empty.  All the usual and none too soon as, sometime between the strident warnings about new COVID variants and the apocalypse, the frantic media voices tell me that winter is coming.   Sure, except for the 70ºF temperatures predicted this week.   Those strawberry plants must think I'm nuts and just cut off their sunlight.

Also completed was the annual "over the rivers and through the woods" to our Indiana past trek of Thanksgiving, in our case the "over-the-river" being the Missouri and Mississippi rivers and the "through-the-woods" was of the forested Illinois and Indiana I-70 corridor.   A few days gone in a cloudy and colder Indiana landscape where it actually even rained one day, and Mrs. ProfessorRoush and I were never so glad as to come back Friday into this gorgeous sunset, occurring just as we made those last few miles through the Flint Hills to home.  Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home....err Kansas.

Sunrise,Scenery, and Sunset

All right, how's this for a morning photograph?  I took it on the morning of December 24th, at 7:25 a.m. looking out my south window.   It's a frozen wasteland out there but the partial clouds make for a glorious sunrise, don't they?  This photograph is completely unaltered, with the exception that I took the picture below first, and then touched my finger to my Iphone on the garden garden area to change this second exposure to see more of the garden and a brighter sky.  

Which do you like better?  I was partial to the top photo with the contrast of the colors and the frozen ground, but the sunrise is more beautiful and the colors more vibrant in its "natural" exposure.  The first brings out the cold and frost of the brutal Flint Hills, the second displays the promise of the morning.  

Sunrise isn't the only time the colors of the Flint Hills help brighten my garden.  The russets of the bluestem and the oranges of the Indiangrass and switchgrass on the prairie are amplified anytime there is rain or moisture.  The buffalograss in the foreground and invading into the paths that I mow, stays the buff of this grass in winter, surrounding the house and biding time through winter.  

These two photos, taken during the rainy day of 12/29/2019, are more subtle in their coloring and hues, but nonetheless quite an improvement over the normal tan.  I cut the prairie low between the house and lower garden during winter for the purpose of deterring rodent migrations to the warm house and aiding the hawks that control them, but here the colors aren't nearly as amplified as in the taller mature grass in the background.  It's a trade-off I make every year as a tactical strike against the ubiquitous pack rats.

And then, there's the color of sunset on the prairie.  This panorama, taken at sunset on Christmas, 2019, shows the barrenness of the prairie in winter, yet the promise from the fleeting sun to return someday and green it all up again.  This garden, this gardener, hibernates until those first days of spring return.

In the meantime, I seem to be on a scenery sideline for this blog and I think for the next few weeks I'll return to the pictures of summer.  I've got quite a few "starter" blogs saved from last year's beauty that I want to share before "Gardening 2020" really gets rolling.  

Sky Worship

I'm sure that many, especially those who reside near the coasts or mountains rather than "flyover states," may not understand my self-enforced and barely-borne tolerance of the trials and tribulations stemming from gardening in the Kansas climate.  Certainly my parents, from rich- and fertile-soiled Indiana, have occasionally expressed their lack of appreciation of the charms of Kansas.  I feel, therefore, obligated to show you a few photos that I've taken just in the past two weeks, lest you think that ProfessorRoush is entirely crazy.  For starters, this is a panorama of the view to my east a few mornings back as I was taking Bella out for an early stroll:

How could I possibly ask for a better greeting and start to my day?  Such sunrises are not at all unusual, pink clouds chased by warm sunshine until the entire sky glows.

A night or two later, it was this double rainbow that appeared, to my south, rain in the distance chased away by the setting western sun.  I've seen double rainbows on two occasions in the last month, and it has only rained twice all month!

Sometimes, it seems as if Mrs. ProfessorRoush tries to rouse me off the couch every evening at sunset, wanting me to take a "real" photo of a sunset instead of using an iPhone.  I actually often complain about how frequently my restful postprandial lethargy is interrupted by her enthusiastic worship of the sky.  I haven't yet mentioned the existence of Tengrism to her, for fear that she may forsake her Christian background to join others in formal worship of the Eternal Blue Sky.  The photo below is a wider panorama taken slightly before the photo at the left.

There are also those mornings where the beauty of the day stems from atmospheric turmoil more than the beneficent touch of the sun.  A few days ago, there was an entirely different appearance to the same morning view of the northeastern sky that I showed you in the first photo on this page.  A little past 5 a.m. Central, the rising sun and distant sky was a backdrop to these very low, fast-moving wisps of cloud.  This time-lapse is taken over about 15 seconds as I tried to hold the camera still.  There was no rain or moisture, just these strange clouds moving opposite the high altitude flow.  

Of course, what I've left out of all these pictures is the almost constant sunshine and moderately cloud-free days of this climate.  Manhattan, Kansas may not have one of the most sunny climates in the world, but officially we are around 240 days of sunshine a year, less then I would estimate (I figured it was over 300), but about 60 days more than Indiana/Ohio/Wisconsin where I've previously lived.  The picture below was taken Friday, June 30th, as I wrote this blog entry, when I realized that I haven't archived pictures of the "normal" sky, just the stormy scenes.  So, at random, this is yesterday, 3:00 p.m., taken right outside my front door, and you can consider it a "normal" Kansas sky.   Maybe those "Tengrists" aren't too far out  on a spritual limb after all.

In Glory, the Sky

There are moments here on the prairie, exhilarating and yet satiating, when the Kansas sky flows deep down into my soul to quench the fires that often rage within.  Summer scorch, drought, floods, grasshoppers, late Spring freezes, winter ice, and tornadoes, all merely are prices we choose to pay in exchange for sunsets like this, golden and tranquil along the western horizon.  This blessing from a particularly merciful Deity came last Friday night after the passing of the storm cell pictured below, a knot of winds and rain rolling first from southwest to northeast as I was lamenting that it was going to slide past us to the north, but then suddenly shifting south under the influence of prayer and anguish and proceeding to drown my sorrows from a thundering heaven.  Before anyone asks, these pictures were taken without a filter, the world presented here as it appeared in, as they say, "living color," the sun and sky conspiring to beauty despite their amateur photographer.

A strange sequence filled the heavens after the storm.  First, an emerald haze formed to the south and east, lightning and thunder chasing the rain and roiling clouds into the darkness of the night.  Then, on its heels, a low bank of clouds appeared in the north and west as in the photograph below, fluffy and solid, a line of marshmallows aglow against the setting sun.  If the Rapture had come at that moment, sweeping across the earth with this silent wall of softness, I would have surely accepted the juncture as a fit beginning to the End of Time, perfectly executed and consummated.

 

The world didn't end, but the evening did as the sun sank into the westward clouds, leaving me not behind after The Rapture, but still in a state of rapture, thankful for the soaked earth and the colorful firmament glowing with glory, a tapestry of oranges and golds and pinks and yellows reflected off the wet ground to bid me a peaceful and restful night, the gardener's soul refreshed and satisfied.