Clear Skies and Long Views

It occurs to me that some of you may fear that this blog is, at times, in danger of becoming a "weather report", justifiably so since ProfessorRoush shares that same fear with you, and yet I still cannot resist showing you this view, as it presented to me a couple of evenings back as I turned onto my road:

In the west, I saw this view and thought, "that's a rain cloud," and yet we had no rain predicted.  I was not prepared, however to check the weather on my phone and see that this thunderhead belonged to a single isolated cell that was still more than 60 miles distant (radar screenshot taken at 6:49 p.m.)!   Salina Kansas, to the storm's south, is 66 miles from me!  How's that for clear air quality?

I haven't calculated the earth's curvature over that distance, and I know this storm probably reached tens of thousands of feet into the air, but, still, I can scarcely believe I was able to see it coming at that distance.  The world is a wonderful place, full of surprises if we only let them in.

I watched the cloud through the evening as the storm tracked from our direct west.  At 8:07 p.m., it was still more than 25 miles away to our west, but it ended up passing barely to the south later that evening.   My  last view of it below is at dusk, 8:07 p.m., still to the west and at the same time as the radar capture seen to the left, with barely enough light from the setting sun remaining to outline the storm cell.  Lightning was flashing in the storm itself as I watched, and it is no wonder that the Vikings could conclude that Thor was angry in the center of that cloud.

Perhaps now you can better understand my fascination with weather events here in my view from these semi-arid, rolling grasslands where rain is sometimes measured in drops and the wind can strike fear in a brave heart.   Better at times, I wonder, would we be if we were this garden spider, a Yellow Garden Spider (Argiope aurantia)  that has patiently tended its web in this exact spot near my back patio for over a month.  I can't tell you how many times I've almost shortcut across this bed into this web, but so far it has survived obliteration from myself, Bella, the neighbor dog, and the weather.  I'm happy for the spider's presence because  it is another sign that Fall is coming and it seems to justify my seasonal neglect and provides some natural pest control for my garden.

Storm Smiles

The weather gods finally opened the spigot and ProfessorRoush's garden got some badly needed rain.   Not from the storm pictured here, a quick downpour that came in last week and left only about 1/2 inch and some pea-sized hail.  No, it was from another, the middle of last week, that left 3 inches in all my gauges.  Three beautiful inches of rain.

But this earlier storm was gorgeous, coming in quickly from the west, while the setting sun kept it all illuminated for the camera.   See how the dark sky highlights the mix of the prairie remnants from last year's growth and the patchy newer growth in the distant hills?   Last week the grass of my front yard still struggled to turn green.  Today, after a small rain and then a deep soaking, it's as green as emeralds.

While these storms can also bring trouble, and the time-lapse here might make many uneasy, they only bring me calm and a sense of wonder at the power behind it all, the power building at my very doorstep and passing me by, God and the Grim Reaper together at once, mysterious and yet always nearby.

I feel the danger nearby, and yet my peace is generated by the sure knowledge that life comes with the storms.  Four days later, yesterday, and my garden was this, roses coming into bloom and, at last, the full rebirth of another gardening year.  No dribbles of a bulb here or a wind-damaged lilac there, I now relish the full gifts of a garden.

Here and above, Canadian rose 'George Vancouver' is in the foreground, sprawling over the nearby bench.   Please excuse the weeds you see there at his feet; I sprayed them yesterday, the only way to kill the rapidly spreading ambrosia.   Behind George, bright red 'Survivor' blooms, and then 'Polareis', a hint of pink in her blooms, and then, in the rear, bright white 'Blanc Double De Coubert', ready to begin to make her hips and start another crop of blooms to feed the hungry bees.   

So fear not the storms, I beg you, for the storms bring color and glory to the garden.  Storms make me smile, smile as wide as a mile, a grin to wrinkle my chin.  If I were only a dog, I'd be wagging my tail happy for the world to see.

Unsettled Skies

This morning, as I was walking from the bedroom to let Bella out, I glanced out the southern windows of the house, seeing dawn slowly bringing the landscape to life, and noticed that the tree branches were swaying.  Pleased that a predicted cool morning would also bring some cool air into the house, I opened the garage door, stepped out, and was greeted with this odd sight of a column of pink blessing the hills to my west amidst a gray sky.

I turned around to look at the rising sun and, of course, it was there shining as always, ready to wake the earth and all its inhabitants in Manhattan, Kansas.  The breeze, however, was still shifting and I could only conclude that a either completely unpredicted but likely gentle rainstorm was upon us from the northwest or that aliens were beaming up my neighbors in a pink column of happiness.




The answer of course, was available on my phone radar app, and just as I downloaded this image, the sky began to growl as well.  Not thunder, not visible lightning, but an audible low growl.  I sedately followed Bella as she bolted for the house from her morning mid-squat stance.  Bella is afraid of thunder, but rain is always welcome to me and I am ever pleased when I don't have to defend against an alien horde before I've had breakfast.

Unsettled skies have been the norm all summer, likely a metaphor for society's woes this year if I were only bright enough to connect it.  Unpredicted showers, winds that sweep across without a storm behind them, clouds come and gone without warning.  I really shouldn't complain because, thankfully, there has been enough rain to keep the grass growing all summer, it has never reached 100ºF in Manhattan yet this year, we haven't had a single tornado warning in the area all season, and fall is clearly on its way.


It unnerves me, however, after years of watching the local radar and weather patterns, to see the skies tossing about in disorder.  The other night, I watched two rainstorms as they split around us from about an hour to the north-west, one gentle moving to the east and south, the other, a nasty little blob of purple, moving forcefully south-west.  I commented to Mrs. ProfessorRoush that, in all these years, I had never seen that happen.  Storms don't move to the south and west here and I watched it with some trepidation until it was obvious it wasn't going to change direction.








I'm not unhappy, however, about the beautiful skies of this summer and I'm thankful for every morning to wake with the sunrise.  The panorama above is my view to the south three mornings ago, sun rising in the east, storm moving in from the west.  The panorama below is my north view just moments later, unsettled skies from the west moving back to the gentle protective light from the east.  Who couldn't feel comforted by skies like these?  Well....me.

Storm A-Comin

The oncoming week of temperate weather conditions is wasting no time in arriving, with the temperature dropping from a 93ºF high two hours ago to a pleasant and breezy 85º at present.  And the sky to the west is providing that uneasy feeling best defined as "ominous."






It's Kansas in summertime, and I, for one, welcome the relief that this "cold front" is going to provide, as well as the rain to keep the prairie thriving down to those long roots deep down in the soil. 

Behold the panoramic majestic prairie in the calm before a storm:

Drought End and Storm Tracks

Can ProfessorRoush get a "Hallelujah" from the chorus, please?  Just this week, the National Weather Service (or whatever organization tracks such things) declared the entirety of Kansas to be drought free for the first time since July 13, 2010.  I don't think my specific area has been suffering continually for that long, but certainly the subsoil moisture has been nonexistent for at least 2 years here.  As a matter of fact, as late as 4/12/16, 97% of Kansas was still designated in some degree of drought or another.  The rains of late April and early May really helped us out, even though my garden performed better in previous years with a little drought AND NO HAIL!

On a related note, for those readers who subscribe to various New Age theories, there is a pattern to storms here in Kansas that I'm at a lost to explain.  Storms often seem to follow one or two tracks across the state from west to east;  they parallel I-70 either south of it or north, but they seldom seem to cross I-70 diagonally.  Look closely at this screen shot of the radar on my iPhone on Tuesday morning.  I-70 is the horizontal highway that runs through the dots that designate Topeka and Salina.  This storm touched the highway, it but stayed just north along it all the way across Kansas.  I've seen this pattern very often.  So what is it about the highway that seems to direct the storms?  Geomagnetic lines?  Ley lines?  Ancient Native American pathways?  UFO flight paths?  Will this change as the Earth's magnetic poles continue to weaken?   Inquiring gardeners want to know.

But they'll only get to wonder for a short time.  Because I'm only leaving this post up to head the blog for 24 hours before we return to plant-y things.  ProfessorRoush is far too grounded to worry much about the mystical things.

Shredded Former Garden

My initial inclination was to title this blog entry "Oh Hail No!" but I'm having a little trouble maintaining the required tone of humor today.  Feel free to join me in a simple soul-cleansing wail because I'm at a loss for words.  Following the example of the recently deceased Prince, perhaps I should just refer to this as "The Garden Formerly Known as ProfessorRoush's."

For those easily depressed by gardening disaster, this is your fair warning to move on to the next post.  For the rest of you, those curious souls unable to avoid gawking at car wrecks or fascinated by visits to Civil War battlefields, you can keep viewing this photo-heavy post, but I would caution you to have a barf bag at hand.  Feel free to "click" on any picture you want to enlarge.



We had a little storm here last night.  When I say a little storm, I am, of course, channeling our British cousins to understate a meteorological apocalypse that included a near miss by a possible tornado, a deluge of 4.2 inches in 2 hours, and about an inch of hail the size of marbles.  The photo at the right is a shot of my back patio during the storm, all while the radio weatherman was telling me to take cover.  It's illuminated by the porch light and it's dim and poorly exposed, but if you can see the ice on the ground you've grasped the obvious.






For a little better glimpse of this catastrophe, the proverbial plague of biblical hail, these two photos of the left and right sides of my front walkway, just after the storm, may be more illuminating.

I woke up this morning to a lot of damage.  There was no real structural damage to the house, but the garden has seen better days.  Just yesterday morning, I was admiring this 'Blue Angle' hosta placed right next to the front door; it was perfect then, not a bit of slug damage.  Look at it now.











This 'Globemaster' allium was getting ready to bloom.  I suppose it still might, but I'm betting it won't reach the glory I was expecting.















The Orientpet lily to the left was the picture of health yesterday.  Today it appears to have been through a meat grinder.  Still, it fared better than the Asiatic lily whose photo is at the top of this blog.












I had scores of irises starting to bloom.  I suppose they might still, but one wonders what kind of display I'll have from these.














This was a Sedum.  'Strawberries and Cream' to be exact.  "Was" is the active verb here.











When a tough daylily like 'Alabama Jubilee' gets shredded like this, well, you know you've had a storm.














And these were some gorgeous purple and white petunias that I planted just yesterday.  If I didn't know that, I couldn't even tell you what they were.












I tried to tell Mrs. ProfessorRoush that the remaining cherries would be larger and sweeter since these were pruned away early in the season.  She was neither amused nor consoled.













I'll leave you now, contemplating this abstract artform as it was created in my front buffalograss.  This is not a view of the Appalachians from space.  This is thatch, floated up from the roots of the buffalograss and deposited in waves on an almost level surface by the 4+ inches of rain.  I suppose I should be thankful that the torrential rain has cleared out the thatch for me and I have only to rake it up now.  I am most assuredly NOT thankful, however.  The magnolias were interrupted this year by the late freezes.  Now the irises, daylilies and alliums by this storm.  What's next?  The roses get hit by a meteorite shower?

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. 

Lightning Fast App

This afternoon, after a day and a half of strenous garden work, ProfessorRoush quit working and took a number of photos to convince himself, and all of you, that Spring was beginning in Kansas.  I was sidetracked, however, by the quick appearance of a small storm with a negligible offering of rainwater, but a little bit of lightning and thunder.

Many of you will remember how excited I was last year to accidentally capture a lightning bolt while I was taking prairie-storm pictures (if not, it's HERE).  Least year's photo was indeed fortuitous, and at the same time it was likely the end of an era, for this year, there is a new app for iPhone that will  capture lightning, fireworks, gunshot flares, and other flashing phenomena.  You see, folks, some genius has taken the luck right out of it and now everyone will have their own lightning pictures.

I read about the app, called iLightningCam, a couple of weeks ago and the wait since for a thunderstorm has been near unbearable.  Just a few moments ago, as the sky darkened and the flashes began, out I went onto the covered porch to see if it worked...and within 5 minutes, I had the picture above, a bolt of lightning flashing over my slowly greening and newly cleaned south garden beds.  Lightning pictures are now idiot-proof and I have the evidence.

The iLightningCam app is inexpensive (disclaimer;  I get no sales revenue from mentioning it), works on both iPhone 4 & 5, and is simple to use.  There is a trial Lite free version as well.  It claims to use the iPhone light sensor to set off the camera, but I theorize that it is running a continuous loop of video and just capturing some set of frames that were taken just before a spike of light notifies it that there has been a flash.  At least that's what I believe the "15fps" in the upper left corner of my screen indicates.

Once I get over my initial excitement with the app, I'm going to try to get more artistic with garden lightning combination photos, but for now, I'm still a kid in the candy store; a kid with the gift of magic bestowed by an iPhone genius named Florian Stiassny.  As my Jeep tire cover says, "Life is Good."