Super-Sunday-not

 Today is definitely not a Super Sunday.  For a Kansas gardener, it's a Mediocre Sunday, and if the gardener decides to curl up and find a good book, it could possibly become an Okay Sunday, maybe even a Fine Sunday, but at 7ºF outside at 12:00 p.m., it's not going to become a Super Sunday, football frenzy or not.  

I had been wanting one decent snow this winter, enough to make everything clean and smooth and white and I still haven't seen one.  What's on the ground now is just a little dusting, a little frosting on the prairie cake; just enough to need sweeping off the sidewalk but not enough to get out a shovel and struggle.  The primary dampening of my spirits, however are the result of the frigid temperatures.   We've had a mild winter, hardly a Zone 6 climate up until now, but yesterday somebody shut the freezer door and the temperatures plummeted alongside this dry snow.  More pertinently, there are some highs-in-the-teens and lows in the subzero temperatures predicted over the next 10 days, back to a true Zone 5 climate that we haven't seen in several years.  Last year at this time I was already clearing perennial beds on 55ºF afternoons.

For the record, I will watch the football game this evening, although I really don't know or care who I'll be rooting for.  Yes, it would be nice to see the long-suffering and local-to-me Kansas City Chiefs win another behind Mahome's spectacular passing accuracy and their daunting defense, but I also wouldn't mind watching 43 year old Tom Brady show Patrick the difference between how an old bull and a young bull approaches the field.  On the other hand, Brady was born in 1977, the year I graduated high school, so neither one is old enough to really appreciate the old bull and young bull joke genre that I'm alluding to.

Also for the record, yes, I cheated on these beautiful forced tulips that are currently in the middle of our kitchen table.  The local grocery store had these ensembles of glass, greenery, and glory for $9.99 the other day, priced low enough for even my miserly soul to consider worthy of a sawbuck.  Seven tulip bulbs to brighten Mrs. ProfessorRoush's Valentines day and keep me in her good graces, and then later I'll plant them in a pot with good soil and move them to the garden this summer.  I usually force a few bulbs on my own, but this year I just haven't found the urge or the time.  When these fade, however, I'm now inspired to go cut some forsythia and flowering almond branches to bring into the house and force into bloom.  Maybe the spring colors can provide us a Super Sunday later in February.     

Tulips and Tail Wags

This morning's blog is brought to you through the photographic artistry of Mrs. ProfessorRoush, the exquisite sunlight of the Flint Hills, and the antics of my beautiful bestie, Bella.  Credit also should be given to the tulips, standing bright and bold in a harsh land, and to their benefactor, a colleague who brought me these all the way from the Netherlands.  Yes, these are real, authentic Dutch tulips!








I had been anticipating the opening of these beautiful tulips for more than a week and had taken a few early snapshots as they began to bloom, but had captured nothing in fading evening light that I thought worth sharing with you.   Evidently, however, I was not alone in my vigil.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush posted these photographs on Facebook this week, taken in the morning sun as I slaved away at work, and I was so proud and envious of them that I just had to re-post them.







There was a little shower that day to make the foliage glisten.  I think the golden sunlight on the bright tulips, each against the backdrop of the dark post-storm Western sky, makes for the prettiest picture one could possibly imagine.  Nice work, Mrs. ProfessorRoush! And the tulips: white and purple, yellow and red, these travelers grace our front walk near the entrance, greeting the mailperson this week with cheerful colors and fringed edges.  Spring personified in each perfect petal.







Then again, perhaps it's the curious Bella, photo-bombing the background, that make the pictures sing.  She's a busy dog, nose always to the ground, tracking every warm- or cold-blooded creature daring to enter HER garden. They are emerging from winter, Bella and Mrs. ProfessorRoush, like butterflies from their chrysalis, venturing out on warm and still days for walks and Frisbee, socially-distanced from all but the donkeys.  And at the end of the day, I can count on them fighting over Mrs. ProfessorRoush's favorite chair and the first evening nap.  Guess who won this time?

Deer Rat Regrets

I really should have shot the four deer when I saw them that morning in the mist.

Normally, deer don't often bother me or my garden.  I don't grow a lot of choice deer-loved plants (except for the roses).

For instance, I grow but a few tulips, even though my wife likes them.  They simply don't display well in my Flint Hills garden, high on a windswept hill where the prevailing gales are sure to decimate their flowers in a few days.  Daffodils, despised by the deer, do better in the wind anyway and so I plant loads of those.

I do, or did, however, grow 50 or so bright red tulips in a single small raised bed at the beginning of our driveway.  I do it despite their expense and the transitory nature of tulips on the prairie in a blatant effort to gain brownie points from the missus. They are probably 30 or so feet from the next living plant (not including the mown prairie grass).  So how did the darned deer find them?

Mrs. ProfessorRoush is not happy, so I and the Security Council (the Brittany Spaniel and the Italian Greyhound) are declaring war.  It'll be nastier than most.  There will be vast quantities of soap and other human scents expended.  We'll have to extend the electric fence ramparts.  We will form mutually-supporting treaties with neighboring territories and their barking dogs.  I may resort to motion-activated defensive devices.  The nuclear option will be considered.

Or I may just stop growing tulips.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush will probably get over it someday, although I'm not going to hold my breath.