Longhorns Ho!

Yesterday was an outside day in ProfessorRoush-land, work to be done, and some exploration in areas that I don't frequently explore.  I mowed and piddled in the garden to my heart's content, the second mowing of the year starting at 9:30 a.m. and then doing other chores until I looked up at last to see it near 5:00 p.m., the afternoon vanished seemingly in seconds.   Most of the work was prompted by the arrival this week of the Longhorn cattle that a friend (actually the son-in-law of a neighbor), summer pastures on our land and the neighbors pasture.  Aren't they beautiful?  ProfessorRoush likes having cows around, even skinny cows with big menacing horns, and they make a conversation piece for neighbors far and wide, creating a little traffic on the road from the townies coming to "Aw" and stare.  

The Longhorn appearance, however, prompts me annually to walk the far fence, the one that I DIDN'T rebuild when we purchased the land, my border line with the golf course.  It's an original, easily over 50 years old, maybe more like 80 years old, with Osage Orange posts that occasionally get caught in the burns, and I often need to hike up the back hill with a new T-post to shore it up.  The picture below is a view of my back garden and the house and grounds from the far hillside.  Yesterday, all was well with the fence and I opened the gate to let the cattle into my pond area.

White-Eyed Grass

Walking that fence line means I walk down through the prairie and cross the woods in the draw and come as close as I get in this area to shady woodland.   This time of year, that means looking at the flora of the prairie more closely.  The prairie is coming alive with its flowers, native Babtisia starting to bloom, and this White-Eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium campestre) blooming everywhere.   White-Eyed Grass is, of course, not a grass but a member of the lily family, a bulb, used by Native Americans to treat stomachache and hay fever.

Garlic Mustard

I also ran across this unusual plant, an invader of course.  Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata) is a biennial weed that came from the Old World and escaped cultivation.  It isn't very prevalent on my prairie, requiring a bit of shade and moisture to thrive, but it seems to have found a spot here in the woods for it's temporary liking.

And speaking of invaders, while on my travels through the pasture, I also came across this unusual plant, seemingly beginning to spread in this area.   This is Purple-Leafed Honeysuckle, an escapee from my landscaping, which I made sure to come back and spray with herbicide yesterday.   I believe this clump was actually transplanted by the bulldozer that cleared it out from a bank where I placed the barn and pushed it into this area, but I surely don't want to see it begin to spread on it's own in the pasture

Poison Ivy

The woodland plant pictured here is, of course, not so desired in a woodland, but it's everywhere, hiding among others and waiting to cause pain and misery in some.  As shown here, among several similar plants, it effectively camouflages itself in early spring and then stands out in early Fall with bright red leaves to match the bright red blisters of the afflicted. Luckily, I'm immune to the toxic effects of  the urushiol in poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans), but I know it causes misery in others.  "Leaves of three, let it be," say some, but I say "Leaves of three, I don't care."  It probably has some place in the ecosystem, a native to North America, so I leave it alone.

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Distractions

There was a repeated melody on the old television show Hee Haw whose refrain went "If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all."  Well, I can  now sing that melody to "If it weren't for distractions, I'd get some real work done."

You see, last Saturday was a day filled with distractions from my gardening goals.  In the midst of achieving my primary objective, putting out the 56 or so bags of landscaping mulch that I had purchased, I was pulled off task by a seemingly endless stream of diversions.  First, there was this gorgeous clump of wildflowers (above left) surrounded by still dormant prairie grass.  The native flower in question is Sisyrinchium campestre, also known as "White-eyed Grass", a member of the lily family.  It occurs all over this prairie, although perhaps in less striking clumps in most places.  Oddly, you may find the species under the name "Prairie Blue-eyed Grass", although the "eye" or center is yellow and the flower petals are definitely pure white in this area.

Another momentary interruption from task was my sighting of the first yellow sulphur butterflies of the season, floating over the prairie sea from island to island of this plant displayed at right, the Ground-Plum Milk-Vetch (Astragalus crassicarpus).  You'll have to imagine the butterflies, because although I spent 30 minutes trying to get one fleeting photo of these flitting ground-plum fans, I was unable to produce even a single blurry yellow blog of them on an image.  The majority of the butterflies that day were yellow, although there were also a few white sulphurs.  Astragalus crassicarpus is a legume and supposedly an ancient food source, although it holds no major claim to human food chains today.  My minor nibbles of the "berries" suggest to me that a better description of the plant is that it is perhaps edible, but not palatable. 

While unsuccessfully searching for still butterflies, and before returning to mulching, I came across this hideous nest of Eastern Tent Caterpillars (Malacosoma americanum) in my 15 year old 'Royalty' crabapple tree.  I hate those nasty caterpillars with passion rivaled only by my disdain for pack rats.  Immediately upon spotting this budding metropolis of leaf-consuming spineless larva, I froze to avoid alerting them.  I slowly and quietly reached to my back-pocket for pruners, in fear that the creeping crawlers might startle and move a few micrometers in an effort to get away.  There, I grasped and smoothly produced my Felcos (slow is smooth and smooth is fast as in the best traditions of gunfighting), and I removed the offending branch from my eyesight, grinding it into the grass under my heel some distance away from the crab tree. Wild Bill Hickok, himself, would have been proud of my resolve and lethality. 

My quest of mulching completion was then further delayed for another half-hour while I examined every tree in the immediate vicinity of the house and dispatched two more disgusting nests in similar fashion.  The 'Royalty' crab survived the necessary amputation and will live to display its sickeningly muddy-purple blossoms yet another season.  'Royalty' is not a crabapple that I'd recommend to other gardeners.  While some texts describe the tree as "particularly loaded with dazzle...covered in such rich, deep-pink flowers that it will literally stop traffic,"  I would describe the tree as a dull-purple blob with dull pink-purple blossoms framed by dull purple leaves and not worth any substantial cost outlay.  Not my favorite crabtree, but I'm still not willing to throw it to the non-mercies of the Tent Caterpillar.

All this and many more yet un-disclosed diversions, and I managed only to empty and spread approximately 30 bags of mulch before exhaustion and larval caterpillar hatred took their toll.  Still, as you can see in the photo below, I think the front landscaping looks better with its new makeup foundation base, ready for the finishing touches of rose rouge and dark green holly eyeliner as the season rolls along.  A garden, as a woman, can certainly be naturally beautiful, but a little foundation and highlighting nearly always help improve the allure.  With the exception, of course, of Mrs. ProfessorRoush, perennially perfect in complexion and grace.