Trellis Overboard!

 I'm sure a few of you caught the national news about the little blow that swept through Kansas and Nebraska on December 15th.  This was my radar picture at 5:35 p.m. as it was about peak, just about an hour after the storm ahead of it, the latter accompanied by a tornado warning for Manhattan.  I've seen a lot of radar pictures over my years in Manhattan, but that long very narrow rain front stretching from northern Oklahoma into South Dakota and the wind following it was unique.  And scary.

I'm also sure a few of you are wondering what this has to do with ProfessorRoush's garden?   There seemed, on the surface, to be little damage from the 70-80mph sustained winds both here at home and in Manhattan, primarily lots of small limbs down and lots of broken pieces of roof shingles laying around here and there.   But, when it warmed up a few days after the storm, when I got out and actually wandered around the garden, I saw that it had taken down my long-standing wisteria trellis.   I know this thing was old, but breaking off 4 six-inch treated posts that were cemented in the ground was not a trivial piece of damage.   Thankfully, I had already taken down the Purple Martin houses earlier this fall or they would have been in Missouri, or the Atlantic ocean.

I took this damage casually with a shrug of my shoulders, but already lamenting what will surely be an abbreviated wisteria showing this spring.   To disentangle this maze of vines will be impossible, so I'll be forced to merely chop the wisteria vines wherever they enter the trellis.  I'll undoubtedly end up with a 5-foot tall pair of wisteria's, and I'll have to decide about building another trellis.  This one was placed to be a "gateway" into or out of the back area of the garden and I've gotten used to its presence so I'll probably do something there.   And also the wisteria have to have something to grow on.   Normally, I'd put the cleanup off until spring, but since it is sunny and supposed to reach 65ºF this Christmas Eve afternoon, I can already hear it calling me.

Here is a picture of the trellis in its better days, already old in this 2019 blog post it came from, but certainly functional and beautiful in a light-lavender sort of way.   I thought the frame was unbreakable, but clearly I was flat-wind wrong.  The lattice-work was decaying when this picture was taken and I think I replaced it that year, but the posts, in cement, should not have broken down.  Or so I believed.

ProfessorRoush will have to up his engineering game for the next trellis.   I'm thinking maybe steel I-beams extending down into the bedrock might actually have a chance at standing longer than a decade?

Token poinsettia picture to wish everyone holiday cheer!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!

Yuck! That's Enough!!!

As a veterinarian, ProfessorRoush tries mightily to love "all creatures great and small," taking his cues from James Herriot's classic memoir of that title, the latter borrowing his title from the lyrics of Charles Francis Alexander in the Anglican hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful.  And he (ProfessorRoush) usually does love all creatures great and small, even the serpents that hang around my landscaping.  Except Japanese Beetles.  And rose slugs.  And spider mites.  I don't see God's purpose for any of these creatures except to provide a plague to test the resolve of gardeners.  Maybe rose slugs were put on earth to feed birds, but Japanese Beetles aren't eaten by anything.  They just exist to eat flowers, and waddle in beetle poop while they fornicate and make more Japanese Beetles.   And spider mites are so small you can barely see them; what purpose is a plant-sucking mite?  Other mites, of the Phytoseiidae family, prey on spider mites, but why create a mite to just to feed another mite?  Oh, the theological cavern that I've just fallen into! 

But, ProfessorRoush digresses.  The Japanese Beetles came back right to central Kansas right on time in late June this year and I've been strolling around and smashing a few every evening for several weeks.  I even went so far as to spray insecticide on a few of their favorite roses while the roses were between bloom cycles just to see if it would quell their numbers, but as these roses, 'Blanc Double de Coubert' and 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup' among others, came back into bloom, they had just as many beetles lounging around in their blossoms as before.  So I've hand-picked and hand-picked, gleefully smashing a few beetles each night under my feet and feeling like Alexander the Great rolling over Asia.  Right up until I came across the disgusting spectacle in the photo above.  The rose is pink and delicate 'Foxi Pavement'.  Look closely and you'll see beetles fornicating on top of beetles that are fornicating.  Disgusting.

Hemerocallis 'Wisteria'

Please try not to let the scene you just witnessed cause any nightmares to disturb your slumber.  Or at least join ProfessorRoush in his efforts to avoid crawling into a corner and catatonically sucking his thumb to avoid the trauma of memory.  Here, maybe a picture of beautiful 'Wisteria' taken on the same evening will help.  Japanese Beetles don't seem to bother daylilies.  Or, perhaps you can take comfort from this morning's sky, a panorama I took at 6:00 a.m.  of the sky to the west and north of my front yard.  All things bright and beautiful, indeed.

I Just Love Spring!

There is nothing quite like the satisfaction of a gentle, lamb-like spring easing into summer.  The world reborn, brown changed into green, rainbows all over the landscape.  Crocus yielding to forsythia bowing to redbud and magnolias, ceding to viburnums.  Peonies budding up to be the next star in the garden beds.  The feel of warm sunshine on skin, the smell of damp earth stirred by fingers, the cold undulations of disturbed earthworms in turned soil.  Sore muscles unused from winter, aching rough hands, and a tired gardener each night.  Yes, there is nothing like a good spring.

Spring continues here in full force, best evidenced by the fantastic bloom this year of our purple wisteria, a mere generic Wisteria sinensis, but a pleasant surprise for Mrs. ProfessorRoush when she discovered it.  She told ProfessorRoush she liked the fragrance of his yellow wisteria more, causing some confusion on his part since he doesn't have any yellow wisteria and had never heard of the existence of  yellow wisteria.  As it turned out, Mrs. ProfessorRoush was confusing the name "wisteria" with "forsythia," further confusing ProfessorRoush because he doesn't remember his forsythia having much fragrance.  Ah, the perplexities of long marriages of dissimilar interests.

Still further confusion ensued later, when intrigued, I decided to search the internet for yellow wisteria.  There are fabulous pictures everywhere on the internet of bright yellow pendulous blooms labeled Yellow Chinese Wisteria (which I want lusted for instantly), and offers for seed from any number of irreputable sources, but no descriptions of yellow wisteria from either more scientific sources or offers of grown plants by reputable nursery wholesalers.  Wisteria, I maintain, likely only comes in white, lavenders and blues, and offers to purchase seed for the mystical yellow forsythia are likely hoaxes, but I'm happy to be educated if I'm wrong.

I've stayed busy in the garden this week.  One major project for me this year is to mulch many of the beds with straw.  For years, I have mulched most of my larger garden with lawn clippings, but because of all the dust I raised last summer during mowing, which continued into the first mowing this year, I think this year the lawn needs the clippings more than the garden beds.  Maybe a year's worth of thatch will begin to restore my prairie.  Besides, don't the lilacs look happy at the anticipation of far more moisture conservation and cooler soils from me than they've know in the past?  I think so.  That 4 inches of packed straw will eliminate any weeding this year and maybe the next in this bed. One bed down, six to go.