Ambrosia Abounding

The quote "Earth laughs in flowers," is from a Ralph Emerson poem named Hamatreya, and it really doesn't have the sweet, happy meaning that everyone attributes to it.  In Emerson's poem, the Earth is literally laughing at Man; any Man who dares to presume that a portion of Earth is his, denying that man dies while the Earth endures....laughing at us with flowers.

I realized today that "my Earth" laughs at me too, only it laughs in Ambrosia artemisiifolia.  That's Common Ragweed to you and I, also known as Annual Ragweed.  Everywhere that I sink spade in soil, this pernicious weed pops up.  I never see it on the unbroken prairie and I've never let it set seed in my garden, but I would estimate, from the frequency it crops up as a weed, that half of the mass of any given spadeful of my soil must actually be ragweed seed.  

I had an infestation in my iris bed this year so bad that I considered, for a time, selling the house merely to rid myself of it.  Here it is (above), growing in the middle of a daylily.  There it is (below), hiding at the roots of a rose.  It spreads, I think both by runners and seed.  It laughs, I know, at my feeble attempts to remove it.  It's partially resistant to glyphosate, shrugging off the first blasts from the sprayer like it was being watered.  I suspect that it suppresses growth in plants who dare to grow in the same soil with it, like a walnut tree with soft velvety leaves and a pollen that brings tears to the eyes of man.

I've got a hunch that the very name, Ambrosia, was a joke by Linnaeus himself.  Ambrosia, of course, was the food of the Greek gods, thought to bestow immortality to those who consumed it.  "Food of the gods," my royal hiney!  The only immortality ragweed provides is to itself.  Once established, it's impossible to unestablish. 

My favorite wildflower website, kswildflower, lists the habitat of Common Ragweed as "disturbed sites, roadsides, waste areas, prairies, pastures, stream banks, pond and lake margins, old fields, fallow fields; wet to dry soils."  Mull on that for a moment.  Ragweed grows anywhere that the soil is disturbed, like it was created for the sole purpose of badgering mankind.  Each plant produces over a billion grains of highly allergenic pollen in a year.  I don't believe all that pollen is necessary just for reproduction.  Perhaps one billion pollen grains per plant is just the Earth's way of getting even with us for disturbing it. 

Crabby old Emerson was  only partially right.  The Earth doesn't laugh at our fleeting folly in flowers.  It laughs in ragweed.  Thoreau probably learned that at Walden's Pond, but never bothered to tell Emerson.

Vie et mort dans le jardin

The Spider and the Fly is a poem by Mary Howitt (1799-1888), published in 1829. The first line of the poem, "Will you walk into my parlour?' said the Spider to the Fly," is one of the most quoted lines of poetry, although I would guess that most of us wouldn't know anything about the author or the rest of the poem.

The quoted line sprang quick and sure into my mind when I looked at this recent photo of 'Leda', the multicolored Alba that so vexes my rose-growing abilities.  The second line of the poem, "'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy," certainly fits this blushing rose; so delicate and beautiful if caught at the right moment.  This spider set up shop on main street, following classic marketing principles of visibility, attractiveness, and access.  Business, it appears, is good in this neighborhood.

I don't think I knew the spider and the fly were there when the photo was taken.  Still, here they are, caught up in the struggle of life and death within my garden, a still life in my personal version of an NSA spy drone, the camera lens of my Canon capturing the moment.  I wonder, does the spider care that I've captured it in the moment of conquest?  No matter that the gardener thinks he controls the garden, I am reminded again that I am merely another tool in this garden; a tool to provide water and mulch and flowers for the vast symphony of life that ebbs and flows beneath the surface.

Howitt's poem is a cautionary tale to warn the unwary about evil creatures who use flattery and charm to draw us in, and she ends with the words "Unto an evil counselor close heart and ear and eye, And take a lesson from this tale of the spider and the fly."  She was obviously writing as an advocate for the fly, but once written and distributed, words and meanings are subject to interpretation and change by the greater world, much to the chagrin of many an author or politician.  As a gardener, I'm rooting strongest here for the maligned little spider.  This minuscule fly probably wasn't harming my garden, but if it sustains the spider until the first fat, juicy Japanese Beetle comes lumbering by, then it was well worth the sacrifice.  Predator and prey, dancing together through the cycle of life.

Lively Lightening

Oh, dear!  As you can see, ProfessorRoush was gone from home for several days, but came back just in time to play with his iLightningcam iPhone app.  I thought this was the best shot of the evening and it should therefore lead the blog.  I just love the blues and purples that are brought out in the photos.



I got home in the early evening, quickly mowed the worst of the overgrown grass in front of the house, and was witness to this lovely sunset:









Which rapidly darkened and turned into this:













And this:










We didn't get much rain with this system, but at least I got a little fun out of it.  If you're wondering how long it takes to capture these, I had all of these within about 5 minutes of turning on the camera. As I wrote before about this iPhone app, it is also supposed to be good at capturing fireworks and this coming July 4th will be my first opportunity to test it.  You can be sure I won't miss it!

Buttery Beauty

I've long nurtured a 'Rosenstadt Zweibrücken' that was almost smothered by a similarly-flowered shrub, my 8 foot tall and wide 'Freisinger Morgenröte' (who makes up these German names anyway?!).  Both have been present in my oldest rose berm for better than 10 years, but the 'Rosenstadt Zweibrücken' disappeared for a couple of years, only to peek out two years ago and struggle a bit since then, caught between the Freisinger and my tall 'Alexander MacKenzie'.  I keep pruning things away so it will get light and survive and it does just that, but no more.

'Rosenstadt Zweibrücken', or KORstasis, is a small remonant pink blend shrub rose of 3 to 5 feet at maturity (mine is about 3 feet tall), that was bred by W. Kordes & Sons in 1989.  The German name roughly means "Rose City"  and Zweibrücken is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, on the Schwarzbach river.  At first glance, you wouldn't think much of the flowers on this shrub; semi-double, only about 2.75" in diameter and without any fragrance, but each individual flower in this clustered rose is a masterpiece of delicacy.  The finely veined pink on the outer petals turns to yellow at the center as if the ample golden stamens were reflected onto the flower.  It seems only moderately healthy in my garden, but since it tries to grow in the shadows of taller roses, I might be more to blame than the rose.  I do have to watch it for blackspot, but again, part of that might be the environmental stress it lives under.

This year, my 'Rosenstadt Zweibrücken' (also known as Spanish Enchantress or Morningrose) surprised me by opening up this perfectly butter yellow bloom next to the regular pink/yellow blend flowers.  At this point, I'm not yet sure if this flower is a sport or just some quirk of the weather, but the unopened buds around it seem yellow as well and you can bet I'll keep an eye on this cane to see if that color holds true.  The world just can't have too many reblooming butter-yellow roses.