Snake Ninja

Well, that respite didn't last long.  My winters in this Kansas garden seem long and harsh, but I number among my few blessings that the winters here are also relatively snake-free.  I say relatively because there is always the chance that lifting a rock might expose a hibernating little milk snake.  I actually saw my first snake this year, a small foot-long, pencil-thick, rat snake, about a month ago when I picked up a bag of mulch that had been lying in the yard in the sun for a week.  That one was pretty sluggish on the still-cold ground, although I presume it had taken shelter under the bag because the plastic-bagged mulch was warmed by the sun and beginning to compost.

 Two weeks ago, however, I spotted this rather large common garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis) stretching out in the open grass while I was out with Bella.  It was interesting that my nose-driven, curious and crazy dog did not notice this snake at all, dancing oblivious within several feet of it before I called her away.   Can dogs not detect the scent of snake?  I've seen Bella follow the exact track of another dog through our yard more than a half hour after the dog ran through it.  But she can't smell a snake several feet away?

If you've read this blog for any long period, you know of my snake phobia.  I hate them, but since I hate rodents more, I don't kill the snakes.  Well at least not the non-poisonous ones and I have yet to run across a poisonous snake in my yard, although I'm sure there are plenty of Copperheads and Rattlesnakes in the vicinity.  Thankfully for my mental stability, I most often find either rat snakes or these pretty orange-black-yellow Common Garters.  This guy is likely an old one.  Wikipedia lists their maximum length as around 54 inches and although he didn't stand still for measurement, he was at least 48 inches nose to tail.  Based on my reading, he may be a Kansas record, but now I'll never know.

As I've noted before, frequent noxious exposure has conditioned me to moderate my response to the sight of a snake and I was calm and collected as I spotted the snake and got the clear picture above.  As I went in for a closer shot of the head, however, the snake moved with ninja-like reptilian swiftness and I found myself looking at a coiled, ready to strike, four foot long snake from about 2 feet away.  Mildly startled, I produced this moderately blurry image from an elevated position of spontaneous levitation.  The snake was not moving, but I certainly was.  Or perhaps the image is just blurred from my heart rate, which went from 60 to 200 faster than an Indy 500 race car.  My primitive brainstem doesn't seem to care that my highly evolved human cerebral cortex knows this snake is nonpoisonous.

Discretion being the better part of valor, I chose at that point to stand still and watch from about 10 feet away while the snake uncoiled and swiftly slithered across the yard and disappeared into the irises, leaving me panting, and at the same time, a little sad.  I had great hopes for the irises this year, but now they'll just have to survive summer as best they can on their own.

Fanatical Frisbee Fido

In this modern age, where self-proclaimed exercise experts abound and continuously expound their unsolicited and dubious wisdom through all forms of media, scarce any gardener will be unaware of the purported health benefits attributed to digging holes in soil to the point of painful arches or the lugging about on a regular basis of various potted plants and bags of organic materials weighing between 6 ounces and 20 tons.  Not to mention the aerobic benefits of sudden spurts of increased heart rate from snake-sightings and the mental stress that is purged alongside the profanity hurled at various garden plagues ranging from late frost to drought to hail.  Yes, gardening is generally regarded as good for your physical and mental health.  Why then, do others seem to want to keep us from gardening?

Many who revolve in the immediate vicinity of a gardener seem not to recognize the health benefits of gardening or, alternatively, they believe their own fitness regimes will benefit you more or are more important than the needs of your zinnias.  Take for example, my constant gardening companion, the intrepid Bella.  The lovable pooch is a frisbee fanatic.  Her morning routine for Mrs. ProfessorRoush and I is 1) wake us up by licking us enthusiastically chin to ears, 2) ring the bell hanging from the front doorknob so we will open the door and then stand outside in the chilled air sleepy and barely clothed while she pees, and 3) throw the frisbee as far as possible across dew-soaked ground and as many times as possible or until the neighbor catches us in our sleeping attire or lack thereof.   Sometimes she skips steps one and two and just wakes us by banging the frisbee into our face.

And it goes on all day.  Every time I turn around, she's waiting patiently, frisbee in her mouth or at her feet, for me to notice.  I'll be planting a shrub, step backward, and trip over the frisbee.  I'll be watering a container, feel eyes on my back, and turn around and there she'll be, frisbee in mouth, pupils wide with excitement.  I come home from work, ready to garden and gain some physical activity, and I have to play frisbee before I can fire up the lawn mower or pick up the pruners.  If, for an instant, rain or shine, she comes upon you sitting down or perhaps even moving slowly, her solution to your inactivity is to go find her frisbee.  The dog is as fanatical about exercise as Richard Simmons and just as bat-crap crazy.

All of this might make more sense if she was a Golden Retriever or a Labrador Retriever, but Bella the mostly-Beagle is a stubby, short-legged, portly, thirty-pound ball of obsessive-compulsive canine cuteness.  She doesn't actually want to play fetch, she wants the frisbee to be thrown for her, but when she brings it back, she fights you for it.  She teases, dropping the frisbee from her mouth but always keeping a foot on it, never willing to let it go without a battle.  So we get exercise at both ends, from throwing the frisbee and from wrestling it back away from her.  Some might call that a win-win but that "some" would only be Bella.

In the meantime, I may not be gardening much but I'm getting plenty of exercise.  In fact, you could say I'm bedogged by the doggone dog until I can't do my gardening.  Deep down, though, I suppose I don't really mind.  My exercise time is better spent increasing the rate of tail wag in a happy pooch than it is in growing alliums for hail to destroy.  

In Pursuit of Beauty

'Wonder Blue'

In need of solace this morning, I turned to my iPhone photos, in likely company with millions of my contemporaries but not, however, in a vain search for selfies.  In my post-hail apocalyptic milieu, I wanted only to recapture the stillness before the storm, the serenity of the unaware.  I desired the reflection of my soul and found it, gazing back from lilac panicles.  And then, lost again, I wandered into thought, my muse a lilac of unusual color but only moderate constitution. Allow me to introduce you to 'Wonder Blue', the so-called bluest of lilacs. This pale variety of Syringa vulgaris is renowned for its compactness and the unusual "blue" hue of its blossoms.  

I thoroughly enjoyed her brief show this season, a spectator to her splendor, yet she is a pretender, a false idol for lilac worshipers.  To my knowledge, there is no true blue pigment in Syringa vulgaris, just as there is no blue pigment in roses, but against the deep purple backdrop of 'Yankee Doodle', this lavender lass suffices for blue in my border.  Shorter than many of her cousins, however, she also is weaker, the least vigorous of all the lilacs I grow.  Compactness, in lilacs, may not be a virture.  Year-to-year, I'm happy to keep a few leggy canes growing to gift me these soul-mending tresses, but its survival always seems a little tenuous, as if beauty's cost were frailty.

Why is it that, in our quest for the quixotic, our pursuit of the perfect, we accept less for a close piece of the prize?  Is a beauty mark really the shining crown of a supermodel, the completion of a beauty such as Cindy Crawford, or is it merely a mole that we tolerate to bask in otherwise near-glory while knowing that melanoma lurks around the Darwinian corner?  Did Father John Fiala, its hybridizer, perpetuate 'Wonder Blue', fully aware of all its flaws but loving it still, merely for a pigment combination?  Is Man now the sole judge of evolution, the unnatural selector of the weakened unique?  Are we mere flawed assessors of beauty who lack a broader view of its true meaning? 

'Sensation'

If all were beautiful and perfect, if Man returned, through science and sweat, to Eden, would we be satiated at last or merely full?  Would we be Adam, languidly accepting the gifts of life, or still Eve, restless and impulsive?  When I bring bouquets of lilacs to work, it's not beautiful 'Wonder Blue', or healthy 'Declaration' that draw the most attention, it's the sensational 'Sensation', itself another weak performing shrub of only mild fragrance that is valued solely for the unique picotee of the petals.  Is 'Sensation' the Kim Kardashian of the lilac world, 'Wonder Blue' the Bachelorette of the season?

Cast out these false idols, I beseech thee.  Do not follow the weak-minded, superficially-oriented ProfessorRoush into the gardening wilderness, content to oversee the mere survival of the odd and unique. Seek out true beauty, the beauty of strength and resiliency against all.  You'll be a happier gardener for it, albeit deprived of the bluest of lilacs.

Healing Time

(Sung to the tune of Closing Time by Semisonic)

Healing time,
I've shut the doors & I've stayed in from the cold hailed-on world.
Healing time,
Waiting for new leaves out for every boy plant and girl.
Healing time,
I need some alcohol so send me your whiskey or beer.
Healing time,
My garden's messed up, but I can't stay in here.

I wish there were buds to bloom right now.
Why aren't there some buds to bloom right now?

I need for some buds to bloom right now.

Bloom right now.


I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but one week after the hailstorm, my parade is certainly characterized by crushed hopes and trashed flowers.  Besides that storm, there have been several others.  Forget the drought in this area of Kansas.  I've had over 10 inches of rain in 6 days and the rose garden is back to swampland.  What is a simple gardener to do?

Wrecked are the irises and peonies.  Well, if I'm being truthful, they are only moderately wrecked.  Irises and peonies who were leeward of the house from the storm or were sheltered by large neighboring shrubs came through largely intact and are still contributing color to the garden, although the blooms are damaged from up close (see the several examples on this entry).  In many cases, the stems were broken but the irises are blooming, albeit closer to the ground. 

Peony 'Scarlett O'hara'

Some roses lost buds, and, as I've investigated the damage further than my brief outside survey last week, the strawberries and blackberries are toast for this year.  Not "jam for toast", they ARE toast.  Peony 'Scarlett O'Hara', normally so beautiful, looks a little beaten up this year, a soiled dove more befitting my personal nickname for her of Scarlett O'Harlot. 

It is actually interesting, setting aside my deep despair, to look around and see what plants did or didn't stand up to the hailstorm.  I should be making lists and writing down names.  Most native plants, of course, like this Asclepias at right, shrugged off the hail and seem completely undamaged.  There are some varieties of peonies who survived intact despite being right out in the open, while others beside them were either shredded or lost their fat buds.  Some roses lost leaves or buds, while others haven't paused. 'Morden Blush' for instance, shown below, went ahead this week to open blooms that were even more blushingly beautiful than normal.  

'Morden Blush'

On the opposite extreme are the alliums.  I had such high hopes for some new alliums I planted last year.  Many broke off entirely and never bloomed.  Others, like this decrepit specimen, survived to rue the day they poked their head above the ground.

Iris 'Roselene'

I must be patient now, patient to wait for nature's repair, patient to wait another year for the promise of some to return.  'Roselene', fair Roselene, how I miss your cheery face and exquisite form.