Great Gardener's Wives

Behind every dedicated gardener is a Significant Other who may sometimes complain that the gardener is spending too much time in the garden but who, at other times, secretly hopes that the gardener quits lazing around on the couch and surrenders the remote.  Now that I've referred to my own SO in the requisite politically-correct way, let me be frank: A Sunday or so back, Mrs. ProfessorRoush kicked me out into the garden.

It's true that I've been slow to get back into the garden as the weather cooled down this Fall, but a couple of frenzied days in September seemed sufficient to keep my low-maintenance garden in a condition better than a complete disaster and they allowed me to keep the Winter preparatory chores caught up to my vague gardening chores schedule.  Additionally, since the immediate surrounding lawn of my house is buffalograss, now entering dormancy, and the outer lawn is mowed prairie, also entering dormancy, I have mowed the lawn a grand total of once in all of September.  I have yet to have to mow at all in October, here at the end of the month and it appears, in fact, that I'm done mowing for the year except that I'm still waiting for seedheads in my new wildflower garden to mature before I mow it off. Only then will I stow the mower, add winter stabilizers to the gasoline, and sharpen the blades in preparation for spring.  I've planted the Fall bulbs and I have tied up some of the taller rose canes so that they don't whip themselves to death with winter wind. 

But I suppose that She Who Must Be Obeyed (SWMBO) was perplexed that I wasn't pushing on with a new project such as bulldozing berms into the back yard or constructing a 20X100 foot greenhouse. Since SWMBO doesn't garden herself, she may not easily recognize the remaining symptoms of August gardening depression, that melancholy that hits gardeners when the temperatures soar over 100 and the garden shrivels to brown crepe paper.  Or, perhaps more likely, she just wanted some alone time in her domain of the house proper.  So she used the feeble excuse that I looked pale and needed a little sun and sent me packing with instructions to find something to keep myself busy outdoors.

And, of course, needing little urging beyond a well-timed spousal kick in the pants, I did just that.  I spread some well-rotted alfalfa tea that had been percolating for a week on several roses, divided a couple of daylilies, took pictures of a few late flowers for the blog, watered the compost pile, watered the recently-transplanted irises, cleaned out the bluebird nest boxes on my bluebird trail, took down and cleaned out the purple martin houses, drained two hoses and put them up for winter, and sat down for a minute or two in my gazebo.  That pretty much constituted a full afternoon of garden dawdling.  Well, I guess I also daydreamed a little bit about future garden plans and projects while sitting in the gazebo. On that beautiful October day, the perfect garden seemed yet within my grasp.  Refreshed, I returned indoors alongside the fading sun. Most importantly, SWMBO seemed satisfied with the duration of my exile to the garden and pronounced on my return that I had some color back in my cheeks.

Good marriages are made of many things, but great marriages are made when a gardener's spouse recognizes those moments when the soul of the gardener needs to merge with the soil of the garden. I am lucky to have found my Helen of Gardening, she sufficiently beautiful to launch a thousand garden beds. If puttering in the garden is what it takes to keep Mrs. ProfessorRoush happy, then puttering is the least I can do.

Happy Bluebird Trails

Yes, I'm one of those wild-eyed environmental (WEE) wackos that cares to keep bluebirds from the brink of extinction, and so I annually maintain a "Bluebird Trail" for the purpose of providing proper nest areas for those beautiful creatures.  Former President Jimmy Carter may have his Habitat for Humanity thing going, but I'm much more interested in seeing the bluebirds stay on the prairie.



Eastern Bluebird in my backyard

Bluebirds are in danger of becoming the next Carolina Parakeet or Passenger Pigeon without our help. Their numbers became dangerously low in the 1970's because they are cavity nesters.  Man, in his infinite wisdom, cuts down and destroys all the dead tree stumps that would otherwise provide natural cavities for the bluebirds and they also have competition for the few remaining natural cavities from sparrows (introduced to this country in the 1850's, again as a mistake by Man because He thought sparrows would eat crop insects, not become the nuisance pests they proved to be) .

Bluebirds and I have a special relationship.  My spirits are revived each spring as they arrive to begin nesting in February.  When we were building our current home, more than once I visited the framed but not yet walled-in house to find a bluebird sitting on a windowsill, as if blessing the building of our house with his presence.  Their quick little bounces while flying always lighten my mood.  And if you've read this blog long, you know I'm a sucker for light sky blue colors in the garden in any shape or form.  I've maintained a Bluebird trail, now up to sixteen boxes, for a number of years in my small attempts to aid the bluebird comeback.  This year I fledged 6 bluebird families from the 16 boxes, with 2 more nests of other species found.  My record was 8/12 bluebird nests several years back.





 In fact, I'm so into the Bluebird Trail concept that I've done some investigation into box design and also designed my own.  I started out by purchasing some typical commercial boxes from Walmart, but along the way I've built and tried lots of others. Somewhere out there on the Internet, you can find specific designs for different forms of bluebird nestboxes, from the NABS (North American Bluebird Society) box to the Peterson box and back again. Bluebird enthusiasts can debate front- and side-opening designs, floor designs, hole shapes and diameters, and hole positions till eternity passes.  Placement and construction of the boxes is critical to draw bluebirds and repel other species.  The box should be placed in grasslands away from trees and shrubs and about 4-5 foot high.  It should be away from houses as well to deter sparrows.  Size dimensions for the nest box are critical and the hole is also carefully shaped and sized (Starlings don't use oval holes and sparrows need wider ones than the 1 3/8 X 2 1/4 inch oblong hole now recommended).  Classically, the hole is placed closer to the top of the box, but another researcher has suggested that sparrows are also deterred if the nesting cavity is shallow, with the hole nearer the bottom.  Every year you must clean out and maintain the boxes to prevent disease in early Winter, before the bluebirds return to nest in February.

I've taken the best features from research to create my own simple design, which I must say seems to be remarkably effective on my little patch of prairie. Five of the six bluebird nests I had this year were produced in the six nest boxes that I've built of my own design and the sixth box was simply empty (without a sparrow nest).  The other ten boxes of commercial and other designs had only one bluebird nest among them, but two other nests from other species. At Photobucket, you can download a jpg of the "Roush Bluebird House" construction (page 1) and a diagram of how to cut up the boards (page 2) if you click on the links.  It's cut from standard lumbar widths; cedar is best for durability. It's a similar box to the Peterson box, with a larger bottom and a lower entrance.  I find front-opening boxes to be the easiest to clean.

So please, whatever design you choose, choose to help the Eastern Bluebird. I regret that I will never be able to see a Carolina Parakeet or Ivory-billed Woodpecker and I wasn't even responsible for those extinctions.  I'd like my grandchildren to still be able to enjoy a flash of blue in their gardens.

Late Surprises

I have seen a lot of posts lately on GardenWeb about late-blooming daylilies. There seems to be a relative contest to see who has the latest blooming daylily this year. And I've seen several of my own precious orange garden stalwarts come on and bloom late.  But I never expected, on October 26th, to see a daylily still blooming happily in my Zone5B garden.  

The daylily here is 'Hesperus', which I've never seen listed as a reblooming daylily, but which has certainly gotten mixed up this year and decided that the proper response to a summer drought and intense temperatures was to brighten up the garden one last time before a long winter's nap.

'Hesperus', hybridized by Hans Sass in 1940, happens to be (have been) the first winner of the Stout Silver Medal, in 1950.  The Stout Silver Medal is given in memory of Dr. Arlow Burdette Stout, a director at the New York Botanical Gardens and the father of modern daylily breeding in North America. It is the highest award a cultivar can receive, given only to candidates who have also previously received the Award of Merit and Honorable Mention status from American Hemerocallis Society judges.

'Hesperus' is a very tall daylily at 36 to 48 inches, one of the tallest in my garden, and its large 5 inch wide blossoms certainly provide a focal point. Now, I must admit, that I've never been a real fan of the orangeish daylilies, partially because of how common they are and partially because of the ridiculous ubiquitiousness (what a phrase!) of the garish Stella d' Oro. 'Hesperus', seemingly another nondescript, albeit healthy, yellow-orange daylily just converses along with its neighbors when the other daylilies in the bed are blooming, but, all alone in Autumn, it shouts "Hey, here I am!" and it becomes the most beautiful daylily the gardener has ever seen. Certainly it brightened my heart as I returned back from dark, wet Seattle on Sunday to the bright sunshine of the Flint Hills where the daylily still reigns as king of the summer garden.

Addendum;  Yesterday (10/28/10) Hesperus was beaten in the Late Sweepstakes by 'Happy Returns', which posted a cheery goodbye for me.

Borrowed Thoughts

I've had some readers inquire where I get the ideas for all the blogs. It's true there are slow times for blog ideas and other times when the thoughts tumble out like high mountain streams.  I've found that two infallible areas that stimulate blogs are looking through the many pictures I take in my garden (and my garden photography has increased substantially since I started blogging) and from simply observing and noting what plants look good or what activities I'm doing in the garden in a particular week.  But when I get stuck, picking up a new garden book will always trigger a few new opinions to blog about.

My latest read was found on the trip I just took to Seattle.  Titled The Gin and Tonic Gardener, by Janice Wells, it bore a 2006 publication date, but I don't recall that I'd ever seen it before. Certainly, I chose it because I felt the short, humorous essays of the book would make a light refreshing read on the trip and for no other specific reason.  Sometimes, a gardener likes to just sit and read, okay? 

The Gin and Tonic Gardener was exactly that, an interesting, loosely autobiographical chronicle of a year's worth of gardening efforts by Ms. Wells.  But, like many of the gardening manuscripts I read, here and there were statements that either made me sit up and think "well, there's a new thought", or "there's a beautiful thought," or "really?  That's not what I think."  The latter more critical opinion comes, of course, from the cynical professor side of my nature; that mind-image that is always sitting in a comfortable chair in the den, reading in dim light in a well-worn sweater, and mumbling "Hhhmpfff, Humbug" once in awhile.

I ended up jotting a note for 9 different potential blogs from The Gin and Tonic Gardener, so you can look forward in the future to blogs about purple-leafed honeysuckle ground covers, puttering in the garden, and the concept of waiting for the garden to tell you what to do.  These notes/ideas are written as simple one-line concepts to remind me what random thought crossed my mind, sometimes supplemented by the page number of the book I was reading at the time. I certainly never copy anything from a book without quoting it, but I'm not above expanding on good ideas from other writers or taking off on a tangent from their words.  If I were to paraphrase the famous quote by Sir Issac Newton about "standing on the shoulders of giants," it would be to say "If I have gardened or written about gardening better, it was by picking roses planted by great gardeners past."