Donkey Droppings

There were times this winter, as I trudged through bone-chilling early morning winds and snowstorms to feed the cats and donkeys, that I wondered if deep insanity had prompted me to adopt these money-burning parasites or if I had merely been prey during a weak moment.  Today, however, I was reminded why I took on housing of the donkeys, Ding and Dong.  It was all about their poop.

I trust that many of you who read this blog followed your normal Sunday routines this morning, perhaps coffee and paper with a loving spouse, or time spent in pursuit of spiritual knowledge or experience. ProfessorRoush, however, was not engaged in such high-minded or polite endeavors.  I was loading donkey crap into a cart shovelful by shovelful (as pictured above) and then, as any self-respecting rosarian would, unloading it in measured fashion as more shovelfuls onto my roses.  Four carts of donkey dung were distributed among approximately 200 roses by early afternoon, interrupted only by a minor drip in the basement ceiling and by personal time to rehydrate.  I threw donkey poop onto the feet of 'Charlotte Brownell' and 'Maria Stern'.  I cast manure onto 'Queen Elizabeth' and at 'Madame Hardy'.  I even tossed a little donkey crap on 'Jeri Jennings'.   I should apologize to the latter since it is entirely possible she could run across this blog entry, but Jeri is an outstanding rosarian of great reputation and I'm sure she will understand my transgression.
  
Four heaping carts of donkey crap may sound like a lot of work, but I'm a long-time feces-slinger.  When I was the tender age of 12 or 13 or so, at the end of our first year with registered Polled Hereford cattle, my father decided the barn needed cleaning and bade me to load the accumulated manure into my grandfather's 2-ton manure spreader.  "It'll only be a couple of loads," he said.  Two weeks and 28 tons of manure later the barn was clean and Dad and I had reached an understanding that he was going to buy a front-end loader for the tractor.  Today's job was not nearly so taxing as that, and this afternoon I have a garden that looks like the bed pictured at the left, roses surrounded by piles of donkey poop.

There were learning opportunities today, as always.  After some period of applying donkey-based fertilizer, it dawned on me that Mrs. ProfessorRoush was not going to be happy about the aroma in the vicinity of our house after the predicted rains later this week.  Additionally, based on personal experience, I can now recommend that those who shovel donkey excrement into the face of a Kansas wind gusting up to 41 mph should take care never to exert themselves to the point of breathlessness and open-mouth breathing.  Such inattention to detail may have dire consequences, the least of which is the likelihood that Mrs. ProfessorRoush, upon reading this blog, will subsequently withhold any affections until she forgets or at least stops gagging at the thought.  The latter is, as stated, the least of my problems because after shoveling, unshoveling, and aspirating dust from four cart loads of donkey muffins, I could frankly use the rest.

Encore! Encore!

I'm sorry, Mother Nature, you must have misunderstood me.  I was not shouting "Encore!  Encore!" in hope of seeing winter continue.  I was shouting "No more, no more!"  Not even the best available weathermen and scientists predicted yesterday that I would wake up to more snow from you this morning. When will it end?

You are getting old and hard of hearing, aren't you? Fighting to stay when you should be welcoming rebirth and youth.  Now look where we are, my crocus babies shivering and buttoned up to hide from your icy touch.  Trust me when I recommend that you let those last tired, cold, and scrawny bones of Old Man Winter splinter and crack back to dust.  Let winter go.  I'm done with it and you should be too. Stop trying to cling to last year victories and move on.  Please.

Let Spring cover naked limbs with fresh new wood, sprout plump buds that seep sticky sap, and ripen flowers that open to sunshine.  Let light green leaves be your epitaph, shiny new skin to cover the tortures of winter.  Let roots warm and stretch beneath the soil to welcome rain and feel the embrace of earth.  Let fruit swell and blush and drop for the nourishment of all.  Fight not against life's end, but welcome at last the cycle of renewal .  Live again as moonlight and warmer winds, as brighter sunshine and as dewdrops.



Oh my beautiful snow crocus, mere yellow streaks now, memories of the glorious palette of creams and yellows from only yesterday.  Will you come back?  Encore, crocus! Will you wait out the frozen rain to bloom again this year?  Encore, crocus! How much more can you take?  How much more can I take?       

Hollyhock Hunger

Friends, I really miss my many hollyhocks.  Yes, I pine for peonies and rave on roses, but today I'm thinking only of light, cheery, woolly hollyhocks.  They bloom at the end of the roses for me, staring down the barrel at the coming heat of summer, but they've never failed to brighten up the borders as the early garden wanes. 

Stubborn and unknowing gardeners lump hollyhocks with other heirloom plants and disdain their contributions to today's gardens, but our grandmothers, as always, were sound and wise with the few ornamentals they chose to trouble with. 

Alcea 'Black Beauty'

We garden today with a multitude of companion plants for roses; of the value of clematis for complementing the bloom of a rose, of the tidiness of phlox and verbena and bulbs to extend the flowering season of a rose border, of the solid background of an ornamental grass.  But many have forgotten the lowly and coarse hollyhock in their rush to modern garden design.  Forgotten the height and structure and texture contrasts that hollyhocks provide against the shiny new rose leaves.  Forgotten the bright blooms that open wide each sunny morning and then fall cleanly to the ground a few mornings later.   








I sing today of the wonders of my hollyhocks.  I sing of the ethereal beauty of those cupped blossoms, translucent against their backgrounds but colorful and substantial in the border.  I sing of the large light green leaves, fuzzy and rough, hardened against drought and wind.  I sing of their rapid reach skyward, to tower for a brief time in the sunlight, to fade into the fall background of foliage and seed.  I sing of their carefree nature, self-seeding themselves into the perfect niche to complement a rose, requiring neither deadhead nor cultivation for procreation or survival.

Witness the delicate membrane of petal, fragile as glass.  Notice the feathery stamens and glistening pistil, aching to join forces. See the play of form and color between rose ('American Pillar') and hollyhock as pictured to the left.  Hail the vibrant crimson of 'Charter's Double Red' to the right.  Alcea all, rosea some, tough and proud faces turned to scorching sunshine, defiant and strong to wind.

I choose and covet my hollyhocks by their survival and their deep color.  I have long friendships with  'Charter's Double Red' and 'Black Beauty' and a beautiful pink variety whose name I've lost to the depths of time.  I've been briefly acquainted with more fickle visitors such as 'Charter's Double Yellow' and 'Queeny Purple', who have disdained my hospitality and faded on.  But if they live, they stay, and if they stay, they serve.  What more can I ask of a plant that can outshine a rose?

Cat-a-phoria

Yesterday was the day I've been waiting for, hoping and praying for, so long now.  Pure golden sunshine, a minor warm breeze, and 75ºF.  I attacked the garden at 8 a.m., determined to get a start on the Spring chores, to feel sweat on my arms and aching muscles again.  Determined to soak in the sunshine, to end up with red-tipped ears and rosy cheeks, melanoma be damned.

CatMint 'Nepeta cataria'

I was not the only creature on God's earth waiting for this day.  The Eastern Bluebirds are back and the Killdeer showed signs of nesting on their usual spot.  Moose, our Maine Coon cat, demonstrated his blissful enjoyment of the day by rolling over and over in the first bunch of catmint (Nepeta cataria) that I uncovered.  You can see it there next to the top of Moose's head.  Another clump is beneath him.  As I related before, I originally was thrilled to discover this native Kansan and I carefully nurtured it wherever it self-seeded.  These days I spend more time grubbing it out then preserving it, else I'd have a garden of white catnip and be overrun by most of the cats from neighboring Manhattan.  You can see in this picture how Moose was affected, his tongue hanging in drugged stupor. This picture isn't very flattering, but the silly boy deserves a few moments of Nirvana.  He's had a rough winter recovering from being the victim of a tug-of-war by two neighboring dogs back in November.

All in all a successful day for both of us.  I cleaned out the back patio bed, cut off all the ornamental grasses in the garden, reattached the lawn mower deck and leveled it, greased the tractor, crab-grass-prevented the buffalograss lawn, fertilized the sprouting daffodils and crocus, potted some left-over tulips bulbs I discovered in the garage, and mused about what I was going to move this year.  This morning I am sunburned indeed, a little bit sore, scratched up from tying up my 'American Pillar', and completely satisfied.

About 7:00 p.m. last night, the wind started howling out of the north, and this morning it is 30ºF and the wind is still threatening to lift the house from its foundations and send it rolling across the prairie.   I don't suppose I'll get much outside work done today although it it is tempting to enlist the wind on my side and just go out, tear out the brown remnants of perennials, and toss them into the air to let the wind dispose of them instead of having to drag them to the compost pile.  In the meantime, I'll leave you with the thought that those brash yellow crocuses that I wrote of just a few days ago look much better when joined by their blue and white cousins,.  Don't they?



  

Acquired Yellows

At this early date, there are two and only two blooming plants in the garden of ProfessorRoush; both  falling somewhere into the ugly brassy or chrome yellow range of the flower world.  Adding to my gardening irritation factor, they are also about 2 weeks later than in the average year.  These lovely plants are, of course, some yellow snow crocus and my 'Jelena' witch hazel.   I'm not at all sure that I like either of them, but now, a brief week or two past the snow and in contrast to the tired color of the dried grass everywhere else in my landscape, I suppose I should take what I can get.

My acceptance, nay, my naked lust, for snow crocus is based entirely on the fact that they are the first blooms I see every year.  If they flowered in late April in the wake of larger and flashier tulips and daffodils, I'd never grow them.  If they bloomed in September, just past the burning fires of August, I might give them the time of day but I also still might not grow them.  They're just too low to the ground and small to receive notice.  Still, I'm thankful every year when I see them in March.

Besides, I'm not that crazy about yellow flowers in general.  I was interested to learn recently that yellow is supposed to be the color of the "mind and the intellect," for those who follow the "psychology of yellow,"  whatever that is.  Yellow "relates to acquired knowledge," and "resonates with the left (or logical) side of the brain stimulating our mental faculties and creating mental agility and perception."  It "talks," it is "non-emotional", it is the "entertainer, the comic, the clown."   Poppycock!  The only part of that I agree with is the "acquired knowledge" part.  After years of hard-won gardening efforts, I acquired the knowledge that the first two plants that will survive a Kansas winter and bloom are two screaming yellow plants;  snow crocus and witch hazel.

As for the witch hazel, my devoted readers know that I've struggled with it here on the Kansas prairie.  I've never been impressed with the bloom and its impact on my Spring garden, but for the first time, I'm a little closer to tolerance for it.  My 'Jelena' has finally bloomed with enough gusto that I can see that it is blooming over ten feet away.  That's not much, but it's a worthwhile beginning on the road to acceptance, and what I've seen is enough for me to keep the plant around for another year of growth.  Perhaps, someday, I can hope to see it blooming from the house windows so that I don't have to walk right up to the plant to check on it.    

Gathering History

ProfessorRoush hasn't read his way completely through a gardening-themed book all winter.  I've picked around at several, picking them up for a few pages and putting them back down, but none of them grabbed my attention.  Until recently, that is.

The winner of this year's ProfessorRoush Winter Gardening Reading award goes to Ms. Diane Ott Whealy, for her portrayal of herself and her family in Gathering; Memoir of a Seed Saver.  Those who don't recognize the author may be more familiar with her as the founding "mother" of the Seed Savers Exchange and the wife of Kent Whealy, the founding "father" of the movement.

Gathering is a memoir that I didn't want to put down once I got hooked.  Part biography of the Whealy family, part history of the formation and growth of the Seed Savers Exchange, it chronicles the farm and lifestyle that became the forefront of current efforts in heirloom seed preservation.  The early nomadic lifestyle of the Whealy's as narrated in the first few chapters made me a little worried that I was really going to enjoy it.  Diane spent some time early on talking about the 1970's and '80's, and this is the first time I've read a book that talks about events in my lifetime that make the 1970's sound like they were ancient history.  That realization can be quite a blow to an old gardener.  But things took a turn around the time of their move to Missouri and the founding of the Seed Savers Exchange, and then got exciting during the purchase of Heritage Farm.  About this time in the text, recipes and descriptions of heirloom vegetables and apples started to fill the pages and it all took life before my eyes.   In past years, I've ordered some of the very varieties from Seed Savers that Ms. Whealy describes, and her stories of saving those heirlooms bring their tastes right back to my palate.  If you want to try some of those varieties yourself, the new digital catalog of the Seed Savers Exchange is here.

Gathering was published in 2011 and I'm not sure how I missed it until I found it last month on the shelves of the local Half Price Books as a used copy.  During my own pre-gardening years and before Seed Savers were a household name, I probably drove past Heritage Farm scores of times as I traveled around the Midwest, but now I've got to schedule a special trip to visit.  Anyway, if you're ready for a story of hard work, perseverance through difficulties, acceptance of life's twists and turns, and single-minded pursuit of a dream, then pick up Gathering and it will surely keep you reading.  The good recipes you'll find along the way are just icing on the 'Moon and Stars' watermelon.

     

Souvenir du President Lincoln

'Souvenir du President Lincoln'

ProfessorRoush is mildly late at observing the fabricated President's Birthday holiday, but since the importance of that holiday has dramatically decreased from the separate observances of Washington's Birthday and Lincoln's Birthday during my elementary school days, I don't feel overly guilty about it.  Truth-be-told, I'm kind of anti- all the little Monday holidays, anyway.  I never saw the point of anything other than Memorial Day and maybe Veteran's Day, but the rest just kind of interrupt my work flow and seem superfluous.  Heck, I had to work on President's Day this year, so what was the point? 


You can always choose to honor President Lincoln, however, by growing a healthy red Bourbon rose named 'Souvenir du President Lincoln'.  He was bred by French breeders Robert and Moreau in 1865, the year of Lincoln's assassination. I have a little trouble, myself, calling him red since he is more of a magenta-pink in my garden, perhaps showing a little fuchsia overtone from time to time.  In fact, there is some broad acceptance in the rose world that the rose currently being sold as 'Souvenir du President Lincoln' is not the original, which was indeed described as dark red, purple, or almost black.  The impostor stands, however, with no rival;  all the complaints about this rose differing from early descriptions may be accurate, but no other rose has stepped up as a candidate for the correct original.  This current one will also not be mistaken for the more modern deep red Hybrid Tea 'Mr. Lincoln', but he has just as strong a fragrance as its modern cousin, and a  blossom that is far more double, with about 80 petals packed into a cupped bloom. 

My 'Souvenir du President Lincoln' is entering his third full season in my garden, provided, of course, that it survived this long winter as it did the previous two.  Last year, as a two-year old, he gained some height, but his straggly nature seems more suited to being a pillar rose than a garden bush.  My specimen has several thick and long canes that grew to about 5 feet high and then proceeded to flop.  It is a very narrow bush, all legs and no torso, hoping only to find something to lean against.  The foliage is matte-surfaced, and grey-green, and the rose suffered from some moderate blackspot over last summer.  Definitely a Bourbon by nature, 'Souvenir du President Lincoln' is often described as an alternative to 'Madame Isaac Pereire, but in my garden I think MIP is by far the more vigorous bush and has a stronger fragrance. 

It has been so long since I've written about a rose that it almost feels unnatural, a bit too "in-your-face" to a winter that has surely not yet released its grasp on my snow- and ice-covered fields.  I hope I'm not tempting fate by thinking about summer roses during a minus zero morning.   

 

Bye Bye Bye, Boltonia

As I have decided not to regrow a seemingly marvelous particular perennial next year, or at the very least decided to move it out of my sight and out of mind, I believe that I at least owe the plant a parting blog. Oh Boltonia, my lovely, I just couldn't take any more.

I spent the late summer of 2012 driving to and fro near a fabulous specimen of this plant at the parking lot entrance to the KSU gardens.  Shining and thriving in the midst of the drought and 100° temperatures that August, it was unlabeled at the time, but I suspected its identity after running across it here and there in plant catalogues. I had long read about the drought tolerance and hardiness of this perennial, and I decided it was time to give it a try, especially since it was almost the only plant in flower during that fiery August.

Boltonia asteroides, the White Doll's Daisy, or False Aster, is a native perennial to this area of the country and the Eastern United States.   It is an erect plant, with blue-green foliage, growing from 12 to 60 inches tall according to references, and its cheery little daisy-face is always bright and happy just as a daisy-face should be.  Hardy to Zone 3, and blooming at the very best time for it to be noticed in the garden, alone in August and September, it is even listed as "clay tolerant."  What more could I ask for?

Well, I could have asked for it to grow less vigorously.  My Boltonia, planted in 2012 and having its first full season in 2013, became a rampaging monster, 6 feet tall and 4 or 5 feet wide, cascading and smothering every other plant in the vicinity, which included a struggling 'Dragon's Blood' rose and my beloved 'Vanguard'.  This, despite the lack of soil enhancements and without added water. Yes, the flowers are gorgeous close up, but farther away the plant just has the appearance of a white cloud.  And no reference ever suggested that it might need support, although I later learned that the Missouri Botanical Garden suggests cutting it back by 1/3rd in late spring to early summer to reduce plant height. 

Boltonia asteroides is a nice, dependable perennial, but I'm banishing it this year from my garden.  I might still give it a chance to survive among the tall grasses at the periphery of the garden, however. Borrowing lyrics from "Delilah," the classic hit by Tom Jones (a favorite crooner's of my mother's during my childhood),  I could also sing;  "My My My, Boltonia.  Why Why Why, Boltonia?  I could see that plant was no good for me. But I was lost like a slave that no man could free.  Forgive me, Boltonia, I just couldn't take any more." 

Unlike Sir Thomas John Woodward (Jones), though, women probably won't be throwing their hotel keys at me while I sing.  It's a pity, but gardening just has no star quality.

Bella

If this long winter has had a bright spot, it has been inside the house for us, not outside.  Everyone, I'd like to introduce you to Bella, the new daily companion of Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  She's 8 weeks old in these pictures, but we've had her 4 weeks today.  Our recent empty nest syndrome was hitting Mrs. ProfessorRoush hard, but I think we've got it licked now.  Or at least we're being licked to death by our "cure" for the empty nest syndrome.

Bella is the offspring of a beagle mom who was a little loose with the neighborhood boys.  We're not exactly sure who the father is, but he is believed to be a Fox Terrier.  At least that was the theory of the breeders, who thought it was the Fox Terrier because he "was the only male dog in the area of the right size at the time."  As a veterinarian, I'm not so sure that an asymmetric mating is so impossible, and it would be about my luck that the father was a coyote.  Bella's beagle genes seem to be pretty strong here, however so we'll just call her a beagle, leave the paternal component unspoken, and just tell her that Daddy was an interstate trucker.  

On the behavior side, we've gotten pretty lucky.  The first night we brought her home we put her to a crate bed around 9:00 p.m. and she left us alone until 6:00 a.m.  Even better, she's done it about every night since, so she's a lot easier on our sleep patterns than either of our human offspring were.  Potty-training has really gone pretty well with the exception that the cats, Millie and Moose, won't leave us alone and distract Bella every time we take her out.  In the meantime, Mrs. ProfessorRoush is completely besotted, as every new mother should be.   I'm just hoping Bella's daddy really was a Fox Terrier and that I get a decent garden rabbit-chaser in the bargain.  It's the least Bella could do for the money I'm trading for puppy food, toys, and shots. In the meantime, I'll try to resist looking at her and thinking about how many new roses I could have bought instead.

Life Against The Odds

When finally melts incessant snow,
When arctic winds no longer blow,
When I've succumbed to Winter's woe,
I'm rescued by sweet crocus.

Just as I have lost all hope,
When I no longer seem to cope,
When I become a forlorn mope,
I'm rescued by snow crocus.

Deep beneath the snow and ice,
Growing, stretching, green and nice,
My spirit lifted up in trice,
Relieved from gloom by crocus.

Gold and white, soon blooms will come,
And I'll be fine, no longer glum,
Because beneath the snow was some,
Gorgeous, lifting, thriving crocus.

At last the deep snow here in the Flint Hills has melted, though out my window even more currently floats down to a warmer earth where slush and muck are taking hold.  Morning sleet turned to snow now, which becomes needed rain on the pavement.  Here and there, a remnant patch of snow and ice hide from the weather, clinging to the north sides of ditches and trees, surviving only where former drifts were deep and wide.  Today's high 48F, tomorrow's 57F will assure that the snow stays in memory, no threat to return in the foreseeable future.

The snow melt left my garden a swamp, the frozen ground reluctant to imbibe the liquid cold which seeks only a return to earth.  The former dry and tall grasses are bent low and sodden by the weight of the previous ice, soon a decaying mass on the prairie floor.  Shrub branches are barren, rose canes and thorns are exposed, and clematis and sweet pea are ethereal ropes dancing in the wind, torn free from their trellises.  Magnolia pods are tightly held, fruit tree buds are hard as nails, and branches everywhere are brittle and sapless, not yet ready to chance growth.

But in a western bed, beneath the dormant lilacs, I've found the nascent life in my garden.  And I am ever faithful that warmth and sunshine will spread this life from here across the garden and then across the prairie.  These snow crocus soon to flower and welcome the oncoming Spring to Kansas also carry my spirit upward, free again from the bonds of Winter's fury, soaring to sunshine and dreams on golden stamens.  Here now is hope, here relief, here life.        

No Joy in Snowville

Why, oh why Lord, doest thou test me so?   I discovered today that my last effort at winter gardening has failed.  I am chastened, abashed at my incompetence, unsteady and unwise.  I've lived quite a saga this winter in my meager attempts to develop even a token few blooms.  Way back in late September I planted, with high expectations, several spare pots full of daffodil bulbs and I placed them out around a Redbud tree to let them winter over.  Unfortunately, I placed them near the rock retaining wall at the back door and within a week, every bulb had been removed, presumably by pack rats stocking their winter larder.  As evidence, I later found two partially gnawed bulbs in the crevices in the wall.  I hope the pack rats choked on them. 

In October, I planted the four containers above (and three others), full of daffodil and tulip bulbs, ready to burst into flower at a moment of my clever choosing in the depths of winter.  I was smarter this time and I placed them down in the unheated barn, covered with chicken wire, where they rested through the cold days and nights.  I had hopes of providing them as lottery gifts to our March Extension Master Gardener's potluck. 

In the meantime, I was busy failing to grow Amaryllis for Christmas.  I purchased two 'Red Lion' bulbs at a local nursery on the first of November and began growing them in our sunroom.  They grew slowly and timidly, and ultimately one flowered a single, deep red, and unsatisfying bloom around the 2nd week of January.  So much for Amaryllis at Christmas.  The other bulb never bloomed, but the leaves look healthy enough.  Maybe I can keep them around for another try next year.

In mid-January, I finally remembered the potted bulbs in the barn and pulled them up into the breakfast nook in front of a large window for warmth and light and began waiting.  I waited.  And waited.  And waited some more.  Finally today, 5 weeks after bringing them inside, upon noticing a few wisps of errant grass coming up in the pots (probably from the hay in the barn near their storage area), I broke down and emptied a pot, only to find the remains of rotted bulbs everywhere.  Woe, oh woe is me.  I promise that I didn't overwater them.  A little moistened potting soil at the beginning was provided.  How could they possibly rot?  Too cold in the barn?

To borrow from the famous poem "Casey at the Bat" by Ernest Thayer, there will be no joy in Snowville this year, because mighty ProfessorRoush has struck out.  Zero for three tries at forcing bulbs this winter.  My only real chance of blooms now are the snow crocus that I planted in the fall, still buried at present beneath the snows.   Perhaps, if I increase my nightly prayers and double my church attendance, there will be a chance I'll see them by May.

Zen Frog In Winter

Amidst the snow and ice of this ceaseless winter, ProfessorRoush needs to calm down and take a lesson from his Totally Zen Frog statue.  I took this picture standing in a snow drift up to my waist, at the end of a long afternoon digging the rest of our driveway clean from the storm that blasted us earlier this week.  Here, only a few feet away from the roses buried in snow, sits the contemplative frog, floating above the snow, untouched by the cold.   He doesn't care about Winter's fury.  He's imagining Spring, full-blown, golden with daffodils, glowing with sunshine.







In my garden, however, Zen Frog seems to be the only one who doesn't care about winter.  Even the ornamental grasses have lost their regal stature, bowed and broken in places from the heavy snow.  Those that remain standing seem mass-less now, shrunken from their previous Fall glory.  They struggle to keep their heads above the snow, straining to survive for winter's swan song.









The annuals and herbaceous perennials have long given up their ghosts.  This Prickly Poppy (Argemone polyanthemos) left only a dessicated and hollow carcass to serve as a grave marker, a spiny brown contrast to the white snow at its waist.   Isn't it an odd contrast that these lifeless remains represent also the hope of the next season, the missing seed from the pods spewed yon and hither to find earth and moisture?


I tried today, in a moment of fancy, to levitate above the snow drift and meditate with the Zen Frog, but I fell back to earth and snow with a crash of reality.  Encased in layers of clothing and caps, water-proofed to the ankles but wet at the knees, I must instead await warmth and sunshine with an impatient heart, for I cannot become stone and wait out the winter.  My lot now is to shovel, swear, and scowl out the windows until Winter fades back and Spring surges forth.

Mr. Higgin's Folly

Yes, ProfessorRoush has not blogged for quite some time.  January has frankly been dismal here in the Flint Hills, and I've been leery of planning the return of green and glorious landscapes lest I awaken the wrath of the Winter Gods and precipitate another late April snowstorm.

I was rudely roused, however, from my winter slumber this morning when my local paper printed the January 29th column of the esteemed Washington Post garden columnist, Mr. Adrian Higgins.  Mr. Higgins, normally a sensible and knowledgeable garden writer, titled that column Prune Rosebushes in Winter, a bland and partly inaccurate title that led the reader on to eventually crash blindly into the shores of poor rose advice.  Thankfully, Mr. Higgins rambled over the first half of the article, presumably filling column space, before he got to rose care, else the damage done to Washington's roses could have been much worse.

In his last few paragraphs, Adrian opens the rose-related conversation by stating that "roses are inherently sickly, but the vigor of modern hybrids far outpaces their woes."  Apparently, Mr. Higgins is only acquainted with the inbred, over-pampered, disease-susceptible Hybrid Teas and Floribundas of the 1960's-90's, a time when monstrosities such as 'Tropicana' and 'Chrysler Imperial' ruled the rose world, commercialized and hyped to the point of nausea.  He never mentions the hardier roses that our forefathers grew, nor the disease-resistant, sustainable rose shrubs created over the last two decades by breeding programs such as that of the late Professor Griffth Buck, or test programs such as the Earth-Kind® program of Texas A&M University.

Adrian doubles down on his rose ignorance by recommending the annual pruning of all roses to a "goblet of five or six canes...cut back to 18 inches," making no exceptions for once-blooming Old Garden roses, nor for leaving many modern Hybrid Tea and Floribunda cultivars taller or bushier.  My local newspaper compounded the omission by also deleting the last two paragraphs of the original column, where Mr. Higgins briefly mentions pruning exceptions for  "utilitarian landscape roses" such as Knock Out and larger Ramblers.  I appreciate Adrian's demeaning characterization of Knock Out, but his description of appropriate pruning for these ubiquitous blights will only perpetuate the attempts of home landscapers to turn these shrubs into flowering topiary such as elephants with flowering ears.

Adrian, you did well with your recommendations of pruning for once flowering shrubs, shade trees, and hydrangeas, but please, leave rose-pruning advice to those with a broader view of the rose world.  I retire now, left to cope with my resultant nightmares of hacked down 'Madame Hardy' and 'Variegata di Bologna', butchered in their prime in the refined neighborhoods of Washington D. C. because of your need to fill column inches.  Oh, the horror.

Interloping Chores

With the return of several days of above-freezing temperatures here, the Flint Hills have at least temporarily morphed from deep snow back to brown grass, and I was enticed outside yesterday afternoon by Mrs. ProfessorRoush to participate in what she envisioned as a nice brisk walk in the sunshine.

Unfortunately, Mrs. ProfessorRoush underestimated my determination to avoid useless cardiovascular exercise and she found herself accompanying me on a few brief gardening chores on the thin-muck-on-frozen-ground that currently serves as the prairie surface.  I pulled the Christmas tree down onto the burn pile, changed the memory card in my garden camera, and dragged Mrs. ProfessorRoush to the pond, where we proceeded to relocate a few bluebird boxes to locations that I hope will entice bluebirds more than the wrens that occupied them last year.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush was a great companion, providing a running commentary of the beauty of the frozen pond while picking her way gingerly through the slop, and thus preventing me from feeling any sense of loneliness in the quiet and peaceful surroundings.   

As is often the case when a puttering gardener is trying to take advantage of a warm day, there were numerous other interlopers besides the lovely Mrs. ProfessorRoush who demanded my time and attention.  Near the pond, we found ourselves being chased down by the donkeys, Ding and Dong, who both seemed intensely interested in the bluebird boxes and who provided close supervision of the move and their advice and final approval of the new locations.  Once or twice, they even had to be swatted away from breathing down the back of my neck while I tightened the screws holding the boxes to the fence posts.  Warm, moist, donkey breath around my ears makes me a little nervous, especially since Ding likes to bite the fingers that give him treats.  I didn't need any Mike Tyson-style ear-mangling events to provide stain the remaining snow.

Soon, I'm sure, Spring will arrive, providing succulent grass to occupy the donkeys and a lack of novelty to outside excursions, and I'll be forced back into solitary gardening, puttering alone with my hands in the dirt. It's a dirty, lonely chore, but one that I'll be happy to tackle once again.