Grape Vines and Checklists

'Reliance' before pruning

Saturday, Leap Day 2020, was moderately windy, but otherwise a marvelous day on the prairie, February fleeing into the past with sunshine licking at its heels.  Another warm Saturday for Bella and I is now behind us and the aching to get outside ProfessorRoush got good and achy.  My garden muscles need a little bit of training yet this season.

I had some errands to run in the morning, so it was nearly 1:30 p.m. yesterday when I ventured outside.  I immediately realized that cleaning the front bed was not going to be feasible in the high winds, so I turned to other spring chores.  First and foremost was washing out the garage floor to remove the tons of mud carried in from the gravel road this winter on the cars.  There were actual dry mud piles stuck to the garage floor at each tire, and I removed a full three gallon bucket of soil from the floor before I turned the hose on the floor to wash out the rest.  I had it all done before Mrs. ProfessorRoush arrived home from her own errands, and nearly 18 hours later my loving spouse has yet to notice or acknowledge the improvement.  Next time I just wash the side where my car sits!

'Reliance' after pruning

I had been eyeing the asparagus patch for several weeks, knowing that I need to remove the dead growth, and that is where I turned next, readying the patch for those first green sprouts.  Next, I decided to check pruning the grapes off of my springtime bucket list, since pruned twigs won't blow into my eyes in the wind.  You can see the "before and after" shots here, this old massive 'Reliance' grapevine visibly relieved from several years of unpruned growth. 'Reliance' is our favorite grape around here and this vine produces well, at least during years I pay proper attention to it, 

One of ProfessorRoush's many failings is that once I rouse my slothful soul to start a project, I really hate to stop before I'm done, so I didn't prune the 'Reliance' and call it a day, I pruned ALL the grapes.  We have about 8 living vines, and you can see another line of vines I attacked with pruneers in the final picture, now readied for the rapid growth of early summer.  In my renewed determination to garden right or give up, I promise to make sure that this year they get sprayed at the proper times to prevent mildew and other fungus.  But that will be much later on in the year and today beckons right now, predicted to be warm, sunny and windless.  Garage, check. asparagus bed, check. Grapes, check.  Maybe I'll get another crack today at finally cleaning those front beds. 

(Not) Killing Peonies!

A few weeks ago, on a partially random internet purchasing foray, I came across How Not to Kill a Peony; An Owners Manual, a 2018-dated paperback by a fellow Hoosier, Stephanie Weber.  Consistent with the wonders of modern shopping, a simple "add-to-cart" click made sure that I wouldn't forget it, and I included the book in a recent order of other items.

I've read several garden-oriented books this winter, but none better than this one.  Ms. Weber wrote a simple and entertaining narrative of her experiences growing and selling peony divisions in Indiana, the rural Indiana of my boyhood home, and she is true to the frank and plain spoken nature I expect of Hoosiers.  Early in the text, she detailed the important factors she used to choose among varieties of peonies for growth and sale, and then related how she and her husband planted 1200 peonies of roughly 40 different varieties in 2006 on a half-acre of good Indiana farmland  to create a "drop-in" peony nursery.   TWELVE HUNDRED PEONIES!  Now that, my friends, is taking a leap of faith reminiscent of Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade!  Well, except for the Indiana placement of the nursery, because I'm well familiar with the productivity of northern Indiana soils.  Borne in them, you might say.

'Red Charm'

How No to Kill a Peony is a delicious, straightforward, and sometimes snarky 98 page read that quickly brought me to understand the many useful things I never learned about peonies from Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall's massive Peonies sleeper.  Ms. Weber quickly explains why heirloom P. lactiflora peonies flop, describes the contributions to peony genetics of each of the 4 major species that led to modern peonies (including the contribution of red pigments from P. officinalis), and she sprinkles valuable information on planting, care, harvesting, and storing peonies through the book.  Every important fact about growing peonies is covered, and covered in straightforward fact.  And the most important advice?  Plant peony varieties that don't flop!  Who knew?

'Scarlett O'Hara' in 2019

 As a testament to its engaging prose, I read How Not to Kill a Peony in a single setting, learning more in an hour about how to choose between peonies than I did in my previous lifespan. As a testament to its entertaining nature, one need only skim section titles such as "How Floppers Infiltrated the Landscape,"Days in May That Cause Dismay," and "The Importance of Eye Candy."  There are hundreds of beautiful peony photographs, and lurid descriptions of popular varieties.  Popular 'Red Charm' receives a proper promotion, and 'Prairie Moon' gets her due attention. Coral-colored 'Flame' is described as "like the quiet, nerdy girl in your math class who you one day realize is gorgeous."  Red single 'Scarlett O'Hara', one of my personal favorites, is "a sleeper, like a granny car with a turbo engine."  Bicolored 'Mister Ed' "has been on acid since the 1950's."

Need I go on?  For early and experienced peonyists (a self-coined term that sounds vaguely lewd and improper but it is the best I can think of), I've never seen a better presented "How-To" that will help you grow peonies that are the envy of the neighborhood.  Now, darn it, where did I leave that Song Sparrow Farm and Nursery catalog?  I just don't have enough peonies in my front yard....

Gardening? What's That?

Like an exile without a country, ProfessorRoush this week was a gardener without much of a garden.  Cold brisk weather and a little snow combined to drive me to indoor gardening, the latter a topic for the future, but I wandered outside a little here and there just to assess the premises.

And to feed the donkey's!  Several weeks ago, I occasionally began supplementing Ding and Dong's forage of the remaining stubby prairie with a little store-bought grass hay and they've quickly become accustomed to these little treats, hanging out on the weekends where I'll see them if I come out.  They've also come to expect apples during these visits, and yesterday seemed quite disappointed when I only showed up with hay, sending me a disdaining donkey look as only these apple-starved pair of prima donnas could.

Western Slender Glass Lizard

In a traipse around the back yard, I also came upon a new prairie citizen, at least new to me.  I think this frozen creature is not a snake, but a Western Slender Glass Lizard (Ophisaurus attenuatus) missing the end of his tail as they often do.  They are named because their tail breaks off easily to aid in escape from predators, but I'm going to have to concentrate to make sure I don't remember this as a "grass" lizard rather than "glass" lizard, being a prairie creature and all.  In coloration and skin pattern, he resembles the skinks of this area, but this guy was about 2 feet long and didn't have legs.  I don't know what he was doing out of his burrow laying upon a layer of snow, but I'll bet he regretted that decision.  In fact, I wasn't sure if he was alive or dead, but I was not about to bring him inside and warm him up to find out, possibly subjecting both the unaware innocent lizard and myself to the wrath of Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  I lifted him carefully with a snow shovel, carried him over to a straw-mulched bed, and placed him beneath a 6 inch layer of straw on the unfrozen ground.  There, he'll either be safe from hawks and other predators and thaw and survive, or he'll join the straw as eventual compost.

The only moving creatures in the garden beside the donkeys, Bella, and myself seem to be the ever-present deer.  I checked one of my new trail cameras yesterday and I'm quite happy with the results.  The pictures are much better quality than my previous camera, the shutter speed is faster and catches more animals, and the deer don't seem to notice the new camera around, or at least they aren't coming up to be nosy about the red light coming from it.  I expect a lot of more "candid" shots over the next few months, although many will not be perhaps as risque as the deer in the background which is depositing some fertilizer near my 'Yellow Bird' magnolia while in the view of another white-tailed voyeur.  I've even already captured a snap of a coyly cantoring coyote (below), the first that I believe I've gotten with a trail camera.   My garden seems to have a better night life than it's gardener!
 

  

Sunny Satisfaction

ProfessorRoush did just exactly what he said in last week's blog as he skedaddled last Sunday out into a rare, warm early February.  I chose to tackle the back garden bed surrounding the patio, a choice made on the basis that it is the south-facing bed and was bathed in sunshine all afternoon.  I wanted those golden rays on the back of my neck all day and blessedly received it!


On a day where the local temperatures reached 70ºF, I quickly shed first a down sleeveless vest and then a flannel shirt, baring maximal skin for Vitamin D production within minutes after starting.  Short sleeves in February?  Oh, yes and loving every minute, as was the grass-rolling and sunshine-crazy Bella, joining me in the joy of a pseudo-Spring.  Sheetbarrow II and I launched into full antic mode, respectively holding and pulling load after load of daylily debris, rose cuttings, and other leavings down to the trimmings pile, to be burned along with the prairie when spring really arrives.

Before

After

It was a great weather day for great accomplishments and at the end of a few hours, I had cleaned up the entire back perennial bed and the smaller daylily and peony bed near the deck.  I know that some fastidious and flaky gardeners  don't consider this "clean," as it is certainly not raked to bare ground, but this is as close as my garden ever gets to spring tidiness.  ProfessorRoush removes the vast overage of last summer's growth and if a few leaves and old mulch are left behind, so much the better to put new mulch upon.  At least nothing is impeding the sprouts of daylilies and daffodils as they push up from the cold earth.

Before

After

The rebirth of life is, in fact, already starting in my garden, the tranquil and healthy daffodil sprouts in the first picture above uncovered from within the dried remnants of last years leaves.   You can see before and after pictures of both beds both above and here.  Pick over them to your heart's content, because the next time you see pictures of these, the edges and debris will be covered in green.   Since winter returned this week, with the highest daytime temperature only reaching the 50º mark and that on a brisk windy day that felt 30º, I can only pray that it will come soon.

Super Sunday!

Don't get mislead; ProfessorRoush cares not even a minuscule portion of his bones that it's Superbowl Sunday.  Well, perhaps a few deep cells of his bone marrow care that it is the last REAL football game until August, and it is one of the two sports I still watch enough to know who's on top (tennis is the other), but only when I'm entirely bored and stuck in front of a TV (which seems to be "never" these days, by choice).

No, what I do care about is that it is the second day of February, it is beautifully sunny outside, and my local temperature is predicted to be 66ºF at 2 p.m.   Right now, writing this, it is 57ºF outside and the back yard looks like the photo above, taken a few minutes ago, so I'm only here for a brief second.  Garden beds and sunshine are calling my name.

 
As you can see from the temperature reading on the second picture on this page, the temperature this winter hasn't always been nearly so nice, but that didn't keep the critters away.  I looked through the winter's selection of game camera photographs today as I removed my old game camera, and among other deer, there was a pretty nice stag rambling around at some point.  I'll have more fauna-captured photographs this spring and next year since I replaced my old camera with two newer and better game cameras.

Today is another milestone perhaps more important than the Superbowl to those of a superstitious bent. Today is, of course, 02/02/2020, a rare global palindrome and the only one of my lifetime.  The last such palindrome was 909 years ago (11/11/1111) and the next is 101 years away (12/12/2121), so forward or backward, I can't really hope for a life expectancy of 161 years to see the next one.  02/02/2020 is also a palindrome day of the year (the 33rd day) and a palindrome of the days left in the year (333 since it's a leap year).  And evidently, Las Vegas is promoting marriages today on the basis that if you married today, your 2nd anniversary would be 2/2/22, all symbolizing the pair-ness of monogamous marriage.   Myself, married some 37 years already, I'll just say goodbye to date palindromes like this deer turned tail and said goodbye to my game camera.

In other notes, I spent some time this morning searching for a word to describe the group of people who are over-stimulated by math like today's palindrome and along the way I was sidetracked by the discovery that there are "weird" numbers  (of which 70 is the first) whose proper divisors sum to greater than the number, and "happy" numbers, of which 1, 7, 10, 13, and 19 are the first 5 happy numbers of base 10.  Interesting to know, but none of this made me happy in base 10 or any other numeric base because I couldn't find the word I was searching for.  Anyone know a word to describe "math nuts"?  I'd spend more time looking myself, but I, and the lovely Bella, are out of here!   

Bright Days

It's a very cold winter day here in the Flint Hills and while I was searching my phone for inspiration, I kept stopping at the bright, the cheery, the flashy photos.  Many of these were photographs of last summer's daylilies, still beaming the sunshine of July into the freezing aura of January.

I had saved the picture above of 'Southern Wind', a 2003 introduction by Stamile, for just such a blog-worthy occasion, however in true keeping with my poor-recording nature I had mislabeled it as 'Summer Wind, which it obviously is not.   Mislabeled or not, it certainly catches the eye doesn't it.  Every new daylilean thing that one could desire is there; the crinkly edging in yellow, ribbed lavender of the thick main petals so resistant to drought, the clearly marked throat.  My 'Southern Wind' is placed in back of the house with a direct southern view, exposed to all the burning sun and southern winds it could ever desire.

'Heavenly Flight of Angels'

'Southern Wind' and the rest of my newer daylilies pictured here are not your father's daylilies, as the saying goes.  I'm too parsimonious to pay for all the newest and brightest, but even the divided clumps of daylilies sold each fall as a money-maker for the Flint Hills Daylily Society suffice to show how much the field of daylily breeding has changed the "ditch lilies" into queens of the garden.  I do supplement my cheap daylily bargains with the occasional commercial purchase as well.  I couldn't, for instance, resist the aptly named 'Heavenly Flight of Angels' displayed on the left. I described purchasing it and dividing it last year. A newer spider, the bright yellow is softened to perfection by the cream edges.

'Sonic Analogue'

I won't try to name the rest of these daylilies on this page.  After some process of elimination and searching records, I could, and I've labeled a few that I'm reasonably sure of, but it would take too long today to label the rest.  I'll just leave you here with these beautiful but long-fallen daylilies, in hopes they brighten your day as much as they did mine today.

'Julianna Lynn'

Garden of Glass

ProfessorRoush had to leave home before dawn yesterday morning, but returned home at noon to a sunshine-blue sky and a garden made of crystal.  The view of Mrs. ProfessorRoush's favorite redbud tree and the lilacs lining the garage pad was otherworldly, an alien landscape of architectural glass forms.

The prairie grasses, themselves, were bent low with the weight of 1/2" thick ice, reddened by the strain of winter's fury.  Even the buff buffalograss was transformed, a crackling surface rough on the paws of poor Bella, who decided she really wanted as few bathroom breaks as possible in this mess.

How much the ice must have affected all the wildlife who couldn't rush inside?  At least the overhang from my bluebird boxes seemed to be protecting the precious structure and potential lives beneath it.

And, alas, all the poor shrubs.  Viburnums, lilacs, honeysuckle and sumac, transformed to statues as stiff as the concrete and glass ornaments among them.  Look at the icicle that was formerly my Star Magnolia, brittle branches defenseless to the first cruel wind that arises.  Today's high is supposed to be 36ºF.  I can only hope that the sun comes out before the south wind and clears the branches from their burdens before they shatter and break.

There is hope however, buried within the glass.  No deer will be munching on these Magnolia flower bud popsicles in the near future.  Glazed artwork,  the protected buds will wait patiently and, maybe, just perhaps, decide to put off their spring debut until a more reasonable period of warming occurs.

For right now, my garden is a time capsule frozen by a winter's tantrum.  A freak sudden climate change, a sudden shift to Ice Age, and millennia from now a future archaeologist might be uncovering a garden of magnolias, roses, and daylilies, wondering how they could all survive together in such a horrid place for gardening.  He or she might come across that eternal granite garden bench of mine, an alluring seat in the sunshine of my photo last week, but not nearly so inviting now.  A little more digging, however, and they'll discover the strawberry bed of the vegetable garden, protected behind an electric fence and under a layer of straw, and know that here lived a gardener, one filled with hope for a fruit-filled future and spring.   

Sunshine is Life!

Well, that didn't take long, did it?  The second day of 2020 and ProfessorRoush has already blogged twice!  I simply couldn't restrain myself from a quick entry, given what I found on a walk outside after yesterday's blog.

The temperature reached 50ºF yesterday around 1:00 p.m. and the sun was shining, so despite a brisk wind, I took the lovely Bella out for a walk.  Well, I walked.  Bella ran around like the world was brand new, sniffed the cold earth for awhile, and then rolled in the sunny buffalograss like the puppy she still is.  We sat for awhile, there in sunshine's embrace, me on the low granite bench in my front yard, and Bella on the warm grass, and together we contemplated how much trouble we would be in from Mrs. ProfessorRoush when Bella dragged all that grass back into the house on her fur.   We discussed running to the nearest Greyhound terminal and heading for Florida, but Bella finally convinced me that was a ridiculous overreaction to the moderate scolding we would undoubtedly get later.



I didn't think that I yet displayed my granite bench to you, the granite salvaged from our kitchen island when we remodeled, but I was wrong, so wrong.  I'm not shocked that I forgot about blogging about the bench, but I was chagrined  that the linked blog entry was clear back in 2014.   It seems like the remodeling project was just a year or two back.  Where does the time go, and why does its passing speed up as we age?  I wish, sometimes, I were more like the granite, impervious to time, ice, and burning sun, but then I remember that granite doesn't really get much accomplished year over year.



Showing you the antics of my energetic and loving Bella, however, was just a cheap ploy to draw you in for the real reason that ProfessorRoush is blogging again so quickly.  Worked, too, didn't it?  No one can resist a perky beagle!

I really wanted to share the photograph at the right and announce to the world that SPRING IS COMING!   Yes, only 9 or 10 days past the beginning of winter, the first daffodils are foolishly pushing stems above the frozen ground out there in my garden.  I was shocked to find them, even here in this bare patch of dark earth disturbed by some digging critter last fall.  Early?  I'd reckon so.  But I'm happy to see them all the same.  It's tempting to cover them up and tell them to go back to sleep, but instead, this old gardener will bow to their wisdom and leave them be, impertinent spring-rushers that they are.


 

Sunrise,Scenery, and Sunset

All right, how's this for a morning photograph?  I took it on the morning of December 24th, at 7:25 a.m. looking out my south window.   It's a frozen wasteland out there but the partial clouds make for a glorious sunrise, don't they?  This photograph is completely unaltered, with the exception that I took the picture below first, and then touched my finger to my Iphone on the garden garden area to change this second exposure to see more of the garden and a brighter sky.  

Which do you like better?  I was partial to the top photo with the contrast of the colors and the frozen ground, but the sunrise is more beautiful and the colors more vibrant in its "natural" exposure.  The first brings out the cold and frost of the brutal Flint Hills, the second displays the promise of the morning.  

Sunrise isn't the only time the colors of the Flint Hills help brighten my garden.  The russets of the bluestem and the oranges of the Indiangrass and switchgrass on the prairie are amplified anytime there is rain or moisture.  The buffalograss in the foreground and invading into the paths that I mow, stays the buff of this grass in winter, surrounding the house and biding time through winter.  

These two photos, taken during the rainy day of 12/29/2019, are more subtle in their coloring and hues, but nonetheless quite an improvement over the normal tan.  I cut the prairie low between the house and lower garden during winter for the purpose of deterring rodent migrations to the warm house and aiding the hawks that control them, but here the colors aren't nearly as amplified as in the taller mature grass in the background.  It's a trade-off I make every year as a tactical strike against the ubiquitous pack rats.

And then, there's the color of sunset on the prairie.  This panorama, taken at sunset on Christmas, 2019, shows the barrenness of the prairie in winter, yet the promise from the fleeting sun to return someday and green it all up again.  This garden, this gardener, hibernates until those first days of spring return.

In the meantime, I seem to be on a scenery sideline for this blog and I think for the next few weeks I'll return to the pictures of summer.  I've got quite a few "starter" blogs saved from last year's beauty that I want to share before "Gardening 2020" really gets rolling.  

Clarity in Winter

The 4th season, winter, is much maligned by most gardeners and ProfessorRoush is no exception in that regard.  As I grow older, my enthusiasm for colder weather ever ebbs and my casual glances at more southern states on the map grow ever longer.

Winter does, however, provide a gardener with one benefit in spades: clarity.  Loss of foliage and flower exposes the skeleton of a garden, highlights her hidden secrets and lays bare the flaws of our efforts.

I noticed, today, how Coralberry (Symphoricarpos orbiculatus), a common weedy shrub on the prairie, has incorporated itself unnoticed into one of my 'Therese Bugnet' rose bushes, the red fruits of the wayward shrub blending cheerfully with the burgundy-red new twigs of the rose (photo at top).   The season also throws back the curtains on my Harry Lauder's Walking Stick (Corylus avellana 'Contorta'), revealing just how badly the straight suckers of the grafted plant launch themselves skyward among the crooked branches I crave (photo at left).  Every spring I remove an armload of these straight stems and they immediately resprout to spoil the symmetry.

Winter exposes the activities of insects unseen and nesting birds in clear detail.  I found these bagworms on the top of a trellis, hanging from, of all things, a wisteria vine that provides the trellis shade in summer (right photo).  How, oh how, did these bagworms know that the wisteria would be unprotected while their preferred perches, the junipers of my garden, are all sprayed each June?

 This nest, in my 'Banshee' rose bush, is a repeat homesite for birds, although I forgot to look here this past summer to see if it was active.  One locates nests in the summer by observing the birds, not the plants, for their feeding patterns, protective dances, and loud scolding of passersby.  In the winter, a nest like this hints at a life unobserved, leaving a gardener to imagine all the possibilities it hid.  Was there a successful fledge?  Did a cowbird insert an imposter into this family?   I'll never know.

     

The gardener resolves, each year to do better as we see the bones left behind from a summer's toil.  This Lamb's Ear (Stachys byzantina) escaped my best efforts to root its invasive nature from my garden (right photo), persisting even now in the protective embrace of an enormous Russian sage.  In summer, one sees the forest and not the trees.  In winter, one is left with the details, the struggles of life laid bare, ground gained and lost, homes built and vacated.  Clarity is what a gardener gains in winter; clarity of our highs and wins, and clarity of where we must improve.