And I feel joy and thankfulness also for the half-dozen Christmas cacti that adorn our south windows. I've purchased them over the years and all have been in bloom recently, each a unique color, bright red, white, pink, fuchsia, yellow, and orange represented in their delicate and fleeting beauty. The sun outside catches them in the morning, gloried like the fuchsia-touched blossom at the top of this blog, yet other jewels in my world. Some mornings, mornings like this one, I can scarcely catch my breath at the beauty of the world, so many jewels that life gives us each day.
Though an old gardener, I am but a young blogger. The humor and added alliteration are free.
Sunday, December 19, 2021
Jewels Outside & Within
Sunday, December 12, 2021
Sad Houses
It all started last Sunday. My intention that day was to get a number of things done around home, but most of the afternoon got delayed when Mrs. ProfessorRoush's car got two flat tires, one of which disintegrated before we could get to an air pump. But I did get out for my main goal and cleaned out all the bluebird boxes while the weather was good. One bad surprise; this bluebird box with 3 sweet little light blue eggs present. These weren't a new brood out of season, these were very light, dried out, old eggs that didn't make it to hatch. I'm guessing Mama Bluebird had an accident and never returned to care for them. So sad. And my bluebird houses didn't seem to do as well this year. Eight bluebird nests for over 20 boxes is way under normal.
Even sadder, one of the first year DVM students was killed last weekend, hit by a vehicle after she witnessed a rollover accident and tried to help; a true Good Samaritan lost to the world. I got the call of hospital personnel looking for emergency numbers for her parents shortly after I finished the Bluebird Trail. There are some things that happen in this life that I can't explain or understand and never will. What a loss to her family and to her classmates and to all the pets she would have helped.
Things were looking up today as we put the house back in order this morning after our kitchen and sunroom were painted. Mrs. ProfessorRoush is in the kitchen making caramels as we speak and I'm anticipating running out into the sunshine soon on this warm, breezy afternoon. But then, as I started to write, I got a text that a young child of the host of our work Christmas party started a fever this morning and tested COVID positive. Our entire surgery service was there for three hours last night, huddled in a small kitchen together. Lots of COVID boosters are about to get tested for efficacy!So, if I'm gloomy today and not my usual positive gardening influence, I'd like to make a formal apology and leave you with this picture of the ProfessorRoush home abode from the far end of the pasture; a view of the dry and brown back garden and prairie and of the back of the house from a vantage that I seldom get to see. Those hills are too much to walk regularly without the excuse to tend to the BlueBird Trail.
Sunday, November 28, 2021
Bedding Down & Tidying Up
I also bustled around the yard and ran the mower over some late invasive cool season grass and mulched up a few leaves in the process. I do like a lawn with a nice even trim, don't you? I also realized there were a couple of hoses that needed draining, the purple martin houses needed to be cleaned out and brought indoors, and my pack rat-bait stations near the house were empty. All the usual and none too soon as, sometime between the strident warnings about new COVID variants and the apocalypse, the frantic media voices tell me that winter is coming. Sure, except for the 70ºF temperatures predicted this week. Those strawberry plants must think I'm nuts and just cut off their sunlight.
Also completed was the annual "over the rivers and through the woods" to our Indiana past trek of Thanksgiving, in our case the "over-the-river" being the Missouri and Mississippi rivers and the "through-the-woods" was of the forested Illinois and Indiana I-70 corridor. A few days gone in a cloudy and colder Indiana landscape where it actually even rained one day, and Mrs. ProfessorRoush and I were never so glad as to come back Friday into this gorgeous sunset, occurring just as we made those last few miles through the Flint Hills to home. Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home....err Kansas.Sunday, November 21, 2021
Suddenly Winter
Regardless, I realized with shock this week that Fall was past and Winter was suddenly present. Perhaps it was the first recent chance to walk the garden in daylight on 11/18/21, the first time for the past week since nighttime now begins at 5:00 p.m. and I'm seldom home in daylight. I only made it early on Thursday because I'd gotten my COVID booster the previous day and had run a fever and chills for the past 24 hours. It will, by the way, be a cold day in hell or in winter before I get another COVID booster. Why take an annual vaccine that certainly makes me sick every year to prevent the small chance I get sick? Three days later and I'm still not normally controlling my internal temperature when active.
But I digress down the deep slope to COVID anger. More pertinent to the subject of today, the leaves all dropped, seemingly overnight, from trees and shrubs galore. I'm not ready, not prepared at all mentally and emotionally, for winter. The granite bench in front of my River Birch no longer is hidden in shade by the protective limbs of the birch (above, top), and my 'Jane Magnolia' (left) is bare but for the fuzzy light green buds that I'll have to protect from the equally fuzzy lips of hungry deer. Even the 'October Glory' maple of my last blog post has dropped a huge portion of its leaves, an unusual occurrence this early in winter. All that remains of Fall in the garden are the still-shimmering shafts of the ornamental grasses. The small clump of Miscanthus sinensis 'Malepartus', pictured below, remains a pleasing sight, catching the last rays of sun in a cooling world.
'Malepartus' is, however, a symbol of hope for me this winter. I received him as a very small division given away by the K-State gardens last fall and in a single year of planting it is already a reasonably substantial garden presence. Only time and winter will tell me if he can hold on to these silvery seedheads or whether they, too, will be quickly dispatched by the cruel onset of the first "polar express." All I can do is wait now, and watch, and try to be present in the garden for its trials and triumphs. I'm out there now, hurrying to spread new straw in the strawberry patch before the cold can dash my hopes for next spring's harvest. A gardener never fully rests.
Sunday, November 14, 2021
Sun, Clouds, and Glory
The prairie is colored this year far better than most. Always, in fall, we hear written or television media talking about expectations for fall color in various parts of the country, usually discussing the effects of moisture or warmth on sugar production, and often telling us that it isn't going to be an exceptional fall in the usual way of our depressing national media. I have a friend, a former news-junky, who recently told me she had sworn off the news because it only reports stories that keep us riled up or upset about the state of the world. So it seems and I cannot disagree. But fall in Kansas has been exceptionally colorful this year and I'm thankful for whatever natural processes or the harvest gods that influence the beauty.
Sunlight, however, helps always, and I'm thankful for the Kansas sun every day. Searing in summer, spiritual in spring, fitful in fall, and warm in winter, this morning it streams in through all the windows of the house, warming the walls and making a home of house, a warm nest for a pleasant Sunday.
Sunday, November 7, 2021
Keeps on Ticking...
'Champlain' |
And I can't, I can't be mad this morning about the time change. So much disruption of our diurnal rhythms and so much anger over political power wielded autocratically and irrationally just isn't worth the fight today when I'm staring at the happy face of 'Champlain'. Oh don't get me wrong, I woke up at 4:00 a.m. instead of 5:00 a.m. because my soul didn't get the memo about changing rhythms, and I waited the same amount of time for the sun to rise after waking. I just know now that I'll be driving in again with the rising sun in my eyes, endangering every walking or biking schoolchild for another month, and that I'll now be driving home in darkness every evening instead of having another hour of light to enjoy.
'Polareis' |
Okay, yes, I'm mad as usual about the time change. I'm mad that my chances for a heart attack are greatly increased this week and that automobile accidents will increase due to bureaucratic political whimsy. As I've said before, a pox on the houses of every politician, Democrat or Republican, who doesn't repeal this nonsense and leave us on daylight savings time all year long. As I vowed last spring, I'm staying on Daylight Savings. If you want ProfessorRoush, you'll find him with his watch and computers set to EST, my new solution to the biennial B.S. imposed on us by our elected nonrepresentatives. Stores and schedules will now just have to confirm to my time, ProfessorRoush Standard Time.
Sunday, October 31, 2021
Autumn Cometh
Hi, Everyone! I apologize for the long lapse in posting, but autumn has been moving along and the world is streaming past my eyes at the speed of life.
We finally, finally received a nice rain this week, about 3.6 inches total over a long night and day of rain, so I hope the garden will go into another Kansas winter well-hydrated and ready to rest.
And I hope the garden stops the weird antics that fall sometimes brings. I've been worried about the row of lilacs to the west of the driveway pad. Several of them, primarily the older Syringa vulgaris, have leafed out some of those precious green buds after they dropped their summer leaves and a couple even bloomed, like this 'Nazecker' light blue lilac. I won't minimize the sublime joys of smelling lilacs in October, but I also don't need to constantly feel like they've sacrificed their last for me. I suppose the chance always exists that I won't be around to smell lilacs next spring, but I'm planning to be here when the snows melt and the lilacs bloom next April, the world right and everything in its own time, just as it should be.Friday, October 1, 2021
Maximum Sunflower Power
You can see here what I mean about the goldenrod. I'm not good enough at quick identification to tell you if this is Prairie Goldenrod or Canada Goldenrod or another species, but this is as yellow as it gets and the brightness fades quickly like the plants in the background here.
Between the bad press given to goldenrod, and the happy beaming face of the Maximilian Sunflower, I've got to choose the sunflower every time. And so, it seems do the bees. The only insect I've ever seen on goldenrod around here are the goldenrod soldier beetles.
Wednesday, September 29, 2021
Sunday, September 19, 2021
Blue Draperies
In point of fact, I don't know if my ubiquitous morning glories are the 'Heavenly Blue' cultivar of the species or just the wild Kansas Ivy-Leafed Morning Glory (Ipomoea hederacea), but they are everywhere. They invade quickly when I stop weeding in July, when I am weary of the gardening battle, and they take advantage of my weakness to drape every plant within reach. And I let them, for I treasure that light sky blue shade above all hues in my garden.
I was struck recently by the combination of the morning glory with the Canadian rose 'Winnepeg Parks' (above), the surreal, otherworldly blue morning glory jarringly visible against the pink rose, clashing across the color wheel to a striking contrast. 'Winnepeg Parks' is a Parkland series Canadian, unfailing blackspot free in my climate and a reliable periodic bloomer. Growing into another rose, chaste 'Morden Blush', Ipomoea blends much better, a companionly match of color for a calming scene.Even the tired foliage of variegated euonymous 'Moonshadow' is improved by a little "morning glory." This picture at the right, suitable for framed artwork against the right light blue wall, just pleased me to no end as I took it. I missed capturing, however, the bees that were darting in and out of the blossoms, the bumblebees every bit as appreciative of the morning glory as I am. In the early morning right now, two plants draw the bees; morning glory and caryopteris; both blue and beautiful. However early I join the garden, the bees are already there.
Two or three weeks after I took the first picture above, the morning glories and caryopteris are still going strong, now lending their gentle contrast to the tall sedums, neighbors by location, opposites of plant physiolgy. You have to get up pretty early to catch the sky blue delicate blooms, as they close when the sun begins to shine with any vigor, but the tougher sedums that support them continue on each day, oblivious to the sun, "feeling the burn," as it were. ProfessorRoush enjoys both lives, early to rise and walk, thriving in the sun, and resting at night in preparation to bloom yet another day.Sunday, September 12, 2021
Mrs. PR and the Bumblebees
My Sunday began in a completely innocent fashion with no clue of the drama to unfold. As I was preparing to mow the lawn, Mrs. ProfessorRoush mentioned that she was going to slip down to pick any remaining tomatoes in the garden before she showered and began her day. Ever the helpful and attentive husband, I followed her down to the garden, where we picked a few tomatoes, snared a few deliciously ripe blackberries from the thorny canes, and then ambled over to the grapes, which were past ripe, sweet and juicy, and needed picking.
Let me set the scene for you. As it happened, Mrs. ProfessorRoush had ambled down to the garden in a mid-thigh length pink cotton nightgown and slippers, her tanned legs bare and well-toned, a beauty among the brambles. She was picking grapes off one vine while I, ten feet away, was distracted from her heavenly presence in the garden by the discovery that bumblebees were feasting heavily on the grapes (see the photo above and to the left).I was contemplating that astounding new bit of knowledge and engrossed in photographing one of the bees eating the grapes when Mrs. ProfesssorRoush began to complain that the bees were bothering her; complaints that turned quickly to excited chatter and then hysteria as the bees decided that the exposed hair and flesh of Mrs. PR seemed to be even more delicious than the bountiful grapes all around. Perhaps it was her hair spray, perhaps it was her perfume, or perhaps it was just the delicious sweetness that is Mrs. ProfessorRoush, but those bees were dead set on either driving her away from their sweet grapes, or feasting on her, or both.
Now picture this: a frantic Mrs. ProfessorRoush running up the hill in a mid-thigh pink-nightgown, arms flailing madly, the bowl of tomatoes and grapes cast upon the ground, Bella trotting calmly behind her, wondering at last, I'm sure, if she was going to finally see her rival for my affections dethroned.
And there I was, phone in hand, with it already turned on in camera mode, and I was laughing so hard I could barely stand, let alone thinking clearly enough to capture a photo or a movie for the future entertainment of humankind. In hindsight, I'm so disappointed in myself. Perhaps I wouldn't have become famous for a video, but I'm sure the pink blur of Mrs. ProfessorRoush's backside running up the hill would have at least made the nightly national news. And perhaps distracted and amused, for just a moment, an entire nation bored from the pandemic.
So, there you have it. Bumblebees eat ripe grapes, I presume for the sugar and cheap energy. I had never heard or read of that before. And I've spent the day outside doing chores and snapping other pictures, like the last two photos of the bees on the light blue caryopteris near the back steps. I remain hopeful that by nightfall my laughter will have faded from Mrs. ProfessorRoush's memory and she'll unlock the doors. Surely she'll be able to see the broader humor of the occasion by then, won't she?
Sunday, September 5, 2021
Webs in the Mist
Sunday, August 29, 2021
Red August
Here in the furnace of August, with the grass dry and crumbling beneath my step, my garden glows red in the hot sunshine, concentrating and sending back the searing rays towards the cloudless skies. While the garden bakes in the heat, some plants thrive and bloom, sneering back their indifference to the heat. All seem to be either red or white and today, I'll feature the red. Next week, perhaps the white. Or another week. White is always there in the garden, but seldom noticed, isn't it?
'Centennial Spirit' |
'Champlain' |
'Cherry Dazzle' |
Basye's Purple Rose |
'Midnight Marvel' |
Saturday, August 21, 2021
Flawed Beauty
Gardeners, do you prefer the captured images of beauty in your garden au naturel, or touched up to hide the blemishes and traumas of living? Should the photographs we bloggers take of our gardens be posted unaltered, or should they be released onto the internet as posed and filtered and airbrushed as Cindy Crawford on the cover of Vogue? Are we ready for the naked truth of our gardens, for the blatant blemishes of foliage or flower, for the ravages of wind and sun and rain? Is the Venus de Milo an ageless perfection in marble or merely one more damaged chunk of rock?
Nearly all of the photos that ProfessorRoush posts here are unaltered except for some cropping and for a few taken after I pulled the surrounding forest of weeds and only then "snapped" the photo (do we still "snap" photos or do we just focus and tap?). Is pre-pulling the weeds a mortal sin of nondisclosure of the truth of my garden or merely a permissible act of vanity and understandable attempt to avoid embarrassment for my gardening sloth? I'm facing the question today as I post the nearly perfect combination of white 'David' phlox and the 'Alaska' Shasta daisies displayed in the top photo and the unaltered reality here of the vista at the left. I took the left photograph before removing the dead and brown spent flowers from the area and posing the top photograph. Yes, I could have done even better if I had cut the unobtrusive bare stems away, but which is really the better photograph? Nature in all its raw glory at left or the gussied up and primped "Still Life of White Flowers" at the top?The broad question vexing me today is so simple in essence but has so many permutations in practice. The aforementioned Cindy Crawford is a beautiful woman, but famous as well for the flaw in her beauty, the melanocytic nevus we commonly refer to as a beauty mark. In fact, google "beauty mark" and a picture of Cindy will pop up alongside the listings, an icon for that concept of a minor flaw perfecting the person. Does that same concept extend to our gardens? Is the picture at the right of this Knautia macedonica blossom struggling up through the phlox somehow more beautiful than that of the simple and pure virginal white phlox in the photo below? As garden photographers, do we need to add mouches to our perfect photos to make them yet more perfect?ProfessorRoush is so full of questions today, eh? So deeply troubled about photographic nuance and so immersed in disturbing philosophical discourse unbecoming of a cool and sun-lit Saturday morning here in the Flint Hills. I know that many come to this blog for entertainment and answers and yet here I am, the snake bound to ruin Eden and cast you out into uncertainty and unease. I leave you today only with my questions, a complete dearth of assuring answers, and my hope that this photo of the clean and white 'David' phlox will soothe the disturbance of your soul.