At the same garden as the prairie above, lived this good girl.
Though an old gardener, I am but a young blogger. The humor and added alliteration are free.
Saturday, June 25, 2022
2022 EMG Manhattan Garden Tour
Sunday, June 19, 2022
Mowing Day
Mowing also forces me towards some new vistas of my yard, making me see from angles that I wouldn't normally walk or chose to photograph. This last photograph doesn't do justice to just how deep the shades of green were across the back yard today. I don't know whether it is the i-Phone not picking up the depths of the green tones, or if it was the photographer not choosing the correct exposure, but I apologize for not helping you to live in the moment with me.
I guess you'll just have to take my word for how good this looked today. However, for those who can't, I am taking names, first-come, first-served, for those who wish to experience mowing here on the Flint Hills. Just let me know what Saturday or Sunday you want to be here between now and October. I'll be happy to accommodate you.
Sunday, May 29, 2022
Rosa Emily Carr
'Emily Carr' |
Please allow me, in the midst of the late May flush of roses, to begin in the next blog entry or three to introduce you to a few "new" friends. New, at least, to me, nearly new to my garden, survivors of at least one winter without protection and survivors of my general lack of proper garden attention.
This week, I bring you 'Emily Carr', a refined Canadian lady that I was introduced to in 2019. She was, at that time, only 12 years past her debutante ball, for 'Emily Carr' was debuted to the world in 2007 (another less-reliable source says 2005) as one of the later introductions of AgCanada. Bred by Lynn Callicott in 1982, she is a member of the AgCanada 'Canadian Artist Series', the only member of that series that I believe I grow. Her namesake (12/13/1871 -3/2/1945) was a Canadian Post-Impressionist artist and writer of British Columbia who was inspired by the Northwest Indigenous peoples and the British Columbia landscape.
'Emily Carr', as you can easily see, is a semi-double, bright red bloomer of medium stature and glossy, healthy foliage. At maturity, she is supposed to become 4 foot tall, although my 3 year old specimen is only 3 feet at present and a pair of posts on Houzz suggest that she goes over 5 1/2 feet in some instances. She struggled her first two years in my garden, an uncertain survivor of the triple plagues of cold, drought, and deer, but this year she popped up strong and solid, a striking arterial-blood-red scream against the pale pink tones of 'Blush Alba' behind her. According to helpmefindroses, she is a direct descendant of 'Morden Cardinette' and 'Cuthbert Grant'. I tried and lost the former, but 'Cuthbert' is a solid, healthy rose for me, slowly ending his own first bloom flush in his 22nd year. Father to daughter, those deep red genes held strong.'Emily Carr' is supposed to repeat reliably in flushes, but as she didn't have much of a bloom over her struggling years, I'll have to see what she can do for me this year. At least she seems to be rose rosette immune, having survived the onslaught of virus in my garden even during her struggles. I sadly can't detect much in the way of fragrance from her, a disappointment since I've always thought 'Cuthbert Grant' had a decent fragrance here in my garden and he, himself, was a descendant of fragrance legend 'Crimson Glory.' It's a pity that fragrance can be lost in so few generations if breeders don't pay attention.
One never knows where research on a given subject will lead in these days of Internet bounty. In this case, my searches for 'Emily Carr' led me down a rabbit hole to the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre and it's "49th Parallel Collection of Roses." And now I'm left wondering what 'Chinook Sunrise' would look like and how it would perform in Kansas. A little late to obtain this year, but maybe next year I can find her.
Sunday, May 22, 2022
Storm Smiles
While these storms can also bring trouble, and the time-lapse here might make many uneasy, they only bring me calm and a sense of wonder at the power behind it all, the power building at my very doorstep and passing me by, God and the Grim Reaper together at once, mysterious and yet always nearby.
Sunday, May 15, 2022
Turnabout Transgression
Look at the beautifully photographed white Columbine above. Mrs. PR got it perfectly right, with the most focused bloom precisely placed in the upper left third. But then, as in the second photo, she incorporated depth of field with the same subject, placing the columbine in perspective against the house and cloudy sky behind it.
A few steps back, a shift of a few degrees, and yet another view echoing the first, but a different subject, this time the 'Batik' irises filling the foreground, framed between the evergreen to the right and the distant River Birch to the left. She resisted posting the 'Batik' head-on, but instead showed off its abundance, its proliferative nature at bloom time. I was impressed as well by the framing between the evergreen to the right and the distant River Birch to the left
Gaze for a moment on the perfect pinkness of this 'Scarlett O'Hara' peony in silhouette, all life and color among the healthy green foliage. Since 'Scarlett O'Hara blooms early and brazenly, I refer to her as Scarlett the Harlot and so I might title this "Silhouette of the Harlot". Titles are fleeting, but beauty eternal.
Sunday, May 8, 2022
Longhorns Ho!
Yesterday was an outside day in ProfessorRoush-land, work to be done, and some exploration in areas that I don't frequently explore. I mowed and piddled in the garden to my heart's content, the second mowing of the year starting at 9:30 a.m. and then doing other chores until I looked up at last to see it near 5:00 p.m., the afternoon vanished seemingly in seconds. Most of the work was prompted by the arrival this week of the Longhorn cattle that a friend (actually the son-in-law of a neighbor), summer pastures on our land and the neighbors pasture. Aren't they beautiful? ProfessorRoush likes having cows around, even skinny cows with big menacing horns, and they make a conversation piece for neighbors far and wide, creating a little traffic on the road from the townies coming to "Aw" and stare.
The Longhorn appearance, however, prompts me annually to walk the far fence, the one that I DIDN'T rebuild when we purchased the land, my border line with the golf course. It's an original, easily over 50 years old, maybe more like 80 years old, with Osage Orange posts that occasionally get caught in the burns, and I often need to hike up the back hill with a new T-post to shore it up. The picture below is a view of my back garden and the house and grounds from the far hillside. Yesterday, all was well with the fence and I opened the gate to let the cattle into my pond area.Poison Ivy |
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Saturday, April 30, 2022
Fun, Disappointment and Home
Owens-Thomas garden and Enslaved Persons Quarters |
Gardenia jasminoides 'Daisy' |
Saturday, April 23, 2022
Finally, Spring
Lilac 'Betsy Ross' |
'Betsy Ross' |