Spring Is Canceled

Let this post serve as a double warning to gardeners and other fragile souls downwind from Manhattan, Kansas.  Give up hope.  I mean it.  Forget about your previous rules regarding planting potatoes or peas on Saint Patrick's day.  Forget about a harvest of peaches or apples or apricots for the coming year.  Forget about any passion you hold inside in hopes of a great gardening year.

Spring-like weather in the past two months had us completely fooled, and by "us" I mean both the gardener and his plants, into thinking that winter had fled and better times were on the way.   We haven't seen rain for months, but I went to bed happy that some moisture was predicted overnight.  A vast hoax, however, has been perpetrated upon me.  I woke up to subfreezing temperatures, blizzard winds, and the scene below in my backyard this morning and loudly spouted a few words that I won't repeat here in case there are children within earshot.

I'll let the picture-heavy text below speak for itself in lieu of me trying to find the words to express despair.

The cranes felt that they'd come too far north and they were not happy.

This photo of lilac 'Annabelle', just coming into bloom, is reminiscent of the photo that appears on the cover of my book, from 2007.

My front garden looks just as bad:  The forsythia is still bright, but the various plants covered by snow here include sedums, daylilies, Monarda, peonies, and roses.

The daffodils were on their way out anyway, but I have to say goodbye to these beautiful scragglers.

Kon-Tiki Head was not pleased at his northeastern exposure.  Neither were the fully-leafed-out roses in his vicinity.

The only cheerful bright spot in the now-winterized landscape are these variegated iris.  I wonder if they will still look this cheery by next week? 

 







Anyway, there are other photos that I may add later, but they're just as depressing as these examples. I could show, for instance, a photo of the clump of Puschkinia that I highlighted in my last entry, but it is just a blob beneath the snow, no flowers to be seen.   I'm sorry for the dark nature of these photos but I waited for morning as late as I dared before grabbing these pictures and rushing on to work.  That being said, the gray tones match my mood, so why not let them convey the despair?

Oh, at the beginning I mentioned a double warning and only gave you one.  The second warning, other than the lousy weather coming your way, is this:  NEVER TRY TO GARDEN IN KANSAS!

Front and Back

Blooms are coming fast and freely in ProfessorRoush's garden, with or without the presence of rain or gardener.  I'm in a busy period, home only to sleep and creep out again, glimpses of the garden in daylight if, or when, I'm lucky.  I rush home at end, run outside to meet the setting sun in my garden, today a perfect cooling breeze and light last rays from the far horizon.






In front, driving up the driveway, my eyes are drawn to the perfect clumps of plump Puschkinia sp. that are madly strewn across the front bed.  These lush wanton displays are white from afar, blobs of bright white against the sun-faded mulch, short and flat and full.

Pin-striped from close, each waxy blossom is perfectly adorned with the brush of an undiscovered genius, a perfect blue stripe centered down each petal.  I've written of these before, allayed with the sweetest, most unobtrusive fragrance yet unbottled.  Today the fragrance is far stronger than normal, discernible and satisfying at head height, wafted upwards by the breeze to save my knees.  I swoon, struck steadfast by the scent, grateful and giddy from sheer drifts of olfactory overload.








In back, my sole clump of grape hyacinths, variety lost to time, lifts another fragrance to the nose, this one at once less and more sweet than Puschkinia. The normal proper position to observe a grape hyacinth is most certainly reclined, belly-down on the filthy adjacent patio, nose deep in the blossoms.  Wary today, I cede the territory to the busy bumblebee above, insect blood warmed by sun in its veins, seeking the first meal of the year, a frantic never-ending search for nourishment as nectar.  I don't envy the insect a touch of the grape, satisfied to sample the scent of spring in my own time and fashion.

With luck, and soon rain, the lilacs will burst on the scene in due time, eager to swamp the senses with buxom inflorescence and heavy odor.  Today, Puschkinia and hyacinth lure me in, tomorrow beaten senseless by lilacs.  It's a sensuous life, but somebody's got to live it.

Early Visitation Rights

As foretold by Br. Placidus of Atchison Kansas, commenting on my last post, my garden has paid little heed to my keenings against its early appearance, and the sequential progression of spring blooms has begun against my sage advise and consent.  Thankfully, it has not yet stormed enough to damage the blooms of Magnolia stellata, which reigns beautiful and fragrant in my garden only four days after I saw the first bud break.  Therefore, despite the insubordination of my garden, I have to admit that I am nonetheless pleased that it has forced me to abandon my seclusion within the house and drawn me outside into activity, fresh air, and ultraviolet radiation.


I hope to see further exuberance from this mature Star Magnolia before the rain predicted for Saturday stains its petals with brown rot and moots the warm scent.  Right now I'm thankful that, as the good Brother suggested, I've already enjoyed more uninterrupted days of M. stellata than I can expect in a typical Kansas spring.  This shrub/tree never seems to get to full display before another cold spell or snow or freezing rain front strikes here.  This year, however, spring is early but shows no sign of backsliding in any long range forecast.  I'll be content as long as the hard freezes stay away.

The reign of the Star Magnolia, however, is quickly being overrun by the peasants of my spring garden.  You can see, below, the backdrop to the magnolia of three forsythia in full bloom, in this case Forsythia hybrid 'Meadowlark', a 1986 introduction of Arnold Arboretum in cooperation with North Dakota State and South Dakota State Universities.   I have several other forsythia in bloom here and there, and they are accompanied and accented by early blooming daffodils hither and yon.  Yellow is most definitely the main theme of my early spring garden, with a splash of blue added by diminutive Scilla siberica.  

If you look very closely at the last photo, you'll see my raison du jour for being in the garden at the time of the photo.  Behind the garden beds, in the distant blue sky, you can see the plume of smoke from a distant prairie burn, which was also exactly what was happening 10 feet behind me as this picture was taken.  I spent yesterday dragging hoses around my property and, in cooperation with my neighbors, burning the prairie clean of debris and invasive plants.  A long and tiring day, but I was rejuvenated by my moments spent visiting with this Magnolia, buried nose deep in its creamy-white petals.

Oh No! I'm Not Ready!

While I've been hiding inside, either at work or at home, my garden has clearly been conniving to play a little trick on me.  Today, instead of staying hidden, it quite suddenly shouted "Ready or not, here we come!" in full fortissimo and to my stunned surprise.

I'm not ready to round the corner and see this Magnolia stellata already showing white petals.  It's still partially sheathed, shy to display full wantonness to the warm gaze of spring, but I can already smell the warm musky scent of the Cretaceous seeping forth, sensual siren to my senses.  Another warm day and I'll see the yellow stamens and glistening pistils, the first mating of spring in full view.  Pray with me that no hasty frost browns these creamy petals.

I'm not ready to see my "Pink Forsythia" (Abeliophyllum distichum 'Roseum') already in full bloom and display.  This bush has been a minor part of my garden since 2004, long enough that my memory had made her into the natural "white forsythia" instead of the pink form.  Ah, the fickle memory of age!  It is moderately scented, but in odd fashion that I would liken to a sweet acetone with overtones of sweaty feet. I'm not ready nor desperate enough yet to present this questionable bouquet to Mrs. ProfessorRoush's more discerning nose.

Abeliophyllum distichium 'Roseum'

My Abeliophyllum has struggled, scraggly and slow-growing here in Kansas, but it has survived to finally reach the expected three feet by three feet mature size.  And now, at last, the display is full enough to enjoy, the first major shrub to bloom in the Kansas spring, just ahead of its yellow cousin.  The native white form of the species is now endangered in the wild, known to exist in only seven locations in Korea, so I'm glad that this specimen has survived here in the middle of a drier continent.





I'm certainly not ready to see roses leafing out, including this particularly thorny specimen of 'Polareis' which seems to be betting that the frosts are over.  Rugosas are tough plants, but I still wish they would be a little slower to stick their stems and leaves out into open air.  Almost all the roses are showing green, willing victims to the guillotine of a late frost that will surely yet come.  Patience, my children, patience is a virtue, and haste tempts a thorny termination.

I'm not ready, and neither is my garden.  Go back to sleep, child, and wait for a warmer morning.

 

Bed Measures of Man

Saturday last was a glorious, windless, sunny day of almost 70ºF here on the Kansas prairie, a premature peek at the spring season before winter rallies once again.  ProfessorRoush took advantage of the good-natured weather to begin his spring chores and he bounded madly out with shears, sprayer and sheetbarrow to work for a few cherished hours.

As I removed vast tons of brown winter debris, trimmed a few roses, sprayed the fruit trees with dormant oil, and puttered here and yon with gleeful abandon, I also spent some time in general pondering, mulling once more over the beginning of another year in an aging but happy life.  And it occurred to me that, other than merely making my muscles sore and strained, the measure of my accomplishments on this Saturday could be calculated in beds.  In all, I cleared the debris from 7 beds, or about 3 of the 4 sides of the house.  It was thus a record day, a 7-bed day, in the annals of my gardening life.

It seems to me that one can ultimately measure one's health, aging processes, and perhaps even the advancement of one's wisdom by keeping track of the number of beds one can clean on a first day of spring.  I was certainly pleased on this Saturday that there was no measurable decrease in the number of beds I was able to clear from last year.  In fact, I was even more productive than ever, a gain that I would like to attribute to working wiser, not harder, as I age.  Certainly, I surprised even myself by finding that the abrasion of time has yet to seriously cramp my gardening agenda.

While mulling, my thoughts also turned to how many of the decades of man can also be measured by a number in beds.  As a child, happiness is roughly equivalent to the number of warm and safe beds into which one has been snugly and tightly tucked.  Active pre-teen and teenage males often measure their vitality in the number of uncomfortable but adventurous beds they make in tents or under stars.   Young adult men of my post-hippie generation (and likewise those of all generations reaching back to the Babylonians), measure their victories in the number of strange beds in which one spent a night, a contest that I gladly surrendered to others after I discovered the joys of repeated moments in the embrace of Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  Here in middle age, I'm happy counting in gardening beds, but I recognize that life by garden beds can only last so long.  Old men, too, have a different sort of measure by beds; the measure of how many hospital beds one either avoids or is forced into.

The latter, though is in the future for this gardener.  Today is the feel of sunshine, the buttery yellow of the first snow crocus, warm mulch beneath my knees, and sharp shears in my hands.  

A Glimpse of Spring

Ssshhhh.  There it is.  Do you see it?  Be careful, don't spook it!  Yes, I'm referring to that pinkie-sized little burgundy-red bullet poking up from the cold, unforgiving ground.  Poor, brave little thing, the first sign of Spring 2016 has appeared in my garden.

I have almost forgotten the feel of warm wind on my face, the warmth of sunlight on my now dry and chapped skin.  It seems like an eternity since the last lightning graced the sky, since the Earth welcomed hot liquid rain to quench thirst and still dust.  You may have noticed my absence from this blog over the past 6 weeks.  My garden and I are strangers now, dreaming to be reacquainted like lost lovers torn apart by war, a civil war begun anew between North and South; only except this North and South are points of the compass and prevailing weather systems rather than quarreling political divisions.  

It's been a dry winter, the last rains ended before the ground froze. Afterwards only frequent frost and hoar to coat the ground and dormant grass.  We've had one snow, a few days of six-inch deep stillness, melted everywhere now except for the deepest north-faced exposures.  I've been lazy this winter, involved in work and in pursuit of hibernation, neglecting the colorful catalogs, unable to rekindle desire even from the most voluptuous and bountiful images of new roses.  The ennui of winter reigns my soul, sapping interest and energy.

But there, in the cold, Paeonia 'Sorbet' rises, slow and stiff and silent.   Somewhere, within the gardener's chest, a slow beat begins.  Lub...........Dub.............Lub...Dub...LubDub, LUBDUB.   Echos of the life without begin again within, a quickening ember fanned to low flame.  It will be weeks, yet, before the fire burns high, but at least I know now that it lives, that wish and thought and action will soon join again to dig and plant and nurture.

Mistgloved Christmas

The garden greets me from a shroud of mist on this quiet Christmas morning and I couldn't ask for more from the world.  Delicately diffused light covers the garden in a blanket of down, softening the harsh lines of winter, cloaking the blemishes of age.  There is stillness in the garden, mist muting the sounds of highway and neighbors, an oasis of rest and silence.  This blessed morn has given me a gift; a gift of oneness and peace with my garden and the world.

Outside, the cold ground meets the mist and coats the earth and plants with frost.  Grass flowers present as delicate sculptures and sparkle with mirth, turning slowly to and fro in the scant wind.  A frozen lilac hides its promise from the wiles of winter, protected within a damp icy blanket and staid among its fellows.

Today's gift of Christmas is the very definition of "hoarfrost," a maladroit moniker for the beauty it reveals.  Hoarfrost has its origins in Middle English and Old Norse from "hoary," something gray or white with age.  Uttering the name, one hears the low ancient mutters behind the name; old, decrepit, tatty, cold.  The synonym "rime" is no improvement, too near its rhymes of grime and crime to suggest any positive enhancement of the dreary winter world.

For future use, I'm going to suggest the word "mistglove" as an improved name for this natural phenomenon.  As I carry no ancient memories of predatory cave bears or saber-toothed tigers, the term "mist" holds only peaceful and comforting connotations, and "glove" amplifies that warm and protective image, making me just a calm and comforted ProfessorRoush on this Christmas morning.  Yes, "mistglove" it shall be.

And a very Merry Christmas to all, mistgloved or not wherever you may be!

My Garden's Got Game

Until today, the sometimes dense ProfessorRoush has been under the impression that his garden has gone into hibernation for the cold days ahead.  Because of my "in-while-its-dark," then "home-while-its-dark" work schedule, my garden wanderings have become limited to weekend treks during the few hours of sunshine and tolerable temperatures.  Primarily, I get out into the garden for a few lovely minutes to exercise the portly Bella and make sure the trailer hasn't been stolen.

I was far wrong, however, about my garden being in hibernation.  While the plants may be biding their energy, a check of my game camera shows that there is plenty of game visiting my garden.   At least I can say "my garden's got game" with a straight face now.  In fact, I just realized that the number of larger mammalian bodies moving through the garden is greater now than at any other time of year, even without any attention from humankind.

From October 31st through December 3rd, my game camera has recorded 19 separate periods of invasion by large-furry tailed rats, some occurring over several hours time, with no discernible pattern as to time of the raids.  Early morning, late evening, middle of the night, all random.  On the camera, as shown in some of the photos here, I can distinguish at least 7 individuals, ranging from the beautiful and proud 10-point buck in the first photo, an 8-point buck, a buck with two broken stubs for antlers (left), an unknown number of does numbering at least two (several pictures have pairs), and at least two different fawns.


Interestingly, the ice storm seems to have affected their daily pattern as much as mine.  The only daylight photos of deer that I captured were taken in the days while ice was on the ground.  Perhaps they were desperate for food that wasn't ice-covered, or perhaps they feel safer moving loudly in the daytime than when they are alerting night predators with each ice-cracking step.








My garden's game is even playing games in the darkness.  The photographic evidence suggests that Follow The Leader is pretty popular, and Hide And Seek pick-up games are everywhere.  Look at the photo to the left;  Can you see the fawn standing in the bushes just behind the legs of the doe pictured here?  I'll give you a hint; locate the light-reflecting eye in the bush and then look for the hind legs to the left of it.


The only damage that has occurred to my garden seems to be part of a Purple Smoke Tree toppled by the ice, so I guess I won't get my dander up about damage that I can't find.  The deer can just have what rose rosette disease hasn't already taken and I'll pick up the pieces next spring.  Bella and I can still enjoy the garden, romping around in the sunshine as we did today.  I'll say one thing for sure; for a mildly obese dog, that Beagle-Border Collie mutt can run like a deer!

Ice Time

Rosa rugosa 'Hunter'

Ice, what change thou has wrought on the landscape of Eden!  A night of frozen tears, a dawn of day, and earth seems shackled in a skin of glass.  Breath of North, a frozen gale has bowed brave 'Hunter' down, closing pistil and stamen against the will of the bloom.  It's suitors absent, huddled in their hives, the red flower now becomes a jewel, a ruby amidst thorns.  This glowing center of winter's garden pleases under ice but will fade at the next kiss of a warm breeze.

The view from my southern back window is lightened this morning, the garden itself somehow cleaner and calmed.  In contrast, the front, north-facing windows are opaque with ice, mere light without form in their distance.  Under the weight of solid water, the Sawtooth Oak on the left sighs and spreads, hoping to ease the burden of load.  

I worry for the trees, especially the proud but precarious Redbud to the west.  The favorite of Mrs. ProfessorRoush, a stiff wind could undo it in seconds, cracking it to kindling in a contest of will.  The existing gale already broke the resolve of the garden's photographer, sending him fleeing into the warmth of house, to the fire of hearth. 

There will be no further sticky-fingered tree frogs on my bottle tree, blue cobalt turned death trap for amphibian skin.  Summer is long past, and I pray that whatever moist skinned creatures survived the droughts of August have long burrowed into shelter.

'Carefree Beauty'

'Fru Dagmar Hastrup'

The orange hips of Carefree Beauty are preserved today, cased in glass, but will soon turn brown and shrivel.  So to, the relucent redder rugosa hip of 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup' will dim to dull.  Life in these hips has been stolen by the relentless ice, the seeds yet to spill upon the ground.

The cherub of the peony bed presides over all, calm and quiet, chaste and cool, reminding that this day was anticipated, nay expected, in the course of seasons.  The gardener heeds the stoic stone at last, slowing heartbeat, resting thoughts, reassured that the garden will survive again the orbit of years.

Housebound Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving, yes, and outside the wind is howling and the rain is coming down in sheets.  We had planned to visit my son in Colorado today, but a bad forecast and a winter storm watch convinced me that the return trip tomorrow might be a dangerous thing, and so, here we sit, Bella and I, staring out the window into the storm.  The photo to the right is from a happier moment, yesterday, when we took advantage of the last warm day to play in the sun.  Bella likes to hold the frisbee with her paws and doesn't give it up easily after she retrieves it.

Thankfully, my fall garden-related chores are essentially complete.  Hoses are drained and stored, peonies and irises and daylily beds hacked down, and the lawn mower oil has been changed, blades sharpened, and gas preservative run through.    Out the back window, the garden has entered dormancy and has turned to sienna, ocher, and umber, colors that are enhanced when the fall rains come to the prairie as you can see in the garden and distant hills below.   I wish I had not yet cut down the tall native prairie grasses in the foreground (see the bottom picture below), but in the midst of this dry fall I had given up on seeing any moisture and I wanted to stem the incursion of the field mice and rabbits this winter.  And "plant" the seeds of this year's penstemon.

Along with the fall chores of the cultured garden, one of my annual chores is to clean out the eighteen birdhouses that I've placed on the the periphery of the twenty acres I call home.  The trek up and down the property provided a perfect opportunity for me to photograph the house and gardens from the back hill, a clear Kansas sky presiding over the scenery on a gorgeous fall day early in November.  This is an overview that I don't think I've shown on this blog before.  The hill in the foreground falls away to a farm pond, hidden out of the bottom frame of the photo below, and then rises again to the house and barn.  The overall garden looks small from this vantage.

My "bluebird trail" and the Professor-Roush-customized bluebird houses were unusually successful this year, perhaps due to the extra moisture of this past spring.  Thirteen of 18 houses appeared to have fledged bluebirds, containing the thin grass nests characteristic of the species.  Four other houses, all near the woods and pond, contained the deep stick-formed nests of wrens, and one decrepit old commericial house contained only a dead wasp nest.  Thirteen bluebird nests is a PR for this little spot of land, a moment worthy of contemplation and celebration.

On the morning of the bluebird-house-cleaning, the back garden was just waking with the sun, long shadows aimed west, and somehow duller, and ready for winter.  Seen here, below, you can see the shoulder-tall height of the native bluestem that I have since mowed off.  I am always torn between leaving them unmown to capture the moisture of the winter snows and to witness the joyous rusty tones they exhibit when wet, but one of the reasons I cut them down is so that the seeds of the forbs among them drop closer, spread only by the whirring mower and hidden in the debris in hopes of increasing their density.  Spring penstemon and fall echinacea are always welcome and appreciated here in my prairie garden.   Now if only next spring would hurry up and come along.

   

 

1!$@%!^ Time to Change

$@%&^#$&% ...time change.... @1!51%$!$% ....dog awake....   A pox on all politicians, State and Federal, who persist in messing up our schedules, our lives, and our very cellular metabolisms.

I woke this morning at 4:48 a.m. Standard Time, which was 5:48 a.m. just yesterday, the latter normal for me on my sleep/wake schedule.  I laid still for a few minutes, wondering at the time, but Bella came creeping up the bed to remind me that it was high time to get up and start the day.  Bella doesn't know that nameless bureaucrats have imposed an arbitrary time schedule change, decisions based on an America engaged in the Great War, the War to end all wars, about 6 or 7 wars ago or a hundred years back depending on how you want to count.  Bella doesn't care, it was simply time to get up and potty and eat and play.

The sun didn't know that it was back on standard time either.  The sky was already starting to lighten shortly after I woke, and it rose at 6:54 a.m, an hour earlier than it did yesterday.  The idiots we keep electing don't seem to have the same power over the sun that they do over my life.  Now I'm back to driving into the eastern sun during my morning work commute, endangering cars and walking students, blinded by the glare four times yearly instead of twice.

The bee, above, doesn't know that the time has changed.  It probably only knows that winter is nearby and it needs to grab whatever nectar and pollen it can, while it can, even this aging pollen from this blown blossom of a miniature rose that I know as "Little Yellow Beauty".  I can't find any official record of this rose, but that's how it's labeled in the K-State Rose Garden.  The g'vernment has forgotten to inform this bee and flower that the time changed.  The flower is probably thankful that it doesn't even appear on a government census.

As you know, I try to avoid politics on this blog like the onset of the plague, but, I'll state here and how that I pledge my vote for any candidate, even The Donald or Bernie Sanders, if they're the sole supporter of just staying on one time.  I'm a single issue voter on this one.  Daylight Savings Time would actually be my preference, but I really don't care, either Time is fine.  If, like me, you want this madness to stop, please visit and sign this petition to Congress, or this petition to the White House, or if you're like the rest of America, at least spend time "liking" this idea on Facebook.  Politicians, being the dolts what they are and an election in their future, they'll probably listen to Facebook better than anything else.  Grumbling over, soon back to your regularly scheduled program.

Shameless Selfies

My trail camera has spent most of the summer in desperate need of attention.  The batteries were beyond dead and I had removed the digital memory card and never replaced it.  After a long, hot summer, who really cares if the garden is being sampled at night?  I had, within the last two weeks, taken the precaution of putting up the chicken wire bindings that protect my tree trunks from deer, and I've spent time doing various and sundry other garden cleanups.

With autumn coming on, however, I felt a need to know who was rambling around my garden at night, and I put the camera back in working order last week.  I've seen no evidence of wildlife damage, at least not on a conscious level, but somehow I felt that something about the garden was different.  I somehow sensed Other. Other in the form of a marauding horde.   Other in the form of hungry visitors.

I didn't have to wait long for evidence.  Dear, oh dear, I've got deer.  Lots of deer, sampling tender rose tips and buds. What I did not expect was the jocular nature of this invasion, the sheer "We're in it for the fun" attitude of this year's table guests.  The first guy above, a handsome stag, seemed to be casting a playful little goofy look for his "selfie", and he was good enough to pose with a full profile on the next night.  Quite a well-antlered boy, don't you think, Ladies?



The stags have been followed already by doey-eyed does, their long eyelashes so innocent and flirtatious with the camera.  Tail up in the air, this lady is ready to find her a man, yessir, yessir.  Soon enough, there will be little fawns appearing in these pictures, their molecules and atoms composed mostly of reconstituted rosebuds and rose leaves from my garden,  Oh well, que sera sera, we're all just the recycled products of some supernova anyway, or so I'm told.  Anyway, I've got to admit that these selfies beat the heck out of anything the Kardashians have produced.

Life Imperative

Here, at the onset of Autumn, the garden slowly slips from life to death, from ardor to apathy.  Peonies are stiff stalks, brown and cracking with every breeze.  I must remember to remove supports and mow them soon back to dust.  Likewise the daylilies and irises, green at their base but yellow-tipped, bent and beaten by wind and sun and insect, begging, almost eager, to move gently into the cold nights.  These and more have budded and flowered and seeded, the annuals among them filling their need to make new life from old, to be reborn with Spring into the next generation.  Perennials also have prospered, storing summer's sugars in roots and stems for another season, casting seed onto earth, future offspring to watch and treasure, children at their feet.

Some in the garden, however, have not yet satisfied that primal itch, late to the game, slow to the plate.  Roses still bloom, unnatural remonant freaks that never understand there is a time for rest, a time to reflect, and a time for rebirth.  They will soon freeze for their troubles, energy wasted on buds unborn.  Helen's Flowers shine on, reflecting back the months of gathered sun into the heavens, lanky and tall before they finally bow to Winter.  Asters abound, white and blue and purple to reflect the autumn sky and coming snows.  

A few fight forward still, faith given to provenance and strength, rushing to beat deadlines of frost and freeze.  I recently discovered this bedraggled sunflower blooming in a bed near the house.  If it is indeed, as I believe, an ox-eye daisy (Heliopsis helianthoides) or false sunflower, then it has evaded weeding gardener, incessant sun, late-summer drought, and an army of insects to flower now in a hardened clay bed, late but insistent, desperately trying to add its hardy genes to the future.  Stunted, oppressed, and humbled, fighting the nearby daylily for every nutrient atom and molecule of water, still it lifts its face to the heavens, stretching for the ribbon at the race's end.

Ox-eye's are perennials here, so I choose now to leave this one and await its return.  Every gardener plays God in his or her own garden. and the lord of this garden is happy to accept this survivor into the gene pool of his garden.  Such are the beginnings of new species and new promises, these pioneers pushed to the edge of death and pushing back with life.  Such are the lessons of the garden for their gardeners.

God is the better Gardener

On a recent trip to Colorado for my son's wedding (hurrah for he and the new missus!), we took a side trip to Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs.  In truth, I am normally so cynical to the depths of my soul that most natural wonders that wow others often leave me unimpressed and underwhelmed.  For instance, I find the important Kansas landmark, the World's Largest Ball of Twine, to be less than inspiring, especially considering the desecration of it by many local visitors, but Garden of the Gods was different.  For a simple backyard and frontyard gardener, Garden of the Gods is a humbling experience in what a Greater Power can do with the simple forms of rock and earth.  Don't go by Colorado Springs without stopping there.

Garden of the Gods (GOTG from here on out) is a public park funded by Colorado Springs and the proceeds from its own gift shop, but it entirely free if all you want to do is visit and wander the park.  There's a paved drive that you can take if you're just in the mood to pass through, but you can also bike or hike a number of various paths around the park.  If I lived in the area, I believe it would be a constant weekend outing for me.  It was designated as a National Natural Landmark in 1971.

The rock formations at GOTG were created by an upheaval along a natural fault during the uplift of the Rocky Mountains.  Native Americans considered it a sacred place, unsurprisingly, and the Ute's, in particular, incorporated it into their creation stories.  Early Spanish and other European explorers began visiting the area in the 16th century.  The public park was created when Charles Eliott Perkins donated 480 acres of land containing part of GOTG to the city in 1909, and William Jackson Palmer later donated his Rock Ledge Ranch which contained the remaining formations.

The primarily sedimentary beds of red, pink and white sandstones were eroded during the Pleistocene Ice Age into the present forms, including "Balanced Rock", a fascinating formation that is now,  stabilized in place by concrete lest it move and crush the adoring public around it. Although it is unlikely to topple over without a major earthquake, I was still a bit nervous driving between these two pillars.


 Although the park is free, don't overlook the very excellent Visitor and Nature Center across from the park entrance.  The center contains many well-done and informative displays about the parks formation, ecology, and history and offers some excellent scenic views for family photos.

Of course, being a gardener, one of the things I found most fascinating about the park was the way that life chooses to cling to every small patch of lousy soil that exists in whatever wind-swept cubbyhole it accumulates in.  Whatever your interest, geology, botany, paleontology (the park has its own resident dinosaur species Theiophytalia kerri), or anthropology (Ute petroglyphs are documented in the park), there is something for everyone in GOTG.  Rock climbing is permitted, for those who are crazy enough to test Death on a daily basis, and even the non-exuberant birders will relish the 130 bird species that exist there.   See it, when you can, and prepare to be amazed.  My mother, who shares my hard-to-impress nature, was practically bouncing off the car windows as we rounded each formation to view the next.  That entertainment alone was sufficient reason for a trip to the park, and the natural formations were just icing on the sedimentary cake.