Stylish Blogger Award

Sherry, of her blog If Only Sweat Were Irrigation, was kind enough recently to bestow on me the Stylish Blogger Award.  As a garden blogger, I'm thankful that at least a few others are reading and enjoying the blog and I hope I can live up to those expectations.

According to the guidelines given for the SBA, I must a) link back to Sherry's blog (see above), b) give seven facts about myself and c) pass the award on to other bloggers that I consider deserving.  So, in that spirit, my seven disclosures are:

1. I hate Spirea in all forms and colors.
2. My writing interest goes way back, encouraged by a 4th grade teacher who gave us brownie points for writing poems and then by a pair of very dedicated high school English teachers who essentially created an advanced English curriculum specifically for me, long before "Advanced Placement" classes became common.
3. I got hooked on Old Garden Roses because of a book by Thomas Christopher, In Search of Old Roses.  It's an addiction I'm unable to break.
4. I'm a Taurus, earthy and stubborn.  Anyone surprised?  What's your sign Baby?
5. As a young boy, aged 6 or 7, I would paint the wooden fence posts around the farm all afternoon for a 60 cent book.  My mother should have been jailed for violation of child labor laws.
6. As a teenager, I used to chuckle at my father planting flowers around the house.  It seems that he got the last laugh.
7. If you'd have asked me when I was 17, Kansas is the last place in the USA I would have told you that I was likely to move to.

And I would like to nominate two bloggers that I follow every day for the Stylish Blogger Award.  I found both of them through the gardenweb.com rose forums and they've become friends I've never met.   The first is Connie @ Hartwood Roses who writes a really nice, varied blog about her greyhounds and her home and her roses.  Oh yeah, and she runs a mail-order rose plant business.  The second is Paul Barden @ Paul Barden's Roses.  Paul is a rose hybridizer extraordinaire whose knowledge of rose breeding is far beyond anything I've ever heard of or encountered, and I suspect I've only seen the surface so far.  I expect Paul to someday end up being spoken of in the same breath with Austin, Moore, Buck, McGredy, Kordes, and other legends. 

Golden Teases

Crocus chrysanthus 'Goldilocks'

Well, for a very short time, we almost had a glimpse of Spring here in the Flint Hills.  Every year, I carefully scrutinize my Witch Hazel (Hamamelis x intermedia 'Jelena'), and also the locations of previous snow crocus for their first blooms.  And this weekend, suddenly there it was; the snow crocus that was nowhere to be seen a week ago suddenly popped up and is showing a little flirtatious yellow to tempt me into premature excitement.  One glance and my spirit soars and my heart races at the sight of the brazen little wench.  Spring has sprung!

But alas, the coy little lass will have to gather her petticoats back around her and hold on for a later opportunity because we are under a Winter Storm Watch and have 3-6 inches of snow predicted this afternoon and evening.  As is common for the Great Plains, we went from the 70's when the picture above right was taken to a daytime high in the 30's in less than 24 hours this past weekend.  And four days later, here comes the snow.

I don't even remember how I came to have these few clumps of snow crocus, but they're planted beneath my forsythia and, true to their name, they often bloom during and through the late winter storms for me.  Yellow always blooms first, followed by the white and purple. I also don't know why I have not divided these clumps or purchased more, since they are so important to my spring mental health.  I don't recall seeing them frequently in fall stock at the "Big Box" stores and since I purchase most of my spring bulbs in bulk in those stores, it could be simply that I haven't had my memory jogged about them.  However, I should have ordered some last year when I mail-ordered a group of Lycoris squamigera if I'd had my wits about me.  I must redouble my efforts in this regard.  The Snow Crocus that I adore (Crocus chrysanthus) are actually just the earliest blooming of four common Crocus species (including Crocus vernus, the Dutch Crocus) which are all sometimes popularly called Snow Crocuses.  And to confuse the matter, there are a handful of obscure and more rare Crocus species that can be obtained by collectors.  The Dutch Crocus blooms well here, but the Kansas wind rapidly shreds the blossoms, so enjoyment of them is a fickle possiblity for me, while the smaller and shorter C. chrysanthus are much more reliable bloomers.

   

Daffodil stems

Of course, another first sign of spring that just appeared are the daffodil stems beginning their push towards the sunlight.  As a less-experienced gardener, I used to worry incessantly about these on colder nights and sometimes kicked more mulch over them or even covered them with blankets. Wisdom and laziness now prevail and I let Mother Nature take care of these in her own time.  They seem to survive the frosts and bloom just as well without me as they did with me.

As gardeners, we like to pretend we have an effect on our gardens, but at the final measure, perhaps our gardens just patiently tolerate our efforts and hope we don't cause them more harm than good.

Spring Cuttings

Anyone living in or near the MidWest knows that we had a miraculous warm spell last weekend, and I know that some might be asking "What did ProfessorRoush do on his glorious weekend?"   Or, more likely, probably not, since most of you were too excited to be out in your own gardens to think about your blogging companions.

In the last "warm" spell of a couple weeks back, I took advantage of a 55ºF day to finally get the fruit trees trimmed and the dormant spray applied.  So the next thing on my yearly list, other than waiting for whatever little floral creature decides to be the first to bloom and brighten my Spring, was to tackle trimming the grape vines into shape before their sap flow starts.  I had intended to do them along with the fruit tree pruning, but realized on that particular weekend that I would have to stand knee deep in the remnants of a snow drift to prune them, and that action seemed a little too extreme.  But this past weekend, the temperatures hit 68ºF and out came the pruners and "Voila!", the grapes were ready for spring.  From there, I went to trimming back all the ornamental grasses, since I had noticed that the KSU garden had done their grass haircuts already. I went on to start cleaning off the front landscaping beds but finally the brisk Flint Hills winds drove me indoors.  It was either that or have chapped hands and an earache to start out Spring.

I don't know how everyone else cuts back their grasses, but I had the fortune of purchasing, a few years back, a Black & Decker battery-operated set of tools containing a sander, circular saw, reciprocating saw, and drill.  The reciprocating saw, with a 4 inch blade, is what I use for trimming back fruit and landscape trees and it makes quick work of my spring trimming chores. But even better than that, I separately purchased the long-handled hedge trimmer (pictured below) that was compatible with the set and I've found it a snap for some grasses, allowing me to stand upright and shear them off with the greatest of ease. The portable trimmer makes quick work of the small-stemmed Panicum sp, and Calamagrostis sp, and the Pennisetum's, or the Schizachyrium cultivars.  Seeing the grasses cut back and the garden lines so much cleaner is one of  my favorite feelings of springtime, sort of on a par with the satisfaction of washing my Jeep after running it down a muddy country road.  Old men and their power toys are a match made in gardening heaven.

Unfortunately, like everything else, my portable trimmer fails me during assaults against the majority of the Miscanthus cultivars.  Some cultivars, like 'Morning Light' or 'Gracillimus' are moderately susceptible to the wiles of the trimmer.  On many of those monsters, however, like the mighty striped Miscanthus sinensis 'Zebrinus', I grumble and cry and finally get down on my knees at the base of the grass clump to pray to the Prairie Gods that I'm still young and fit enough to chop through a large clump with manual hedge trimmers.  If you haven't grown Miscanthus, you might not know about this, but these beasts of the grass family cannot be hacked with machete nor trimmed with power equipment.  It takes a pair of good strong arms and a stiff set of shears to bring them down each Spring.  Even worse than cutting them back is any attempt to move them, as their root masses form solid clumps of wood deep in the ground that I have found impossible to lift or divide without the aid of a bulldozer.  I'm currently planning the division and move for several of my taller misplaced Miscanthus this Spring, and I'm vacillating between using dynamite or hiring several unsuspecting teenagers for the task.  It's a tough choice, but I'll likely gravitate in the end towards the explosives since they'll be quieter and less destructive to the surrounding plants than the teenagers.