A Little Piece of Texas

Like most of the US population, Kansans sometimes exhibit a little bit of Texas envy, manifested in the gardening population of Kansas by a desire to grow Texas Bluebonnets and Indian Paintbrush.  Since neither of the forementioned plants are reliably hardy in my climate (don't think I haven't tried!), I've turned to another native Texas plant to satisfy my yearnings; Red Yucca, also known as Texas Red Yucca or Red False Yucca.

Of course, since I've only been in Texas once, not counting a few hops through the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, I was introduced to Red Yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora) in Las Vegas, where it serves as a common xeri-landscape plant.  I'm sure any native Las Vegans, if in fact there are any, could identify the plant on sight, but I suffered on that particular trip from being in a foreign climate where a) I had no real idea what I was looking at, and b)  neither did any of the people working for the hotels and casinos that I asked.  From experience, I'm guessing that casino dealers and hostesses as a general rule don't spend a lot of time admiring the casino landscaping.  Identification had to wait for my return home and access to a computer, where I recognized Hesperaloe on the High Country Gardens website as the plant I'd just spent three days lusting after.

Hesperaloe parviflora 'Yellow'

Red Yucca is found native to the Rio Grande and northern Mexico area, in the Chihuahuan desert, where it matures to a 2-3 foot high and 4 foot wide succulent mound with narrow blue-green leaves and filamentous edges.  The plant flowers over a long period with inverted bell-shaped flowers of coral red, and it is well-suited for xeriscaping by its drought-tolerant, full-sun requirements and its preference for alkaline soil.  I was happy to see that it's a favored plant by hummingbirds and requires little or no maintenance beyond cutting down the flower stalks.  In fact, one helpful Internet gardener commented that it grows in very poor soil, "virtually no soil," so it seems made for my Flint Hills clay.  It's supposed to be hardy to zone 5, and evergreen to boot, so I'm giving this one a chance in my garden.  I've planted two different varieties from High Country Gardens, the red Hesperaloe and a yellow form (Hesperaloe parviflora 'Yellow'), both in somewhat well-drained poor-soil areas. Both survived the hot, dry summer we just had and needed minimal extra watering for establishment.   The yellow form, pictured at left, is doing great and probably has doubled in size since June, although it hasn't yet bloomed. I have great hope for it as I've seen reports of it growing in Denver, Colorado, and Shawnee Mission, Kansas, the latter just a hop, skip, and dead plant away.

So, once again, I'm stepping out into the murky waters of zonal envy and pinning my dreams for garden excellence on a whimsically-chosen plant glimpsed in someone else's climate.  You'd think I'd learn, expecting providence while staring from warm September down into the depths of a Kansas winter.  You'd think all gardeners would learn, but gardeners, more than all other human strains, seem to remain eternal optimists in the face of repeated failure.

BumbleBee Harvest Time

Ornamental grasses are all the rage in the fall garden these days and gardeners also crave any shrub whose foliage turns red, orange, or yellow to light up our fall landscapes.  As we design our landscapes solely to ease us softly into bitter winter, however, we should not forget that while it's harvest time all over Kansas and the Midwest for the grain needed to sustain mankind though the winter, it's harvest time for all the other creatures of Earth as well.

While fall gardeners still value flowering plants for adding color to the garden, there is no better reason to keep fall-blooming plants in your garden than to provide that final fall burst of energy for the many creatures who need nectar for winter stores, whether it's the hummingbirds migrating south for the winter or it is the bumblebee at the right, sipping at the 'Blue Mist' caryopteris.  In fact, take a closer look at that blue-collar workaholic bumblebee; covered in pollen from the many visits, it doesn't have time for a shower or a deodorant spritz, it's just buzz buzz buzz till the cold saps its energy.  Bumblebees store only a few days energy in the nest and each individual must reach a certain weight before entering their hibernation state if they are to survive the winter.  Astonishing efficient and cooperative, they leave a little scent deposit on every flower they visit, a gentle way of communicating to the next bumblebee to come along not to bother wasting time at that particular blossom.  In the fall, they benefit most from lavenders, asters, sunflowers, hyssop, sedums, goldenrods and salvias, which accounts for the activity around my lavenders and for all the Blue Sage (Salvia azurea), goldenrod, and sunflowers blooming all over the Kansas prairie right now.  I've not had a lot of luck with heather here in the Flint Hills, but a dense patch would help shelter the bumblebees in inclement weather so it might be worth a try in a sheltered area. Several sources noted that honeysuckles are also valuable in fall as a rich supply of nectar for bumblebees.  And I noticed just this weekend that my 'Florida Red' honeysuckle was blooming again.  Smart vine, that honeysuckle!

Of course, other flowers and plants are useful for these and other visitors.  The  Buddleia sp. keep up their display to attract butterflies like the late season Thoas Swallowtail pictured at the right.  The milkweeds sacrifice themselves for the greater glory of the Monarch.  And of course, nothing likes the honeysuckle better than the migrating hummingbirds.

Every plant has its favorite pollinator, every insect a favored plant, all synchronized to mix and mingle just at the right time to keep them all going, year after year, eon after eon.  Seems like there's a Grand Plan to all this, doesn't it? 

Seventh Generation Gardening

Jim Nollman, in "Why We Garden"  tells a unique story in the chapter on his Sequoia tree garden.  He relates that whenever the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy held a council meeting, the  Haudenosaunee (Iroquois tribal government) took a moment to invoke the presence of the seventh future generation.  According to Nollman, under the Great Law of Peace, any vote among the living council members also included an equal vote for the needs and dignity of those who would live in the seventh generation to come. 

Isn't that just a great concept?  If in everything we did, in everything done by our system of government, there was a voice or a vote by a representative for the Seventh Generation, how would that change the debates?  What would it mean for US environmental policies?  For drilling in the Arctic tundra?  For saving the Spotted Owl?   At the turn of the 20th Century, would it have saved the Ivory-billed Woodpecker?  Or the Carolina Parakeet?  If the Executive Board of British Petroleum had a member whose sole duty was to represent the Seventh Generation, would the Gulf Spill have happened?  Unfortunately, the modern expression  of the "Seventh Generation" idea seems to have only spawned hype for any number of modern products and outcomes, from the green cleaners and laundry detergents made by Seventh Generation Inc., to the Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development, to the proposed Seventh Generation Amendment (Common Property Amendment) for the US Constitution.

 Unfortunately, it also all seems to be based on a myth.  I'll admit that I'm cheating on the research effort, since I've only searched the Internet, but in two different translations of Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois available to me, the word "seven" is mentioned only twice, both times in relation to how thick a skin a council member should have, and the future generations are only invoked in a vague sense, as in Article 56 "They therefore shall labor, legislate, and council together for the interest of future generations,"  or in another passage that states, "Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground."  And in practice, I suppose the idea of a representative for the Seventh Generation wouldn't work in our government.  Who would speak for the Seventh Generation?  Al Gore?  George Soros?  Rush Limbaugh?
 
Luckily for gardeners, the Seventh Generation concept does work well in our own gardens.  When I planted a slow-growing Scarlet Oak at the back of my garden, who did I think would benefit from its shade?  Not me, surely, for 8 years later it still barely lifts its branches four foot above the ground.  When I plant a pecan tree, what generation am I expecting will finally be the beneficiary of the nuts that will rain down sometime in the distant future?  Do I maintain my Purple Martin houses and Bluebird trail for my enjoyment, or so that there will be a chance that Eastern Bluebirds and Purple Martins will always return to this bit of Flint Hills prairie with each Spring? How long will vanity let me leave the volunteer milkweeds alone, creating a shamble of my garden design, but providing food for the dwindling Monarch butterflies?  
 
Whether or not the story told by Nollman is true, please plant something today, make a new garden bed, or put up a new birdhouse, I urge you, for the Seventh Generation. 

Garden Tranquilizers

If, my fellow gardeners, you missed the news while you were out digging and planting, Science has recently discovered that gardening is addicting, or at least responsible for our generally cheerful moods, and even better, that gardening might make us smarter.

Stupid scientists.  We already knew both those things, didn't we?

It's all about a natural soil bacterium called Mycobacterium vaccae.  Previous research studies have shown that heat-killed M. vaccae injected into mice stimulated growth of some brain neurons that resulted in increased levels of serotonin and decreased anxiety.  Serotonin, for the medically uninitiated, is a neurotransmitter that helps us sleep, regulates our body clocks and our body temperature, and regulates our daily cycle of endogenous cortisol, calming us down at night. So, in essence, due to bacteria we're exposed to as we dig, gardening is just a big dose of anti-depressants for its stalwart devotees. It's also true that LSD acts through stimulation of serotonin receptors, so draw your own conclusions from there to some of the gardeners you know.

More recently, a study presented in San Diego by Dorothy Matthews and Susan Jenks at the 110th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology reported on the ability of mice to navigate a maze after being fed the bacteria..  The result;  M. vaccae-fed mice negotiated the maze twice as fast and with less demonstrated anxiety behaviors than control mice.

As gardeners, we're constantly exposed to M. vaccae through breathing or ingestion (for those who garden with an open mouth), so, in theory, every time we dig into the dirt, we relax a little bit and we get a little smarter.   I, for one, am happy to keep digging (or I'm digging to keep happy)  to get my daily fix of M. vaccae.  I'll leave it to the WEEW/OGB (Wild-Eyed Environmental Wackos/Organic Nut-Balls) to promote eating dirt clods or drinking muddy water for the "natural" benefits.

Follow-up experiments by Matthews and Jenks showed that the increased intelligence effect was temporary (diminished after several weeks)  if the exposure to M. vaccae was withdrawn, suggesting that it is important for us to keep digging regularly and perhaps explaining why Northern Hemisphere gardeners are so depressed during winter months.  Rebecca Kolls of Rebecca's Garden TV show fame was always telling us to "Keep those hands dirty!" wasn't she?   If nothing else, we now have some evidence why gardeners should be better at getting around those corn mazes that crop up everywhere in the Fall.