Ban the Dust in the Wind

I thought I'd heard the pinnacle of supreme bureaucratic overreach when I learned about the EPA considering the banning of our annual spring burn (see my blog titled Burn the Prairie!) but it seems the EPA was just getting warmed up.

Recent frantic headlines and editorials across the Midwest, all something on the variation of "EPA to Crack Down on Farm Dust," have alerted anyone with the slightest interest in current events that the EPA is reevaluating the dangers present in the air we breathe; particularly regarding PM (particulate matter).  Twenty-one farm state US Senators signed a letter on July 23rd opposing changes in PM standards.  The local news picked it up about 5 nights ago and the local Manhattan, Kansas newspaper even ran an editorial on the subject late this week.   

All the hubbub is about the Policy Assessment for the Review of the Particulate Matter National Ambient Air Quality Standards (released to the public via the Federal Register on July 8, 2010).   Now, I'll tell you, even with my generally good scientific background, the 357 pages of this report are tough to read.  And it's difficult to take away anything that suggests that this is a farm issue.  The word "farm" only occurs in the report when discussing past litigation of standards and listing the American Farm Bureau Association as being one of the parties to the litigation.  And "agriculture" is only mentioned referring to a previous study that found that western airborne "contaminants were shown to accumulate geographically based on proximity to individual sources or source areas, primarily agriculture and industry."  In fact, all I can essentially glean from the report is that it is a comprehensive review of the evidence that particulate matter has detrimental effects on the cardiovascular, respiratory and visual systems, among other important body stuff.  All the hype about farmers having to wet down their fields before harvest and all dirt roads needing to be paved is coming from somewhere else, not from the report.  The big news that I can understand comes in Appendix 2, Table 2A-1 where it's revealed that under current PM standards, 12% of US counties (and 24% of the population) fail the standards, while the alternative standards being considered would result in anywhere from 29% to 79% of the counties (accounting for the living area of most of the US population) failing the new standards.  

So, I don't get it, myself, but out there in the public view there's a fairly dry report on particulate matter standards by what I'm sure are a bunch of highly knowledgeable, well-meaning scientists working for the EPA, and somewhere, some other intelligent scientists, who can draw conclusions from that report far better than me, are raising alarm sufficient to rile 21 US Senators that the EPA is trying to destroy America. 

I don't know how all this will finally shake out and whether we'll all just agree in the end that we can't really control (or it's too expensive and cumbersome to control) agricultural dust, or whether the EPA will establish new standards that will either lead to the total destruction of agriculture and business in the US or to another Revolution.  In the meantime, my feeble brain is pretty aware of the fact that "all we are is Dust in the Wind" to quote the famous rock song by Kansas.  Since most of the problem here is recognized as being created by human action, maybe People are the dust that the EPA will ultimately recognize should be banned.  Seems we're heading in that direction.  

Idiot-Proof Scanner Photography

For all those poor souls who, like me, sadly have the artistic ability of a donkey no matter what the canvas, I've got to show my first results with a new technique; using a computer and scanner to create collages with my garden bounty.

I became aware of scanner photography through the GardeningGoneWild Bloom Challenge website which had wonderful examples and was itself linked to a blog containing the works of photographer David Perry titled A Photographer's Garden Blog.  The breadth of possibilities and expression demonstrated on Perry's blog inflamed my obsessive-compulsive nature and, although pausing for supper, I spent the evening after my discovery choosing flowers and vegetation and trying the technique out my home scanner, and after a little photo editing, I created, among many others, the images here.

You've just got to try this technique out.  To get started, you need only a computer, scanner, and some garden material and after that, the sky is the limit.  Literally.  As far as tips go, I've already got a few from my brief experience:

a)  Use only perfect blooms and foliage;  the scanner will pick up every little imperfection.

b)  Keep the scanner surface perfectly dust- and streak-free.  Again, any defect will mar the final picture.

c) The only perfectly focused items will be right on the scanner surface. Items and blooms even slightly off the surface quickly lose focus.

d)  For pictures without a background, keep the room lights off and do the scanning at night to get a background that a little photo manipulation will turn to seamless black.

e)  You can try colored or patterned backgrounds, but in practice, I found it tough to make the textures of these backgrounds fit the pictures.

f) The photo editing software need not be sophisticated, but you will need some editing capability.  I used Microsoft Office Picture Manager for these pictures.

Give it a shot;  you'll amaze yourself and stun the friends and family who've given up on ever seeing your artsy side!

Ravishing Madame Hardy

Over forty posts into this blog and I am remiss by not admitting that while I don't, as a general rule, pick favorites for most things, I do, however, have a favorite rose.  I confess publicly that I love the delectable purity of Madame Hardy.


Madame Hardy

'Madame Hardy' is an 1832 Damask rose that is probably one of the most unique and recognizable roses of all time.  The first indication of her delicate nature is the unique fringed sepals that surround the developing blooms. The blooms open flat and completely, normally revealing a fully double rose of pure white petals around a central green pip, but  in cool weather Madame Hardy seems a little embarrassed about revealing so much of herself at one time and there will be a slight cream or pink blush when she first opens.  Those perfectly formed blooms are held above a light matte green foliage on a bush completely unlike that of modern roses.  Instead of coarse, thick-caned, thorny and stiff legs, Madame Hardy has a perfect vase-like form, with thin long canes that seldom branch, but run from foot to head, and her thorns are reserved and ladylike in their lack of aggressiveness.  And the fragrance!  Sweet honey with overtones of lemon, Madame Hardy has a perfume that is strong and at the same time light upon the senses.  She doesn't beat you with fragrance like an Oriental Lily, she entices you, she lures you, and finally seduces you into worship.  If I were to chose a single word to describe this consummate lady, it would be "elegant."  She blooms only once a year, Madame Hardy, but when she blooms the angels have come to earth and blessed us with a glimpse of heaven. 

Madame Hardy was known to be a special rose from the beginning.  Her breeder, Monsieur Jules-Alexandre Hardy, was the Superintendent of the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris and an acknowledged expert on fruit trees, dabbling in roses on the side.  Some references, including Michael Pollan in Second Nature, a Gardener's Education, state that Monsieur Hardy was the head gardener for the Empress Josephine's rose collections at Malmaison, but the timing seems a bit off to me since Monsieur Hardy was born in 1787 and would only have been 25 years old by the time Josephine died in 1812.   All sources agree that Monsieur Hardy named this rose after his own wife, a testament to his devotion for eternity, and if that was his intention, he couldn't have chosen better.  One source states that the original name for this rose, after his wife, was 'Félicité Hardy', while another source gives the wife's name as Marie-Thérèse Pezard, but regardless, the rose has come to us down the ages as 'Madame Hardy'. According to Alex Pankhurst, in Who Does Your Garden Grow?, "by 1885 there were over six thousand varieties of rose available....that year a French rose journal recommended 'Madame Hardy' as one of the best..."  More recently, the celebrated British rose expert, Graham Thomas, wrote, “This variety is still unsurpassed by any rose.”

Alas, for all rose fanatics, Madame Hardy remains chaste in the garden and won't form hips or contribute pollen to other roses.  She would have undoubtedly been a great source for breeding a line of fantastic modern roses, but leaves us with no rivals, only her own beauty to be admired.

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.