Books and Blogs

Those who have been following this blog in its short life since late July have been seeing its evolution and my slow learning process here, so I thought I'd take a single blog to address the whole "why do you (I) blog and write?" and "where is this thing going?" series of questions.

Here is the key;  I've always been a bibliophile and I've always said that someday I would write a book about something.  I started writing the book Garden Musings (pictured and linked on this blog) a few years back solely as a release for me.  I simply enjoy the writing process and years ago I was conditioned by a great set of high school English teachers to be able to sit down and vomit my thoughts in a relatively coherent fashion onto paper.  But, after a couple of decades where my writing was confined to dry scientific papers in my chosen profession of veterinary orthopedic surgery, I simply missed the more creative outlet of writing for the fun of it.  And I know I'm not even close to being a horticultural expert (I should barely claim amateur status based on the survival rate of flora that I place into the ground), but I didn't want to write about veterinary patients after treating them all day, so the next best choice was a book of gardening experiences. So I started slowly writing Garden Musings and finally, during the cold winter of 2008-09, I made a push to put enough essays together to make a decent-sized book, went to an independent publisher (iUniverse), and got it out. What a learning experience publication was! 

Now, notice that I said I started writing Garden Musings solely for me.  Because I, like many others, stated loudly and clearly at the beginning that I was NOT writing because of ego.  Well, the second key here is this:  I don't care who you are, writing may be for the writer, but publishing is ALL about ego.  You may think you start writing for yourself, but once your baby is out there in the world, you suddenly CARE that others read it and you suddenly want to know what they thought of it.  There's even a whole new addictive syndrome, "Amazon-Rank Fixation," where the gardener begins checking the ranking of his book on Amazon at hourly intervals and comparing the rank to books by other well-known garden writers.  Not that that ever happened to me. 

I've had good feedback on Garden Musings the book. Much of the feedback was surprising, though.  I didn't write it to be a comedic work but I was told by some readers that it was side-splitting funny in places.  Some did think it was informative, those few poor souls who didn't realize that I kill more plants than I grow.  I was told by one reader that it's the perfect book for reading on the toilet;  each essay is three-four pages long on average...just long enough.  My mother said "I suppose it's a good read if you like gardening" (she doesn't) and my father suddenly realized, as he told my sister, "that I was a deep thinker."   

Regarding Garden Musings the blog though, there is, if you haven't run across it yet, at least one book out there specifically about writing on gardens, Cultivating Words by Paula Panich, and of course I came across it after I already published my book.  Cultivating Words covers the whole gamut of garden writing, from weekly newspaper columns to monthly magazines to books, and it's a very informative work. Using ideas from Panich's book and elsewhere, I even put together a pretty good presentation for gardening groups on the process of garden writing (lecturing is, of course, yet another form of ego-stroking as any other professor will tell you).  Ms. Panich cautions "book writers" not to become "blog writers" because blogging funnels the creative instincts away from finishing books.  And I heeded her advice for awhile, but at heart, I tend to be a little resistant to authority. A friend suggested starting the blog and that sounded like a new and fun experience, and the software seemed to be easy enough to figure out, and off I went. 

Blogging, though, is also still all about the writer's ego and it is even easier to measure the ego boost by counting numbers of comments and page hits and ranking sites and all that. These days it is all about the voice provided to me by the audience. I write for you. If you have followed me long, you may have guessed that I'm trying to settle down into a pattern: a random thought that has been occupying me on Mondays, something I'm reading or reviewing on Wednesdays, a rose feature on Fridays, a gardening technique on Saturdays and a little garden philosophy on Sundays. Of course, my obsessive-compulsive disorder occasionally rears its head and I blow that schema, but I'm trying.

I'd love to have feedback whenever my readers get time. What articles did you like?  Which were thought-provoking?  Which will keep you coming back?  God knows, except for the poor curious souls who click on the advertising and provided the $2.26 I've earned so far, I'm not in this for the money, I'm in it for the camaraderie of gardeners.  And, to be honest, the occasional ego boost of having someone else listen.

Kon-Tiki Seasons

When I considered the suggestion by horticulturist Kelly D. Norris to take pictures repeatedly of the same view in the garden (see my blog titled "Sometimes a Diversion"), I realized that I had presciently taken that advice, but only in regards to one or two specific places in my garden.  And "The Head" was one of those places that I haven't yet written about.

The Head, an Easter-Island-type statue I obtained from a local garden store, has been in my garden since the beginning.  It was the first statue of any size that I placed in the garden.  I keep the somber Head on a pedestal in the middle of two yellow 'Rugelda' rugosa hybrid roses, backed up by the white 'Marie Bugnet', and facing, of course, due east on the compass.   There it waits daily for the sunrise and stands watch for me to spread the alarm in case of the return of the Gods.

I'd always thought The Head provided a handsome conversation piece, flanked by the glory of the 'Rugelda' roses, but since I purchased it, it was always a point of ridicule for me from my loving wife, who despises it.  The last laugh was mine, though since the identical piece of concrete appears frequently on HGTV in the garden of Paul James, the Gardener Guy, forever muting my better half's questioning of my gardening tastes.  Anyway, when the 'Rugelda' fades, pink 'La Reine Victoria'  and blush white 'Comte de Chambord' are there to pick up the slack.

The Head is a good soldier, standing firm in the face of thunderstorms, prairie fires, and the ever-present Kansas wind (at least after I finally created a stable concrete foundation for it to keep it from slowly listing and falling off the pedastel).  It takes the harsh eastern sunrise on its face and the full burning Flint Hills non sun on its hatless skull without complaint.  And even when the ice comes down and glazes its features, it stands silent, immune to the world.

 

But I have seen The Head, in the depths of winter, weeping with me at the cold damage to the naked rose canes surrounding it and its poor perennial friends shivering in the show. The Head is always a good garden companion for the plants and for me alike. It doesn't talk to me though, really it doesn't.  At least not that I'm telling.  And I'll let you know if it informs me that the Gods have returned from space.

Hope for Humanity

'Hope for Humanity'.   If ever there was a rose named to increase sales to the WEE (wild-eyed environmentalists) and the Birkenstock herd, it is certainly 'Hope for Humanity'.  It's fortunate for the more cynical human personality types, including the many gardeners that prefer to spend time with plants rather than their fellow Homo sapiens, that 'Hope for Humanity' is also a healthy and beautiful rose so that we can claim we appreciate it for something other than its name.

'Hope for Humanity'

'Hope for Humanity' is a 1995 introduction in the Parkland Series from Agriculture Canada that was released to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Canadian Red Cross Society. Appropriately for that commemorative purpose, she is not the muddy magenta-red rose color that many "red" roses have, she's a deep vivid crimson red that makes the bush appear to be studded with enormous rubies.  The Red Cross had exclusive rights to market the rose until 1998 when it was released to sale by commercial outlets.  Like most of the Canadian releases, you will most often find 'Hope for Humanity' growing on its own roots, increasing the hardiness and survivability of the rose here in Kansas.  She blooms continually with those blood-red, fully double blooms held in trusses of 4-5 blossoms about 3 inches in diameter.

There seems to be a lot of recent interest in this rose on several gardening forums I frequent, particularly among the zone-poor gardeners like myself who are denied the less cold-tolerant rose families.  As I stated in an Internet posting recently, I constantly fight a bad case of zone-envy and regret that I can't grow tea roses or Noisettes, or camellias or gardenias outside of my house. And there's a lot of confusing information about 'Hope for Humanity', particularly in regards to height.  Agriculture Canada lists this rose as growing only 2 feet high, but numerous internet gardeners describe their specimens as being from 2 feet variably to 6 feet high.  Here in Zone 5B, my 'Hope for Humanity', about 6 years old at present, has never been cut back and is about 4 1/2 feet tall at present, with a half-dozen strong canes.  It is reportedly hardy to Zone 3 (it should be since it was developed at the Manitoba-based Morden Research Centre by Colicutt and Marshall) and I can confirm that I've seen no winter-dieback at all here in Zone 5. There's also some argument as to the repeat flowering of this rose, with sources listing it anywhere from 2-3 repeat cycles during the growing season to continuous flowering.  As I said, mine is continuous flowering from May through September and into October, rarely, if ever, without a bloom.  And it's a disease-free rose;  I never spray it and it gets only mild blackspot in the most humid weather.  It has survived wind storms, ice storms and the determined cane-gnawing by a family of rabbits in its short time with me.

If you're a suppressed Victorian who prefers hybrid-tea roses and is turned off by the shrub-like form and floribunda blooming of 'Hope for Humanity', another Canadian rose that might better fit your desires is the less sickly-sweet named, red hybrid-tea style 1967 introduction named 'Cuthbert Grant'.  The majority of internet sources list 'Cuthbert Grant' as another Parkland series rose, but the rose is named after the Métis explorer and leader.  'Cuthbert Grant', the rose, is a good hardy performer in my climate (also rated as hardy to Zone 3), of almost the same red color but perhaps a little more venous than arterial blood-toned in its particular red.  Growing a trifle taller to six feet and a bit faster, Cuthbert is also more suited to bringing into the house in a vase for display and has a better fragrance than HFH.    

Luckily there's a rose for every fool, a fool for every rose, and still some 'Hope for Humanity.'

The Undaunted Garden

I had occasion recently to re-read Lauren Springer's (now Springer-Ogden) first text, The Undaunted Garden.  What a treasure trove it is of gardening information for the Kansas gardener beset by wind and storm and ice.

Subtitled "Planting for Weather Resilient Beauty," it remains one of the most readable and beautifully illustrated garden-related books I've ever read.  First published in 1994, the text and photographs were all created by Ms. Springer in an obvious labor of love and belief in what she was producing.  It has become a classic garden read, first, I believe, because the writing is aimed not at the highbrow level of garden designers, but at the dirt's-eye level of the struggling gardener.  Second, the lessons for plant selection and plant survival on the Great Plains are well thought out and presented in logical order and in language easily understood by all levels of gardening experience.  Lastly, Springer's Undaunted Garden heralded her embrace of native plants, and further yet, her recognition of "adapted" plants as a means to transform gardens in the prairies and Colorado foothills, beginning her reputation as the premier garden designer and writer she has become.  Until this book, I don't think that I had ever seen the concept that one can create a garden that smiles through the worst of a climate by not planting just with natives, but by extending a home to plants that are adapted to similar climate conditions, whether those plants were found bordering the Mediterranean or in Australia.

I've always sympathized with her opening thought "I don't understand the concept of the low-maintenance garden...to desire a garden that requires no time spent except the occasional stroll in well-laundered clothes is like having the most beautiful and appetizing food laid out on a table before you and not wanting to take a bite."  Ms. Springer invites us in, and then teaches us, with named examples, to select plants that survive the extremes of drought, hail, wind, and driving rain, all while keeping an eye on the design of a bed or garden.  My favorite chapter, Roses for Realists, increased my own interest in Old Garden and hardy roses, to which I was especially susceptible after only a few short years of beginning gardening where I learned that Hybrid Teas were perhaps not the best choice for the Flint Hills climate.  And the last section, Portraits of Indispensably Undaunted Plants, which is a glossary of Plains-adapted plants, provided us all the tools we needed to reform our own gardens.  In reviewing that section, I found that I have tried most of the plants highlighted for sunny exposures.  It was the first time, for instance, that I ever heard of Knautia macedonia, which is now a mainstay of my front border.      

I see from the Amazon.com site that a revised second edition is coming out soon, expanding both the photographs with new additions and increasing the number of highlighted plants from 65 to 100.  Although the bibliophile in me will always prefer my first edition hardcover, I may have to fork out the money from my gardening budget to get the revised edition as well.  I can always consider another 35 recommendations for my garden from an established expert, particularly one writing, it seems, especially for my Flint Hills weather.