Glorius Sunrise

There are mornings, beyond understanding, when we wake up and the world that has lately seemed small and brown and drab is suddenly made golden and magical by the sunlight.  As I went outside to do the morning thing with the dog, what greated me on a recent morning was this sight at sunrise:

Sometimes the gray, late Fall mornings just steal the life from the morning here on the Flint Hills, but other times, most times, the sun turns haze to a prism and brings the prairie alive.  Yes, the picture shows this area of the garden needs some ornamental grasses moved and a better wall to block garden from prairie. And yes, the milk jugs protecting the new rose bands distract from the picture. And, yes, my Marsala Aga statue in the center background looks lonely and small on the greater scale of the garden. But the morning dew has picked up the red tones from the grass and the few evergreens in this view are holding on bravely.  And I'm happy that the prairie has chosen to greet me with a smile this morning.

I've often said that Manhattan has the most sunny days of anywhere I've ever lived and somewhere, sometime, I always remember that I heard the number quoted as 330 sunny days a year.  However, I confess that I can't find anything near the 330 day figure on an Internet search.  According to a USNews report of best places to retire, Manhattan only has 36% (131) sunny days/year.  Okay, that site may not be accurate anyway, particularly since it states that the OZ museum is in nearby Lincoln (it's in nearby Wamego, 20 minutes away, and the closest Lincoln is Lincoln, Nebraska at 2.5 hours away).  Manhattan is listed as having 127 sunny days/year on an astronomy site, 145 clear days on a Hi-Tunnel Gardening site (126 additional days that are partly cloudy), and 219, 218, or 214 sunny days as listed on various pages of bestplaces.net and finally 218 days on realestate.yahoo.

Who's to say who is right?  The low figures seem to count only cloudless days, and since our clouds here are often small and intermittent, the 271 day total listed on the Hi-Tunnel site as having some sun may be closer to our real figure.  I don't know where the real answer lies except to say that there seems to be plenty of sunlight here to feed the full value of life and I'm thankful for what each day brings.

Chicken Fetish

One of the definitions of "fetish" by The Free Online Dictionary is an "object of unreasonably excessive attention or reverence."  If that's the case, then I must admit that along with my collection of cement rabbits in my garden, I also have a certain small fetish for artificial roosters in my garden.  Oh dear, Sigmund Freud, what exactly might that say about my psyche?

The rooster at the right watches over my lavenders right outside the back door.  This is a straight western exposure, lots of sun and wind and cold during the winter.  Made of cast iron, I was pretty sure when I purchased it from the garden store that it would withstand the prevailing Kansas winds in this exposed site, and so far, it has "withstood" the worst that the prairie can throw at it.

The second rooster, at the left, is a nice addition to my front landscaping, even placed as it is overshadowed in the summer by the bright red bee's balm (Monarda didyma 'Jacob Cline') surrounding it.  It is also a perfect example of why "permanent" garden ornaments shouldn't be formed from terra cotta.  It slowly decays a little bit each year, but at the same time, I so love the patina and the color of the thing that I can't bare to provide it any shellac or coating.  I assume that someday, after another long winter or two, it will become just another an unrecognizable crumbling clay pillar, but till then it stays vigilant for me to scratch out  any insects that try to invade the house from the front. 

There's just no accounting for garden taste now, is there?  Wait till I finally write about my rabbits!

Fall Foliaged Roses

'Morden Centennial' Hips

There is no doubt that I miss the roses when winter hits and the final buds shrivel as they decide it just isn't worth it to continue struggling through the cool days and cold nights.  I've been watching my garden carefully for the opening of those last buds, grabbing them greedily each night for a quick trip inside so we can still enjoy their beauty before Winter grips the Flint Hills.

Rosa 'Purple Pavement'

Roses, in the past and currently, have not been great contributors to the fall and winter garden.  Yes, there are a number of roses that provide some nice red or orange hips that contrast nicely against the snow.  There are also a few roses whose leaves, given the right fall conditions, turn a nice yellow or yellow-orange before they finally tumble down.  In my garden, 'Purple Pavement' is one of those roses that gives me a nice yellow before the leaves drop and sometimes it might even leave a nice juicy red hip or two around.  And gardeners in-the-know have been aware for a number of years that a few roses, such as 'Therese Bugnet', have a nice purple-red hue to their winter canes that even rivals that of the red-twig dogwood.

  

'Therese Bugnet' winter canes

The future, though, is bright.  Paul Barden has been talking about breeding new bright-red fall foliage into roses on his website and his blog here and here.  He's reporting good results from crosses of 'Therese Bugnet', R. foliolosa, R. solieana, and R. arkansana, among others.  He doesn't know what all the blooms look like yet, but with further breeding, I'm sure he'll end up with some beautiful four-season roses.  I didn't purloin the pictures, so you'll have to follow the links to get there, but make sure you take a look at them and while you do it, dream of an improved Knockout with bright red fall foliage to rival a burning bush.  Now if Mr. Barden can just improve the yucky red-orange color of Knockout in the process!  

P.S.  Yes, I've been a little slow posting the last 10 days.  Alas, preparing lectures and allowing for the twists and turns of life sometimes interfere with my hobbies.  Readers, please keep checking back when I get lax.

Rose Readings

I've been long in the midst of a wonderful book combining some of my favorite roses and their histories.  Titled Pink Ladies and Crimson Gents, by Molly and Don Glentzer, this one is a must read for any rosarian who loves old garden roses.  Molly is the writer and Don is the photographer and they've collaborated on a unique project.

This colorful text looks at fifty different roses, most of which are old garden roses but some of which fall into the modern category.  For each rose, there's a delicious full-page photograph of a perfect specimen of that rose, taken against a pure white background to be free of distractions.  No insect damage or blackspot on these roses! You can almost feel the roses on each page and sometimes you think that the briefest wisp of old rose scent has passed by on a draft as you read.  'Mme Eugene E. Marlitt', 'Mme Isaac Pereire', and 'Lady Banks', 'Sir Thomas Lipton', 'Napoleon', and 'Don Juan', all the cultivar-honored names of history are there, along with the individual stories of both the breeder of the particular rose and a short biography of the honoree.  

It's a highly readable book, and in a perfect format, one of those books that I refer to as "throne reading."  You know, those books that can be read a page or two at a time while you are otherwise briefly occupied in a sitting position on a white porcelain chair and biding your time with necessary physiologic pursuits.  It takes me a while to get through a book in that manner, two pages at a time, but I'm pretty sure that 'Gertrude Jekyll' and 'Graham Thomas' don't mind, as long as I get to their stories at last.

Old Rose fanatics will appreciate that the authors acknowledge that many of the blooms were taken at G. Michael Shoup's Antique Rose Emporium in Texas and at Vintage Gardens.  I myself grow several roses from the former, having enjoyed its Brenham, Texas establishment once as a sort of side-trip pilgrimage during a visit to friends.