Oopsies

Well, I'll start off year two of my blog by showing you a recent little oopsie that constitutes my biggest garden error; EVER, bar none!  This little mistake was not on the same level as placing a Stella de Oro daylily next to a magenta phlox.  Nor was it quite equivalent to planting Houttuynia cordata 'Chameleon' between the stepping stones of a walkway (although that would be a pretty big error).  No, this bonehead move resulted in horticultural murder, mayhem, and genocide in my garden.  I may need to convene a Gardener's War Crime Tribunal to clear up this aftermath and assign blame.

Before I confess, I must, in my defense, state the mitigating circumstances.  It was a hot Saturday.  A very very hot Saturday.  And I had been working in the garden for several hours, and likely was operating under delirium brought on by heat stroke.  And there were several things left to accomplish on my list before I melted away, including mixing up "Over-The-Top" spray to kill some grass invading an heirloom group of irises and my strawberry bed, and I was in a hurry.   So I reached for the Hi-Yield Grass Killer sitting benignly on my killing shelf (as Helen Dillon refers to it), measured out the proper amount, added some sticker-spreader, and sprayed the aforementioned areas.  And with a little left over, decided to also spray some Nut Sedge (Cyperus rotundus) that had surrounded a 'Jean Kenneally' miniature rose and some crabgrass that was romping across an island bed.

Alas, about 45 minutes later it occurred to me suddenly that I had picked up the identically shaped and sized bottle of all-purpose herbicide that I used on the buffalograss this spring. Oops.  A quick check of the label indicated that this herbicide took two hours to become rain-proof, so I made a frantic run for the hoses and quickly washed off what I could.  The only hope that I really had is that in many areas of the strawberry patch I had directed the spray only on plants choked by grass and had not generally sprayed the entire bed.  The end result is that the strawberries mostly survived, I can't bear to show you the irises, and I can only bear to show you the miniature rose.  If you peer closely at the picture at the left, you'll see that the green foliage at the bottom of the picture, taken 3 weeks after the mishap, is a surviving part of the rose.  Thank God this rose was own-root and several years old because it has a chance to recover someday. 

There are a couple of lessons here.  First, the old adage about never to "ass-u-me" anything because it makes an ass out of -u and -me applies here.  Just because I knew the bottle shape and size didn't excuse the fact that I should have checked the label.  Second, my practice of writing the concentration in bold marker on the bottle so that I don't have to search the label for it may not, after all, be a good thing.  If I had to go looking for the fine print, I might just have noticed that what I was holding wasn't what it should have been.

I've been thinking about trying to host a monthly "show your garden errors" blog day.  What do you think?  Would a display of public humility either be educational or cathartic for you?  Do you think that all of you out there with perfect gardens would find enough problems and  be willing to disclose them to make it worthwhile?  Or did I just act out the horticultural equivalent of Will Ferrell in the movie "Old School," streaking along by myself and expecting the gang to follow?

One Year of Mind and Garden

Today, though I can scarce believe it, marks the first-year anniversary of this blog. 

From my first post, an introduction and explanation, to the most recent post Tuesday evening, 227 posts along, my blog is still evolving and changing. It has filled my need to occasionally free-associate and ramble and sometimes rant outside of my normal daily grind, and it has allowed me to explore, a little bit, the new social media outlets and think about applying them to my day job.  It has given me a chance to learn more about gardening and especially about roses, through research and from others.  And it has opened some doors to inward reflection.  I now know more about the passions that exist in my life and have an ever-so-slightly better appreciation of the important things in life from writing about them.

I appreciate, most of all, you readers and regular visitors to Garden Musings.  I've gained friends that I've never met in person and I've learned from each of you through your own observations and comments about my entries.  I've explored new plants and new thoughts because of this blog.  I've learned that sometimes the better part of  being a blogger is simply thinking about what went right or wrong in that most recent garden effort.  On the other side of this electronic divide, I hope you're enjoying a glimpse of Flint Hills gardening and that you can continue to tolerate the lens of humor and irreverent bemusement that I view the world through.  Please feel free to drop me a private line about anything you see that will help me to improve, either my gardening or my writing.  I also hope you realize that Mrs. ProfessorRoush, who is gracefully continuing to evolve into my garden muse, is not so much an onerous gardening cross that I have to bear as she is a loving and supportive companion who at least tolerates my eccentricities and the time I spend away in our garden.

As for the future, I'm content to let it develop as it will.  One thing that life (and gardening in Kansas) surely teaches us over time is that we all need to take it a little less seriously and be able to roll with the seasonal and sometimes tornadic punches.  Somewhat-daily blogging has slowed down my efforts on a second gardening book, but I hope it continues to better my writing and helps me find a unique voice.  Certainly, my grammar is slowly improving and the ideas are stacking up.  

And, anyway, blogging is but a garden of the mind, sometimes budding to bloom, sometimes wilting in the harsh light, but always expressing life in every thought and paragraph.

Charity, Wisdom, and Snooty Gardener-Husbands

Someone said it ages past; "Charity begins at home."  "Charity" in this reference means either its second definition in the free online Webster dictionary, "generosity and helpfulness especially toward the needy or suffering", or in its fourth definition, "lenient judgment of others."

I'm referring in this instance to charity extended to poor, misguided Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  We were out for a meal the other evening and leaving the fairly new Olive Garden's restaurant together, when she looked down near the sidewalk and stunned me momentarily speechless with the words, "Oh, those are pretty, are those geraniums?" 

She was referring, of course, to the heat-damaged Knock Out roses lining the sidewalk of this new commercial development.  Faded and sun-burnt, but Knock Outs nonetheless.  My regular readers know full well my opinions of Knock Out, but for those who don't, I'd refer you to my earlier blog titled Anti-Knock Out Cultivarist. 

I was only mildly surprised that she called them geraniums (to give her the benefit of the doubt, they were quite misshapen and discoloured from 10 days of plus-100 temperatures), but I was highly offended that she called them "pretty." Various retorts tumbled around in my brain for awhile, ranging from those which were merely pitying of her tastelessness to the beginnings of a profane rant, but my husbandly instincts thankfully kicked in and slowed my tongue from answers that would have resulted in a myriad of possible spousal sentences ranging from silent pouting to banishment to the couch for upwards of a week.  After all, Mrs. ProfessorRoush and I have been married nigh on 29 years and even a slow-witted, opinionated and socially-untrainable husband will develop some rudimentary survival instincts in that lengthy time period.

I choked back any offending thoughts from coming to the forefront and said only "No Dear, those are Knock Out Roses."  And I resolved, after a little reflection, to maybe give Knock Out a little more credit.  After all, I now have personal proof that there may be a significant portion of the population who thinks that Knock Outs are "pretty."  And for me it is a portion of the population who is both pretty, and pretty nice to have around, so keeping my mouth shut is a tiny price to pay.

Mowing Bedlam Revisited

In a post written last March titled Mowing Bedlam, I described how I've completely ceased any extensive maintenance on my iris and daylily beds.  Instead of individually cutting down each iris in nice fans and individually removing the remnants of last year's daylily foliage, I have been simply mowing them off and I thought the results were quite acceptable.  

Well, year two of the experiment on the daylily beds has been complete, and the results, seen at right and pictured from the opposite end of the bed as in my previous post, are just, if I say it myself, gorgeous.  And I've done nothing at all to the bed this year (no fertilizing, watering, or extra mulching) except spend about 10 minutes weeding it.  Not 10 minutes a day or 10 minutes a week, 10 MINUTES THE ENTIRE SUMMER.  It seems that chopping up last years foliage and leaving it behind as mulch is quite sufficient to keep the decent bloom going.

You'll recall that I also threatened to start mowing off the peonies and let the foliage also lie where it was chewed up by the mower.  Well, you can compare the picture of the partial bed at the left, taken in May, with the picture below of the same area, taken exactly 2 months earlier.  I don't think the peonies look any worse for wear and this was not even a good peony year; a cool wet spring resulted in the loss of  quite a few peony buds to botrytis and it didn't seem to matter if the peonies were massed in this minimally-cared for bed or separated in other beds.   

In fact, the picture above is a decent example of one of the reasons to photograph your beds.  I thought the peony season was wasted this year, but looking back at the pictures, it looks pretty good to me.  The same thing happened with my roses; I believed I had a dismal early rose season because of the wet weather, but the pictures I took of the garden in mass look like it was blooming away with no thought for tomorrow.  Using the camera really does help us see as if we were looking through the eyes of another gardener, one separated from the frost and wind and heat.

 Anyway, all written sources to the contrary, I'm continuing this experiment.  No fertilizer, no extra water, and no extra mulch but the foliage of these perennials back on the ground again this fall.  If these beds stay looking this good, my low-maintenance dreams are realized.