New Year Activities

I don't know how the rest of you MidWest gardener-types spend your dreary brown winters, but beyond my feverish browsing through the plant and seed catalogues that now appear in  my mail box every day, I spend the early Winter catching up on chores and planning for next year's gardening.  And enjoying my Christmas presents.

Mrs. ProfessorRoush presented me with a Christmas gift this year that allowed me to do all three activities at once (chores, planning, and enjoying presents, that is).  Knowing that my Purple Martin gourd-type houses are on their last legs, she presented me with a second Purple Martin condo to put out this Spring.  As those of you who stoop to providing these plastic monstrosities to the Martin masses are aware, these houses must be assembled from detailed plans, and that was how ProfessorRoush spent his New Year's Eve this year; first spreading out the parts over the living room floor and then watching it slowly form a new bird domicile. What a wild and crazy New Year's Eve that was.  What, you thought I'd do it outside?  It HAS been unseasonably warm in Kansas so far this Winter, but I'm not that crazy. 

I realize that I should probably go after something more classy for my garden than these pre-fabbed S&K Manufacturing Purple Martin Houses, but these are all that are easily available from Tractor Supply or Orschlen's in this area, so that is the harvest I reap.  And, anyway, the Martins seem to love them. 

Do you keep Martins?  I've become convinced that beyond entertaining me with their acrobatic antics as I mow, my Martins really do cut down on insect problems in my garden.  Since I don't spray insecticides anymore, the area is safe for their families; ideal really with their house perched fair above the prairie grasses.  And maybe, just maybe, when the Japanese Beetles make it this far west, a family or two of Martins will create a Japanese Beetle non-copulation zone around my rose garden.

Elusive Nature

I admit I'm not the most patient of photographers, but I'm completely convinced that Nature herself conspires to keep me from capturing a number of what would be really great images. 

Take for example the picture at the right.  This is a photo of an upper level window in our stairwell that faces due East.  I was downstairs and calmly browsing the web a few minutes ago, trying to keep quiet so that the wife, daughter, and visiting son could sleep in, when suddenly I heard "flutter, flutter, flutter"....."flutter, flutter flutter"...repeated over and over.  As I got up to see what was going on, I found what I think was a Mockingbird flying into the window, presumably fighting its own reflection.  In the growing morning light, snapping on the light didn't make any difference, so I thought, "okay, if you want your picture taken, I'll oblige by going to get my camera."  A quick trip downstairs, a quick trip upstairs, and I'm ready.  Evidently the bird was ready too because it never appeared again from the moment I got the camera turned on.   Fink.

I've had a similar problem all Fall and Winter trying to get a picture of a hawk.  They're everywhere on the prairie in winter, watching over the fields by day for the slightest mouse-like creep or squeak.  But every time I try stopping the car or getting close enough to grab a picture with even my long-range lens, off they go.  And I've got such a good blog planned around a hawk picture.  I'd hate to waste the writing on a picture of a stark, empty tree limb.

Why, oh why, can't Nature just cooperate?

Ornamentation

A mere mention of the word "ornament" to a gardener usually brings forth a variety of mental images of garden gnomes, gargoyles, naked statues, cement rabbits, or abstract art laying around the garden.  I confess that it is no different for ProfessorRoush, who has detrimentally overpopulated his garden with beloved cement statues that range from the thoughtful to the absurd. 

But, it occurred to me this week, during the Christmas season I practice a different form of garden ornamentation, although to no less excess.  You can essentially forget about "stewardship of the planet" during Christmas at my house.  

  

The other members of my household, Mrs. ProfessorRoush, the absent son, and my diminutive clone of my mother, all are in agreement that the annual Christmas tree in our house must be "live," or rather, one of those cut-off but once-living classic Christmas trees. In fact, it must be a Frazier fir, preferred by all for the stiffness of the branches and the longevity of the needles.   I've personally been tempted to obtain the orderliness and ease of an artificial tree, but I've been overruled for a number of years now. And, due to my confusion caused by the various advocates for potted living trees or for the plight of poor Christmas Tree farmers and the distractive screaming of the WEE (Wild-Eyed Environmentalists) who bemoan the fossil fuel consumption represented by an artificial tree, I'm not sure what is the ecologically correct solution anyway.  So every year, I'm hauling in another dying tree to hope that it doesn't become a fire hazard before I can dump it into a pond (for fish shelter) after New Year's Day. 

  

  

 Regarding ornamentation, however, that poor dying tree is gaudied up to the nines every year.  And the ProfessorRoush household isn't into the scene of a purchased set of matching Christmas ornaments or a store-bought, designer approved, ornamentation schema.  No, our tree gets decorated with a hodgepodge of ornaments, all individual and all weighty with family meaning.  

They start at my favorite, the Kansas Wheat Ornament pictured at the very top right of this blog, handmade by my daughter in nursery school.  This one, so special to me, represents Kansas and my former toddling daughter all at one time. There are a number of other homemade ornaments as well like the one pictured to the right, this particular one made by ProfessorRoush himself in a ceramics store to which he was dragged against his better judgement at the time.

There are ornaments to commemorate vacation visits, from the White House and other areas.  And friendships, like the one given to my wife by her best friend and carrying each of their names. There are a whole bunch of soft cloth ornaments like the one at the left that were handmade by my mother one year early in our marriage, most of which still make the tree.

 A very special group of ornaments that decorate our tree represent a tradition started by my father, to give an ornament as a gift most every year to the children, so there are various anonymous ornaments representing a child's age (as for my son's 3rd Christmas at the right) or some that are more professionally done that are personalized to each child, like the one pictured below.  The latter group, of course, will follow the children someday to their homes and I'll be left missing the ornaments at Christmas, probably almost as much as the children.

Alas, it may be a dying tree that provides holiday cheer in the ProfessorRoush home, but it is given the best prettying up we can give it, with each bauble and bangle cherished all.  Merry Christmas to all!

    

Christmas Cactuses (or is it Cacti?)

I feel that I must confess.  I'm a crazy collecting Christmas Cactus closet connoisseur. (Yes, I also have a fondness for alliteration).  I can't help but purchase any new color of Christmas cactus I run across.  There surely must be some twelve-step program to help me.  Hi, I'm ProfessorRoush and I am a Christmas Cactus addict....

There is, in my estimation, no easier houseplant to grow than the Schlumbergera sp. epiphytes, otherwise known as Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Crab Cactuses (Cacti?). I should reveal that at one time I grew over 30 orchids, 15 Christmas Cacti, a handful of African Violets, and some assorted other houseplants.  When we went away for Christmas one year, somehow the heat for the house got turned off and upon our return one week later, I found one frozen upstairs toilet that had to be replaced and a whole bunch of dead orchids and violets.  The supposedly tropical Christmas Cacti survived somehow.  Or maybe it wasn't such a miracle since one plant hunter has described collecting specimens in areas of overnight temperatures down to 25F.  I've got one fuchsia Christmas Cactus that's been alive for 20 years and has produced umpteen offspring.  How many other houseplants do you grow that can claim such longevity in the face of the desert-like house conditions and the poor care of a typical homeowner?

Most of the year, they sit there in my windows, dark green and healthy, needing water only about every other week and a repotting in organic matrix every third year or so.  But now, around Christmas, they bloom forth to add to the colorful holiday.  I know there are lots of instructions available for bringing them into bloom by exposure to cold nights and decreasing photoperiods, but mine are right on schedule this year, aided only by the decreasing light level of the insulated windows they sit next to.  They're even quicker to bloom if you've got them in an old house with single-pane old-style windows.  If you have to resort to trying to force buds, flower buds will form reliably by providing 16 hours of darkness daily for 8 days at 61F temperature. 

I've seen no insect predators on the plants and the biggest danger to their survival is by overwatering them;  remember that these are succulents and treat them as such.  An overwatered Christmas Cactus will shrivel up and become limp, which just encourages more watering by the unwary, killing the plant.  Most sources say to keep them away from strong light sources such as South-facing windows, but yet mine seemed to thrive this Summer outside, placed in a corner of the house where they got full Eastern and Southern sun exposure from sunrise through about 1:00 p.m. 

The easy reproduction by rooting stems of Christmas Cactus makes me look like a genius to the friends who have benefited from the divisions I've given away.  To propagate them, twist off pieces of stems one to three segments long and then allow them to dry for 3-4 days to allow formation of a callus at the broken end.  Planted into a suitable humus-rich medium, they'll usually then root quickly in warm environments.

Native to the moist coastal mountain forests of south-eastern Brazil, Schlumbergera are leafless epiphytes with segmented green stems.  The tubular downward-facing flowers, composed of 40 or so petals that are actually "tepals", are adapted for pollination by hummingbirds, although my Christmas Cacti won't ever benefit from the arrangement here in Kansas.  You can find named cultivars, but typically all the cacti we ever see for sale locally will be labeled only by color.  The white Christmas Cactus above is, however, named "White Christmas", and I think the true red one at the left may have been "Kris Kringle".  But, whatever their names, at this time of year when everything outside is bleak, brown and drab in Kansas, I welcome the color they bring to the interior of my house.  And at least I can say that I'm able to keep a houseplant alive. 

By the way, according to the dictionaries I can find, either "Cacti" or "Cactuses" is the correct plural.  Evidently, for once, we're allowed to choose.