Techno-Teasing Trauma

I was out running errands around town yesterday and, entering a large home improvement box store that will remain unnamed, I was captured, as usual, to look over the entry display of various bagged up bulbs and perennials. As a general rule, I try to avoid spending any time in front of those racks because I know that most of these plants and bulbs will be dehydrated with little chance of survival and also because they are very common perennials and thus below the standards a real gardener should hold for themselves. Since I'm not a real gardener, however, I nearly always leave with a bag of something or other. Talk about your impulse purchases.

Anyway, today, it was a bag of Tigridia, the tiger flower, that caught my eye. Having never seen them before, and seeing that they were promoted as "Sun Lovers" (see the package below), my first thoughts were a) "That would be good for a novelty," and b) "I wonder if they are hardy here?" The packaging didn't list a USDA hardiness zone, but it did have one of those wonders of modern convenience, a QR Code, pictured here at the right. And I, being ProfessorRoush and of an early technologic bent, have just such a code-reading app on my Smart Phone.  Go ahead, try it out.  It works on the screen too. 

So there are the Tigridia, on sale at Home Depot, and here you are, the technically-proficient and thoroughly modern gardener.   The package QR Code links you for more information to the Longwood Gardens website. And what do you find? The message"LFGinfo.com spring bulbs coming soon." To quote the Peanut's character, Charlie Brown, "Aaarrrgggh!"

HELLO! STOP TEASING ME WITH YOUR PROMISES OF KNOWLEDGE!  It's already Spring, almost past it, in many parts of the country.  I'm a poor, uneducated common gardener just looking for help.  Do you think it is about time to post the necessary information up?  Why put the QR code on the packaging if it is not even active yet?

I've since found out that Tigridia pavonia is only hardy to Zone 8, and further more, is short-lived, each flower blooming only for a day.  Wonderful.  I just purchased an annual daylily. Of a truly ugly magenta coloration.  Just what I wanted.

Well, such runs the disappointments of our gardening lot.  Doomed forever to take a $6.98 chance on twenty dehydrated, decrepit bulbs that I now find will, in fact, likely not survive winter in my Zone 6 climate.  Tigridia  is noted on one website to grow in Olathe, Kansas and Lincoln, Nebraska, if, like dahlias, you are industrious enough (or crazy enough) to dig them up every fall and replant every Spring.

I don't grow Dahlias for just that reason.  As I've noted many times, digging and replanting bulbs in my stone ridden soil is a Sisyphean recipe for a broken back and a broken gardening spirit.  But I will try to enjoy the Tigridia for this summer, fleeting as they may be.  Those few flowers, at least, whose bulbs survive their dessicated state in my drought-stricken Kansas soil long enough to grow and bloom.

Imposterous!

I don't know what chronic gardening issues exist in anyone else's particulars, but one repeated Spring chore in my garden is the search for spys, mimics, or imposters that attempt to escape my wrath by camouflage within a beloved plant.  There are, in my landscape, certain weedy vines who attempt to hide out for awhile here and there, but it is the Rough-Leafed Dogwood (Cornus drummondii) that is the bane of my roses and other shrubs.

The Rough-Leaf Dogwood is ubiquitous in the Flint Hills, sometimes forming large thickets sufficient to keep people out and provide shelter for lots of different fauna.  Spread everywhere by birds, it seems to take a particular liking to sprouting in the shade of a large shrub, as you can see at the right.  It then grows happily up through that shrub, to become visible during the growing season only as it reaches eye level and only then to a very discerning eye that is examining the foliage instead of the roses. 

I've found, instead of looking for it during the growing season, that the time to search and destroy this interloper is right now, early Spring before the Time of Leafing Out, when the stems can be discerned by the light grey color and different texture from the shrubs around it. You can see, on the left in the closeup, that the reddish stems of  'Carefree Beauty' are clearly different than the dogwood stems on the right hand side, allowing me the chance to then search out and nip the marauder at its base.  Usually that close cut suffices to kill the dogwood without resorting to herbicide on the cut stump, but if the latter nuclear option becomes necessary, I follow the example of President Harry Truman and use those ultimate weapons judiciously.

The only real difficulty in this exercise is finding the unauthorized growth in other shrubs with stems that resemble more closely the Rough-Leaf Dogwood.  I once had a clump grow in a Mockorange bush for what I estimated was three years before I surgically excised it.

Anyway, take it from me and look now, in this lull time of warming weather and bashful foliage and weed out the weedy shrubs before they get a foothold.  Your roses will thank you come Summer.

      



Told Ya!

I tried to tell them, didn't I?  But, no, up those crocuses popped, unable to restrain themselves in the sunlight and warm wind, heedless of the cold weather surely yet to come.

And here they are, one mere day later, twenty-four hours older and a phloem's death wiser, shivering in the hail and snow remnants of last night.  The cold rains started at 11:00 p.m. yesterday and intermittently spent themselves until 1:00 a.m., leaving a different world to view this morning.  Our dog barked continually from midnight to 1:00, probably telling the crocus, in dog language, that they were getting just deserts. Gelato Crocus, anyone?

I wish they'd waited, like the daffodils.  I saw the first hint of color on a daffodil bud this morning, but those little yellow fluffs seem to be staying tight in their beds so far.  Proving once again that, Kansas daffodils have a higher survival IQ than most of the other Spring flowers.

Too Early

During the start of spring cleaning my garden, I wandered around with a camera on Saturday and took note of the first of the 2012 blooms.  Plants are sprouting everywhere, popping up here and opening tender leaves there.  And it is far too early to consider we've seen the last of Winter.

I know, my Darlings (speaking to the daffodils now), that you're far past ready to stick up your heads and get growing. Like the early worm for the migrating birds, however, you're just going to get yourselves hurt.  Yes, we've seen a lot of days in the 60's and 70's, and I know it was above 60 and sunny for the last trio of days, but the weatherperson tells us it will then get cold again.  Highs in the 50's, lows in the 30's for the rest of the week.      



Wasting my breath, aren't I?  I've got about as good a chance of the bulbs listening to me as I do getting Mrs. ProfessorRoush and her diminutive clone to follow my lead.  Look at the first beautiful blooms that are out already.  I found my first Siberian Squill (Scilla siberica) up and starting to bloom this weekend, glorious in its breathtaking blue reflection of the Kansas sky. 





And, popping up among the roses, a bright cheerful Iris reticulata to contrast its dark blue and yellow against the brown grass mulch.















Worst of all, for me, is the fact that a number of roses are beginning to leaf out, just like the 'Ballerina' at the right.  Too fast.  Too fast, my dancing beauty, because your thin canes and tender leaves are just going to be left shivering in the wind.


A prayer, please, for those who are about to get slammed with a late freeze.  You know it's coming.  I know it's coming.  We can forecast it.  The plants can only carry the history of climate in their genes.  So many cold days followed by so many warming days and they think it's time to bloom.  Well, my Loves, not this year do the old patterns work.  Be slow this year.  Be patient this year.  Listen not to the warm sunlight.  Listen not to the warming southern winds. This is Kansas, not Florida.  Hell's demons spend their Spring Break on our prairies.