Winged Lilacs

American Lady butterfly

I was delighted, a few evenings back, to find my Korean lilac fittingly buried by gracefully-flitting brown-orange butterflies.  The lilac season in Kansas is already nearing its end, somewhat shockingly on this premature April date before they normally have even started blooming. Two different lilacs bring up the rear in my garden, the Syringa meyeri 'Dwarf Korean Lilac' pictured at the right, and the 'Josee' hybrid pictured below.

It is the Korean lilac that is the more fragrant of the two, and the American Lady butterflies (Vanessa virginiensis) were robbing it for nectar en masse, six or eight of them at a time.  The American Lady's are one of the Brush-footed butterfly families, and are of moderate size and, I would judge, merely moderate beauty as butterflies go.  I enjoy butterflies as a denizen of my garden, but I've never been as particularly fascinated or captured by them as I am, say, by rose varieties or bird species.  I've never made a concerted effort to be able to identify them on sight beyond the usual knowledge of when a butterfly might also be a swallowtail, or is instead a moth.  I can identify a Monarch, but I take no pride in that ability as I recognize that most young schoolchildren can identify Monarch butterflies due to the intense popular press the Monarch's enjoy.  Fly a few thousand miles as an extended family effort twice a year and it seems everyone thinks you're special.

My poor 'Josee' was neglected by the butterflies that evening, but I felt it was also making a special effort for my attention by showing off its subdued color hues against the variegated iris at its feet.  'Josee', as previously mentioned, may not be my most scented lilac, nor have the strongest coloration ('Yankee Doodle' has that distinction in my garden), nor does it have anything special like the picotee flowers of 'Sensation', but it does have one big advantage;  it was the first of the reblooming lilacs released and it really does, occasionally, dole out a panicle or two for my enjoyment in August.  Any lilac willing to defy its ancient nature to that degree for me will always have a place in my garden and my heart.

Ready to Burst!



'Austrian Copper'  4/10/2012

ProfessorRoush spent his lunchtime today checking in on the K-State Rose Garden, part of the Kansas State University Gardens, where he volunteers some Extension Master Gardener time.  My primary goal was to toss down some alfalfa pellets to stimulate and fertilize the roses this spring, but I was also surreptitiously checking on the early bloom of 'Austrian Copper'.

The K-State Rose Garden looks incredibly healthy this year and the roses are brimming over with buds.  It is going to explode in approximately 2 weeks time and I'm going to be in surrogate rose heaven between my own garden and this rose garden adopted by the EMG's.  The only roses blooming with any intensity in the garden yet, however, are 'Austrian Copper' (above right) and the 'Therese Bugnet' roses that surround the bronze "girl with a rose" sculpture that is at the front of the garden (below).  'Austrian Copper' is a rose I purchased at Home Depot two summers back and donated to the garden.  I had seen 'Austrian Copper' that year in Colorado and immediately purchased my own band via mail-order, only to find that Home Depot offered them in 2 gallon pots in June for the same price as the band I purchased.   Who could have predicted that would happen?   Because of the vibrant orange color and the early bloom, it never fails to draw comments from visitors to the Garden.
 
'Therese Bugnet', of course, is a stalwart rugged rose for the K-State Rose garden and envelopes the bronze statue with its furry gray-green leaves and red winter stem.  They are getting big, though, and we are soon going to have to tackle the thorny creatures to restrain their exuberance.  The modern Hybrid Teas and Floribundas in front of the statue are some of  the recent AARS awards winners, so this display is going to change its focus from background to foreground soon.  Ah, the rose year is upon us!

Back To My Rosy Roots

'Benjamin Britton'

I've begun thinking recently that too few gardeners set a straight and true gardening course and steer along it.  We start out with a garden in our mind and we try to build that garden in the soil. Too soon, we are tossed among the waves of garden fashion, the trends of garden design, setting out a nice hosta bed we never intended to add, or marring our shadeless garden by the addition of a large red maple that will eventually smother half the sun-loving plants.  I know that I am guilty in this regard, collecting new plants on impulse purchases, experimenting with new species and even new genera that don't fit into my garden's themes, and in general, just mucking up any semblance of continuity in my garden design. 

As a doctor (okay, as a veterinarian), there are several symptoms that are diagnostic for the disease that I hereafter dub "Garden Dishevelment Disorder", or GDD.  By listing them below, I hope to do humanity and gardeners everywhere a service.  Knowing and admitting you have the disease gets you halfway to a cure.

1.  Do you frequently read a marvelous article in Fine Gardening about, for instance, Camellias, and resolve to purchase and attempt to grow every last Camellia cultivar you can find, despite gardening in the USDA Zone 2 regions of Alaska?

2.  Do you impulse buy plants at Big Box stores or at supermarkets, without the slightest idea of the plants identity or cultural requirements, merely on the basis of flower appearance or cost?

3.  Do you often buy plants without the slightest idea of where you are going to plant them?  Include and admit here all those plants you've purchased with the knowledge that a particular bed is full, but the belief that you just might still be able to "spoon it in."

4.   Do you collect plants in certain genera with no thought given to where they fit in your overall garden design or if they are, in fact, appealing on a grand garden scale?

5.  Do you create new beds for your garden without thought given to garden design, but merely to expand the number of plants you can grow?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you have GDD.  If you answered yes to all of them, as I do, then you need real help, deep long-lasting help, to even pretend that you have a garden rather than being a simple obsessive/compulsive plant hoarder.

This winter, I looked more closely than ever at the plants that grow well here on the prairie, at the plants that add to my overall garden design, and at the plants that I just enjoy growing.   From that self-garden-examination, I've resolved, as evidenced by recent purchases, to go back to my rose roots (sic).  There are not many other genera (okay, maybe daylilies and peonies) that are as effortless to grow well on the prairie as Old Garden Roses are.  And I might as well face it.  Deep at heart, I'm a rose gardener.  A rose (Mirandy) was the first plant I bought when we purchased our first home, and I still can't walk past a new rose at any store without determining if it is worthwhile to purchase. 

To begin my transition back to more roses, my plant purchases this year so far have been 15 mail-order and three local potted roses.  I'm expanding from OGR's to some more modern roses, since I'm now theoretically Zone 6 and I have a prayer of getting a Hybrid Tea intact through winter.  I've got 5 more roses on order and I'm looking today for two shrubs and a tree to fill a couple of holes.  But the large, impossible to transplant, Miscanthus's (Miscanthi?) that I've eliminated from the borders are being replaced by roses.  And I think I can squeeze a couple of more roses into the "hydrangea bed".  And maybe I can add a new bed or two, and dedicate them specifically to roses.....

Thankful Mornings

There are times, gardening here in the Flint Hills, that I am frustrated beyond endurance, tired of fighting the fierce winds, the stony ground, the late spring freezes, and the summer swelter.  The ice storms, the periodic and seasonal droughts, and the ever-present danger of prairie fires are just a few of the traumas that batter my gardening soul.  There are also moments, however, when the incredible beauty of the Flint Hills takes center stage and lightens my burden:

As it did one early morning this week, when a low-lying fog hugged the valleys to my west (above) and brought mystery and grandeur to the prairie. 

Or as it did yesterday morning, when my back garden emerged clear and calm above the misty lower pastures (above). 

Early in the season, the sparse early blooms may be washed out by the bright noon sun, but with morning light and a little dew, the lilacs in the foreground pop and the colors of the purple smoke tree  in the background seem somehow more vivid.  As the garden greens with spring, so my heart rises, buoyed out of fog with my growing garden.