Blushing Hawkeye

I realized, today, that not only have I been busy this week and not posted at all, it has also been a few weeks since I waxed poetic about a rose.  In fact, Spring had better come fast because I may be running out of roses about which to wax.  Not.  Regardless, a quick check of my photo collection served to remind me that I have neglected one of the best of Dr. Griffith Buck's roses; the beautiful and sumptuous 'Hawkeye Belle'.


'Hawkeye Belle' is a pink blend shrub rose bred by Dr. Buck and introduced in 1975.  It is officially a medium pink, but in fact, I think 'Hawkeye Belle' is the perfect shade of pink; not too brazen, not too blue, and not too white.  This is a pink (RHSCC 159D according to Dr. Buck) that goes with any other rose you want arrange it with and the centers tend to age deeper pink than the outer petals.  Describing 'Hawkeye Bell' as a shrub rose is placing a label on it that is too awkward for the reality.  The flowers are not the haphazard mishmash of Modern Shrub roses, they are more Hybrid Tea in character, albeit a very double Hybrid Tea four-inch diameter bloom with 38-45 petals.  Flowers are moderately fragrant   The bush is also more like a Hybrid Tea in form, standing about 4 foot tall and 3 foot around in my garden at maturity.  Canes are stiff, thick, and healthy, more resistant than many of my roses to the Kansas winds that try to break them off. The foliage is dark green and shiny, moderately resistant to blackspot, and new foliage is tinted red.  I think I noted in an earlier post that about 10% of the foliage succumbs to blackspot during an average summer here.

I always think of 'Hawkeye Belle' as royalty, descended as she is from a seedling of 'Queen Elizabeth' X 'Pizzicato', crossed with pink shrub 'Prairie Princess'.   Since 'Pizzicato' was also a pink shrub, it is no wonder that 'Hawkeye Belle' is the epitome of dainty pink, able to mix with common folk as well as with more refined roses.  This is a rose that I often bring inside, extending her domain from the harsh burning garden to shaded home where she is better appreciated.  She does well outside, though, continuing to bloom through the hottest stretches of summer and braving the best that my now Zone 6A climate can offer.  A commenter on helpmefind.com indicated that, unlike most roses bred for the Midwest, 'Hawkeye Belle' is also "exquisite" and disease resistant in California.  Only in the wettest Spring does she acknowledge the weather, balling up a bit when it is wet and chilly.   'Hawkeye Belle' is hardier to colder climates in mine;  she was labeled a Rose of the Month in June 2006 by the Twin Cities Rose Club. 

 

 

For my Kansas garden, 'Hawkeye Belle' has always been a dependable performer.  I have two bushes, one that survived from my first days out of the city and another that I planted later into my more formal rose bed as a cutting from the first.  i hope she does as well in your garden as she has in mine. 

Pheasant Phatality

I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce everyone to Mrs. ProfessorRoush's fabulous new Christmas decoration.  Hold on, Hold on.   Before faithful readers jump to the conclusion that their benevolent and gentle gardening grump ProfessorRoush has plotted and committed the murder of one of God's most beautiful wild creatures, I plead with you to read on to the end of this blog entry.  I'm innocent, innocent I tell you!

A little less than two years ago I was coming back from some work in Nebraska and driving south of Lincoln, when, about a half mile away, I saw a large bird land right next to the road ahead of me.  My first thought was "Wow, what a large bird!"  As I got closer, I could see that it was a gorgeous male Ringneck Pheasant in full winter glory, standing tall and....well....cocky.  And just as I came abreast of him, and I was completing my second thought of "Lord that's a beautiful pheasant," he flew up straight into the passenger side mirror of my Jeep, shattering the mirror in an obvious suicide-by-Jeep attempt.  As I braked, shifting my gaze from my shattered side mirror to my rearview mirror where the pheasant was now laying motionless in the middle of the road, my third thought was "Okay, buddy, you broke my mirror and now I'm going to have you stuffed."

I regretted this malicious thought almost immediately, of course, feeling guilt over my vehicular birdslaughter as I backed up and examined the beautiful creature.  I didn't feel that leaving it in the road to be further mangled or moving it to the side to decay was going to help my karma at that point, so I brought it back and delivered it to the care of a fabulous local taxidermy shop, Don Rush's "Sportsman's Taxidermy."  A friend recommended Don and told me, "You're going to drop it off, and then you're going to forget you even left it there, and about 18 months later, Don will suddenly call and tell you that it's done."  And that's exactly what happened today, and that is the story of how Mrs. ProfessorRoush has unenthusiastically gained a new household decoration and why I can deliver a plea of "not guilty" to first degree avianicide.  It cost me only $50 to fix the mirror of the Jeep, but it cost me $246 and some change to worship the beauty of bird from this point forward.

Just gaze a moment at the poorly composed picture to the left and wonder at the palette of colors and patterns of this spectacular bird.  Russets and reds, blues and purples and greens and yellows and greys and golds make a mockery of the finest clothing man can produce.  Ringneck Pheasants are the North American name for the Common Pheasant (Phasianus colchicus), but the bird looks anything but common.  They are a well-known game bird here in the Midwest and consequently I was unaware until now that they are not native to North America, but to Georgia (the country in the Caucasus region), a factoid which has helped to ease my conscience regarding my culpability in the death of a native prairie bird.

Pheasants were introduced to North America as game birds in 1881, and have since naturalized all over the Great Plains, even though they continue to also be bred in captivity and released for hunting.  I'm sure they occasionally visit my garden, and for years there was a male who lived near the beginning of the road that passes by my house, where he would strut each Fall morning as I drove to work.  I sure hope his Nebraskan cousin had procreated before meeting his unfortunate end with my Jeep, because those beautiful genes should not be wasted solely as a reluctant mantelpiece.    



   

Thankful Vistas

Looking through a group of photos that I've saved for the blog today, I found in reflecting on my garden year that I'm most grateful not for the closeups of my prized roses, but for the largest and smallest of those living things that exist in my garden.

Living, as I do, just outside the city limits of a major city in Kansas (if the phrases "major city" and "in Kansas" are not mutually exclusive), I occasionally am quite thankful that my garden, lacking large trees, still has vistas that are separate from the chaotic civilization that surrounds it.  For example, the view (above) from the western side of my garden past the formal rose bed on the left and the viburnum bed on the right, was particularly fetching this past October as the 'Tiger Eyes' Sumac began to add red to it's normal yellow palette, and the remaining fuchsia-pink 'Earth Song' kept merrily blooming on.  In a similar fashion, the overall view from another angle towards that same formal rose bed (below) includes my crude handmade gazebo and my vast southern horizon towards town, the city itself hidden from view except for the roofs of a few houses now visible on the horizon.

I'm thankful as well, for things that the smaller life of my garden teach me, learning industriousness from the examples of bees, and patience from the spiders who lie in wait inside some open blossoms.  Without the killing influence of insecticides in my garden, the faunal world inhabiting every plant expands till sometimes, I don't know if I'm bringing flowers or a menagerie in to Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  Unfortunately, she is not as open to the beauty of both as her gardening husband, and so, for my own safety, I must shake out the buds and wash off the leaves before depositing them in the house, destroying the homes of thousands of creatures to keep the peace in my own.

Buds Unborn

According to the calendar, Winter is still a bit over 4 weeks away, but my garden isn't waiting for the coming Soltice.  Already, flowers are only a memory but for the white plumes of ornamental grasses that still dot my garden beds.  My view fom the windows has returned to endless hills of russet and gold, more red as the rains come, returning to drab khaki under the dry sun.

It passed beyond, my garden, literally in the flower of youth, full of buds and promise, not at all ready for the end of days.  An early, very hard freeze in October caught all these beautiful buds of 'Belinda's Dream' still loafing, lulled by the lingering heat from summer's warm soils.  The night before the freeze, there was the promise of fushia buds clothed in green, the main masses yet to explode. One or two perfect young flowers greeted the last warm night, precocious to the last.  A few days after the cold blew in, all was dropping and brown, changing color and form before my eyes, a green Eden reduced to sticks and crinkly underclothes; an exposed Eve, embarrassed and uncovered.

My garden rests now, slumbering deep in soil, trunk, and branch, waiting for the return of spring and the stirring of sap.  I hope, for my sake and my garden's future, that the Mayans were wrong with their Long Count and that this particular 2012 Winter Soltice is not the apocalyptic b'ak'tun that modern doomsayers proclaim.  The yellow 'Topaz Jewel' at the right, whose delicate yellow ornaments died unborn, deserves to reincarnate again in the coming Spring, a vain attempt to reproduce the beauty of the last.  These beloved roses, it seems to this old gardener, reflect the women of his life, aging with each Winter, but reborn every Spring with vigor and blush and promise.  Beautiful flowers for the gardener to caress and smell and touch and adore, ever young at their heart.