A Ruby in the Rough

In a quick, winter-boredom-induced search for roses on which to report, I have identified several Canadian roses that I have yet to mention in this blog.  I intend to rectify this oversight over the next few weeks, and I believe I'll start first with the unusual petals of  'Morden Ruby'.

'Morden Ruby' is a Parkland Series Canadian rose bred by Dr. Henry Marshall in 1964 and introduced in 1977.  It forms a small, well-behaved pink-blend shrub that has occasional repeat bloom throughout the summer.  The 3" diameter cluster-flowered blooms open quickly from ruby-red buds and are fully double with an old-rose form, but they have little or no fragrance.  My twelve-year-old multi-stemmed specimen stays about 3 feet tall and four foot wide and has required absolutely no trimming.  In fact, the bush is certainly not vigorous, but neither does it seem to have much disease or cane dieback, so I can't remember needing to attend to it at all for the past 5-6 years.  The leaves are matte green and fairly blackspot resistant, and the stems turn reddish-brown in winter. Several references mention hips, but I have not seen an appreciable fruit on my bush.  If 'Morden Ruby' has a fault, it is that I rarely notice him unless I make a specific effort to visit it.  This is not a rose that will make an impact in your garden when viewed from afar.

I'm not one to belabor a point (okay, I am, but I'm ignoring all evidence to the contrary), but 'Morden Ruby' would be a little-noticed shrub except for the beautiful and unusual deeper red stippling of the petals that you can see in the picture at the upper left.  I came across a comment in Swedish about this rose that google-translated to "freckles on the cheek", and that phrase describes the bloom nicely.  This is a rose to view up close and personal, where you can examine the perfection of each petal.  He is a pretty thornless rose in character, so you can also get that upclose view easily without danger your life and limb.  A cross of a seedling and the floribunda 'Fire King', 'Morden Ruby' is said to be a sister plant to 'Adelaide Hoodless'.   I believe the stippling may be the result of the R. arkansana heritage of this rose.  Reported to be fully hardy to Zone 2b, I haven't seen any dieback at all here in Kansas since I got the rose established here.

One reference stated that 'Morden Ruby' is a good rose that should be more widely grown, and I agree with that statement, but unfortunately, it will never have the garden impact of Knock Out.  Of course, 'Morden Ruby' has its own internal beauty, but since when has the world taken notice of that?

New Year's Cherubim Blessing

As a Christmas gift to myself, Mrs. ProfessorRoush had encouraged me to bring back a new garden statue from Indiana while I rented a moving van to retrieve items from the farm.  At first appearance, that may seem a long distance to go for a cement statue,  but just south of where I grew up is a large statue nursery, with great prices.  It is the site of the nude and voluptuous "Eve" that I wrote about in my Garden Musings book, and over the years we had shopped it on occasion, purchasing small items when the mood struck.  At Thanksgiving, the missus and I together had noticed this adorable cherub, and we were in agreement that it enhance the theme of my garden and provide a nice focal point.  And here it stands now in my garden, 700 miles and six weeks later.

The theme of my garden? I like to think of it as a reading garden, a quiet garden for contemplation and knowledge acquisition, combining my dual loves of the garden and the written word.  My ideal garden structure is not the construction of a simple greenhouse or potting shed, it is of a comfortable, cool, and well-lighted structure in which to read and write amidst of my garden.  Somewhere there, in that vision of personal paradise, I hope to spend my golden days, engaged in the quiet study and worship of life on this prairie. 

I knew enough to call my new statue a "cherub," and I thought the "shushing" gesture was cute, but I was really unaware just how well this particular little cherub would fit my garden. I had little previous knowledge of cherubs except that they are depicted as fat little infants with wings.  I was woefully ignorant of a vast amount of religious symbolism and myth, for cherubim are not simply angelic infants floating in heaven, they are the second of nine orders of celestial angels in Christian theology, the personal attendants of God who hold in themselves the special gift of wisdom.  This little stone angel with a finger to its lips fits my garden far better than I ever dreamed.

I've introduced you before to one of my other "reading garden" statues, my Aga Marsala, holding her book high among the roses.  But while writing this blog entry, to my shock, I realized I've never shown you the first of my readers, the angelic reading statue (pictured now at left) that was a birthday gift from Mrs. ProfessorRoush and her diminutive clone many years back.  Little they knew at the time that they were gifting me a garden theme and a focus for my days to come.  It is a little scary for an old man to realize how transparent he is to the females in his life.  An open garden book, perhaps?

Hog Heaven

During my scavenging trip to the home farm, one of the garden items that I was going to bring back by hook or crook was the large ball pictured at the right.  And now you're wondering, "what the heck is that thing?"  And some of you are wondering, "how do I find one of those for my own garden?"

This, my friends, is a hog oiler.  As you can see in the picture below, it even says it's a hog oiler.  Long ago, when people bought their bacon "on the hoof" rather than in vacuum-packed sanitary packages at the grocery, a local farmer was raising those pigs and most of those local farms had a hog oiler.  You poured oil into the base of the oiler (plain old motor oil as I remember, in those halcyon days when we didn't realize that oil was toxic) and then the pigs rubbed against it to coat their skin with oil.  Evidently pigs liked that.  Oiling the hogs was supposed to keep the lice and other critters down on those free-range hogs, although its efficacy was questionable.  Mostly, we got only oily hogs and oily hog pens from hog oilers.

Our hog oiler was used on our farm until the late 1960's, after which it was retired along with the last pig and set to rust in a barn for 30 years.  It's a very heavy cast iron model, evidently rare today because many of the cast iron ones were gathered up in WWII for scrap metal.  If you want one, I understand they're quite pricey these days.  My father resurrected it for his garden about 10 years ago, painting it black, but after a few years it went back to the barn to partially rust.  When I got it 10 days ago, it merely looked like a neglected black ball.

I'd had my eye on this oiler for ages, sometimes lusting at the thought of putting it into my garden.  I've avoided the glazing/reflecting ball cliche in my garden all these years because I can't stand the things, but this hog oiler is going to grace the center of my daylily bed as soon as I find a large enough pedestal to elevate it a bit.  I've painted the ball silver, as you can see, hoping that it may reflect a little color and light in the Kansas sun, but if I tire of the shininess, I can always spray it back to matte black.  Or let it rust.  Rust would be perfect.  I'd be as happy as a pig in, well, oil, if my hog oiler would rust all at once.   I've got a shiver running right up my spine as I think of a big rusty ball as a centerpiece to my garden.  God knows why, but you feel it too, don't you?

Miracle Reed or Malignant Weed?

From the Weather Channel, of all places, I recently learned that I've been growing the next great energy fad, completely unaware for the past 10 years of the potential gold I could be harvesting from my landscape.  I'm referring, of course, to the recent spate of news reports which herald the enormous biomass production capacity of Arundo donax. Evidently, some biofuel investors in North Carolina have discovered that Arundo can produce up to 20 dry tons of foliage/acre, far ahead of its closest competitor, and they plan to join with Chemtex International to build a production plant for synthetic fuels made from the grass. 


Gardeners who aren't into Latin may not recognize the name Arundo donax, but I assure you that all of you would recognize it by the common name, 'Giant Reed' grass.  I've grown the variegated form of this grass for the past decade as a better-adapted substitute than pampas grass to camouflage our septic tank from view.  In Kansas, it grows approximately 10 feet tall each year with absolutely no care or extra watering, and it maintains a decent appearance until late in the Fall.  My feelings have run both hot and cold for Arundo as long as I've grown it.  I admire the easy-care maintenance of the grass because it requires only cutting it back to the ground each spring; no extra water, no fertilizer, no shaping.  It stands up to the strongest summer storms.  On the other hand, even the variegated form is so uninspiring that I've never taken a picture of it.  Ever.  I can't even show you a picture of it as it appears right now because I've already cut it to the ground for the winter.  It is planted on the far edge of my garden so it doesn't even appear in the background of garden pictures.  The picture above, cropped and blown up, is from a wider view of my back garden and it at least gives you an idea of the clump of Arundo in my garden, separated from the rest of the garden by a good margin.  This far away, you can't even see the variegation, just the tall, maize-like nature of the plant.  Arundo just sits there each summer, a tall blob in my landscape, too stiff in the wind to provide any interest or motion to the garden, uninspiring in flower, and dull brown in winter.  Who would think that it had any real value as a production plant?

The danger to the ecosystem, of course, is that Arundo donax has naturalized in 25 states and it is considered a noxious weed in California and Texas where millions of dollars have been spent trying to control it.  Are you surprised that a plant that grows so large so easily might become a bully to some poor little Monarda? Some experts fear that Giant Reed could become the next kudsu, out-competing native flora in a apocalyptic expansion.  My only contribution to the discussion is that my clump has not yet escaped the confines I've given it in my garden, nor have I seen it crop up in the native pasture.  Seeds are supposed to be sterile, but it can spread from every node of a green plant if it gets broken off.  I suspect the danger for spread would be far greater in areas where grazing animals trample it and help to spread it.

Some of you will want to try Giant Reed in your landscape, and if you do, I've got plenty of starts that are guaranteed to grow, so just come on by.  I can't, however, provide you a decent  picture of the plant until next fall, when I'll try to keep a mental note to specifically photograph the plant.  Until then, take my word for it, it will never be the star of your garden although it may someday fill the gas tank of your car.