Shockingly Old News

BLAAWH!  BLAAWH! BLAAWH!  I'd like to interrupt my previously scheduled programming with the following terrible news bulletin:  In response to my flippant comment yesterday about the seeming recent dearth of mail-order catalogues and my hope that I wouldn't hear of any new nursery closings, a kind reader has informed me that I have missed the demise of one of my favorite xeriscapic plant sources, David Salmon's High Country Gardens.

Since a quick panicked search of the Internet has shown this to be yesterday's (or at least last November's) news, most of you probably already know about it and may be resigned to it.  I don't know how I missed it, but I do now realize why I haven't seen a catalogue yet this year from High Country Gardens instead of the seemingly monthly catalogues I used to get.  I have that feeling people get when they go out to feed the cats and suddenly realize that they haven't seen them around for a week or so.

All may not yet be completely lost, I pray. The High Country Gardens company website states that mail order may still continue for at least the 2013 season, but it sounds like the retail stores have closed and the company is reorganizing.  Still quite a shock to me, though.  I had recently seen and enjoyed David Salmon as the featured speaker at the Kansas State Master Gardener's Conference and I had been planning a High Country order this spring derived from notes I made during Salmon's presentation.  Where now, am I going to get new Agastache, Gaillardia and Salvia?

I'm afraid, friends, that this is going to get worse before it gets better.  I've seen it occurring in the specialty rose mail-order businesses and to some of the large mail-order nurseries, but I never expected it with a company I thought was as popular as High Country Gardens.  I'm a little worried now that the weekly emails I've been getting from K. Van Bourgondien and others are not just overexuberant marketing, but may be, in fact, a cry for help.  All I can do is make a plea for all of us to help out your favorite speciality nurseries by placing any size order you can afford, and soon.  Walmart and Home Depot may be inexpensive and convenient, people, but they're not going to offer 'Madame Hardy', or for that matter, Agastache 'Desert Sunrise'.  Gardening is going to be a poorer hobby if High Country Gardens does cease business, but it will be unbearable if we're ultimately restricted to purple barberries, 'Stella de Oro' daylilies, and boring junipers because of our shortsighted pocketbooks and lack of effort. 

Caution, Barn Ahead!

Pipevine Swallowtail on Purple-leaf Honeysuckle

So, has the anticipation built enough yet?  I've stayed away from my blog because it is too cold here to even think about gardening.  The world is not  imposing any gardening musings on me either, since I've only received two seed and bulb catalogues in the mail this year.  Is the lack of catalogues a sign of the garden economy?  Next, will I hear that more mail order nurseries are cutting back or out of business?  I hope not.

I have been forced to brave the cold however to plan and keep track of my huge winter project.  I previously wrote about the home farm sale and my trip back home to gain some tools, but one of the biggest tools is yet to make it to Kansas;  a small tractor with all the trimmings for cutting pasture and garden cultivation!  And before it can come, I've got to have storage space built, so I've finally begun construction of an outbuilding/toolshed/barn which will house the tractor, implements, lawn mowers, hoses, and all the other gardening paraphernalia that Mrs. ProfessorRoush blames for dirtying up her garage.  In short, I'm building a big gardener's playhouse and being banished to it.

In my area, outbuildings have to match the design and roof line of the house according to the local homeowner's agreement, so, to limit the amount of brick I have to buy and to decrease the visibility of the structure, I decided to bury it in the hillside just east of the house, pictured above and below, with the 3-bay entrance facing the pasture.  This hillside was too steep to mow, and years ago I planted it with a dozen seedlings of purple-leaf honeysuckle, which spread rapidly to adequately cover the rocky hillside and provides me plenty of pleasurable perfume each spring.

One day, a couple of weeks back, it was an overgrown mass of honeysuckle, lifeless in winter, and infested with pack rats and snakes.  The next day it was a hole in the ground, exposing the rocky soil profile to the world as I noted in my last post.

So, goodbye to the honeysuckle, hello to the barn!  Well, at least temporarily adios to the honeysuckle because although I've never heard her mention it before, Mrs. ProfessorRoush has made me promise to replant "her" beloved honeysuckle that she now claims she enjoys so much.  I agreed in principle to keep some of the honeysuckle, but primarily for the benefit of the Pipevine Swallowtail butterflies and not at all due to the wailings and tongue-lashing from Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  Tomorrow or the next day, I'll show you the walls that have gone up this week.  One good thing about concrete walls;  they go up fast!

Rocky Rumblings

So where, Dear ProfessorRoush, have you been?  My email has been ringing whilst my blog has been quiet for over a week, but yet never fear, back again, I am.

I confess that I have taken a short January break, toppled over by the dual effects of a moderately-severe gastrointestinal flu that sapped my energy for a few days and by an attack of the mid-winter doldrums. Even the winter catalogues seem slow in coming this year and my gardening enthusiasm is at the apogee of annual orbit in my soul.   January, you are so cruel and hard, and my spirit is so weak and desolate without the sunshine.

I have been forced into a winter project, however, to pick up my spirits, and I got rid of the flu by passing it on to poor Mrs. ProfessorRoush, who I then nursed for another few days just as lovingly as she had nursed me earlier.  Married life does occasionally justify its trials by providing a little comfort in the form of a cool cloth and a soothing voice while you are draped limply over a toilet.

But you're wondering about the winter project?  Well, I'll keep you in suspense for a day or two, but I will teasingly reveal, for now, that it involves digging.  The picture is a current cross-section of my soil profile from surface to approximately 8 feet deep, provided here in order to gain your eternal sympathy.  You thought I've been kidding about the rocky nature of Kansas soil, didn't you? Well, here it is, about 6 inches of nice organic soil, followed by 4 feet or so of mixed clay and flint rock, followed by a foot or two of dark brown clay with a little less rock, then a foot of red anaerobic clay without rock, then chalk, then limestone.  They don't call it the Flint Hills for nothing.

Now imagine digging through this dry nut-sprinkled mud pie.  Your shovel, no matter how hard you jump on it, penetrates no more than three to four inches until it reaches rock.  Or imagine that you are a root, a baby rootlet reaching deep to stretch your tender fingers between the sharp shards of flint. Ouch!  See the roots, just short of half-way down the image?  Those are from purple-leaf honeysuckle bushes, the most recent inhabitants of this particular bit of soil.

In a few days I'll reveal my new project in it's entirety, but for now, content yourself with thanking your lucky stars that you only have to contend with sticky Georgia clay, humus-poor Florida sand, or perfect Kentucky loam.  Or we could both concentrate on the perfection of that clear blue Kansas sky taken early this morning, peeking from the top of the picture here.  Ain't it pretty?



    

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?