Warning for the UnWary

NewsFlash!  Read All About It!  This is a Special Edition of the Garden Musings blog written to you from breezy Kansas.  ProfessorRoush, your renowned gardening investigator, has caught a big box store in the act of practicing horticultural fraud!

Actually, Folks, ProfessorRoush just wants to remind you that sometimes things aren't always what they seem at the big-box gardening centers.  I was at a local vendor today, looking for shelves, not garden plants, but I couldn't resist wandering through the newly arrived shrubs and perennials to see what was available.  'Sky Pencil' hollies are on a wish-list for me, so I was drawn to these 3 foot tall specimens from across the parking lot.  Unfortunately, as you can clearly see in the front container, these specimens were recently transplanted from a one-gallon container into these three gallon containers, presumably so that they could be sold at the $25.00 price, instead of the $6.95 or $12 price that a one-gallon plant would command.  Unaware consumers that buy the other plants lined up behind this corner specimen are paying at least $12 for the 2 extra gallons of mulch.  Quite a steep price for mulch, isn't it?

Please remember, my gardening friends, that it is a good practice to shop only reputable nurseries and even then to occasionally slip plants an inch or two out of their containers to see if the roots have reached the edges of the pot, or, in the other extreme, if the roots are pot-bound and tangled.  Plants like the one above are the worst of both worlds; a pot-bound plant that was recently "planted up" without any effort to free the roots into the new soil. 

I have a feeling these 'Sky Pencil' hollies are never going to grow tall and reach the sky.  They haven't been given the chance.

Marriage and Magnolias

After years of study and accumulated evidence, ProfessorRoush has reached the conclusion that in an infinite number of universes, there are only three possible gardening relationships between spouses.   First, there are those sad couples where neither person gardens but where one grudgingly assumes the duty of pushing a roaring machine across a postage stamp lawn every week from April through October.  Often, such couples ultimately retire to a high-rise apartment with a potted and dehydrated cactus on the balcony.  Second, there are those mythical unions where both spouses share equally in the garden's triumphs and disappointments, planning and working together in perfect harmony.  The only documented example of such a relationship, of course, ended when Eve gave Adam a bite of the apple.   The third marriage, a land where there is an unequal and uneasy union between an avid gardener of vision and a less knowledgeable but still mildly enthusiastic spouse, is the one that most of us navigate, bouncing between the shores of two visions for our garden.   In these ungodly unions, in the interest of marital harmony, the gardening spouse must, at times, be willing set aside his or her grand vision to accommodate some ill-considered whim of the partner. 

My latest personal sojourn into such a gardening quagmire came last weekend, begun in an ill-considered moment when I asked Mrs. ProfessorRoush if she'd like to accompany me to one of our favorite local nurseries.  Presumably I was feeling a weak moment of the guilty pleasure of a weekend spent alone in the garden, and Mrs. ProfessorRoush was missing human contact, even if such contact occurred only in the presence of a sweaty, dirty, and sore older gentleman.  My punishment came quickly upon arrival at the nursery, where the only visible bloom was from a group of Magnolia 'Ann' and it was announced loudly that I had to purchase one immediately, regardless of my whining protests and the squeak and groans that occurred during the act of prying apart my wallet to purchase the $70.00 extravagance.

As background information, it is important to note that I had long ago considered and rejected the feminine wiles of  'Ann' for several reasons, not the least of which is that my garden already contains her lighter-pink sibling 'Jane', purchased for far less at $10 several years back.  I really don't need the sisterly rivalry to disrupt the ambiance of my garden.  Another deterrent to her purchase was that, although I am fond of magnolias, they are still reluctant participants in my garden regardless of the best efforts of global warming trends.  The more hardy magnolias will bloom occasionally here, but the blooms seldom last long in the strong prairie winds and they are sometimes caught out naked in a late freeze.  Finally, I had no inkling of where to possibly fit 'Ann' into my garden, although I freely admit that such a consideration has never stopped me before.  Thus, I grumbled and gritted my teeth, but Mrs. ProfessorRoush twisted my arm, and home we came with a pot-bound and prematurely blooming 'Ann'.

I have since planted 'Ann' in a site where she is destined to be the centerpiece of a new bed, a burgundy-colored beacon to explore deeper into the garden.  Anticipating a few days of gentle rain and mild temperatures, I lovingly teased out the root ball and fought my way into the anaerobic clay to bed her down, and I've now had two days to fondle her thick petals and inhale her thick musty fragrance.  Tonight, of course, the unpredictable Kansas weather is rolling back the clock with a predicted record low of 28°F and possible snow flurries on the 10th of April.  Tomorrow night there is a similar forecast.  There were evenings, in my younger gardening days, when such a prediction would have sent me scurrying around the garden with armloads of blankets to cover tender plants but I am long past such foolishness.   I have instead bid 'Ann' a reluctant goodbye and cast her fate to the Gods.

Next time, I have vowed to swallow my guilt, stay home, and divide a daylily or three.  Such an action may not provide any traction towards marital harmony, but at least my wallet will be more thick.

 

Lightning Fast App

This afternoon, after a day and a half of strenous garden work, ProfessorRoush quit working and took a number of photos to convince himself, and all of you, that Spring was beginning in Kansas.  I was sidetracked, however, by the quick appearance of a small storm with a negligible offering of rainwater, but a little bit of lightning and thunder.

Many of you will remember how excited I was last year to accidentally capture a lightning bolt while I was taking prairie-storm pictures (if not, it's HERE).  Least year's photo was indeed fortuitous, and at the same time it was likely the end of an era, for this year, there is a new app for iPhone that will  capture lightning, fireworks, gunshot flares, and other flashing phenomena.  You see, folks, some genius has taken the luck right out of it and now everyone will have their own lightning pictures.

I read about the app, called iLightningCam, a couple of weeks ago and the wait since for a thunderstorm has been near unbearable.  Just a few moments ago, as the sky darkened and the flashes began, out I went onto the covered porch to see if it worked...and within 5 minutes, I had the picture above, a bolt of lightning flashing over my slowly greening and newly cleaned south garden beds.  Lightning pictures are now idiot-proof and I have the evidence.

The iLightningCam app is inexpensive (disclaimer;  I get no sales revenue from mentioning it), works on both iPhone 4 & 5, and is simple to use.  There is a trial Lite free version as well.  It claims to use the iPhone light sensor to set off the camera, but I theorize that it is running a continuous loop of video and just capturing some set of frames that were taken just before a spike of light notifies it that there has been a flash.  At least that's what I believe the "15fps" in the upper left corner of my screen indicates.

Once I get over my initial excitement with the app, I'm going to try to get more artistic with garden lightning combination photos, but for now, I'm still a kid in the candy store; a kid with the gift of magic bestowed by an iPhone genius named Florian Stiassny.  As my Jeep tire cover says, "Life is Good."

Farewell to Brittany

Winter IS ending just as ProfessorRoush's endurance is waning, but Spring is accompanied this year by a heavy heart here in the Flint Hills.  I regret to report that the chief Rabbit and Snake Chaser of my garden, our aged Brittany Spaniel, has passed on to greener hills and sunnier skies than yet exist here on April's rolling prairies.

"Brittany" was 14 years old and her strength had been fading for some time, but her young spirit  never left.  From the start, when we brought her home as a small puppy while we were building the house, she was a free spirit, running for the hills whenever she was let off a leash. She would head straight for the golf course on my south fence line and on towards town, greeting the first golfers she saw, and then running on to the next hole to be petted by the next foursome.  She became a known and regular visitor at the golf course club house.  Finally, it became a game;  she would slip past one or the other of us and disappear over the nearest hill.  Several hours later, the golf course supervisor would call us to tell us they had caught Brittany and tied her up at the cart house and we would make a quick trip to bring back a happy, tired, and often extremely muddy dog.

These impromptu escapes continued on a regular basis until one summer, not so long ago, when she jerked the retractable leash right from Mrs. ProfessorRoush's hand, disappeared, and never reached the golf course.  We searched high and low for a week, walking the pastures and golf course, and had sorrowfully concluded that she had met a bad end or been adopted by someone in town.  One afternoon, though, there returned a thinner, scratched up, and dehydrated Brittany, followed by our neighbor who had found her hidden down in a ravine, the leash tangled up in brush where she at least had access to a small spring and a little shade to fend off the hot July days of her adventure.  After that, she stayed closer to home, content to roam between the house and cow pond, or to go with Mrs. ProfessorRoush to a nearby 50 acre dog-park.

Her health had been good over these 14 years, with only two little scares   At 8 years old she got into a little rat poison somewhere and developed a large sublingual hematoma, but recovered quickly.  At 10 years old, on Thanksgiving day, she came out of her kennel one morning and fainted right in front of her veterinarian owner.  A few tests and a few hours later, I had diagnosed and surgically removed a 10 lb spleen filled with marginal lymphoma ( a benign form of lymphocytic cancer) and she recovered once again and never looked back.

Recently, however, we noticed that she had begun to lose appetite, energy and weight, all quickly and simultaneously.  I've been first a veterinarian and later a veterinary surgeon for 30 years now, long enough to know what I'd find if I went looking, and sure enough, she had a different type of cancer, spread all through her lungs and liver and past a treatable stage.  All we could do was make her comfortable and pray for a few warm days to enjoy with her while we could.  She still wanted to be free, not kenneled, so we allowed her out every day to roam around the yard where she would pick a warm spot in the grass to lie down and watch the prairie come to life around her.  She collapsed at the dog park on Easter Sunday with Mrs. ProfessorRoush and her diminutive clone and I helped her pass quietly there, lying in the warm Spring sun and held by the girls.

One last story; I'm sure some of you are wondering about a veterinarian who came to name his Brittany Spaniel "Brittany".  That moniker can be blamed on my children, who were experts at unimaginative names for our pets.  During their childhood, we've had a cat named "Dane" (named by my then-4-year-old son because his grandparents had a dog named Dane and "he didn't know many animal names"), a brown cat named "Hershey", and a calico cat named "Patches".   Their crowning attempt at original naming, our beloved "Brittany", now rests near "Hershey" in my garden, in a spot where I had, in knowing preparation, fought my way down through the loose rock into the deep clay last week.  I'll let the faithful readers of Garden Musings know what rose I plant on that spot later on this summer.

(P.S.  I forgot about my daughter's current Italian Greyhound.  Named "Italee").