Nest Eggs

Like my friend Connie over at Hartwood Roses, ProfessorRoush has been marveling of late at the display of life represented in his garden by its more finely feathered inhabitants.  After spending the early Spring fretting that my self-designed Bluebird boxes had an unusual number of vacancies, the second wave of Bluebirds has hit and every box within easy sight of my garden is occupied by a bright blue aviator.  This picture, taken with my iPhone, was captured one night recently after I saw momma scoot off her nest in the box nearest my vegetable garden.  I'd watched her flying back and forth from the box for about three weeks.  Aren't they just a beautiful shade of blue?  About half the size of the Robin eggs I photographed earlier this year, these four eggs looked for all the world like delicate china just got shipped to me in a straw-padded box.

The very next day, by a happy coincidence, I looked again and those beautiful eggs had already been replaced with these jaundiced, mostly naked and very tired chicks.  Mamma Bluebird was not happy that I was back peering into the nest box.  I'm going to leave these babies alone for a couple of weeks, at least until I'm able to hear them crying for food as I pass by.  Sshhh...they're sleeping right now!









The Killdeer have also been busy feigning injury in an attempt to lure my lawnmower away from a certain patch of grass in the front yard.  They've undoubtedly  been bragging to their friends about their success in that endeavor, because a 6 foot diameter patch of my front lawn hasn't been mowed for 3 weeks now.  In the center of the grass, of course, is the usual clutch of four exquisitely camouflaged white and black speckled eggs.  In actual fact, if this spot looks familiar to you, it's the exact same rocky four inch area where a Killdeer couple hatched four babies in 2011 and I blogged about here.  Amazing, isn't it?  An acre of mowed prairie in my front yard and these parents pick the exact same spot to raise a brood.  Are they the same couple from two years ago?  Are they offspring from that nest?  Are there other factors about this spot that make it so attractive and so different from another rocky spot less than 2 feet away that I, a stupid human observer, would have said was nearly identical? 

All of which leaves me wondering;  Did the Killdeer just start nesting this particular spot since I built a home and started mowing the prairie for them?  Or have there been decades.... centuries.... millennia of Killdeer offspring born on this same patch of earth, in the grazing grounds of ancient buffalo?  I'm just shivering in delight at that thought.


Update 6/29/13, 8:26 am:  Mrs. ProfessorRoush mentioned to me last night that she had seen a "bunch" of little birds and two big ones running around the front driveway.  I checked this morning, and sure enough the Killdeer eggs hatched, sometime between Thursday evening and yesterday evening.  Four little balls of fluff on stilt legs running around being inefficiently herded by two anxious parents who seemed to be dividing their efforts;  one to corral babies and the other to feign injury and lead me away.  How can a 0.5X1.0 inch egg turn into a chick about 4 inches tall and 2 inches around almost overnight?  And we humans complain about how fast our children outgrow their clothes!

Wild Ginger Woes

My, that's a beautiful rose, isn't it?  This exquisitely formed and delicately colored Hybrid Tea-style bud belongs to 'Wild Ginger', a 1976 introduction by Dr. Griffith Buck.  Unfortunately, this is one of only two decent pictures I've ever been able to take of this rose.  If 'Wild Ginger' was a human being, I would say that she was camera shy, but the truth is that she just seems to be an unphotogenic muse.  For a rose bred from a seedling of 'Queen Elizabeth' and 'Ruth Hewitt' crossed with the pollen of 'Lady Elgin', she's also not very regal in form. 

'Wild Ginger' has been growing in my garden for 4 years, and that beautiful bud perfectly represents the always unfulfilled promise of this rose, an instant of perfection followed by inevitable disappointment.  Maybe this roses' failings are my fault; a placement too shaded by taller shrubs around it, a lack of air circulation leading to disease or too much competition from nearby perennials.  Perhaps this is just a rare Buck rose that doesn't meet my expectations.  It might do well in some climates or microenvironments but it surely doesn't like where I placed it in my garden.

Officially an orange-blend Grandiflora, 'Wild Ginger' grows tall but has given me only a few sparse 4 foot tall canes that whip and often break in the Kansas winds.  Blooms are mildly double and large, with 20 petals or so, with a mild fruity fragrance, but I see them borne singly more often than clustered.  The buds are indeed beautifully colored, but they open quickly into flat, disorganized messes.  Even when partially open, the petals often seem misshapen or deformed like the photo at right.  The orange and pink and tan color shadings are definitely "to die for", but the petals spot quickly with rain and are often affected by Botrytis blight.  'Wild Ginger' has dark green semi-glossy leaves, but they are prone to blackspot and the overall bush form is more like a spiky Hybrid Tea than a nice shrub rose.

In a nutshell, as beautiful as she is, 'Wild Ginger' is a soiled dove in my garden, prone to fungus, blemished, and frankly not very attractive below the neck.  I hope that somewhere, there's a climate where she stays more groomed and less diseased, and I intend to give her a chance in more sunlight as soon as I can get a cutting started from my sole own-root plant.  That action might just be an antiquated male reflex to save a soiled dove, but I can't give up on a beautiful lady without trying at least once to see how she'll do in a palace with clean clothes. 

 

 

Garden Bookoholics Anonymous

It is not often that ProfessorRoush steps away from his libertarian politics and asks for action by the authorities-that-be, but someone really needs to step in and close down Half-Price Books before this vile, crack-den masquerading as a commercial enterprise drags me deeper into garden book addiction and debt.

We should form a club of garden book addicts, calling it Garden Bookoholics Anonymous or something similar, with our own twelve-step program.   I'm already a member of Garden Statueholics Anonymous, so I'm already halfway down that path anyway.  I've always enjoyed reading garden-related literature, particularly essay-type pieces based on experience, but whenever I cross over the threshold of Half-Price Books, I seem to fall into an abyss, wild-eyed and avid, with no evident self-restraint or shame.  Take last week for example.  I was on an innocent visit to my parent's home and wasting time while my wife shopped, when I happened across this local book-pusher's establishment.  On the feeble justification that I only had a few minutes and wasn't likely to buy anything, I stepped inside.  In hindsight, I now recognize that such excuses are common among addicts;  "I only tried the Burgundy to see if it differed from the Boone's Farm," or "I only stepped inside the strip joint to see what it was like," are identical in intent, if not in prose. 

In five minutes I walked out with 6 hard-back books, all purchased at "a bargain," and all irresistible to a garden-book collector.  How could I deny that I needed Gardening With Grasses by Piet Oudolf himself?  How to abstain from the pleasures of Suzy Bale's The Garden in Winter?  Peter Loewer is a well-known garden author and I couldn't forgo Thoreau's Garden, could I?  Growing Roses Organically just spoke directly to my rose-nut soul and I listened.  A trip to another Half-Price Books addict den two days later yielded another four books.  Jefferson's Garden by Loewer was another classic.  Bizarre Botanicals was essential in case I ever wanted to grow a Venus Flytrap or some other tropical monstrosity.  McNaughton's Lavender, The Grower's Guide had some beautiful pictures that might help me identify the varieties in my presently-blooming lavender bed.

As others with similar addiction know, I've previously reported cataloguing my garden books collection on a nifty little phone app, and it came in handy on my recent binge, preventing me from buying books I already own.  To reveal the depths of my depravity, I will note here that my collection now includes 486 gardening-related books.  Yes, I know that one is not supposed to reveal the extent of one's collectibles on the Internet in case enterprising thieves are lurking, but I feel there is little danger that someone will break in to steal my garden book collection.  Anyone who wants the collection for their own use deserves only my sympathy and pity, and, for money-motivated thieves, the whole collection is probably worth about $12.78 if sold to a second-hand book store.

Gardening bibliophiles with a similar addiction, please repeat after me.  "I admit that I am powerless against the lure of books by Sydney Eddison and Henry Mitchell and Sara Stein."  "I hope to believe that a Power greater than myself can restore sanity (if not God, at least a forceful spouse might intervene)."  "I will continue to take inventory and promptly admit when I've bought a bad book."   Oops, that last one may not help. Curses, a pox on Half-Price Books!  I don't really want to stop.  Can it really be that terrible if my garden book addition keeps me away from the Devil's Brew and out of strip clubs? 

Distant Drums Disclosure

'Distant Drums', fully exposed

ProfessorRoush finally conceded to convention this summer and purchased the widely-acclaimed Griffith Buck rose 'Distant Drums'.  This uniquely-colored rose has been rising in popularity over the past few years, but I'd previously resisted it because that same unique-color just turned me off.  It always seemed a little murky, a little too mauve, for my tastes, and so I inevitably opted for other rose choices each time I considered it. 

I had sort of obliquely promised that I'd try 'Distant Drums' to Rev. Keneda of Red Dirt Roses last year, however and since I'm giving an upcoming talk this Fall about the Griffith Buck roses, I decided that I shouldn't give it without at least a season growing 'Distant Drums'.  I asked for it for Father's Day but it didn't appear, so I did what any good father would do and purchased it for myself under the premise that I am a decent father and deserved it.  In reality, my family probably wouldn't have gotten the name right anyway and I might have instead been given some hideous Hybrid Tea like 'Big Daddy' or one of the two frightful Floribunda's named 'Drummer Boy', so this seemed the simpler and more direct approach.

'Distant Drums' is a shrub rose introduced by Buck in 1984.  Officially a mauve or purple blend, I believe the bloom color of this rose varies with the temperature and season.  I've seen it as very "mauvey" coming from the greenhouse, but so far my (unfortunately) grafted specimen has fortunately been more orange and pink, a color combination that I approve of.  It seems to start with pinkish-mauve buds and then open up with gold tones to reflect the Kansas sun.  It will be interesting to see what it does this Fall as cooler weather hits.

'Distant Drums', early bud opening

The very double blooms have a strong fragrance and it blooms both singly and in clusters on a healthy bush with medium green foliage.  Obviously, I can't attest to winter hardiness of this offspring of 'September Song' X 'The Yeoman', but I expect it is fully winter hardy in my climate.  I can tell you that I've got a young own-root 'September Song' that was also started this Spring and I'm very impressed with it's rebloom rate, so I've got high hopes for the rebloom of 'Distant Drums'. 

As I look over the reviews and marketing for this rose, it is no wonder that 'Distant Drums' is growing in popularity.  A writer from Ellensburg WA wrote "This is an unusual color rose - sort of a coffee/cream inner color, fading to a mauve outer color. It has an antique look to it - very old fashioned feminine."  Feminine?  Obviously this writer is wrong because 'Distant Drums' seems to be a male rose to me.  The Weeks Roses tag that came with my rose was nauseatingly effusive: "Stop, Look, and listen up!...Distant Drums grows much like a Floribunda in habit, drumming out clusters of pointed brunette buds that swirl open to revel ruffles washed with orchid pink.  All this set to music against dark green foliage makes for a toe-tapping commotion in the landscape."  A toe-tapping commotion?  Hmmm, I haven't toe-tapped in my garden for some time.  And what, pray tell, is a "brunette bud"?  If Mrs. ProfessorRoush finds me growing other brunettes in my garden, I'll surely find myself bedding down in the gazebo.