Best Laid Plans

The best laid plans so often lay an egg, don't they?  Several weeks ago, the hummingbirds arrived to my garden, resulting in a massive increase in the amount of time I spend staring out the window at the feeder, enjoying their grace and acrobatic flight.  My hummingbirds often seem to arrive late in the summer, coinciding with the bloom of the blue sage on the prairie and in my garden, and this year was no exception.  My only regret as I watch the hummingbirds has always been that I don't have the proper long-range camera equipment to get a decent picture.




Wait a minute!  I've got a game camera in my garden that's pretty good at candid photographs of impromptu garden visitors!  Why haven't I trained it on the hummingbird feeder?  I'll bet that I get thousands of great hummingbird pictures in just a few days!  Imagine my excitement as I set up the camera just a few feet away from the feeder below my bedroom window.  Imagine my anticipation as I witnessed (from the window) hummingbird after hummingbird visiting the feeder, right under the "nose" of the camera.

Alas and curses.  My execution of an excellent plan had a few flaws, not the least of which was that a game camera is not made for close-up photography.  I knew that the near focus was probably farther back then I wanted, but I was too lazy to search for the pamphlet to tell me the correct focal length of the lens, so I guessed.  I guessed wrong and placed the camera too close and thus got a number of semi-blurry photographs.



You also likely already have realized that the birds in these pictures are not hummingbirds. It seems that I also experienced the minor problem that hummingbirds don't seem to be either large enough or warm-bodied enough to trigger the game camera.  Despite the frequent visits of hummingbirds to my feeder that I was witnessing with my own eyes, all I captured over two weeks was these repeated visits of American Goldfinches (probably females or males in non-breeding plumage) to my feeder, visits that I never witness in person.  On the chance that this particular question keeps you up at night, you should know that I have decent evidence that the Goldfinches were not just perching on the feeder, but they were occasionally sipping the droplets of feeder juice spilled by tipping the feeder with their weight.  Who knew?

In two weeks, I collected 50 pictures of drab Goldfinches (why couldn't there been at least a few golden-yellow males in breeding plumange) and, finally, a single blurry picture of a Ruby-Throated hummingbird.   The latter was way too late and way too unimpressive for me to get excited about.  All I really gained from this experiment was a good excuse to give to Mrs. ProfessorRoush when I drop a wad of cash on a new digital camera and a big long-range lens.

As a consequence of my failures, I've moved the camera back to other parts of the garden, where it can document more exciting discoveries than the syrup-pirating drab Goldfinches.  The photograph below was taken just before I moved the camera from its original spot and it is remarkable for two reasons;  First, the presence of the coyote, captured at 9:58 a.m. in my garden.  Coyotes are supposed to be primarily nocturnal, a fact that I can confirm since they frequently awaken me by howling at night.  Second, please observe the date and the temperature printed on the photo.  Who has ever heard of Kansas being 63 degrees at 10:00 a.m. on the 8th of August?  Now there's an oddity worth documenting! 

'Knock Out' Purgatory

I suppose that I should have expected it, should have foreseen the horrors. Once 'Knock Out' became ubiquitous in the suburban landscape of America and moved beyond usefulness to cliché,  I should have known that this paradigm-changing rose was inevitably destined to be even more misused, abused, and perverted; to ultimately be used in manners so hideous as to defy the imagination of gardeners born with a vestige of good taste.

I was still shocked, however, to stumble across the mutilated specimens shown here, these professionally scalped and shaped green rectangles and balls that I fleetingly mistook at first glance for privet or yews.  These, my friends, are not evergreens, yews, privet, or box.  I was horrified to realize that these monstrosities were 'Knock Out' roses, identifiable by the sparse murky red blooms visible at the back of the rectangular-shaped specimen.  For a fleeting moment that recognition caused me to reach for my eyes in a fruitless effort to gouge out the offending images from my soul, but alas, I was too late, my sensibilities pushed over into the abyss, plunging into the bottomless pit of 'Knock Out' purgatory.

What was he or she thinking, this misguided landscaper?  I assume this job was "professionally" done since these misshapen demons lay next to the door and walkway of a large medical center whose working doctors and nurses are not likely to moonlight as hedge-trimming psychopaths. But these blobs were even trimmed "wrong" as hedges; the tops and sides wider than the bottom, shading out the lower leaves and destining them to naked stems and thorns.  Why remove the blooms?  'Knock Out' cycles rapidly enough that spent blooms go unnoticed amid the off-red tapestry of current flowers.  Does no one realize the value of orange rose hips for winter appeal?  Where do we go next to misuse this rose?  'Knock Out' topiary?  A nice 'Knock Out' elephant with a red saddle on its back and a red stripe along its trunk?  A 'Knock Out' clown face with bright red hair?

Please, I beg of you, those who just must plant 'Knock Out', at least give it freedom to still be a rose; to branch stiffly and awkwardly, to bloom a spine-grating red shade and to retain dingy orange hips.  Give it the freedom to be more than another green gumdrop in our landscapes.  We've got enough shrubs that can be shaped at will into your favorite football mascot.  If 'Knock Out' it must be, leave them unfettered and free to grow as they were meant to, as random unshaped colorful masses in our lawns.  Please.

Ode to Chiggers

There's a red spot on my tushy, itching like the very devil,
There's another on my hiney, now I'm scratching with my shovel.
Itch and torment on and on, both spots keep on getting bigger,
Weeping, mashing, slapping, slashing, this must be a goldarned chigger.

Experts say they bite and leave, but I'd like a sec to quibble,
All this fuss and pain and scratching can't just be from chigger dribble.
I believe that chigger's head, must be buried deep inside me,
Biting down and clawing round, worse than any doggone dog flea.

Maybe chiggers were the Fire, used to banish Eve from Eden,
Chased us out from Paradise, chiggers on our nether regions.
Followed Moses cross the Red Sea, chiggers biting on our tail,
Puritans' itching, wasn't witching, chiggers all down Historys' trail.

Soap and water does no good, Calamine just dries my skin,
Alcohol is no solution, just won't work on where they've been.
I believe in clear nail polish, thick and shiny on the bump,
Some say it don't make no difference, but it soothes my itching lump.

Pray for frost and spray your poisons, that will knock them chiggers out,
There's no one good way to get them, burn or spray or freeze the louts.
High in Heaven, up on clouds, please God make a place for diggers,
Give us respite from our itching, don't let in those damned old chiggers.



I don't know about where you live, but the chiggers have gotten bad around here this summer.  And yes, I know that the "experts" claim that nail polish won't work, but I, for one, swear by it as a chigger remedy.  If it is only just a placebo, then I'm happy to embrace it, nonetheless.   And how, you might ask, is the blue thistle photo at left related to chiggers?  Well, it's not.  It was just a pretty picture to draw you in.  Happy scratching, friends!


  

Lichen Enlightment

I'd like to take this moment to confess my doting admiration for one of the simplest symbionts of all that exist on this lovely planet, the lowly but enduring lichens.  Here on the dry Kansas prairie, I had almost forgotten the existence of these composite organisms until I happened on this healthy lichen plantation growing on the north side of the trunk of my young pecan tree.  I do see lichens everyday in Kansas, manifested as ugly black scale on the limestone of the K-State campus buildings, but there is hardly anything to admire about dirty-looking limestone, so please excuse me if I've almost forgotten their more attractive cousins.

Lichens are partnerships of a fungus (the mycobiont) and an algae or cyanobacterium (the photobiont), that grow in some of the most inhospitable environments on Earth; bare rock, arctic tundra, and hot deserts.  They're so tough that they can survive the vacuum and cosmic radiation of space and they will grow in a Martian simulator, suggesting that they will be of use someday as Mankind terraforms Mars.  The fungus surrounds and sometimes penetrates the algal cells, protecting them from dry environments, while the algae are photosynthetic and provide energy and food to the partner.  Cyanobacteria in the cyanolichens serve to fix nitrogen, sharing this important building block with their mutual fungus partner. 

I should also confess that ProfessorRoush was (and is) one of those weird kids who was often found reading a random volume of a paper and ink concoction formerly known as an encyclopedia.  My parents once owned an entire set of a 1964 edition, purchased by my mother from one of the sweet, clean, predatory college students who used to travel the country each summer taking money off of  doting mothers of budding science and space travel nerds.  Today, I frequently satisfy that urge to explore new worlds with a Wikipedia search, clicking from subject to subject in a seemingly endless journey.  Lichens are certainly a fertile search muse for some fascinating hours of Wiki-diving.  For example, I learned that Swiss scientist Simon Schwendener was the first to discover the symbiotic nature of lichens (in the year 1867).  I also found out that lichens reproduce by the dispersal of diaspores (which contain both algal and fungal cells), and that there are three types of diaspores;  soredia, isidia, and what are essentially just dry lichen fragments that blow around in the wind.  If by chance you are not yet fascinated by these organisms, it might thrill you to know that there are experts in Lichenometry, experts who can determine the age of exposed surfaces based on the size of lichen thalli and who regularly measure glacial retreat in global warming studies.  Wouldn't we all love to have that job so that we could easily pick up girls at a cocktail party?  One more factoid for the medical marijuana crowd;  certain species of lichens contain olivetol, a substance also found in the cannabis plant where it is a precursor for the production of THC.  Lichen brownies, anyone?

I'll stop here with the satisfaction that I know more today than I did yesterday.  Even though it's possible that I could have continued my existence without ever learning more about lichens, it is probable that we owe lichens our very lives for their actions of converting rock to soil, thus allowing plant life to flourish on Earth, and ultimately enriching the lives of gardeners.  Oh, and by the way, lichens don't hurt your trees.

Try to say "Swiss scientist Simon Schwendener searched soredia in the Seven Seas" three times fast.