Now? Really?

Like many other Texas-borne and -bred organisms, my Texas Red Yucca seems to be befuddled since it was transplanted from its native environment.  I have three plants, purchased on a whim after I saw them blooming in Las Vegas, and I am finding their bloom periods unpredictable at best.

Keep in mind that all three plants are the same age and size and they are cited about two feet apart in the same bed under the same tree.  Last year, two clumps bloomed, the center one starting in June and the south-most one in July, both continuing through September.  This year, the center clump didn't bloom at all.  The clump to the north end bloomed alone in June and has made a nice display all summer.  A closeup photo of the very long-lasting waxy flowers from that raceme is on the left, below.  Most recently, just a few days ago and after our first freeze here, I noticed two foot-high flower spikes growing on the southern-most clump as pictured to the above right.  Say what?  What possible natural signal would have enticed this plant to start blooming now? 

Talk about your messed up biologic cycles.  Land sakes, it must be more evidence of Global Warming!   Somebody please, quick, alert Al Gore!  He'll surely take action; at least, maybe, if you can pull him away from the millions he made selling his TV network to Al-Jazeera.

It will, at the very least, be interesting to see how the winter weather affects this raceme.  Will it shrivel up and turn brown and die?  Or will the waxy coating protect it from the frigid North winds and the dehydrating bright winter sun?  Will this stalk perhaps make it to March and then bloom in April, giving me 6 full months of bloom from a single stalk of flowers? 

No way could I get that lucky.  I'm predicting either a) a mouse will find these succulent stems delightful as a Christmas meal, or b) that the stress of the flowering stalk forming in late fall and into winter will result in the death of the plant, while its more intelligent neighbors bide their time and survive.  Or both.

I Want It!

ProfessorRoush doesn't often post pictures taken outside his own garden, but I can't resist posting this iPhone photo of a Halloween display that I encountered yesterday at a local horticulture proprietor.  Forget the Halloween paraphernalia, look at the garden table!  I took one look at this table, stained cement at about the perfect height for either "real" garden work like potting or for just display and ornaments, and I almost walked out the door with it despite the almost $400 price.  Shades of impulse buys, somebody purchase this thing before it lures me back!

I've never, ever, thought about a table in the middle of my garden, but somewhere in ProfessorRoush Fantasy Garden Land, this table, with its Griffon-style legs, stands adorned in Spring with forced pots of bulbs hidden among blooming wisteria vines.  There is a fat calico-furred feline soaking up the early Spring sunrays and lazily watching a torpid bumblebee lumbering near.  The view changes again in Summer, and I see the legs adorned in Jackmanii wisteria and a fragrant pink pillar rose draped over it along the back, butterflies floating slowly from bloom to bloom on placid early morning air currents.  I see this very table in September, arrayed with ornamental gourds and pumpkins, surrounded on the sides and back by tall 'Northwind' and Miscanthus 'Gracillimus' grasses.  What garden paradise can I create here with this eye-level cement muse?

Alas, while these beautiful vistas beckon, I can't escape from the realities of the Flint Hills.  I know that potted bulbs would be quickly swept off the bench by the Kansas winds of April, and the wisteria would likely refuse to bloom.  The fragrant pillar rose would rake across the table in Summer, scraping any contents to the ground in an instant.  The clematis would be wilting in the hot summer sun, particularly where it contacted the boiling concrete.  The colorful pumpkins and gourds of autumn would be whisked off to Missouri on the back of a thunderstorm while the grasses stood as silent guards around the cement tomb of summer's hopes.

Hey, look again at that picture.  It might not work out in my garden, but I think it would look great in yours!

Misty Magic

I believe ProfessorRoush has mentioned it before, but the monotone beige of the autumn Flint Hills comes completely alive when rain or mist dampens the tall grasses.  Without moisture, the grasses are an uninspiring shaggy carpet of light browns and tans, some perhaps rarely displaying a dusky red undertone.  If the heavens bestow a mild drizzle, however, or perhaps engulf the land beneath a damp cold mist, the prairie becomes a sea of fall colors, reds, golds and yellows woven into a tapestry of summer's bountiful growth.

I came back from a day trip to Nebraska last evening, fighting mist and fog over the last thirty miles of backroads, to find my little corner of prairie transformed into a quiet paradise of colored foliage studded with clear aqueous gemstones.  The mist imposed a sense of isolation and dampened all sounds from the adjacent roads and city as well as raising a veil to screen out the view of other houses on my horizon, leaving my garden as an oasis within Eden.  Some might label the silent misty cloak as an ominous warning of apocalypse, but I felt only peace and calm draped across the land.

The evening mist also provided me a victory of sorts.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush finally conceded that the unmown prairie grass on the rear-facing slope behind the house might have some redeeming qualities beyond her fears of a snake-infested meadow.  I made sure to get a firm verbal commitment of support for my laissez faire approach to the landscape, but I prudently decided not to push my luck with a request for her surrender in writing. Mrs. ProfessorRoush was, in fact, madly snapping close-up photos of the grasses, presumably with the goal of adding them to her already voluminous Facebook page.  In unusual fashion, she was even squatting at eye level with the foliage, capturing a much broader and more artistic view of my meager gardening efforts than she normally strives for.  Oh my, vindication and validation are such sweet wines to the gardener's palette!

My own quick Iphone capture in the growing dusk resulted in the photo displayed above.  There was barely enough light left to trigger the digital pixels, but I found that I liked the blurring effect that the dim light added to the mist.  This is the Kansas prairie, untouched and unsullied by man, carrying all these harvest hues now exposed into winter.  I slept soundly on the prismatic prairie last night, wrapped in a silent blanket of inner peace, separated and protected by a misty curtain against the waves of civilization.    

Old Daisy, Old Friend

I'm far off my gardening track here, but I've been spending time with an old friend and thought I should introduce him to the rest of you.  I haven't seen him in years, decades actually, until recently, but he was a companion as tried and true blue as I ever had, and I noticed a few weeks back that the years haven't been kind to him.  Like many of us in our late 40's and 50's, he's become worn and dented in spots, squeaking here and there, missing some original parts, and he seems a little short of breath.  I write, of course, about my childhood BB gun, a Daisy Model 99 Target Model.  It's been banished to the basement for far too many years and I decided it might appreciate a little sprucing up and tender loving care in return for providing some of the best days of my childhood.


Daisy Model 99 target airgun, scarred, rusted, and missing the peep sight and the stock medallion.

Stock closeup, missing medallion

It seems horrible now, in these ecologically-minded times, to speak of it, but this old Daisy and I are responsible for deaths of hundreds of birds in the late 1960's.  "Murderer!"  "Genocidal Maniac!"  I hear now the accusations of my adult conscience, even while my child-like subconscious tries to console me. "They were only sparrows."  "None of them were on the Endangered List."  In my defense, the slaughter was carried out with my mother's urging and support, an excuse that seems a little lame after Anthony Perkin's portrayal of Norman Bates has become such a classic and well-known movie character.  You see, our farmhouse was surrounded by mature Silver Maples, thick shelter where hundreds of sparrows roosted every night, and Mom hated them and she hated the bird poop on the walkways and patios, the never-ending stream of goop coming from the trees.   Mom's solution was to provide her eight year old son with a BB gun, an infinite supply of  BB's, and a clear order not to shoot at the windows of the house or barns.  Today she'd probably be locked up for contributing to the delinquency of a child just for providing the gun.

The medallion is back!  And how nice the natural stock looks!

So shoot we did, the innocent rifle, and I, the killer ape-child, for hours on end.   Like many young boys of that era, I was, for a time, John Wayne and Davy Crockett and Teddy Roosevelt, all rolled up into the body of a skinny child of single-digit age.  Today's children know the mayhem of video games and exploding zombies.  I knew only the thrill of the hunt and the fleeting guilt inspired by the dead sparrow at my feet.  My poorly-developed accuracy was not really much of a threat to any given individual bird, but the Law of Averages eventually provided a substantial body count for my mother to praise.  I wasn't malicious either and I never shot at friends or pets or cars.   Contrary to the fears of MAIG mayors and hand-wringing psychologists, neither my BB gun nor my love of Bugs Bunny cartoons made me into a serial killer or homicidal maniac.  To my knowledge, the only lasting effect from the carnage is that I feel guilty every time I hear the classic hymn "His Eye Is On The Sparrow."

Much better!

 Anyway, over the past few weeks I've cleaned up the rust, sanded and stained the stock, put on a new peep sight, and replaced the inner seals on my old pal, and it now shoots as good as new.  I've got a little work left to do on the bluing.  You would think that it would be hard to find parts for a 30 year old airgun, but true to the Internet's function of connecting people with similar interests, I've found there are a number of individuals who specialize in these old rifles.  One phone call to Baker Airguns in Ohio and, after personal attention from the owner, I had the proper parts and a manual and the tools to do a bit of minor gunsmithing.  It's shiny now, and functional, and whole again, and if I can't fix up my own body as well as I did this airgun, at least I can pretend to be young at heart with it.  I promise that I will only shoot paper targets with it from here on out.