Mr. Higgin's Folly

Yes, ProfessorRoush has not blogged for quite some time.  January has frankly been dismal here in the Flint Hills, and I've been leery of planning the return of green and glorious landscapes lest I awaken the wrath of the Winter Gods and precipitate another late April snowstorm.

I was rudely roused, however, from my winter slumber this morning when my local paper printed the January 29th column of the esteemed Washington Post garden columnist, Mr. Adrian Higgins.  Mr. Higgins, normally a sensible and knowledgeable garden writer, titled that column Prune Rosebushes in Winter, a bland and partly inaccurate title that led the reader on to eventually crash blindly into the shores of poor rose advice.  Thankfully, Mr. Higgins rambled over the first half of the article, presumably filling column space, before he got to rose care, else the damage done to Washington's roses could have been much worse.

In his last few paragraphs, Adrian opens the rose-related conversation by stating that "roses are inherently sickly, but the vigor of modern hybrids far outpaces their woes."  Apparently, Mr. Higgins is only acquainted with the inbred, over-pampered, disease-susceptible Hybrid Teas and Floribundas of the 1960's-90's, a time when monstrosities such as 'Tropicana' and 'Chrysler Imperial' ruled the rose world, commercialized and hyped to the point of nausea.  He never mentions the hardier roses that our forefathers grew, nor the disease-resistant, sustainable rose shrubs created over the last two decades by breeding programs such as that of the late Professor Griffth Buck, or test programs such as the Earth-Kind® program of Texas A&M University.

Adrian doubles down on his rose ignorance by recommending the annual pruning of all roses to a "goblet of five or six canes...cut back to 18 inches," making no exceptions for once-blooming Old Garden roses, nor for leaving many modern Hybrid Tea and Floribunda cultivars taller or bushier.  My local newspaper compounded the omission by also deleting the last two paragraphs of the original column, where Mr. Higgins briefly mentions pruning exceptions for  "utilitarian landscape roses" such as Knock Out and larger Ramblers.  I appreciate Adrian's demeaning characterization of Knock Out, but his description of appropriate pruning for these ubiquitous blights will only perpetuate the attempts of home landscapers to turn these shrubs into flowering topiary such as elephants with flowering ears.

Adrian, you did well with your recommendations of pruning for once flowering shrubs, shade trees, and hydrangeas, but please, leave rose-pruning advice to those with a broader view of the rose world.  I retire now, left to cope with my resultant nightmares of hacked down 'Madame Hardy' and 'Variegata di Bologna', butchered in their prime in the refined neighborhoods of Washington D. C. because of your need to fill column inches.  Oh, the horror.

Interloping Chores

With the return of several days of above-freezing temperatures here, the Flint Hills have at least temporarily morphed from deep snow back to brown grass, and I was enticed outside yesterday afternoon by Mrs. ProfessorRoush to participate in what she envisioned as a nice brisk walk in the sunshine.

Unfortunately, Mrs. ProfessorRoush underestimated my determination to avoid useless cardiovascular exercise and she found herself accompanying me on a few brief gardening chores on the thin-muck-on-frozen-ground that currently serves as the prairie surface.  I pulled the Christmas tree down onto the burn pile, changed the memory card in my garden camera, and dragged Mrs. ProfessorRoush to the pond, where we proceeded to relocate a few bluebird boxes to locations that I hope will entice bluebirds more than the wrens that occupied them last year.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush was a great companion, providing a running commentary of the beauty of the frozen pond while picking her way gingerly through the slop, and thus preventing me from feeling any sense of loneliness in the quiet and peaceful surroundings.   

As is often the case when a puttering gardener is trying to take advantage of a warm day, there were numerous other interlopers besides the lovely Mrs. ProfessorRoush who demanded my time and attention.  Near the pond, we found ourselves being chased down by the donkeys, Ding and Dong, who both seemed intensely interested in the bluebird boxes and who provided close supervision of the move and their advice and final approval of the new locations.  Once or twice, they even had to be swatted away from breathing down the back of my neck while I tightened the screws holding the boxes to the fence posts.  Warm, moist, donkey breath around my ears makes me a little nervous, especially since Ding likes to bite the fingers that give him treats.  I didn't need any Mike Tyson-style ear-mangling events to provide stain the remaining snow.

Soon, I'm sure, Spring will arrive, providing succulent grass to occupy the donkeys and a lack of novelty to outside excursions, and I'll be forced back into solitary gardening, puttering alone with my hands in the dirt. It's a dirty, lonely chore, but one that I'll be happy to tackle once again.
 

Sleeping Gnome

This dawn beckons, the first morning of a new year, and yet I find myself reluctant to bid goodbye to the old.  The Year 2013 Of Our Lord was a good year on the Kansas prairie, filled with change and happy moments.  It spanned the building of a barn and the quickening of that simple enclosure's spirit by the addition of  warm-blooded inhabitants to the environs.  It embraced an active and expanding garden, with roses and grasses and shrubs and perennials to satisfy any man and swoon many a maiden.  It connected aging man to growing opportunities, moved impatient gardener closer to Nirvana, and forced change where change needed made.  Experience has added yet another year to this gardener's repertoire, a hedge against the improper choices of youth and recklessness.

On the other face, 2013 brought Japanese Beetles to my garden, and revealed evidence of the existence of  a still unknown creature who likes to root through the soil in search of grubs, destroying iris and daffodil alike.  It brought coyotes, a multitude of white-tailed and quite hungry deer, furry rabbits and long sinuous silent snakes. It oversaw the return of my weed nemesis, the Common Dayflower, to my landscaping, and the rapid advance of a prize blackberry into an impenetrable and unproductive thicket.  It disappointed me with a lack of fruit in the orchard and the disappearance of grapes from the vine.  Snow fell in very late April and Spring was late.  Winter came early in October and deepened in December, shortening the golden period of the garden. 

Perhaps this new year, 2014, is good riddance to the old, best welcomed in its arrival rather than lamented as change.  Today, like the concrete gnome that lays at the foot of my sidewalk, this gardener and his garden rests.  Like the gnome, the garden is cold and dead, brittle and brown from the view of the outside world, inert and languid.  Like the gnome, the aging gardener will also nap today, but indoors, his new resolution to spend at least part of every seventh day this year imitating the gnome, an unread book on his stomach and smiling from a pleasant dream.  With the New Year, and the growing length of each new day, hope and happiness begin again.

Meet Moose and Millie

I'd like to take this pre-Christmas opportunity to introduce you to Miss Millie and her live-in companion Moose.  The pair has settled in nicely over the past month, so I suppose they're going to stay around long enough to let my readers in on their lives.  They are both about 7 months old now and I obtained them from a veterinary student who had promised their original owner that she would try to find a single home for them so that they could stay together.  

Moose

Moose is a Maine Coon cat and will likely be a pretty big boy when he's fully grown and muscled in.  He's withdrawn and calm, moving slowly and meowing quietly and sparsely.  His fur is incredibly long and soft, so Mrs. ProfessorRoush spends a lot of time holding him while the very jealous Millie climbs around her legs and shoulders and demands attention.  Despite his much larger stature, Moose is a pussycat (ouch), allowing Millie to have first chance at the soft food and ignoring her as much as he can.  It is Moose that's going to be my mouser; he's already left me two pack rat corpses to admire.  Unlike many rodents trophies, these happily presented rodents still had their heads and tails so I presume that he's not acquired any culinary interest yet in fresh, warm mouse meat.

Millie

Millie is a dainty tortoiseshell female, with a mischievous and restless nature.  If a cat ever needed Ritalin, Millie does.  She has a needy personality, constantly rubbing around our legs and making us worry about stepping on her while we walk to the barn.  She will play with a mechanized toy that Mrs. ProfessorRoush brought into the barn, but otherwise, she seems to merely exist to eat her weight in cat food and to aggravate the more stoic Moose.

I'm expecting big things from these two, hoping  that they'll keep the mice and moles away from the barn and garden, which, in turn, should decrease the number of snakes in the area as well.  Hopefully these two cats will leave the prairie birds alone and they'll stay around the donkeys at night for protection from the coyotes.

If you are wondering about their names and how they got more imaginative names than "Big Cat" and "Little Cat", it is because I named them myself instead of letting Mrs. ProfessorRoush and the kids have a say.  Millie just seemed like a "Mildred" and my theory in the seemingly random name is that she may be a reincarnated pioneer soul of the last century.  The other choice for naming Moose was "Bubba", and although he seems a little like a "Bubba", the aliteration of "Moose & Millie" was just too good for me to pass up.