Yellow and more Yellow

In contrasting fashion to Picasso and his blue phase of painting during years of depression, ProfessorRoush seems to be going through a yellow phase of uplifted spring spirits.  Everything in my garden (well, except for some blue iris and a very splashy pink 'Therese Bugnet') seems to be yellow at the present, all of them a bright cheery yellow sufficient to join me in a celebration of the coming warm weather.  My yellow celebration really began on Friday last, as my first ever Tree Peony (Paeonia suffruticosa) opened up a single bloom just after our rainstorm. The satisfaction of seeing this bloom washed over me like a rainstorm across the prairie.


Tree Peony experts in the audience are laughing, but they don't fathom the difficulties I've transcended to get here.  This is my fourth attempt at a Tree Peony and the fourth year here for this one.  I've lost them to cold and drought and had them toppled by marauding critters and wind.  Growth has been slow, and I thought I'd lost her once, but she is settling in and looks like a survivor.  She is sited in the most protected spot I could give her; walls on the north and west to collect and reflect the sun's warmth, amd open only to the south and east where gales are least likely to topple her.  There is shade in the afternoon and she is protected by chicken wire on all sides, a virtual fortress erected to be impenetrable to man or beast.  Thus, you can understand my elation at getting this far, even though she dropped petals quickly and is now but a memory.

Just finishing up is my prize Magnolia 'Yellow Bird', an exciting bush that I've bragged about before.  It continues to grow and do well, now almost twice the size of when it was planted 4 years ago.  The bloom this year was a delight to see and more prolific than ever.  I can attest now that 'Yellow Bird' must be at least Zone 4 hardy, since that seems to be the degree of winter it has just survived and thrived through.  Rain sometimes dims the brightness of these blooms, but even the soft yellows of a dampened flower are pleasing to the eye.  

The most dependable and brightest yellow on this Kansas prairie comes, as usual, from the chrome-yellow rose, 'Harison's Yellow', just beginning to bloom profusely.  Almost one in every four buds on this rose is now blooming, so it will get better yet, but it's pretty good right now, don't you think?

How long will my yellow phase go on?  Not much longer, I think.  The irises are taking center stage and a whole bunch of pink roses are about to steal the show here.

Timid and Demure

On Saturday last, I discovered this tiny retiring flower hidden deep within my climbing 'Jeanne Lajoie'.  Nestled and covered by the new foliage, visible only from inside the pergola on which the climber rests, she is the first blossom from 'Jeanne Lajoie' for the new season.  What a metaphor for the year we're having, this coy little pink jewel hiding and protected within a green-leafed cave.

I've wondered if the climate is ever going to settle down this year; warm, then cool, warmer, then back to freezing.  Yesterday it was 90ºF in Kansas, but there was snow on my son's lawn in the Colorado foothills.  I finally purchased tomato plants on Sunday and then found that I couldn't plant them yet, learning this morning that the lows of the next five nights are all in the low 40's, a temperature that will stunt the tomatoes.   I have full sympathy for the reticence of this quiet pink blossom to cast caution aside and declare that rose time has really arrived. 

My Saturday chores included an effort to finish trimming the roses near the house for the second time this year.  I had pruned most of them minimally near the end of March, but late freezes in April had blasted the canes of many down to near ground level.  'Jeanne Lajoie' survived at her six foot height, but the canes of her arbor neighbor, 'Zephirine Drouhin', were blackened and dead, similar to several other roses in that border.  Separating and removing dead canes from within foot-high new basal growth is a delicate task, requiring concentration worthy of a jigsaw puzzle enthusiast.  One should always, however, pause respectfully from one's labors in order to admire great beauty.  The lure of a beautiful woman or a perfect flower both similarly affect an aging gardener. 

 My Merriam-Webster dictionary defines "coy" as having a shy or sweetly innocent quality that is often intended to be attractive or to get attention.  I doubt that a better description exists of this early flower of 'Jeanne Lajoie'.  It playfully caught my eye as I was quickly examining the bush looking for dead canes, quietly whispering from within the shaded interior in an effort to be noticed, to be appreciated for the gift of its mere presence.  This is not the first of my roses to bloom.  'Marie Bugnet' led off the parade a few days prior and 'Harrison's Yellow' and 'Therese Bugnet' have since joined the queue. This flower is the first to remind me, however, that full summer is just around the corner, just a few days or weeks farther down the path.   I paused in quiet homage to the demure gem and then moved on, secure in my new knowledge that at least one rose believes that the world is due for another summer.

Impulse and Impact

Oh, ProfessorRoush was a bad boy today.  A very bad boy.  I did the exact thing that every good gardener knows to avoid.  Further, I did it joyfully, happily, and ecstatically, even with full knowledge of the potential mistake that I was making.  I made an impulse buy in the garden center.  At the Home Depot garden center to be exact.   Can you tell what I bought from the photo at the right?

I had ventured forth innocently this afternoon to buy a couple additional cans of Thompson's Water Seal for the concrete patio.  As is my habit in the early days of a new gardening season, I entered Home Depot through the garden center.  I mulled over one of the new "Smooth Touch" thornless roses, but decided to investigate them more before buying any.  I looked for a new S. vulgaris lilac to replace a really ugly forsythia  in the side yard, but I could only find short and squat 'Miss Kim'.  It was then that I noticed a few small trees with this really unusual leaf coloring sitting off to the side.  For the unwashed, this tree, the tree of my dreams, is Fagus sylvatica, the European beech.  And not just any European beech.  No, this is Fagus sylvatica 'Roseo-marginata', also known (incorrectly) as F. sylvatica 'Tricolor'.

I first came across this tree years ago on a family visit to New York City.  I had slipped away for the afternoon to the Bronx with my father and son to visit Wave Hill.  In the midst of that gorgeous public garden, I first fell in love with the dark and brooding Copper Beech (Fagus sylvatica purpurea) shown to the left, but even then I knew better than to place this dark purple blob in the middle of the prairie.  Later on the tour of Wave Hill, however, I came across the Fagus sylvatica 'Tricolor' pictured below and I knew that someday I'd own one.


You would not be wrong to surmise that this tree would be on my bucket list, if I actually had a bucket list.  Yes, I know this is a tree of deep and humid woods and that the tender leaves may burn in the Kansas sun.  Yes, I know that it will do better in partial shade and moist soil and I have neither.  Yes, I know it is slow growing and I likely will not live to see this tree top 30 feet tall.  Who cares?  My $50 impulse buy may not live to see next Spring.  But it is worth every penny to try.


Where to put it?  Where it will be shaded by a Cottonwood?  Down on the flat where the clay is so wet the roses struggle?  High in the front yard where, if it survives, it will be visible for miles around? Imagine.  Just imagine the impact it could have in my garden.  

Beware of Boxwoods

ProfessorRoush would like to call down a pox on all those garden authorities who have advocated various winter hardy boxwoods to be excellent landscaping plants.  A further pox on the "Big Box" stores who sell the cheapest boxwoods available and thus limit the selection of available cultivars to us.  Boxwoods are everywhere these days.  Southern Living, for instance, has an 18 page internet extravaganza on boxwoods as "the backbone of Southern gardens for centuries".   Boxwoods for landscaping.  Boxwoods as the perfect container plants. Trim and tidy boxwoods. Lavender and boxwood gardens.   Boxwood...BS, I say!

 

I jumped onto the boxwood welcome wagon a number of years ago when I grew tired of mustache landscaping with junipers and arborvitaes.  In Kansas, those two conifer stalwarts are plagued annually by bagworms, leaving the gardener only a choice between marathon hand-picking sessions or toxic wastelands.  During the landscaping of a new home, I went with less traditional choices for my front entry; large-leaved evergreens such as hollies and boxwoods.

 

I was so enamored by the survival of my first boxwoods that when it came time to screen the wind near my front door and outline the circular driveway (or, if you prefer, to slow and divert the feng shui flow of qi in the area), I chose to buy 12 inexpensive Buxus microphylla koreana 'Wintergreen' plants to create a hedge.  I will admit openly that the effort has created a really functional low-maintenance hedge over the years, at times a bit winter-damaged as I've noted previously, but a very nice screen as pictured above.

 

Functional, yes , but undesirable.  You see, the one thing that most boxwood advocates fail to disclose is that boxwoods, at certain times of the year, smell like....well, they smell like cat urine.  Unneutered male cat piss to be exact.  If you realize the source of that stench around your house comes from the boxwoods, then search terms such as "boxwood" and "cat piss" will turn up any number of entrys about the problem, ranging from how it will diminish the sale value of your home, to sources where the authors claim to like the odor, claiming "it reminds me of happy hours spent in wonderful European gardens, surrounded by brilliant flowers, the hum of bees and the redolence of boxwood."   I'm sad to confirm that if you park your car in my circular driveway right now, the odor as you step outside the car will not remind you of happy hours in European gardens.  Until I read that the stench should have been expected, I thought my cats were using the area as a toilet.

       

Adding insult to injury, however is not beyond the reach of the most diabolical garden authorities.  One D. C. Winston, author of an EHow article I found titled "How to find a boxwood that doesn't smell like cat urine," is a prime example. The advice given in the article?  Avoid the Buxus sempervirens cultivars because they are have the strongest "acrid" odor.  Seek out the species Buxus microphylla.  Mr. Winston specifically recommended 'Wintergreen'.  Ain't that a hoot?

 

Take it from me,  don't plant boxwoods by your front door. Ever.