Sheaves of Miscanthus

♫Bringing in the Sheaves, ♪Bringing in the Sheaves, ♪ProfessorRoush Rejoicing Bringing in the Sheaves.♫

This was a glorious golden day here in northeastern Kansas.  Gentle sun, mild wind,  A mid-day high of 66ºF.  Perfect for a work-starved gardener who was aching to get his hands into the dirt again.  It was one of the spectacular dozen days we get here every year, the majority in early Spring, with two or three left for September.  That's right, twelve perfect days a year is all I can count on here and one is already gone.  Actually, at least three are gone because there were two great days this week that I missed entirely while I perfected my indoor fluorescent tan at work.

I was almost sidetracked today by an early morning veterinary emergency, but I was home by 11:30 a.m. and in the garden by noon.   My first move was to uncover my formerly beautiful strawberry patch, praying that green budding strawberry plants would lay beneath the straw and deer droppings.  And there they were, rumpled and a bit put out from missing several good days of sunshine, but seemingly game to get going.  Since the ground was dry clay powder to the depth of 2-3 inches, I watered them, and surrounded the unsheathed shade house by a stretch of snow fence in an effort to keep the deer from sampling the new foliage.   My strawberry dream is still intact, still safe despite the very real potential of late snows, marauding creatures, drowning rains, drought, and perhaps a plague of locusts.

You can see from the picture above that I also cut back the majority of my ornamental grasses, shortening the average height of my garden by half in a single afternoon.  Tying each bunch into a sheave before cutting it off  is a little trick I learned several years ago to help me keep the garden tidy (or, more truthfully, to keep Mrs. ProfessorRoush from complaining about my habit of strewing grass stems all over the garden).  As an added bonus, seeing all those sheaves of grass standing and waiting to be cut touches an ancient spot buried deep in my psyche, connecting me to those first agriculturists who decided that grain might be a little tough to chew, but it was surely better than being trampled by a Mastodon.  Indeed, Mastodons may be gone from Kansas, but the grasses and strawberries and I struggle on, rejoicing in each perfect golden day that we can..

Begging On My Knees

Even the strongest relationships have to dig through rocky ground from time to time, and the bond between my garden and I has been similarly strained to the breaking point.  I admit that I have neglected her over the winter, lavishing my attentions on other interests, and, in turn, she has given me only cold and brief bitter love for the past few months.  She, too, has turned to others, allowing deer to roam over her surface at will, letting pack rats and rabbits nibble her most delicate stems, while showing me only unmade beds and unkept tresses.  Here, in early March, I've experienced weeks of cold beds and stony silence and we are, understandably, no longer on good speaking terms.

Yesterday, I sensed a slight thaw to the distance between us, and I took advantage of the first warm Saturday in eons to shower my darling with attention and patch up our difficulties.  Although my enthusiasm was low, I put on a brave face and began cleaning up the front landscape, removing the blemishes of winter, kneeling at the feet of the Goddess Gaia and freshening her couture.  Out went the flattened peonies, the rattling Babtista seed pods, and the hollow stalks of long deceased lilies.  I wrestled with dead thorns and desiccated clematis, shaped willow and arborvitae, and trimmed iris to flattering fans.

Yet still, beneath the warm mulch, her ground is frozen and hard.  There is little life there, little stirring in her heart.  Oh, a few infant sedums are hiding deep in the mulch and the snow crocus pictured here are trying to lure me back, but Spring is far away and the daffodils have just broken ground and the peonies are absent and tardy.  Other years, I would have been planting seed by now, planning for the ripeness of early June.   This year my garden is making me earn back her love, making me beg for forgiveness, demanding penance for my neglect.

I had a quiet conversation yesterday with  my young, 'Emperor 1' Japanese Maple.  I scratched his bark to its green core and assured myself of his survival, and we agreed between us that the love of a Garden is often fickle and fraught with communication issues and wandering attentions.  Consoled with the companionship of another lucky winter survivor, I put my tools back away, biding my time while her affections thaw, another patient suitor who hopes that time and attention will heal the bonds of love.

  

Paradise Lost

I escaped this week from the howling winds,
Fleeing from the tempest in the Northern Plains.
I couldn't bide the bluster of a Polar plunge.
Couldn't face the sleet and snow and absent sun.
I followed skeining geese, I set my compass to the south,
And nested in the orange groves next to Sandhill Cranes.


I spent a week in Paradise, lying on the shores,
Hiding from the storms that reached the Southern Plains
I relished in the glow of tropic sun upon the sand.
Spent time among the skimmers, working on my tan.
I rested like a sleeping bear, I lived the life of ease,
And feasted in the orange groves free of winter's chains.



I'm back now in the winds, the freezing cold I've joined anew,
North I came to bravely face the fact of Winter's reign.
I can no longer skip on life, no longer can I hide,
Duty called, dogs were lame, the donkeys thought I'd died.
I've gathered strength and stored up warmth, I've hid an ember deep,
And rested in the orange groves free from cold and ice and pain.

Bison Bust

ProfessorRoush often, perhaps almost monthly, has the opportunity to travel east of Manhattan towards Topeka on the major traffic tributary of I-70.   Just before Exit 328, on the south side of the road, is a metal shed with the slogan "Know God, Know Peace, No God, No Peace" in large letters that can't be missed by weary passengers from either side of the highway.   Of more immediate interest, to myself and perhaps others, is that the field next to this shed often contains a herd of 30-40 bison, grazing peacefully in the mornings against a virgin backdrop of Kansas prairie.



Recognizing the potential for a great photo or two, every time for the past year that I've headed to Topeka or parts beyond, I've tried to remember to bring my Nikon.  Unfortunately for me, the whole expedition has become an exercise in frustration, or, viewed in more charitable terms, an object lesson in the difficulties of obtaining a perfect photo.  Each time over the year that I have passed the field with a camera in the car, ready to pull over at the slightest glimpse of dark fur and stubby legs, there hasn't been a buffalo in sight.  Or it's during the middle of a thunderstorm.  Or it's too dark to get a usable photo.  On the one or two occasions that I've passed when every condition has been perfect;  buffalo present and during a dazzling and photogenic snowstorm, or in gentle morning sun with perfect light on the prairie, I have always managed to forget the camera.

It was with every good intention to remember the camera that I set out yesterday on the journey.  I was looking forward to the photogenic possibilities the January morning offered;  foggy, misting, and overcast.  The perfect conditions to create a nice mood image of ancient buffalo on the timeless prairie.

And then one mile from the exit, as I began to anticipate the buffalo, it hit me;  no camera!  What a professorial idiot!  Already 25 miles distant from home, I knew I was missing the perfect opportunity but there was no turning back at this point.  All I have, once again, is a haunting iPhone camera remembrance of what might have been the next Twitter sensation.  As I pulled off to the side of the highway, zoomed my lowly iPhone to full magnification, and tried to capture the wary expression of the adult male bison who guarded the rest of the herd, I knew only that once again I had failed miserably, soon slinking away on my travels with only the memory of a perfect photograph lost.