Magic Mornings

There is no morning more pleasing for me than to wake up early and find the house silent and cloaked in fog, harsh rays of the rising sun diffused into gentle radiance.  Combine that with the clean air and glistening landscape from a previous evening's rain, and I'm in heaven, or at least as near as I can get with my feet still on soggy ground.

These are magic mornings for me. Magical moments that I steal to watch the world stir and wake, to wait without worry and simply to be.  On most other mornings, I'm fully awake as my feet touch the floor, leaping into my life with jobs to finish and errands to run, lists to complete and chores to get done.   On these mornings, however, I pause, knowing that rain has dampened the urgency of outside work, and wanting to preserve the quiet and peace of a still-resting household.   While Mrs. ProfessorRoush sleeps soundly in the silence, Bella and I slip outside to capture the scenes, small or vast, that wait just a wall away.

On such mystical mornings, if you wait and watch, seek and search, you can pierce the veil and glimpse, if only briefly, the canvas of life beneath the colors.  Hues of blooms and leaves and grass seem brighter, stems and stalks stand surer, and birds sing sweeter as the sun slowly dawns.  On this morning, I found the cheerful buds of 'Betty Boop' bound together by industry, support stays for a small spider's larder.  Raindrops glistened on perfect new leaves, each drop a jewel of a sequined cover, each leaf a dark green factory of life itself.  The tightly woven petals, scarlet and yellow patterned into perfection, pushed back the darkness and reflect the warming sun.  The whole drama, a merry microcosm greeting the greater world in grace and glory.

Soon, I know, the sun will burn back the damp and break the fog's embrace.  Sound and action will pour in with the sunlight and send the silence slinking back to the shadows.  I'll start coffee for Mrs. ProfessorRoush and butter her toast to better our marriage.  But I've had my rest and quiet, my moments of wonder and awe to revitalize my energies and soul.  Another day beckons with jobs and errands and lists and chores.

(P.S.  I was so pleased with the photo of Betty Boop that I'm entering it into the Gardening Gone Wild 'Picture This' photo contest.  See the contest at http://gardeninggonewild.com/?p=28687)

I Was So Wrong

'Morning Blush'

Some variation of  the title of this post should probably be the title of every other that I write, amateur gardener that I am, but in this case it pertains to my 5/1/12 posting regarding the beautiful rose 'Morning Blush'.  I was unexcited about this rose during its juvenile growing phases, but it has both figuratively and literally grown on me.

Perhaps this is an unusual and stellar year for this rose, given the wet and cold conditions of this spring, but I'm convinced it was one of the stars of my garden this year.  Sandwiched between Barden roses 'Gallicandy' and 'Allegra', my 'Morning Blush' has reached its 6 foot tall promise at maturity, and the canes that I formerly regarded as "floppy" are at least leaning nicely against the neighbors.  I wouldn't call this rose overly floriferous, but it is putting on a decent display as you can see from the photo of the full bush below.

'Morning Blush', mature bush

The blooms make this rose a keeper. The petals are quick thick and seem to be resistant to the ills of the weather.  Even in the damp 10 days proceeding the photo above, the blooms of  Morning Blush are not stained brown by water or botrytis, while 2 doors down, the blossoms of 'Marianne' are a mess.  'Morning Blush', in contrast, looks as fresh as if just from the shower, which, literally, I guess it was. The blooms also stay on the bush for a long time, and the pink fades slightly but never completely disappears.  I am going to stick to my previous assessment of the fragrance as "moderate."

It goes without saying that 'Morning Blush' is fully cane hardy in my climate and she is one of the healthiest roses I've ever seen.  No blackspot, no mildew, and no cane dieback at any time of year.  I don't think I've ever touched her with a pruner.  Those long thick canes are both an asset and her only drawback;  they are stiff and ungainly like a Hybrid Tea, and they tend to sprawl if not supported by neighbors.  At least they aren't thorny.

ProfessorRoush was raised and trained to step up and admit when his is wrong, and, while I admit that I don't think I'm wrong very often, I was wrong about 'Morning Blush'.  This offspring of 'Maiden's Blush' is a beautiful rose and I'm sorry that I doubted her.

Jumpin' Jackpot!

I don't want to interrupt the "every other day" flow of blog posts that I have going, but I also couldn't let my good luck go unheralded, so I'm interjecting this particular post for a short time and then we will go back to the flowers tomorrow.

Aside from gardening and my three or four other hobbies, I am most certainly a bibliophile and I have a modest collection of gardening books, 557 at last count by the Home Library app that keeps track of them and keeps me from purchasing duplicates.  Before you start calculating what 557 garden books must have cost, you should know that most were purchased used or discounted, primarily at my favorite home-away-from-home, Half-Price Books.  Once I've parted with the cash, the value doesn't matter anyway since I have little worry about any one other than a peculiarly nerdish burglar breaking in for my gardening book collection.

I was completely thrilled, on a trip yesterday and knowing that Half-Price had a 20% off sale this weekend, to find this like-new copy of Modern Roses 12 at the store, and marked, as you can see on the cover, at $9.99.  Rose-nut that I am, I didn't own a copy until now.  Additionally, as you can see from the receipt at the left, I got it at 20% off, so with Overland Park, Kansas taxes, my final outlay was $8.67.  A rose gardener can't beat that deal with a stick!.

The real shock, after turning the book to its back cover, was finding out that the original price was $99.95!  Half-Price Books was more like 90% Off Books for me this week!

I have no luck winning the Powerball, but I am quite willing to take advantage of a book bargain when I see one, and almost, well nearly almost, as happy.

Strawberry Fields Forever

By posting these photos, I stand in minor danger of turning this blog from a gardening blog into a dog blog, but I couldn't resist sharing these new pictures of Bella.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush took them with her iPad after she returned from helping me pick these strawberries, and slightly blurry as they may be, I thought they were adorable.   Look at those beagle-hungry eyes.  I think Bella would like a strawberry, don't you?

To deflect any criticism about yet another post reflecting the intense love between a gardener and his faithful companion, we will feebly pretend instead that this blog entry is about my triumph over the fickle scarlet-skinned god of the strawberry patch.  Because, really, that's what it is, a bragging post unmitigated by any trace of self-restraint, even while I know deep down that I'm depleting my gardening karma account and probably will soon be punished by a June freeze for my impudence.

NEWS FLASH:  I HAVE HARVESTED HOME-GROWN STRAWBERRIES IN KANSAS!

Devoted readers of this blog know of my deep, life-long love for strawberries.  You've endured my epic, all-out campaign to get a strawberry patch through the August heat and drought, the bitter winters, and the late spring freezes that define Kansas gardening.  You have suffered through my purchase and erection of a shade house and my defensive measures and counterattacks against marauding deer.  You have bravely endured the whimpers and the whining and the woeful wailing against the cruelties of nature and the Kansas Flint Hills.  I have successfully spared you (till now) my agony during the past 3 weeks of cold, March-like temperatures and rains that have conspired to prolong ripening and increase rotting.

ProfessorRoush can publicly declare now that it has all been worth it, every drop of sweat, every aching muscle, every curse muttered in the general direction of the unsympathetic earth.   Mrs. ProfessorRoush, Bella, and I harvested 2 or 3 quarts of sweet strawberries over the last week or so, and last night we filled this bowl with another 4 or 5 quarts.  I'm sure there will be a few more quarts to come over the next week.  Not a grand harvest, but they exist and they made it to the reddened finish line.  And I accomplished it all through perseverance, labor, and sheer determination, not to mention the wad of cash I bestowed on the shade house manufacturer.   I refuse to calculate what a $1000 or so total divided by 10-15 quarts of strawberries works out to be on a per quart basis.  Not including, of course, my time and emotional trauma.

Whatever.  These are my strawberries, and, as Bella's twitching nose confirms, they are sweet and they are ripe and mouth-watering.   For one season, for one year, I have grown strawberries!