Bloomin' Beginning

A couple errant warm days this week startled spring into subtle splendor, this leafless, stiff and formless shrub leading the way  on the east side of the house with a cheerful display of yellow capable to rival the daffodils that are blooming in clumps elsewhere in the garden. 

I only wish I knew exactly what it was!  I had previously written about this shrub as Genista lydia, but I'm currently having doubts about its identity.  Genista lydia blooms at the right time, but it should have more legume-form flowers.  However, the only other yellow shrub-like plant that I have recorded in this bed is Diervilla sessilifolia 'Butterfly', the Southern Bush Honeysuckle, which should bloom much later and blooms in clusters.  Regardless, this thing is ungainly, incredibly invasive, decidedly unattractive when out of flower and barely tolerable in flower, but it is the absolutely earliest thing to bloom in my garden each year.  Even so, I occasionally get tired of finding it spreading in and around other plants in this bed and I've tried more than once to grub it out.  It persists despite my best half-hearted efforts. 

I'm happier about the bloom of Abeliophyllum distichum 'Roseum', the Pink Forsythia.  A rare shrub in this area, it never really looks healthy, but it also persists, and each year gives me a slightly better display of these briefly pink flowers that quickly fade to white.  About two weeks ahead of the more showy yellow forsythias, it smashes those later and brassier namesakes this time of year by being incredibly sweet-scented, a light and delicate bouquet that draws me in whenever I pass nearby.  The bush itself is a bit spindly, and I try each summer to give it a little special attention, more than its fair share of fertilizer and water, but she never seems to respond as I'd like.  With Pink Forsythia, I suppose I should just shut up and be happy it survives here at all.

The most anticipated of all my early blooming shrubs, however, is the welcome arrival of the Star Magnolia bloom.  Despite my earlier pleas this month, this first bloom opened 3 days ago, followed by an explosion of about 30% of the shrub's blooms the next day, immediately thereafter placed and now held in suspended animation by a cold front that swept through.  This is the flower I most wait for every spring, carrying the heavy-scented musk fragrance that I could and would happily drown myself in.  It may be cold outside, and these blooms near frozen, but bring them inside and they warm up and exude pure pleasure in a few minutes.  Forget Old Spice and Brut, I think men would attract more feminine attention if our aftershaves smelled like Star Magnolia rather than cloves.  Are you listening, Aromachologists?  Let's bottle it and put some Star Magnolia aftershave on Walmart's shelves and perhaps the pandemic and quarantine won't be quite so lonely for any of us.

SWMBO Minimality

I have spoken before, tongue-in-cheek, of She Who Must be Obeyed, easier abbreviated as the acronym SWMBO, in reference to the beautiful and home-ruling Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  Imagine my surprise then, while google-navigating across the Washington DC landscape the week before last, when I saw "She Who Must Be Obeyed" pop up on the google map on my iphone a few blocks from where I was at the time.  Feeling a sense of unease at my prescient phone and wondering why my wonderful spouse might be stalking me halfway across the country, I decided to meander innocently in the direction the map indicated, fully prepared to explain why I had wandered from the conference that I was supposed to be attending.

Eventually, I came across this somewhat enigmatic modern sculpture by Tony Smith which is titled, you guessed it, "She Who Must Be Obeyed."  It sits innocuously on the plaza lawn of the Department of Labor building (the Frances Perkins building) near the east wing of the National Gallery of Art, hidden from broader view by the buildings around it and unvisited by the art-unwashed like me.  My personal tastes in art, as described before, trend to figures recognizable as tastefully nude humans or cuddly animals, not abstract geometry.

While I was humbled that a statue was named after my lovely wife, this minimalist rhombus does not look anything like her, nor does it do any justice to the feminine figure of Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  The statue does have a mildly disapproving air about it, but that is as far as the resemblance goes.  I am further a little bit angry at the artist for the flippant naming of the structure, likely to cause confusion and anxiety in any married male who comes across the statue in a blissful moment of hiking across the D.C. mall.  Shame on you, Mr. Smith, for this monochromatic miscreation.

The Quarantine Is Real

Friends, ProfessorRoush wouldn't be blogging again quite so soon, but he noticed an interesting little fact after he finished Saturday's blog.  While checking the statistics for Garden Musings, I was astonished to see that blog traffic from Italy had risen to 2nd place over the past week, behind only the United States.  You can see that depicted in graphic splendor on the map on the right, the prominent medium-green boot under Europe.  Welcome, my Italian gardening amici and amiche!

Since this blog started, a decade ago, Italy is in 7th place all time in blog visitors, behind the United States (always #1!), Russia, Germany, Ukraine, Canada, and France.  I would like to believe that the massive increase in interest from Italy has occurred because I've recently written some stellar Tuscany-relative plant potboilers.  However, the hard truth is that I am forced to conclude that there are at least a few incredibly-bored gardeners in Italy who have quarantined themselves and, having exhausted Netflix and AmazonPrime, decided the next best time-occupier is to read the blog of some gardening weirdo in forgotten Kansas.

Yes, I know 174 visitors from Italy may not push me across the edge to stardom as the next great garden prophet, but from another perspective, compared to the numbers from the U.S., Italy normally is about 3.5% of the U.S. total.  This past week those numbers are 50% of the U.S. total!  It has to be coronavirus quarantine-driven, doesn't it?  Please though, don't ask me to speculate why the numbers from Turkmenistan are up.  I can't even find the latter on a map.

My beleaguered Italian friends, I hope you stay well and can get back into your own gardens soon, whether that garden is the small balcony planter that I imagine hanging over your ancient cobblestone streets, or it is an entire square mile planted with lavender, laurel, and rosemary surrounding a country villa.  If it helps you pass time reading of roses and forsythia in Kansas, if you are amused by pitched battles against Japanese Beetles, rose rosette disease, and sun-scorched drought, then please keep reading away.  In the end, if my small script in life was to help you keep off the plague-ridden streets, then I'm content that I've served in this smallest of ways.

Waiting Game

Spring began in Manhattan while I was away in D.C., as I came home to this very first daffodil blooming on March 10.   We had enough weather in the 50's this week to advance others so that today I have several clumps blooming well and even a few Scilla siberica and giant crocus coloring the back beds.  It's raining however, and going to be a cold week, so I expect that the developments of spring will be on hold for awhile.  I checked my records and that first daffodil is early by about 10 days.  They almost always bloom on March 19th or 20th in this area, at least for the last decade or so.  I think winter is going to have a last gasp and reset the clock to normal this week.

On the other hand, the yellow forsythia and my Magnolia stellata are already later than average.  I have no forsythia bloom yet, although I expect it any day, and the Magnolia buds all look like the picture at left, half-born into the world, but afraid to open.  Please little Maggy, just stay there until the forecast settles down.  The forecast is highs in the 40's & 50's and lows in the 30's & 20's for next week, not favorable for a baby Magnolia bud.  We also have 4 days of rain in the near forecast, and I really don't want the musky fragrance muted nor to have to mourn for brown-edged petals as they open. 

Looking at the bright side (there's always a bright side to a gardener, isn't there?), the mornings have been spectacular.  I haven't seen them or enjoyed them myself because the blasted time change shifted my work departure back into darkness (#$%#!$%^*&#!!), but Mrs. Professor Roush took this picture one morning this week from our bedroom window, as well as the video attached at the bottom.  What a gorgeous morning, wasn't it?   Turn up the volume if you want to hear the birds.  And there I was, slaving away at work and unable to enjoy it because the idiot politicians of our Republic think that it is within their purview to mess with our biologic clocks on a semi-annual basis.  I'll say it again; ProfessorRoush will vote for any politician of any party who abolishes the time change and makes daylight savings permanent.   But kudos to Mrs. ProfessorRoush for her videography.