Houses on Halloween

It was way too pretty a sunny Saturday, yesterday, to spend indoors.  A long week and things that needed doing indoors were conniving to keep ProfessorRoush inside, but around 2:00 the call of the sunshine just grew too strong.  Surely, there must be something to do outside?

Ah, Bluebird house maintenance!  I'm a little early this year running my bluebird trail.  Normally, I'm doing this on a cold day in late November or early December, but I'll take the high 60's and sunshine anytime.  I skipped the bluebird trail last year entirely so it was doubly important that I get out there and clean house, so to speak, this year; clean house after house, after house and after house, twenty-four houses in all spread over my 20 acres and overlooking all the neighbors.  

I always start out loaded down with screwdrivers and wire and nails and wood screws and a hammer and wire cutters, because every year a house will need its roof repaired or the house need to be held tighter against a post.  I've learned, over the years, that paper wasps also like these boxes, some designs more than others (I think my newer house design had less paper wasps this year).  Bluebirds aren't harmed by the wasps but don't like to nest in houses with wasp nests, so I always carefully remove the wasp nests from every home.  I just read today that rubbing a bar of soap on the inner ceiling of the birdhouse will deter the wasps, so I'll have to try that next year. 

Some of my bluebird houses are getting quite old, showing gray weathered wood and splintered sides.  I believe I made the box above more than 10 years ago and from this closeup, you can see the patina and lichens it has accumulated, character and wisdom from the Kansas seasons.  It may look ancient and rundown, but it still housed a nest last year and that's what counts.  

Bluebirds aren't the most fantastic nest architects on the planet, a thin bed of grass is about all they place in the box, but it seems to do the trick.  I was really proud this year of the results of my NABS-approved Roush Bluebird Nestbox; twenty unmistakable bluebird nests, 20 nests in of 24 boxes, a personal best.  Or rather a personal best of my bluebird tenants.  I attribute the increased count to moving some of the boxes that previously attracted wrens to other areas away from the woods.  Two of the four remaining boxes had anemic nests that I didn't count, perhaps occupied a year ago, or perhaps there was trouble during the nest-building.  Who knows?  A snake reaching a box in the summer, a jilted male bluebird without a mate, or another bird attempting to move in.  Maybe next year, with the new porch and straightened shutters of my repairs, some poor lonely male bluebird will have a better chance to attract a mate.  Hope springs eternal in the rusty breast of a bluebird.
   

PS:  I found that the links to the Roush NABS-approved Bluebird Nestbox don't work in the original post as linked above, so I placed them on a separate page here in the blog.  Look at the top for the "Bluebird House/Presentations" tab!

Pleasing Prairie Fall

'Heritage'

Gracious, 4 weeks, almost 5 since ProfessorRoush blogged?  Yes, I've been busy, but it is not labor that has kept me from the blog.  I've simply lacked the muse, lacked the mood to just sit down and pour out my thoughts.  I haven't, however, been absent from the garden, a drained hose there, a peony support removed there, rain gauges put away (for the most part) and the last mowing done.  

Tomorrow, it's supposed to snow and freeze down into the teens, so the last delicate 'Heritage' rose above is blooming in vain, no pollinators around to attract, just Mrs. ProfessorRoush to please.  I'll bring it and others indoors today, a few last desperate moments in a vase to grace us before, as former Vice-President Biden called it this week, a "dark winter."

I'm thankful now, I am, for all the plants I have planted for fall accents over the years, and for the prairie itself.  My back yard is as alive with color in the fall as in the spring, although the tableau goes from pinks and yellows in spring to umbers and tans in fall.  Now, with any wet weather, the tall grass prairie lights up with red, grasses full of flame into winter.  Big bluestem and little bluestem lift up my landscape and carry the beauty of summer into winter.

In the center of the photograph above, and pictured closeup at left, you can see the yellow beacon of Amsonia hubrichtii, the 'Arkansas Blue Star'.  I planted it decades ago as a trial plant, a low-maintenance plant for the prairie, never realizing how many seasons of joy it will bring.  Small bright blue flowers in the summer, feathery trouble-free foliage for backdrop, and then this bright yellow ball into fall, shining as if it has stored the sunshine of summer and reflecting it back in the face of winter. Pest-free, the only trouble it has ever given me is it that it has a tendency to spread by seed, but it is easily recognized and eradicated wherever it pops up.

I've waited several years for this Black Gum tree, Nyssa sylvatica, to begin to grow and show the potential of its species.  From a $10, foot-tall seedling, it has made it in a dozen years into an 8 foot tall, drought-resistant sapling.  This year was the first chance I've gotten to see it turn red enough to pick out from across the garden, a mere promise of what I hope it will display in another dozen.  I've had to trim the lower branches to be able to mow around it, and I probably slowed the growth of the tree as I did so, but I'm willing to be patient for its full fall foliage impact even if it takes the rest of my lifetime.

That being said, I'm going to cut this blog short today:  I just noticed how small and vulnerable this trunk looks and I'm going to run out right now, into the cold damp morning, and get some fencing around it before the young bucks come around and rub the bark off.  If there is one thing a Kansas gardener learns, it's preemptive fencing!

Sedum Seasons and Blog Trauma

So, if you think this blog entry looks messed up, you're correct.  Google Blogger made a "new" blog interface and it took me hours to figure out how to wrap text around photos...and it still ain't easy.  And I can't figure out now how to just left align the fourth paragraph.  I can center it, right align it, and justify it, but can't left align it.  Who makes a text editor so bad it won't do that?  And now, if you click on a photo to enlarge it, you can't get back to the post by "esc".  Google needs to fire its Blogger staff because it probably, based on the feedback I've seen, just ruined this portion of the business.  Time will tell if I can stay here or need to start over.

ProfessorRoush surrendered his garden to the fates yesterday.  It is time, past time, that cold weather comes in and puts a stop to this madness, the tangles of Knautia macedonia, morning glory vines, and stiff daylily stems, the decaying leaves of summer clinging desperately to the trees, and the creeping crabgrass trying vainly to slip past the gardener.  I've grown tired of 2020 and dream of renewal, of the clean slate of snow and the crisp air of winter.  My garden remains only in spirit and the color of a few futile sedums, vainly trying to seek the last rays of a dim sun.

These sedums, two among many, caught my eye yesterday while mowing, a shorter bright pink foreground Sedum spectabile 'Brilliant' against the backdrop of a taller sedum that I have on my garden map as Sedum telephium 'Arthur Branch'.  Although the latter lacks the reddish-leaves characteristic of the variety, I don't doubt its identity; it's the right height and early enough in the season that the red coloration is yet hidden.   Both are long-term garden survivors for me, 'Arthur Branch' planted in 2000, the second summer of my garden, and 'Brilliant' in 2001.   I already knew, even in those early years on the prairie, that sedums would stand the test of time and carry me into winter, and so they have, each year.  I have 8 or 10 varieties that take the flowering place of the fickle fall mums in my garden.

It seems easy enough to understand how 'Brilliant' got it's name, but I'm at a loss to explain 'Arthur Branch'.  It seems sure to be named after a gardener, but Google has failed me in my quest to find an origin, providing only a criminal in New York and the fictional Law and Order character played by Fred Thompson, the latter possible since Law and Order first aired in 1990, but neither very likely or satisfying as provenance for a plant name.  My library isn't helping either, Alex Pankhurst's Who Does Your Garden Grow? and other sources failing me.   If anyone knows of the naming source, please let me know so I can add it to the other useless brain tracks in my ever-active curiosity center.  

Sedums aside, I essentially put the garden to bed yesterday, removing peony stakes and garden markers, draining and putting away hoses, sweeping out the garage for winter, pulling up weedy grasses in the garden beds, and finishing last-minute chores such as repainting some peeling trim on the barn.  If it snows tomorrow, I'll be unperturbed, my garden secure and ready for the moment.

In fact, I think all of us, brother and sister gardeners on the planet, are ready for 2020 to end.  The pandemic, the endless election twattle and sports much-ado-about-nothing, all combining to create an early fatigue, this year preceding the color change of leaves.  The death of RBG this week can only make it all worse, the din of both sides in an endless cycle of accusation and reprimand.  Even the sun has dimmed here in Kansas, yielding to the pollution from the relentless California wildfires, 1500 miles away.  Normally, ProfessorRoush laments cold and snow, dreading the onset and the duration, but right now, a little brisk, clear Artic blast seems like just the right prescription to put 2020 out of our misery.

Confusion and Mass Hysteria

French Lilacs blooming in September?  Syringa hyacinthiflora?  I'm not talking about new, fancy reblooming lilacs, mind you, I'm talking about as lilacs as old-fashioned as old-fashion gets.  This is exactly what we should expect of 2020, of course.   As best stated by Dr. Venkman in Ghostbusters (played superbly by Bill Murray), "Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!"  What's next?








I had watched nervously as this lilac, 'Maiden's Blush', suffered from an attack of drought and mildew in early August and lost all its leaves.  Many of the other lilacs in the same row did just fine, shiny dark green foliage standing up to the worst of summer.  I had even, at one point, taken a picture of the National Arboretum's 'Betsy Ross', three doors down, which looked just as pristine and healthy in August as it did in May.   Since 'Maiden's Blush' had retained its tight, brown buds, I was only a little worried, but I really had no doubt that it would come back next year, tough as a prairie hedge apple tree.  I was certain right up until it rained in early September and this poor, confused relic opened those buds into new light green growth worthy of spring.   Nothing is certain in 2020.

Ever more concerning, today my precocious little beauty bloomed, offering two diminutive panicles of light lilac color and perfect fragrance, a gift to September that should never occur.  I fear greatly for it now, this twenty-year old lilac, fear that it will not be able to muster enough growth before October to allow it to survive into spring.  This unnamed cultivar of Syringa vulgaris beside it (pictured at the right) also lost its leaves early, but has so far had the sense to pack it up for winter, no real sign of breaking those buds.  Still, I appreciated the gesture, the fragrance of lilac in the middle of September, even as a dying gift from an old garden friend.

There's nothing I can probably  do for 'Maiden's Blush', but even so I'm going to try.  If a simple lilac bush can break all the rules of nature, I can break my own rules and spray these young leaves for mildew and fertilize the bush right now, hoping to give it the best chances I can to form more new buds for spring before the frosts steal its strength again.  New buds, I pray, for the spring of 2021 when we all hope this wacky world rights itself and normality returns to the garden and our lives.