Temporal Disobedience

That's it, ProfessorRoush has had it!  I'm done with the stupid seasonal time change and done with all of the turmoil to which it induces in our biological systems.  Increased automobile accidents, increased heart attacks, increased suicides, it is obvious by the damages they inflict that the idiots we elect to political office have no common sense nor decency and it is time that we, gardeners and farmers, lead a revolt.  There was never a proven worthwhile reason for kicking the clocks back and there are plenty of bad ones.  We should bow to the evidence of unintended consequences and stop this nonsense.  Consider this our Declaration of Temporal Independence and join me!  

I could, in an attempt to wax eloquent, blatently plagerize and slightly modify the lead of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams to stir the blood of others to my movement.  To wit, "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for ProfessorRoush to dissolve the political bonds which have forced him to disconnect himself from the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle him, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that he should declare the causes which impels him to the separation."   Well, here it comes. 

Like many of you, since the clocks were turned back by fascist decree on November 1st, I've been waking aimlessly an hour before I actually need to prepare for work and struggling uselessly to keep my eyes open after 7:00 p.m.  I leave now, in the dark, and come home in the dark, comforted not in the most minimal fashion that I'm somehow contributing to the salvation of humanity by conserving any energy or resources.  For weeks, the sun has directly scorched my eyes on my morning commute while endangering those on the road near my thundering carriage.  Now, I barely glimpse the dawn as I transit to fluorescent existence.   Weekdays, I haven't seen my garden in the daylight for months. I've tried, oh how hard I've tried, to reset my cellular clock, pinning my eyelids up in a futile attempt to stay awake past 8:00 p.m., and lounging in bed trying to stay asleep in the mornings.  The ticking clock of my existence is too loud, however, too insistent on following the normal patterns of sun and moon and earth to submit to any mere totalitarian decree. 

This illegal and immoral control on our biological clocks is detrimental not just to ourselves. Think of our pets, our fur children!  Poor Bella, now waking at 5:00 a.m., starving for the food that she gets an hour later in the summer, and coming to me each night barely after supper with her "baby", the stuffed lamb she carries to bed, demanding that I call it an evening and join her in bed, her day over because the sun is down.  Who among you can resist the sleepy eyes of the creature pictured at right, staring at you from the next chair with a soulful plea to turn off the TV and turn in just as the 6:00 news has begun?

Let us follow Thoreau's lead and be civilly disobedient; "When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government."  Myself, I'm not waiting any longer for our elected nincompoops to quit quibbling over budgets and battlefields and turn to the important things.  When daylight savings time begins again, on March 14, 2021, I'm staying there, permanently, enjoying the longer evenings and who cares whether it is still dark when I stumble to work?  When November comes again, I am staying on ProfessorRoush Savings Time (PRST), saving my sanity, my heart, and innocent bystanders from the damages wrought by our inept leaders.  I'm going to continue to enjoy the moments of daylight after work and my bosses will just have to get used to seeing me in early and leaving late afternoon during PRST.  Business can either adjust to PRST or do without my monetary contributions to their bottom line, probably better for me and likely unnoticed by them. The evidence that I'm standing with the angels here will be the extension of my life and doubtlessly the gratitude of Ms. Bella, attuned with me to the natural cycle and happy just in our own cocoon.  Who's with Bella and I?  Stop the Madness, Stop the Time Change!

A Time to Read

Ssshhhh...The garden is silent.  There is no life left here above ground, just cold concrete angels that urge you to respect the dignity of life drawn deep into the frozen earth for winter.  Dry grass, perennials become twigs, stone and stick, all that are left of the season past.  Maidens, demurely dressed, dot the garden and dream to be someday embraced by flowers reborn on all sides.  Patient, they wait for stories to grow, for life to spring forth from their pages, reading the future a season away.

In winter, ProfessorRoush's garden reflects his indoor life, reading now the primary entertainment in both locales.  The angelic girl-child and the grown woman pictured here and engrossed in their books are both full-time inhabitants of my garden, weathering and softening as the years roll by.  Neither will respond when you ask the topic of their study, for both live on a time scale beyond our fleeting lives.  They wait, sparely changing as the seasons past, hot and cold, wet and dry as the sun and weather choose.  

Inside, I join them, reading along in a more comfortable setting and weathering and softening in my own time.  Stack of books wait on the nightstand and bookcase for my winter pleasure, each a quiet escape from the weeks between now and spring.  I'm not sure where I'll start, fiction or nonfiction, fancy or facts, but the time for the feel of warm earth in my hands has past and will be replaced with a good solid book, warm and comfortable indoors while the sharp sunshine of a cold day waits outside my window.

In the garden, birds ring the feeders and rabbits hide from hungry hawks.  A cardinal pair picks at the sunflower seeds, meal-worms wait for the bluebirds, and fat fluffy sparrows dart in for seed, a constant stream of greed.  Besides these, the world waits again in frost for the sun to warm, and the remainder of my garden reads and rests with me.

Parfumed Future

I neglected to show you one new rose in ProfessorRoush's garden this year, the Hybrid Rugosa 'Parfum de L'Hay' that I purchased as a baby early this spring.  It seems to have taken pretty well to its spot, so I have great hope for its survival this winter.  It bloomed sparingly this year, however, and my timing was never right to catch a bud coming into full bloom.  

So, you're stuck, at present, with the poor photograph here, just a tease of color and foliage to sustain you until next year, assuming its rugosa genes allow it to survive drought and cold and deer, and that it doesn't develop a case of rose rosette virus before it reaches maturity.   

'Rose à Parfum de l'Hay' is a 1901 introduction by Jules Gravereaux of France.  Even though this is a lousy photo, the bloom itself represents the mature color well, those double petals of carmine red displaying their lighter edges.  She has a strong fragrance and repeated two more times this year in my garden, albeit playing hide and seek with my camera and schedule.  Less mauve and more red than most of the rugosa hybrids, I would guess that she takes her fragrance and color from the 'Général Jacqueminot' grandparent on its mother's side, as it reminds me of that Hybrid Perpetual perhaps more than the pollen R. rugosa rubra parent.  My season-old plant is about 1.5 feet high and has three solid and prickly stems at present.  Before the cold weather moved it, 'Parfume de l'Hay's  foliage was matte medium green, only very mildly rugose, and free of blackspot.  

Suzy Verrier, in her Rosa Rugosa, noted that 'Rose à Parfum de l'Hay' is often confused with the more rugose and deeper colored  'Roseraie de l'Hay', but the appearance of my rose would leave me to believe that I received the right cultivar.  Both were introduced in the same year in France, and both were meant to honor the renowned rose garden in Val-de-Marne, created in 1899 by Gravereaux on the grounds of an Parisian commune dating back to the time of Charlemagne.   Peter Beales included it with the rugosas in his Classic Roses, but noted that its maternal R. damascena x 'Général Jacqueminot' parent confused the classification of the rose.  Me, I'm just happy she's in my garden, carrying the weight of history along with her blooms and giving me hope for her survival.  Now where, do you suppose, that I can find a 'Roseraie de l'Hay' to plant alongside my 'Parfum' next year?

Carpe Beatitudo

 Surprise blooms, in my estimation, are the best blooms, one of those little moments of life where karma reaches out, taps us on the shoulder, and says "Here, fella, let me bring you a little cheer!"  Not that I particularly need cheering up today, but in the hectic midst of life, I will never turn down a chance for a laugh or to enjoy a sunny moment when they appear.    

Pictured here is, of course, this year's appearance of  Blc Lily Marie Almas 'Sun Bulb' Orange, a Cattleya hybrid that I purchased from Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in years past.  Although I was so inattentive that I didn't see the flower spikes growing, she is right on time, or perhaps just a little early this year.  Last year, I blogged that she gifted me with two flowers on December 1st, and here she is, reincarnated, with 4 flowers this year on November 22nd.  I feel a bit guilty, maybe a little unworthy, that she struggles so mightily each year to gift me such sudden joy, but I will certainly take delight from whence it comes in this lost COVID year.

Lost year.  I suspect that is how history is going to record 2020, and many of my contemporaries will agree.  Our pets have prospered with all the extra home attention, and I suspect that the private vegetable and flower gardens of the world may have been a little better tended and a little less weedy this year, but, for most people, it has been a year of tension and apprehension, fear and fretting.  It has not, for ProfessorRoush, been quite so frightful on that front however.  I've worried for friends and family, but not for myself; there's too much work to be done and I'm far too fatalistic to worry about my own health.  I take precautions, but with my colleagues, I have worked right through this whole mess, missing the crowds of students in hallways, but relishing those few contacts we still have. Arbeit macht Glück, in my case.

'Lily Marie Almas', will be just another chapter in my upcoming memoir, How To Remain Happy and Hopeful During the Apocalypse.  I have a secret, you see, a secret to staying happy, a chart for remaining cheerful, a recipe for rose-colored repose.  It's just this; enjoy the little things and shed the little stings.  From little bits of happiness, we can, each of us, build a great big house of joy to keep the world at bay, bricks of bliss against the gloom.   Said another way, the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," as Shakespeare put it, are no match for the simple practice of welcoming and engaging with every happy moment, not "carpe diem," but rather "carpe beatitudo." Seize happiness my friends, whenever you can.