Hortus Populous

ProfessorRoush was in Washington DC this week, normally my favorite city to visit, particularly if I have time between conferences to hit the mall.   I've been there a number of times and have visited almost every monument and museum, some in the days before terrorism and nannyism ruined access to them.  I have walked the steps of the Washington Monument to the top and yet lived to tell the tale.

On the plus side, the weather was decent in the early part of the week and, as you can see from pictures, I did get an afternoon to wander about, visiting a number of my favorite monuments and the Museum of Natural History.  

In fact, I ran flat into the FDR Memorial, not previously knowing it existed, and I was moderately impressed by the mountain of red granite moved for its creation into the former swamp of DC.   Certainly and appropriately the most ADA-accessible monument, I recommend walking through it, particularly spaced where it is on an almost direct line between the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials.

On the negative side, I was, as usual, too early for the cherry blossoms, seeing only a stray early bloomer or two in a protected depression near the Constitutional Gardens.  And it turned cold and windy during the latter part of the week, and I learned that the cold winds of Kansas have a rival in the winds coming off the Potomac on a cold day.

Most exasperating, however, was discovering that the United States Botanical Gardens conservatory has been closed to the public for over 2 years, at least according to its website.  The outside gardens are open, but not the USBG conservatory.  When I go to DC, I always check the schedule of lectures at the USBG, just in case I get lucky as I did when I once saw Roy Klehm lecture.  This time, however, the website has not been updated for quite some time and there is no mention of a reopening date.  It seems that the USBG is within the "U. S. Capitol campus" and the fools on Capitol Hill, elected and despotic, are deathly afraid that perhaps a massive revolutionary coup will be staged from within the Children's Garden or perhaps the Orchids Room. Good grief.

My dear Representatives, Senators, Supreme Court Judges, and Executive; 

When in the course of gardening it becomes necessary for peoples with calloused hands and sunburned faces to dissolve the political idiot-cracy and allow visitors to the public gardens to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitles them, it is our right, nay our duty, to throw open the gates and allow the people inside.  Hortus Populus, Mors Tyrannis (Let the People garden, Death to Tyrants)!  You are right to fear the peasants who are most familiar with the proper use of pitchforks and shovels. Let Freedom Grow!

Indoor February Color

February already?!   It feels like Christmas has barely past, that 2021 was still a newborn just past the birth canal of 2020, let alone now a senile monarch passing the throne to 2022.  We have yet to lock horns with winter, a few days of snow here and there, fleeting and flown, but soon I expect crocus and Scilla and budding daffodils raising their heads.  

For now, it remains the duty of the Christmas cacti, or Thanksgiving cacti, or whatever the things are, to bring color to a brown landscape and brighten the morning.   My collection, as it could be termed, of Christmas cacti expanded yet again this year, with the addition of a pale yellow cultivar to the whites, reds, and pinks, and one beautiful new small plant that bears blossoms of an unmistakably orange hue.  

All are blooming again, now for the second time this year, with the exception of two.  One is the orange variety which sulks in the kitchen where Mrs. ProfessorRoush has not allowed it enough sunlight.  It is, I'm sorry to say, a Schlumbergera which is...slumbering...in a post-gluttony phase of bloom.   And I'm chagrined because I was sure I had a picture of it, taken at the peak of color, but, alas, the picture is gone, lost I say, to the silicon and ceramic wafers of computer memory.   I'll try to edit this post later as it blooms again and add it in.

The second current nonbloomer is the very fuchsia variety I've had for a decade.   It has also bloomed, and is in bud again, but I've stolen the picture here from an earlier blog entry; purloined electrons to jog your memory.

For now, veuillez m'excuser, but you must content yourself with the white, yellow, red, and fuchsia varieties.  The reds and fuchsias are, I recognize, only distinguished from each another by subtleties, small differences in the percentage of white on each petal or the shade of carmine or cardinal it most resembles, but I celebrate the individuality of all.   The reddest is at the top of this blog entry, while two other varieties, each a little more white to the petals, also vie for the "best Christmas colors" display.

Ladies and Gentleman, I give you the colors of February, hues of life to carry you through to that first glimpse of yellow daffodils....

Near Sunset

Sometimes the "near" sunset on the prairie is more stunning than the sunset itsel

Creatures Gonna Creep

Creatures creep in my garden fair,

They sneak and crawl, go here and there.

They run, they jump, they eat, they fight,

They wander there most every night.

I think my garden mine alone,

They think the garden theirs to roam.

When nighttime falls, then out they come,

They're feeding off of my green thumb.

Deer and skunks and squirrels and coons,

The garden mine in afternoons.

At night, the garden, creatures own,

They sit upon my garden throne.

Share I must, I must not kill,

The creatures linger out there still.

I surrender all to them each night,

They cede the garden, mine each light.

ProfessorRoush collected his game cameras last month and I was surprised, as always, by the life of my garden at night.   I was less enthused at the skunk that made an appearance, but she seemed to be just wandering through.   The coyotes  are the most frequent visitors, patrolling the beds for rodents and generally just slinking around every night.   

But, I recognize that life in the garden is fleeting, here one minute and gone the next minute, just like the sudden starlings in the photo above and the empty ground a few seconds later of the photo below.  Notice the time stamp on these two pictures.  Life is fleeting in the garden.