Longhorns Ho!

Yesterday was an outside day in ProfessorRoush-land, work to be done, and some exploration in areas that I don't frequently explore.  I mowed and piddled in the garden to my heart's content, the second mowing of the year starting at 9:30 a.m. and then doing other chores until I looked up at last to see it near 5:00 p.m., the afternoon vanished seemingly in seconds.   Most of the work was prompted by the arrival this week of the Longhorn cattle that a friend (actually the son-in-law of a neighbor), summer pastures on our land and the neighbors pasture.  Aren't they beautiful?  ProfessorRoush likes having cows around, even skinny cows with big menacing horns, and they make a conversation piece for neighbors far and wide, creating a little traffic on the road from the townies coming to "Aw" and stare.  

The Longhorn appearance, however, prompts me annually to walk the far fence, the one that I DIDN'T rebuild when we purchased the land, my border line with the golf course.  It's an original, easily over 50 years old, maybe more like 80 years old, with Osage Orange posts that occasionally get caught in the burns, and I often need to hike up the back hill with a new T-post to shore it up.  The picture below is a view of my back garden and the house and grounds from the far hillside.  Yesterday, all was well with the fence and I opened the gate to let the cattle into my pond area.

White-Eyed Grass

Walking that fence line means I walk down through the prairie and cross the woods in the draw and come as close as I get in this area to shady woodland.   This time of year, that means looking at the flora of the prairie more closely.  The prairie is coming alive with its flowers, native Babtisia starting to bloom, and this White-Eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium campestre) blooming everywhere.   White-Eyed Grass is, of course, not a grass but a member of the lily family, a bulb, used by Native Americans to treat stomachache and hay fever.

Garlic Mustard

I also ran across this unusual plant, an invader of course.  Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata) is a biennial weed that came from the Old World and escaped cultivation.  It isn't very prevalent on my prairie, requiring a bit of shade and moisture to thrive, but it seems to have found a spot here in the woods for it's temporary liking.

And speaking of invaders, while on my travels through the pasture, I also came across this unusual plant, seemingly beginning to spread in this area.   This is Purple-Leafed Honeysuckle, an escapee from my landscaping, which I made sure to come back and spray with herbicide yesterday.   I believe this clump was actually transplanted by the bulldozer that cleared it out from a bank where I placed the barn and pushed it into this area, but I surely don't want to see it begin to spread on it's own in the pasture

Poison Ivy

The woodland plant pictured here is, of course, not so desired in a woodland, but it's everywhere, hiding among others and waiting to cause pain and misery in some.  As shown here, among several similar plants, it effectively camouflages itself in early spring and then stands out in early Fall with bright red leaves to match the bright red blisters of the afflicted. Luckily, I'm immune to the toxic effects of  the urushiol in poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans), but I know it causes misery in others.  "Leaves of three, let it be," say some, but I say "Leaves of three, I don't care."  It probably has some place in the ecosystem, a native to North America, so I leave it alone.

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Fun, Disappointment and Home

ProfessorRoush has been away this past week, away from still cold and windy Kansas, to...well, I'll let you guess.  Where, might you guess, have I been this week?

Wormsloe Allée

If you guessed the South, you're correct, and some of you know of the Wormsloe Plantation ruins and its live oak allée.  You perhaps even recognized the statue photographed at the right.   I've been to Savannah Georgia, enjoying a few days traveling to new places with Mrs. ProfessorRoush while at the same time lamenting that I was missing the peak bloom of my lilacs back home.  The statue, for the unknowing, is Bird Girl, a bronze creation of  Sylvia Shaw Judson made famous by the book and movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.  At the time the book and the movie were famous it was located in the Bonadventure Cemetery of Savannah, but it is now exhibited in the Telfair Academy, an art museum we visited this week and where I took the photo.

Owens-Thomas garden and Enslaved Persons Quarters

Don't, please, think for a moment that ProfessorRoush is an aesthete, or that I, in fact, have any knowledge of art or appreciation thereof.   Most of art is lost on me other than the thought that I'm looking at a "neat painting."   We ended up at the Telfair Academy by accident, as the ticket is combined with entry to the nearby Owens-Thomas House (garden and enslaved persons quarters pictured above), which we DID want to see.  Although the art museum was lost on me, I did enjoy viewing the Bird Girl and I allowed myself to covet it for a brief moment for my own garden.  

Gardenia jasminoides 'Daisy'

I hoped to visit Savannah at the heart of the garden season, but I must admit I was sadly disappointed in the garden offerings there.   I missed by three days (although tickets sold out last November) the annual charity tour of private home gardens, which was probably spectacular, but the public gardens of Savannah were surprisingly few and far between and nothing to travel for.  The Southern Magnolias (Magnolia grandiflora) were in bud everywhere, but not yet openly blooming.  There is a small, poorly labeled "Fragrant Garden" in the world-famous Forsyth Park where I took the Gardenia jasminoides photo at the right and enjoyed the vining jasmine and a nice blooming but unlabeled specimen of 'Zephirine Drouhin'.  However, honestly and without the slightest hint of humility, I have to say my Kansas lilacs and garden here rival the best that Savannah could produce for fragrance.  There's no place like home.

I had hoped to finally see, in person, a few Hybrid Noisette roses in their native south, or at least a good display of other roses in a warmer, wetter and kinder environment than Kansas, but I was completely disappointed everywhere we went.   I spied here and there a few barely-surviving English roses and some ugly Drift and Knockout roses.   But even the Savannah Botanical Gardens had a less-than-inspiring collection of a few straggly Hybrid Teas, barely surviving in too much shade.   It was at the SBG that I took the completely appropriate picture at the left.   The label says "Iceberg, Possibly Best Floribunda Ever," and the fact that the actual rose is completely absent here sums up my feelings about 'Iceberg' after I've tried several times to grow that overrated bush unworthy of being called a rose.  

One highlight of the trip, however, was a turn off the main road made on a whim to the Pinckney Island Refuge, which we happened to drive by as we came home from Tybee Island.  There, we saw this rookery of Great Egrets and Snowy Egrets, socially nesting safe above the alligators waiting below in the pond.  I was tickled by the three fuzzy little egrets sticking their heads up in the lower right corner of the photo.   Click on either photo to blow it up to full size!

Now that I've mentioned both birds and magnolias, I'll close with photographs taken today of my 'Yellow Bird' magnolia, just past its blooming prime, and of my "lilac row", also past prime.  When we left, not a single bud of 'Yellow Bird' had opened, yet six days later I return to find that I almost missed it blooming this year; an unspeakable tragedy narrowly avoided.   Since the wind here has blown in gusts of 30-40 mph all day today after a thunderstorm and tornado watch last night, I expect another day of vacation would have left me missing the show.  If I can't see magnolias in Savannah, at least I've got them here.

'Yellow Bird'

  

Finally, Spring

Lilac 'Betsy Ross'

At last, Spring has arrived in Manhattan, Kansas.  It is and was a long-awaited, miss-conceived, desiccated Spring, but I'm declaring Spring nonetheless.  I have to, for if I waited any longer, I'd be in mid-summer and sweltering. This is no longer  a Spring of a few wee annual bulbs now, this is full-blown everything growing Spring.   No spring rains yet, but hopefully the ground will get re-saturated before July steals it all away.   There is plenty of wind blasting past, however, wind that kept me awake all last night and wind that has kept my roof from being repaired for over 3 months since the December gales that lifted a few shingles.   And frosts galore, frosts that ruined my annual celebration with Magnolia stellata and has dampened the impact of purple 'Ann' this year.

'Betsy Ross'

I was struck, two mornings ago, by the morning light and beauty of my awakening back yard.   Color drew me out to take the photograph above, pastels and spring pinks, a cool morning but sufficient to celebrate the collage of spring colors in the back yard; volunteer redbud in the foreground, occasional blush of magnolia in the borders, my red peach in full bloom in the back.   And the houses on the ridgeline south, across the golf course, visible now, but invisible to my inner eye which still sees the bare hilltops I used to see here.

My primary focus this morning is on my lilac line, the end of the garage pad at the house, beloved pink and white 'Annabelle' at the back.   Some are in full bloom, some just partially open and others yet to start, but a mere whiff of air on that side of the house saturates you with lilac and converts every racing thought to a lazy dream.  The "Most Spectacular" award this year goes to Syringa oblata 'Betsy Ross', a  2000 U.S. National Arboretum introduction from the 1970's breeding program of Dr. Donald Egolf.   My 'Betsy Ross', planted in 2013 and photographed this cloudy morning.  She is certainly now well worth the Andrew Jackson photograph I traded for her when she was a small plant.   Perfect white panicles, non-damaged this year by frost, wind or rain, and as fragrant as a bottle of perfume.   I can't ask for more.

It is, in fact Spring outdoors and indoors right now.   This rare (I think) yellow Christmas cactus is now blooming for the third time since November, and the colors are even more rich and deep than it's first bloom.  Fully 80% of my Christmas cacti are still cycling bloom, months and months of delicate color to fill the sunroom.

I leave you, this cloudy morning of Spring, with the last of the daffodils that live in the coldest, darkest, northern exposure of my landscape.   Last to bloom, they are protected there from wind at the least, perfect blooms and cheery faces to remind  me they will be back next year again.   Yes, we've had a few sprinkles this morning to brighten them up, but the ground beneath is bone dry, crying for moisture, for the re-quenching rains that should come with Spring.   Is that still too much to ask for? 

Dabs and Dribbles

'Cole's Red' Quince

Spring, this year, is a fight within our witness, a struggle by life to leave behind the cold winds of February and March and move to sunlight.   There has been no knockout blow, no sudden blitzkrieg of either heat or snow to change the fortunes of garden and man, but the to and fro, the feint and parry, of the seasons continues with no easy end in sight.   We will not see spring, I fear this year, in broad strokes of pastel color, but in dabs and dribbles, slowly meting out its glory in smaller packets of pleasure.

'Betsy Ross'

It is both dry and cool now, continuing the pattern of past weeks and it seems, promising the weather for weeks to come.   The sky has not provided enough moisture to yet ignite the irrepressible forces of life, nor has the sunshine been overly generous with its sustaining energy.   It benefits me little to blame the cheerful weatherpersons for the slow strides towards summer, nor do I deign to fret over the millions proclaimed to be in severe weather danger each day, not while I'd happily risk bad storms to quench the thirst of the ground.  I wait instead, patiently, for these pictured buds to open and clothe the garden and world with beauty.

'Annabelle'

The quince alone is fully open and meeting my lust for rusts and reds, Chaenomeles japonica ‘Coles Red’ in this instance, pictured at the top.   I appreciate quince but it struggles here, the prairie a smidge drier than it likes, the winters and deer a little harsh for its full comfort.  Stronger for us are the lilacs, but they are still biding time this year, afraid perhaps to fully commit lest a late snow or freeze catches them in full exposed blossom.  It would not, of course, be the first time I've seen snow on lilac panicles.  Naked and afraid, 'Betsy Ross', above, and 'Annabelle', here, are providing only a glimpse still of the promising maidens they could become.  One night in the next 10 is presently predicted to be below freezing, so I am content in this instance to indulge their teasing and patiently await their full exhibition.

In similar fashion, the red horsechestnut leaves remain tightly furled, the rough, prehistoric texture safe from frost and marauding deer, and my beloved red peach is mightily trying, but failing, to become a beacon of spring for the neighbors.   It is covered, as you see below, in buds, but yet to glow, the cloudy skies and brisk winds battling against its nature, its reason for survival, those buds to become seeds, those seeds to be trees.

Red Peach

And so, I wait here, still wait this Easter, for the annual rebirth, the rebound of the world.  With Easter comes promise, a guarantee of life's return, a revival, not promised this year perhaps in trumpeted herald, but softly spoken in dabs and dribbles.  Regardless, I close singing in full voice along with Sara Evans, her lyrics:  "Hallelujah, a little revival....amen to love."