1004 Mortal Moments

'Cosmic Struggle' early morning

ProfessorRoush had grandiose plans, a year back, to celebrate the 1000th published entry of this blog as he recognized the landmark nearing.  I had such hopes of a deep, thought-provoking masterpiece, complete with photographs of unblemished and vividly-colored blooms and prose fit to stir awe and envy in all its readers.  I resolved carefully to watch, to remain vigilant as the day approached, to portend and celebrate its long-awaited moment.

'Space Coast Color Scheme'

This week, I realized that I had missed it, that 1000th entry, which actually occurred on May 22nd last, the milestone sneaking past in yet another banal description of yet another badly-needed rain brought by yet another terrifying summer storm front.  I not only overlooked the occasion once, nor twice, but 3 times, like Peter denying acquaintance of the Savior, the post today sneaking in as my 1004th, according to Blogger's count.  Caught up in life, caught up in the garden, I lost sight of the broader vision, missed the passage of time and the momentary significance of yet another blog entry.

'Marie Bugnet'

How do I now make up for it, that lost opportunity, the special occasion gone uncelebrated?   I thought long and hard on it since I realized the oversight.  Do I photograph the perfect rose for you, perhaps the virginally-perfect 'Marie Bugnet' to the right of these words?   She is, after all, one of my all-time favorites, the first to greet my hungry eyes most springs, tirelessly blooming the rest of the summer over perfect foliage.  

'Amethyst Art'

Should it instead be a new daylily addition to my garden, heavily-anticipated and fulfilling it's promise, such as the thick-petaled 'Cosmic Struggle' at the top of this entry, or the striking 'Space Coast Color Scheme' to the left of the second paragraph here?   Or the older, yet still splendid, 'Amethyst Art' shown to the right, chosen out of its many, many cousins for its timeless beauty and productivity?   'Cosmic Struggle' is newer to the world and simply striking, as shown above at the morning's call, but these same blooms at the end of the day lack the grandeur of the morning (below).  'Space Coast Color Scheme' has been tremendously prolific this year, a sight to behold, but no matter how bonny the mass, her individual blooms are orange and yellow, the most common of daylily colors.  

'Cardinal de Richelieu'

Should I overwhelm  your senses with the sumptuous purple tones of 'Cardinal de Richelieu', blooming at the time of the 1000th blog? Or should I instead tempt you with a rose new to my garden, yet undescribed here in these pages but healthy in my garden?  Decisions, decisions, so difficult to make and so impactful once made.

Bull Thistle

Wait, would another blog about a native prairie plant interest you?   I've been lately concerned with the Bull Thistles in my pasture, the aptly latin-named Cirsium vulgare.   Another member of the Sunflower Family, it's a noxious weed on the prairie, not, unfortunately a forb to celebrate but one to ruthlessly cut down and eliminate.  It is so hated that folklore has it that merely chopping it down at this stage is not enough as it will still develop viable seed in the pods.  I'm skeptical of that story after looking at the dry remains of mine after 3 days in the prairie heat.  My maternal grandfather always said to chop it down on June 23rd and over time it will disappear from the pasture.  I'll stand by that, having witnessed the effect of the procedure on an entire pasture full of Bull Thistles in my Indiana youth. 

Perhaps, as a 1000th entry should be, I should present here a grand summation of the garden, a broader picture of life here on the Kansas Flint Hills?   My current view from my bedroom window, greeting me cheerfully and colorfully each and every morning when I assess the weather (left)?   Or a vista of the rear garden, daylilies in the back patio bed in the fore, the blue mists of Russian Sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia ‘Filigran’) and white of Hydrangea paniculata ‘QuickFire’ in the midphoto, and the color of daylilies in the rear (below)?  Things bloom in the garden, and my attention follows the blooms as randomly as I weed or keep track of the number of blog posts.   But these photographs were taken as I began this blog, another captured moment in time.

'Cosmic Struggle' late-day

In reaching this paragraph, I have by now realized, of course, that the occasion is past, lost to time and inattention, never to be relived or revered.   The next milestones, at 5000 or 10000 entries, are so far into the future that I can only faintly hope to still be able to write and garden and reach them, the first 1000 taking nearly 12 years to form.  Even 5000 new thoughts are difficult to conceive of, and who would still be reading them if they weren't each new and interesting?  Perhaps I should think in terms of years, blog birthdays, and celebrate instead 15 years or 20 years or 25 years of thoughts and blogs.  July 28th, 2022 for instance, will mark 12 years of blogging.  And yet it seems such an evasion, an excuse, a compromise of virtue to accept  such an altered goalpost as won.  Like 'Cosmic Struggle' (right) losing its cosmic struggle at the day's end, I  give you here a mere shadow of what could have been.   We will all just have to be content with celebrating this, my 1004th blog entry, and each to follow. 

2022 EMG Manhattan Garden Tour

Today, June 25, 2022, was the Extension Master Gardener tour in Manhattan.  Yours' truly, as usual, was the unofficial photographer for the group, so I spent the morning taking 814 photos in 4 hours, and 720+ turned out to be pretty useable.  I'm pretty proud of the fact that despite the heavy daylily bloom today (and at least one of the 7 gardens on tour claimed to have 800 cultivars), I only took around a dozen closeups of daylilies.  Of the other photos, I've selected my favorite dozen for you to view, my selection based on what I viewed as the most "artistic" photos. Without further ado, enjoy.   Click on the photos if you want to see them full size.

The light this morning was fantastic.

I thought this was the best daylily picture that I took.  It's not the prettiest or most unusual, but I liked the way the leaf draped across the blossom.

One of the gardeners is doing a great job recreating a prairie meadow planting.

At the same garden as the prairie above, lived this good girl.

Sometimes, a little woodland serenity goes a long way in a garden photo.

I don't know who Rex and Bogie were, but this homeowner loved them very much.

I'm calling this one "Stairway to Heaven".   That blue Kansas sky just kills me.

Oh, the colors here are just fabulous!

Had a serendipitous moment with this butterfly.

Again, Color!

Is it an entrance or an exit?   Only the homeowner knows!

Mowing Day

It is hot as Hades here in Kansas and ProfessorRoush chose to mow early today before the sun could sear my socks off my feet.   Mowing always brings forth mixed feelings for me.  I hate to mow, to know that I must aimlessly drive in short circles all over my landscape on a weekly basis, but at the same time, I love the neat clean appearance of the house and yard after mowing, and it gives me a chance to assess the health of the garden and it's floral population.

Take my hollyhocks, for instance.  I primarily notice these as I mow, since they're right near the edge where I start in.  This group, on a southeast corner of the back patio, is completely self-seeded, now several generations removed from a Alcea rosea 'Nigra' that I planted in the area over a decade back.  They have reverted to a palate ranging from pinks (as pictured above) to blood reds (as illustrated below), but they're dependable bridges from the first bloom of the roses into daylily season.  

Hollyhocks in Kansas need only a little disturbed soil or mulch to self-seed, and they seldom need care.   Some develop a little rust from time to time, but not normally enough that I need to spray them.   And those clumps pictured above withstood the EF2 tornado, or at least the 100 mph straight line winds, that came through Manhattan on June 11th, 2022.   I can assure you, as I was looking out the basement window at the time, that these were bent to the ground for some time as the storm passed.   The tornado actually touched down on the east side of town, damaging a few houses there, but the path of the worst storm damage to trees and electric lines seemed to go right through our house in a straight line to the area of damage.   Thankfully there was no loss of life, and I, for once, didn't even lose a shingle.

I saw today, as well, that the Knautia macedonia is out of control in my front boarder.   Pretty up close, but too small and dark-red to be impactful from a distance, they are so successful here that they tend to choke out smaller plants if I don't watch and remove them.   As a no-maintenance plant, however, I have no complaints regarding Knautia.

Mowing also forces me towards  some new vistas of my yard, making me see from angles that I wouldn't normally walk or chose to photograph.  This last photograph doesn't do justice to just how deep the shades of green were across the back yard today.   I don't know whether it is the i-Phone not picking up the depths of the green tones, or if it was the photographer not choosing the correct exposure, but I apologize for not helping you to live in the moment with me.

I guess you'll just have to take my word for how good this looked today.   However, for those who can't, I am taking names, first-come, first-served, for those who wish to experience mowing here on the Flint Hills.   Just let me know what Saturday or Sunday you want to be here between now and October.   I'll be happy to accommodate you.

Rosa Emily Carr

'Emily Carr'

Please allow me, in the midst of the late May flush of roses, to begin in the next blog entry or three to introduce you to a few "new" friends.   New, at least, to me, nearly new to my garden, survivors of at least one winter without protection and survivors of my general lack of proper garden attention.

This week, I bring you 'Emily Carr', a refined Canadian lady that I was introduced to in 2019.  She was, at that time, only 12 years past her debutante ball, for 'Emily Carr' was debuted to the world in 2007 (another less-reliable source says 2005) as one of the later introductions of AgCanada.  Bred by Lynn Callicott in 1982, she is a member of the AgCanada 'Canadian Artist Series', the only member of that series that I believe I grow.   Her namesake (12/13/1871 -3/2/1945) was a Canadian Post-Impressionist artist and writer of British Columbia who was inspired by the Northwest Indigenous peoples and the British Columbia landscape.

'Emily Carr', as you can easily see, is a semi-double, bright red bloomer of medium stature and glossy, healthy foliage.   At maturity, she is supposed to become 4 foot tall, although my 3 year old specimen is only 3 feet at present and a pair of posts on Houzz suggest that she goes over 5 1/2 feet in some instances.   She struggled her first two years in my garden, an uncertain survivor of the triple plagues of cold, drought, and deer, but this year she popped up strong and solid, a striking arterial-blood-red scream against the pale pink tones of 'Blush Alba' behind her.   According to helpmefindroses, she is a direct descendant of 'Morden Cardinette' and 'Cuthbert Grant'.   I tried and lost the former, but 'Cuthbert' is a solid, healthy rose for me, slowly ending his own first bloom flush in his 22nd year.  Father to daughter, those deep red genes held strong.

'Emily Carr' is supposed to repeat reliably in flushes, but as she didn't have much of a bloom over her struggling years, I'll have to see what she can do for me this year.   At least she seems to be rose rosette immune, having survived the onslaught of virus in my garden even during her struggles.   I sadly can't detect much in the way of fragrance from her, a disappointment since I've always thought 'Cuthbert Grant' had a decent fragrance here in my garden and he, himself, was a descendant of fragrance legend 'Crimson Glory.'   It's a pity that fragrance can be lost in so few generations if breeders don't pay attention.

One never knows where research on a given subject will lead in these days of Internet bounty.   In this case, my searches for 'Emily Carr' led me down a rabbit hole to the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre and it's "49th Parallel Collection of Roses."   And now I'm left wondering what 'Chinook Sunrise' would look like and how it would perform in Kansas.  A little late to obtain this year, but maybe next year I can find her.