Golden Teases

Crocus chrysanthus 'Goldilocks'

Well, for a very short time, we almost had a glimpse of Spring here in the Flint Hills.  Every year, I carefully scrutinize my Witch Hazel (Hamamelis x intermedia 'Jelena'), and also the locations of previous snow crocus for their first blooms.  And this weekend, suddenly there it was; the snow crocus that was nowhere to be seen a week ago suddenly popped up and is showing a little flirtatious yellow to tempt me into premature excitement.  One glance and my spirit soars and my heart races at the sight of the brazen little wench.  Spring has sprung!

But alas, the coy little lass will have to gather her petticoats back around her and hold on for a later opportunity because we are under a Winter Storm Watch and have 3-6 inches of snow predicted this afternoon and evening.  As is common for the Great Plains, we went from the 70's when the picture above right was taken to a daytime high in the 30's in less than 24 hours this past weekend.  And four days later, here comes the snow.

I don't even remember how I came to have these few clumps of snow crocus, but they're planted beneath my forsythia and, true to their name, they often bloom during and through the late winter storms for me.  Yellow always blooms first, followed by the white and purple. I also don't know why I have not divided these clumps or purchased more, since they are so important to my spring mental health.  I don't recall seeing them frequently in fall stock at the "Big Box" stores and since I purchase most of my spring bulbs in bulk in those stores, it could be simply that I haven't had my memory jogged about them.  However, I should have ordered some last year when I mail-ordered a group of Lycoris squamigera if I'd had my wits about me.  I must redouble my efforts in this regard.  The Snow Crocus that I adore (Crocus chrysanthus) are actually just the earliest blooming of four common Crocus species (including Crocus vernus, the Dutch Crocus) which are all sometimes popularly called Snow Crocuses.  And to confuse the matter, there are a handful of obscure and more rare Crocus species that can be obtained by collectors.  The Dutch Crocus blooms well here, but the Kansas wind rapidly shreds the blossoms, so enjoyment of them is a fickle possiblity for me, while the smaller and shorter C. chrysanthus are much more reliable bloomers.

   

Daffodil stems

Of course, another first sign of spring that just appeared are the daffodil stems beginning their push towards the sunlight.  As a less-experienced gardener, I used to worry incessantly about these on colder nights and sometimes kicked more mulch over them or even covered them with blankets. Wisdom and laziness now prevail and I let Mother Nature take care of these in her own time.  They seem to survive the frosts and bloom just as well without me as they did with me.

As gardeners, we like to pretend we have an effect on our gardens, but at the final measure, perhaps our gardens just patiently tolerate our efforts and hope we don't cause them more harm than good.

Spring Cuttings

Anyone living in or near the MidWest knows that we had a miraculous warm spell last weekend, and I know that some might be asking "What did ProfessorRoush do on his glorious weekend?"   Or, more likely, probably not, since most of you were too excited to be out in your own gardens to think about your blogging companions.

In the last "warm" spell of a couple weeks back, I took advantage of a 55ºF day to finally get the fruit trees trimmed and the dormant spray applied.  So the next thing on my yearly list, other than waiting for whatever little floral creature decides to be the first to bloom and brighten my Spring, was to tackle trimming the grape vines into shape before their sap flow starts.  I had intended to do them along with the fruit tree pruning, but realized on that particular weekend that I would have to stand knee deep in the remnants of a snow drift to prune them, and that action seemed a little too extreme.  But this past weekend, the temperatures hit 68ºF and out came the pruners and "Voila!", the grapes were ready for spring.  From there, I went to trimming back all the ornamental grasses, since I had noticed that the KSU garden had done their grass haircuts already. I went on to start cleaning off the front landscaping beds but finally the brisk Flint Hills winds drove me indoors.  It was either that or have chapped hands and an earache to start out Spring.

I don't know how everyone else cuts back their grasses, but I had the fortune of purchasing, a few years back, a Black & Decker battery-operated set of tools containing a sander, circular saw, reciprocating saw, and drill.  The reciprocating saw, with a 4 inch blade, is what I use for trimming back fruit and landscape trees and it makes quick work of my spring trimming chores. But even better than that, I separately purchased the long-handled hedge trimmer (pictured below) that was compatible with the set and I've found it a snap for some grasses, allowing me to stand upright and shear them off with the greatest of ease. The portable trimmer makes quick work of the small-stemmed Panicum sp, and Calamagrostis sp, and the Pennisetum's, or the Schizachyrium cultivars.  Seeing the grasses cut back and the garden lines so much cleaner is one of  my favorite feelings of springtime, sort of on a par with the satisfaction of washing my Jeep after running it down a muddy country road.  Old men and their power toys are a match made in gardening heaven.

Unfortunately, like everything else, my portable trimmer fails me during assaults against the majority of the Miscanthus cultivars.  Some cultivars, like 'Morning Light' or 'Gracillimus' are moderately susceptible to the wiles of the trimmer.  On many of those monsters, however, like the mighty striped Miscanthus sinensis 'Zebrinus', I grumble and cry and finally get down on my knees at the base of the grass clump to pray to the Prairie Gods that I'm still young and fit enough to chop through a large clump with manual hedge trimmers.  If you haven't grown Miscanthus, you might not know about this, but these beasts of the grass family cannot be hacked with machete nor trimmed with power equipment.  It takes a pair of good strong arms and a stiff set of shears to bring them down each Spring.  Even worse than cutting them back is any attempt to move them, as their root masses form solid clumps of wood deep in the ground that I have found impossible to lift or divide without the aid of a bulldozer.  I'm currently planning the division and move for several of my taller misplaced Miscanthus this Spring, and I'm vacillating between using dynamite or hiring several unsuspecting teenagers for the task.  It's a tough choice, but I'll likely gravitate in the end towards the explosives since they'll be quieter and less destructive to the surrounding plants than the teenagers. 

Eden Photographed

Gardening Gone Wild's "Picture This Photo Contest" for February 2011 has had me in a tizzy now for a couple of weeks, tossing and turning in my sleep, and flipping and flopping like a landed fish over my choice for entry.  The photo contest theme (each month has a theme) is to take or choose a photo that captures your favorite place in a manner to display its "Genius Loci," the special atmosphere of that place.  In the words of guest Judge Andrea Jones she wants "your personal interpretation of one of your favourite outdoor spaces. Your special place photographed in such as way to show what you love most about it.  Please keep the view wide as possible to encompass of a view as you can but capture that spirit – that’s what matters." 

  

 Although I'm fairly new to both garden blogging and garden photography, I've already amassed a number of pictures of the Flint Hills landscape around me.  The dilemma for me is which of my stored photos best represents the feeling that this land stirs in me?  Kansas presents so many faces to experience that I hardly know where to start. Is the best choice a photo of a typical golden Kansas sunrise as viewed on the right?  

Or should I choose a photo of the summer thunderstorms coming from the North (as at left), the clouds so low that they touch the land? 

Do I choose to highlight the characteristic agricultural activities of the Flint Hills?  Would viewers be interested in the streams of fire rolling down the prairie hillsides in the annual burns?

Or would the August moon over the late harvest of summer grass be more captivating and inspirational?

Perhaps the sunrise creating a cheerful morning mood over my garden to the Southeast of the house?

Or will the frosts of winter highlight the Southern view of my garden towards the town serve to grab the attention of those who have never experienced the beauty of Kansas? 

After long consideration, I still believe that all of these photos, all taken essentially from the walls of my house, represent well this special place on the Earth. Perhaps the choice of "the best" depends on the mood of the viewer at a particular moment. But in the end, the view that I have chosen to exhibit the innate spirit of the Flint Hills is the same picture that has been the background of my computer desktop all winter.  That image, below, taken late in the day in early Winter before the start of the December snow, starts at my front lawn and looks North towards the horizon. The gravel road visible in the picture winds around the rolling grassland and hints towards the promise of travel, of life beyond this barren prairie, this Great American Desert.  The rust and beige hills sit in somber silence, and the gray winter sky is not yet allowing the promise of Spring.  Except, of course, in my heart, where I know that these weathered hills will pass through frost and fire and emerge again emerald green in the Summer that will surely come again.

Faith in a Seed (Packet)

As the winter moves on, I've amassed a respectable collection of seed packets from a number of different sources, all designated for enhancement of my summer garden.  And it occurred to me today that if you are a searcher for faith, whether that search be for God or for strength to prop up your waning conviction that spring will come again,  a seed packet is a most marvelous place to start.  The writer of Matthew 17:20 was not far off the mark when he wrote "if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move."   In like fashion, every gardener knows that within a single seed is hidden all the promises of Eden.  If you haven't yet read it, Thoreau's last manuscript, published as "Faith in a Seed," is a good starting place for hungry winter gardeners to ease their worries.

The entire concept of next summer's garden is a leap of faith when viewed from the winter-sterilized Flint Hills.  Outside, if the biting cold air is still, nothing moves or breaks the silence.  The rusty tones of Little Bluestem break the tan monotony of buffalograss and switchgrass, but not a single bird or animal ventures about.  You can find an occasional hawk, motionless on a telephone line or tree, watching in vain for the furtive movement of field mice, but it will be diet by starvation in the frigid air tonight.  And when the wind blows it comes suddenly and briskly, shrieking past the houses and over the prairie, relentlessly pushing aside leaf and stem and feather and piling the dry snow into mountains.

But there, in my seed packets, safe in the artificial heat of home, lies the promise of my summer dreams.  Small bundles of DNA and starch, cotyledon and seed coat, they await only the touch of warmth and water to initiate the future.  All shapes and sizes, without the packages, I have no hope of telling dill from poppy, lima bean from field bean.  But somewhere inside, Rudbeckia hirta 'Cherry Brandy' awaits.  Will it sprout and survive the inevitable late and unexpected frost?  Will the color match the package and match the surrounding plants where it is placed once it begins to bloom?  Will the blue corn grow tall or be bent low by a June storm?  Will the dill and fennel draw in beneficial insects, as angels to protect my garden against the hordes of chitinous Huns that threaten to steal the summer bounty?

My thrust and plans for garden changes this summer are threefold.  Encouraged by wild-eyed organic converts whispering into my ears, I am collecting dill and fennel, daisy and parsley, to provide sustenance and homes for monstrous predators that I hope to enlist on my side of the battle for garden supremacy.  I have also been searching far and wide for cosmos and poppies and helianthus and daisies to brighten up an area designed as a wildflower meadow and attract the flittering beauty of butterflies for me to contemplate as summer nears its end.  And I'm carefully choosing varieties of edible garden plants, some heirloom and some the newest hybrids, to allow the garden to pay back my labor in sugars and starches and flavors. I am placing my faith in the seeds, enlisting their support to transform my garden once again, as summer rolls towards me.

Harison's Yellow

If I were to choose a rose that I believe exemplifies the spirit of the prairie, it would be the drought-tolerant, thorny, scraggly mass that is 'Harison's Yellow'.  Harison's Yellow, an early season bloomer, always serves to remind me that the brightest days of Spring and Summer are yet to come.

This has long been one of my favorite roses but I'm convinced that my fondness for it is entirely due to the cheery bright yellow color in the early Spring.  Ever the optimist, I tend to gravitate towards interaction with, and enjoyment of, plants and people that will keep my day on a cheerful note, whether it is watching the perky Robin Meade on the Morning Express of Headline News ("Good Morning, Sunshine!") or picking the next perennial to go into my garden.  As a consequence, I shy away from the trendy "black" and chocolate flowers that the designers rave about and instead I choose bright colors.  My garden tends to be on the flamboyant side at times, at least among the roses.  Harison's Yellow is just such a cheery yellow that I can't help but feel lighter at the sight of it.

Of course, Harison's Yellow (R. spinosissima X R. foetida 'Harison's Yellow') has other positive attributes that make it one of the few roses I grow in multiples.  The dark green foliage provides a great contrast to the vibrant semidouble yellow blooms, and I believe the small leaflets, delicate in appearance, give this rose a bit more drought-tolerance than the average Rosa.  It is also, unusual for a yellow rose, highly resistant to fungal disease and I never spray this rose for blackspot or insects.  Don't get me wrong, it does get blacksport, but it rarely proceeds to affect the plant significantly.  And hardy?  Harison's Yellow is stone-cold temperature-hardy into Canada.  This is a rose that laughs at the worst of my Zone 5 winters and shrugs off late freezes and frosts.  It grows about 6 feet tall in my climate, and, due to it's suckering habit, can be as wide as I let it range.  It is a once-bloomer, but that is not something I count among the deficiencies of this rose, for its beauty is all the more cherished by me for its fleeting nature.

All great beauties have their drawbacks though and Harison's Yellow is no exception.  This is an exceptionally thorny rose;  not with great gouging thorns like 'Chrysler Imperial', but with more delicate, sharper and more numerous thorns that pierce you every which way from Sunday.  It has tall gangly canes that have a delightful brown tone, but tend to sprawl in a mass.  It also suckers and spreads like there is no tomorrow on the prairie.  This is a rose to use as a barrier for human marauders or livestock, reportedly one of its original uses on the prairie. A final regret, however, is the musky scent carried in the blossom. Harison's Yellow has a history clouded by various myths of origin, but undoubtedly this rose is a cross from Rosa foetida 'Persian Yellow', because it carries the bright color and rotten scent of the latter parent in every bloom.  From several feet away, I tend to like the aroma surrounding Harison's Yellow, but not when my nose is buried in an individual bloom. 

Part of the allure of Old Garden Roses as a group is the history surrounding the roses, and there are many stories surrounding Harison's Yellow.  Its introduction ranges anywhere from 1824 through 1842 in various sources, but all seem to relate its origin point as being in New York during that period.  The most common story, unverified and under debate, is that it first bloomed in the garden of attorney George F. Harison on 32nd Street and 8th Avenue and was introduced by nurseryman William Price in 1830.  It is also known as the Oregon Trail Rose and the Yellow Rose of Texas and seems to have followed the pioneers across the United States, leaving pieces of itself at every homestead. I always hold a picture in my mind of a heart-worn pioneer woman bringing Harison's Yellow along in the wagon as a reminder of home.  Rosarians should keep in mind though, that the famous song "The Yellow Rose of Texas" refers to Emily D. West (aka Emily Morgan), a woman who reportedly aided the Texans during the Battle of San Jacinta with her ability to keep Santa Anna preoccupied in her boudoir.  Lovely flowers, it seems, come in all forms and were helpful to the struggling American pioneers in many different ways. 
 

Totally Zen Insanity

During this time of year in the nation's heartland, every garden store and nursery should be required to display a large and inherently noticeable warning sign, saying something to the effect of "Beware!  Winter Ennui Helps Us Empty Your Pockets!"

Like other Flint Hill and Midwestern gardeners, I've taken to browsing local centers regularly, drawn irresistibly to find those early seed-starting supplies, house plants, and bird-feeding supplies that allow me to pretend I'm doing something for the garden in the dead of winter. And of course, also like other gardeners, I have the ulterior motive of needing to make sure that others don't beat me to those first few packets of seeds that arrive in the stores, lest some rare and treasured find disappear before I can purchase it.  

At such times, I'm unfortunately at extreme risk of impulse purchases, a realization that was reinforced recently when, on a trip to Omaha, I visited what has become my prime source of statuary.  There, I simply was unable to resist the Totally Zen Frog pictured to the right. Although this errant-Methodist youth does not practice meditation or Zen, I've always had some admiration for those who do, as well as a soft spot for the quiet calm of the philosophy.  Therefore, forgetting that my garden really does not have any other whimsical focuses, nor that I really don't appreciate of whimsy in any form, garden or otherwise, I was sure that this Zen Frog was meant specifically to live in my garden.  That belief was hardly weakened when I found that this particular identical statue sells all over the Internet and probably lives in thousands of other gardens. 

If you sense I'm a bit disappointed in myself, you would be correct.  Until now, I've successfully resisted adding pink flamingos, TraveloCity Gnomes, and other cliches to my garden.  Okay, there is one of my rabbit statues that is dressed in a suit like a gentlemen caller, but I swear that all the other rabbits are strictly natural in form.  Then along comes the Zen Frog and I fall, hook, link, and sinker.  The webbed feet got me.  Please don't tell Mrs. ProfessorRoush because I slipped it into the garden with all the furtiveness of a philandering husband.  The Frog has been in my garden over a week and she hasn't asked about it yet.  By now she probably thinks of these hunks of concrete collectively as "his statues," perhaps with a slight indulgent smile, and she has hopefully stopped counting the statues and the money spent on them, so there is a chance she'll glance over it.  And if a little more time goes by before she sees it and a few bird droppings adorn it, I might be able to successfully convince her that it has been in the garden for years.   

For now, I've placed it on the bench in the center of my "formal" rose garden on a bench, surrounded by the melting snows, but I doubt this will be a permanent spot for the creature.  I've got a vision of it placed on a pedestal across from a meditation seat made for myself from two large flat stones (one for the seat and one for the back).  A sort of a mirror meditation spot in my garden where I will perhaps be enticed to sit, relax, and enjoy the garden, hidden from the neighbors who'll think I've gone senile.  Sitting is about all I'll do, however, since I'm getting to old to make it into the Lotus position and further experential enlightment is probably a hopeless quest for me.  Besides, I'm not sure that the smug smile on the frog's face is conducive to my inner tranquility, especially since I'm also not convinced that the frog isn't giving each passersby, or me, "the finger."

Teaming with Information

In my reading pile lately was a book I purchased with a Christmas gift card (somehow, friends and family have realized at last that a prime Christmas gift for me is a gift card to a book store).  I had previously glanced through Teaming with Microbes, published recently in a revised edition by Timber Press and authored by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis, but I had never bitten the bullet because the book appeared, well, a little too dry and scientific.

Was I ever wrong--and yet right at the same time! Teaming with Microbes is a book that every gardener should read.  Yes, it can be a little dry to read in the first section titled "The Basic Sciences", but the photographs are so perfectly amazing that I can't begin to describe how it will open your eyes.  Each chapter discusses how a specific organism, bacteria, fungi, nematodes, algae and arthropods, lives and interacts to form your soil's food web.  Okay, okay, okay.  This first section is interesting and well-written and filled with statistics but didn't ring my bell just yet.

But the second section of the book, "Applying Soil Food Web Science to Yard and Garden Care," is where the corn and potatoes core of the book resides.  I finally "get it," much better than ever explained by my Extension Master Gardener courses, why some plants prefer some soils, how acid pH and alkaline pH soils differ in nitrogen type and availability, and how plant succession mirrors soil development.  Did you know that some plants prefer their nitrogen in nitrate form, others as ammonium?  That the number of bacteria per gram of soil doesn't really differ between garden, prairie and forest soils, but that the number of protozoa and fungi are logarithmically increased in the latter?  That nitrogen-fixing bacteria don't function well at acid pH's and that fungi increase the acidity of the soil?  Why aerobic compost teas are necessary?  That mulches of different materials support different microorganisms?  How to increase protozoa in your soils?  Teaming with Microbes will convince you that half of what you think know about or have been doing to your soil is just flat wrong.

Therein lies the downside to this excellent and readable text.  It makes it harder and harder for a professional organic gardening skeptic to stand secure in his ignorance instead of teetering on his biodegradable soap box. I've already eliminated insecticides and fungicides from my garden (except during my annual battles with the dastardly squash bugs).  This year I might have to try some areas without artificial Walmart-purchased fertilizer as well.  What's left?  Except for the evidence of a coming Ice Age outside my window, will I to be forced to start considering the possibility of global warming?  Naaaahh!  Ain't going that far! 

Ode to Oothecae

I discovered a surprise in my garden last weekend, and with a little research and a little more searching of the garden, my surprise has turned into pure delight.

Delight, I have found thee, and thy name is Ootheca.

As I was walking around the garden with our Brittany Spaniel, or more accurately as I was being pulled around the garden by our manic Brittany Spaniel, the bright winter sun caught the structure pictured to the right just enough to make it sparkle and catch my eye.  It was attached to a cane of the winter-bare red stems of  'Therese Bugnet', one of my longest-grown rugosa hybrids. I was examining the rose closely to see how its structure was revealed by its temporary lack of leaves.  And there it was, a pale brown, misshapen honey-comb-like structure that looked like it would flake away weightless at the slightest touch. 

Isn't it marvelous that, on a visceral level, all gardeners will instinctively recognize this thing, this unplantlike structure, as something related to or made by an insect?  What otherworldly factor does it have that says "not mammal," "not plant," and "not natural," and leaves us at "insect"?  That single certitude was enough to start me off in the right direction to investigate and determine to my joy that it was an ootheca, an entirely new term in my vocabulary. "Ootheca" (pronounced ˌō-ə-ˈthē-kə) is derived from the latinized "oo", meaning egg, and Greek "theca", meaning cover, literally translating to an "egg case."  From my brief research, I quickly learned that only a few creatures, primarily cockroaches, the praying mantis family, and mollusks, create proteinaceous oothecae to provide protection for the embryos of the next generation.  And since I was not near a stream, nor did I feel it likely that a cockroach would have climbed up my rose bush to lay this thing, I concluded that it must be from one of the 1800 worldwide species of the Mantis order, best known by the collective "praying mantis" moniker.

Now, the question might be, which Mantis?  There are websites available to aid in the identification of these egg capsules, but with literally hundreds of possibilities and complicated by the fact that I don't have a PhD in insect identification, I'll probably never know the exact species present on my roses.  It is enough for me to know that they are present, biding their time, in my garden.  To a gardener, finding evidence that future generations of praying mantis will inhabit and protect your garden is a blessing equivalentto finding gold flakes in a stream in your backyard.

After searching more rose bushes and then over the rest of my garden, I found numerous other examples of oothecae around the garden. One of the more curious is the smaller and more symmetrically neat structure pictured at the left and below, found perfectly placed in the ear canal of a concrete greyhound statue.  Another mantis species, or something else?

Despite finding Internet instructions to raise the little critters by hand however, my curiosity does not extend to trying to hurry along Mother Nature.  I'm quite content to await the chitinous inhabitants of the garden as they appear in their own good time, secure in the knowledge that it's all part of the life cycle of my garden. 

Best Garden Blogs and Fine Gardening Posts

This brief message is different than my usual blogs, but I wanted to make regular readers aware that I've been added to the Best Garden Blogs site with THIS POST and that I posted two pictures of my "Kon Tiki" head on Fine Gardening's winter picture contest HERE.  I'm pleased to be able to participate at both sites!

Social Marketing

I got quite a shock recently when a friend, who knows that I write a garden blog, asked me "how much money is your blog making?" Money?  It is to laugh. 

If you, yourself, blog, then you are well aware that almost all of the 1000's of gardening blogs out there on the web have no more reason or reward than whatever the inner motivations of that gardener are;  whether altruistic, educational, or egotistic in nature, or if the blog is purely a mode of relaxation for the individual gardener.  There are only a few gardening blogs in the Netosphere that I suspect provide any monetary gain at all;  those that have paid advertisers (few and far between) and those that have a blog that are associated with a business, for instance a nursery or a gardening magazine.  And the latter commercial group may only see a return on their investment in time and resources if they see an increase in sales coming via the blog, a very iffy proposition and hard to measure.

I, myself, have seen only one instance so far of a direct tangible benefit from garden blogging.  A few months after beginning this blog, I received a random email from a CobraHead representative, a marketing genius obviously well on top of the social media trends, asking me if I'd like to try a sample of their product. Lo and behold after my reply of "yes," I received one in the mail within a week or so.  Now, I've got to give this astute individual a lot of credit. There was no quid pro quo requested. They did not ask me to promote the product on my blog, they did not ask for the placement of an advertisement, they simply probably saw that my readership had gone over a few thousand individual views and likely thought that a subtle product placement might be worth sending me a free one.  In fact, it was a perfect hidden ego stroke; "hey buddy, we like your blog and think you might gain enough readers that you might help us promote our product."  There, my friends is confidence in your product.  The CobraHead folks don't know if I'm going to like it or what I might write about it, but they have faith.  It's been in my hands now for several months, unfortunately coming too late to try it out last year, but this spring I will give it a workout in good faith and report back here. 

CobraHead "head"

If you don't write a blog yourself, then you should know that the writers of your favorite blogs covet every little crumb of positive reinforcement over a well-written piece, and that many measure success or failure by readership comments.  Many of us, in fact, are sitting on the other end of an invisible Internet fiber, starving for feedback and friendship.  So please, visit your favorite garden blogs regularly and support them by occasionally commenting on a blog or passing the link on to a friend who might like it. And if, by chance, you can help me increase my readership and other manufacturers are listening (hint, hint), I'd love to report on how a nice portable garden debris shredder has improved my compost pile.     

Too Much Mulch

As I sit around on my hiney this winter, staring out at the bleak Flint Hills landscape covered by snow and thinking about changes that I need to make in the garden next year, one change the I know that I need to make is to use less mulch in certain parts of my garden.

"WHAT?" the avid mulchers and composters scream, "BLASPHEMY"!  The xeriscapers dryly ask "What are you going to do about conserving water during the arid, hot Kansas summers?"  And the weeping organic gardeners query "What will happen to the soil structure?" 

Calm down everyone.  I said "in certain parts of my garden."   You see, it finally occurred to me that, by keeping the entire plethora of my garden beds heavily mulched, I've eliminated the self-seeding of many annuals and short-lived perennials that I've enjoyed in the past.  They are slowly disappearing from my garden over the years, or they survive up close to large roses and shrubs where the mulch isn't quite so deep.  My pink-salmon Poppies, descendants of a strain given to me by a friend years ago, are popping up less often to delight me with their surprise locations. My beloved blue and purple Columbines, that I have carefully monitored to weed out any pastel or pale interlopers, are dwindling away. My self-spread, unknown-origin Brown-eyed Susan's are fewer and farther between.  Beds with six inches of cypress or prairie hay mulch are now barren of these lovely flowers. 

   

So, I'm going to reinstitute some haphazardness into my garden.  A few areas of ground left bare here and there, scuffed up to improve the germination of the Papaver somniferum and Rudbeckia hirta clans.  Some shady, lighter-mulched areas to encourage the Columbines.  Perhaps an entire garden bed lightly raked and thinly mulched in the Spring to encourage the self-sowers to proliferate with Darwinian abandon.  And overall, less of the expensive, imported cypress mulch and correspondingly more quicker-degrading home-grown grass clippings that will allow sprouting annuals to reach both soil and the sunlight.

I'm already looking forward to the chaos.

Prairie Camouflage

I believe that some of the most fascinating aspects of Flint Hills gardening have been the examples of local fauna adaptation that are everywhere around me, hiding alongside the prairie grasses.  I could wax long and hard on the invisibility of the various prairie snakes that tend to announce their presence at the best possible moment to give me heart palpitations.  But I'm not going to because I have deeply suppressed those memories of brief panics that make me a serious contender for the Olympic high jump. No, I'd like to present a couple of unique and more cuddly creatures of the prairie ecosystem.

One delight of gardening in Kansas is the stealthy appearance of the stately Praying Mantis.  From my childhood in Indiana, I was sure that the Praying Mantis was always light green, a green that made it invisible among the plants in my father's garden.  I would have bet that the Praying "Manti" of Kansas would be green as well, perhaps the exact green of big bluestem or Indian grass, but obviously I didn't know better.  In reality, the Mantis in Kansas has evolved to be present in greatest numbers in the Fall, when insect populations here have reached their peak, and they are not green, but are simply brown.  The brown of drying Fall prairie grass.  A brown tone mixed with the brown  color and the pattern of the dust that fills the air during the heat and droughts of summer.  I actually transferred the Mantis (I don't know the exact species) pictured at the right from the tall grass to the brick wall of my house simply so that it could photographed.  I'd never even have found it in the grass if it hadn't moved as I reached forward to fondle a Miscanthus seedhead.

If there were an award for camouflage, however, I'd give it to the Common Nighthawk (Chordeiles minor).  Below, you can see a female Nighthawk who chose to nest a few summers back in the mulch surrounding a walnut tree in my yard.  Nowhere in my yard was there a better background for it to choose to hide against during mid-summer than that mulch and the flint rock surrounding it.  And it was obviously planning well, for behind it, if you look closely one of the things that looks like a rock is a Nighthawk chick, invisible against the mulch except for the beady little black eyes.  That chick and two other siblings survived an entire month after hatching, flat out in the open front yard, surrounded by predators both on the ground (my bird-loving Brittany Spaniel and a pair of cats, as well as hungry coyotes and sneaking snakes) and in the air (owls at night and Red-tail hawks during the day).  In reality, the biggest danger to this cute little ball of fluff was likely my lawn-mower, because during mowing, the chicks would run out into the grass, moving back and forth as I mowed next to the mulch.  I spent an entire month waiting for a horrendous little "pffft" and a tuft of feathers from the lawn mower deck, but somehow these little creatures survived all the hideous noise and the machinery that helps me keep the snake population down in the immediacy of my surroundings. 

Nature is sometimes incredibly brilliant in its designs and methods, is it not?
  

Ballerina Dances

It perhaps will come as a surprise to serious rosarians that the Hybrid Musk rose 'Ballerina' grows and flowers well here in the Flint Hills. Or to a really serious rosarian, perhaps it is not a surprise.  It is rated as a Zone 6 rose in many sources, so trying it out in my garden was one of those occasional (okay, frequent then) stretches that many gardeners seem to take in a fit of zone-envy.  The upshot of this experiment is that I've got several own-root specimens of 'Ballerina' growing in my garden and in all respects, 'Ballerina' is a trouble-free, hardy rose here in the Zone 5B Plains region.

'Ballerina', released in 1937, is a cloud of pink flower trusses during the main rose season, and it reblooms sporadically over the summer and fall.  Blossoms are single with bright yellow stamens and the blush pink tones often fade quickly as the hot sun burns the petals in the Kansas sun.  It is a fragrant rose, as advertised, but I find the fragrance fades with the pink color here in the wilting Kansas heat. I leave the blooms alone without deadheading because I enjoy the small orange hips that form a spectacular display as Autumn and Winter come along.  As an own-root rose, 'Ballerina' stays about 4 foot tall wherever it grows in my garden and I have not detected any winter dieback in the past decade.  I've seen a wondrous five foot specimen in the Denver Botanical Garden as well, so I know it will take the winter in other Zone 5 areas as well.  I never spray the rose and it does not become denuded by blackspot in the worst of summers.  It also tolerates shade exceptionally well for a rose, blooming profusely in my back landscape bed close to the house and overshadowed by a  7 foot tall NannyberryViburnum  (Viburnum lentago).  'Ballerina' makes an excellent hedge and its thick foliage can be pruned to shape or the thin canes allowed to spill over a wall or other structure.

I originally purchased Ballerina because I recalled it was listed as a "dancing" rose in a 1993 American Rose Society article where the author, Anya-Malka Halevi, described four of her favorite roses that have flexible canes that dance in the wind.  I've got plenty of wind available and my biggest problem with wind is that it breaks off new rose canes.  I hoped Ballerina would thus be strong in the wind and in fact, the flexible canes stand the wind well.  Unfortunately, checking the original article again, I see that I had a bit of a senior moment and probably confused the Ballerina name with the desired activity, for the four roses described by Ms.Halevi were 'Therese Bugnet', 'Madame Plantier', 'Honorine de Brabant', and 'Sir Thomas Lipton'.  Ballerina, it seems, dances only in my mind.  But as long as she thrives in my climate, she's welcome to stand in as a dancer in my garden anytime.

Gardening Eternity

I have always known that gardeners, as a general lot, comprise some of the most optimistic and even-natured humans on the planet.  The very nature of planting and growing something in defiance of the vagaries of wind and weather systematically weeds out the pessimists and those individuals who combine angry outbursts with a weak cardiovascular system.  Planting tomatoes well past the expected last frost date and having them wiped out in a freak spring freeze is brutally Darwinistic.  So is watching an ice storm take down the paper-bark maple you coveted for a decade before planting and have been nursing along for the past five years.

Recently however, I was simultaneously humbled, and almost driven to tears, by the words of a friend's father, a life-long gardener, who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and told he has mere months left to live, with many of those precious weeks likely spent in decline.  According to my friend, her father has taken the news with a calm acceptance that has eased the minds of his family, saying only that "he is looking forward to planting his garden this spring as always, even though he knows he'll never see the harvest."

Dear God, what depths of faith are relayed by that simple sentence. Just as all religions state the concept in one way or another, Christian scripture cautions that  "we know not what shall be on the morrow" (James 4:14). Few of us garden or live, however, as if the end WERE going to be tomorrow.  It is one thing for me to know logically that, at 51 years of age, I will likely not live to see the second semicentury of the scarlet oak I planted a few years back. It is another thing entirely to recognize and accept that I might not live to see ripe tomatoes from the seeds I am preparing to start indoors in a few weeks.  I do not know my friend's gardening father, but I have known two of his children personally and professionally and if his garden matches his family, I am sure I would be awed by the vigor and beauty of his plants. He leaves behind a legacy that will not just be this Spring's peas and this Fall's potatoes.  His legacy is bequeathing the wisdom, to all those he touches, that living well is about doing every day exactly those same things we would choose knowingly to do in our last months.

I know not what life's end will bring.  I cannot know for certain if there is an Eden above for gardeners to spend eternity dabbling in the soil, or whether I will return in the next life as a squash bug, or whether my soul and chemicals will simply merge with Mother Gaia.  Like many in this Age, I feel sometimes that I lack the faith that I was raised on and should have, for I have seen far too many bad things happen to keep an unquestioning faith blindly intact. But I do know, looking out my window now at the snow and ice blanketing the ground in mid-Winter, that I can follow one brave gardener's path and plant again this Spring, even though I may not ever see the harvest.    

Closet Occupations

I'm wondering this morning how many other MidWest closets and basements have become, in this season of our gardening discontent, a place for accumulating spring additions and surprises to our gardens.

Take me, for instance.  In my basement storeroom last week, the iron obelisk-like thing pictured at right suddenly apparated, begging me for a spot in my garden this spring.  I entertained the thought for a few moments and decided to concede that perhaps I could give it a good home as the centerpiece of a daylily and iris bed, but I admonished the rusty creature that it was going to have to spruce itself up a little before being placed into the garden.  And lo and behold, two coats of rust-preventing light blue paint have appeared this week, brightening up the obelisk in just the right shade (I hope) to make a nice background for a flimsy annual vine or smaller clematis that wants to help me provide an interest point in that particular bed.  Just for your enjoyment, it consented to have its picture taken in the snow if I did it quickly, but it has asked to be brought back inside for the remainder of winter so that it doesn't have to experience the weather extremes of the Flint Hills until spring.  The iron scrollwork and details are such that I might not be able to keep my promise very long, as the pictured obelisk and its shadows on the snow are stirring something in my soul.  

I'm sure that, as I browse garden stores in a desperate search for green coloration over the next 2 months, there will be other garden items that decide to inhabit my closets, garage or basement, biding their time until spring.  Already, out in the garage, a new pole for the purple martin gourd houses has moved in, and it will soon be joined by bags of cement needed to pace it firmly in the ground against my Kansas wind.  I'm thinking it may not be long before it is joined by a sack or two of summer bulbs, some seed packets, and maybe a new birdhouse or two.    

What, perhaps, is stirring in your closets or garage this winter, begging to join the garden?

Cloche Encounters of the Fourth Kind

If I were Catholic and this was a confessional, I'd have to admit here that I've long had a hankering to obtain and use a real cloche in my garden.  Hankering?  Okay, call it a barely controllable lust. Pictures of beautiful classic bell-shaped glass cloches placed over perfect green tender foliage always light my soul on fire.  I've never, however, been able to physical and financially acquire the real thing, substituting instead plastic milk jugs or recycled bottles of large size when I needed protection for baby plants. I've always viewed the latter as poor tradeoffs, about as rewarding as eating dinner with your sister instead of dancing the night away with Marilyn Monroe.  Real, heavy, gorgeous glass cloches, though, have always been just too expensive for my budget.

 

Up until now, that is.  This weekend I wandered into the local Hobby Lobby to find that their large clear glassware, including two large heavy glass cloches, were all on sale for 50% off.  If I borrow J. Allen Hynek's classification for UFO encounters, I therefore just had a cloche encounter "of the fourth kind," or one that involved abduction (me) into the world of the Cloche.  Many gardeners have had a cloche encounter of the first kind (where they might have glimpsed one at a distance) or of the second kind (actually up close and warming the earth beneath it) or even the third kind (with a  tender plant actually covered and being protected by a cloche), but few are lucky enough to be proud glass cloche owners.  I joined that group with a quick local purchase and then added three more cloches from a weekend trip that included a visit to two more regional Hobby Lobby stores. so I now have a thriving set of cloche quintuplets inhabiting my garden.

And just in time.  The first snow of the season hit Kansas on Monday, as the pictures of these 16 inch tall cloches illustrate (the second with a little snow knocked-off so you can see it better).  Somewhere beneath the drifts, my glass sanctuaries already protect some fall-planted Gallica bands hybridized by Paul Barden and a rooted 'Prairie Harvest' start from last spring.  And my winter landscape looks a little less like a milk-jug garden and more like somebody is gardening with a little class.

Cloche is the French word for "bell," referring to the classic shape.  For those uninitiated, a cloche acts like a miniature cold frame, controls temperature and humidity around young plants, and protects them against insects, wind, frost, hail, turkeys, and wayward dogs. The Internet describes the real cloche as being either of vague French origin or as having been invented in Italy in 1623, but my bet is on the French because of the name and because a plant in the French climate is more likely to need the protection than one in Tuscany.  Many gardeners, like myself, have rationalized for years that plastic milk jugs and jars are adequate and perhaps even preferable, but all of us know, deep down, that a good, heavy glass cloche is what we have always really craved.  There are commercial bell-shaped plastic garden cloches available at reasonable prices, and one can make a decent home-made garden cloche that looks nice, but in my Kansas winds, I need something heavy enough to stay put instead of tumbling along to the Atlantic.  Besides, I'm tired of picking up pieces of weathered, shattered milk jugs from my mulch.  

So, if you're also seeking a cloche encounter of the fourth kind, watch for the next Hobby Lobby sale cause this one ended last weekend. If you're in Kansas, you are just out of luck anyway since I bought all the cloches currently available in the state.