GGW September Photo contest

Like others who took on the challenge of Gardening Gone Wild's September Picture This Photo contest, I had a hard time choosing between entries.  The guest judge, Christa Nue, picked a very open subject, "Late Summer Garden," and then made it harder by providing examples ranging from closeups to colorful garden beds, to wild vistas.  Late Summer and Fall subjects are apt to be more difficult in the Flint Hills, a landscape which is often at its best in Fall as the late cool rains turn the grasses and hillsides red in contrast to the late sunflowers and goldenrod that rise amongst them.

As an example, I briefly considered this more natural vista of wild goldenrod on the prairie.  I got lucky with an early morning mist for this picture, taken across my neighbor's pasture.  This golden, unplanned field is composed of a mix of native goldenrod species, including Downy Goldenrod (Solidago petiolaris), Rigid Goldenrod (Solidago rigida), and the ubiquitous Missouri Goldenrod (Solidago missouriensis). 

When I think of a Fall garden, I often think of rose hips, so a recent picture of Rosa eglanteria hips appealed to me on a closeup level. Orange skin and wicked curved barbs, rose hips hold the essence of the fading sunlight.

 And for a pure late summer flower show, nothing rivals Hydrangea paniculata in the Flint Hills.  This cultivar is 'Limelight', no less interesting in late summer for the browning, drying petals, their demise hastened by the drought which still lingers.  Seeing this, I remember why they're popular subjects for dried flower arrangements.

 

Roush GGW September Entry 'Goodbye Summer Harvest'

But, I finally settled on entering the picture at left  into the contest; an overripe, overgrown, group of forgotten cucumbers on a fence.  I know that the overall subject is a little unusual, but the title of "Late Summer Garden" suggested more of a vegetable garden feel to me.  And in the end, I couldn't resist the papery, detailed texture of the dried leaves and prickly stems of these cucumbers.  Make sure you look beyond the overall "orangeness" of the composition and click on the picture to see the full size version to appreciate the detail.  To me, this picture screams, "Summer Is Over!"  

(Rats, it's been automatically compressed because it is so large....really, the leaves look great in full size!)

Perky Betty Boop

One of the delights of the gardening act is that occasional moment when, despite all the careful planning of the gardener, despite the research about and the search for special plants, despite the careful site selection, and the arduous care afforded many plants,  the gardener finds a miraculous unplanned beauty, a serendipitous excitement, that was still unplanned for.  Sometimes, I wonder if the very plants are conspiring against our plans, growing bountiful and beautiful not "despite" the gardener, but to spite the gardener who believes the beauty is all due to him.

Rosa 'Betty Boop' is one of those plants that I never expected to really love, nor that she would return my love.  I bought her on a whim as a bagged $3.00 specimen several years ago, merely because a gardening friend loves the rose.  I was never really attracted to the rose by the published pictures I've seen but somehow I still felt that I should give her a chance in my garden.  And I never expected much from her.  Many floribundas struggle in my Zone 5b garden, surviving, freezing back to the ground every year, but, once on their own roots, at least providing me with an occasional bloom that keeps me from spade-pruning them.  That's all I really expected for 'Betty Boop'.

But, for reasons I can't explain, I dumped this cheap, grafted rose in the front of my house, a place of pride next to the edge of the walk, stacking the odds against her by placing her at the edge of the bed where it would be coldest in the winter and driest in the summer.  And she has defied me by growing stronger and more beautiful every year.

What gardener cannot love the delicate mix of yellow, pink and white displayed by the newly opened flowers of 'Betty Boop'? The open, welcoming cheerful faces presented to the sun? The yellow pistil and stamens, private parts of the flower on full display for dashing bee drones with their minds on food and sex?  Yes, the yellow fades as the blossoms age, and the pink becomes slightly less vivacious, but she still welcomes all who would admire her.  I've been stunned by my growing appreciation for this rose and I'm grateful that she chose to surprise my expectations right there, at the beginning of my front walk. Even in Fall she shines, placed accidentally next to Sedum 'Purple Emperor', welcoming my visitors with a contrast of deep purple and bright pink and white.

'Betty Boop' was a 1998 introduction by Carruth, so she is a relatively new floribunda to the trade compared to some of the old classics. Her semi-double form matches the delicate nature of her shading to perfection. I'm told she has a strong scent and I'm embarrassed to admit that I haven't even tried to inhale her blossoms although I've grown her now 5 years. She grows about two and a half feet tall in Kansas by the end of the season, and despite my lack of winter protection in Zone 5B, she usually doesn't freeze entirely to the ground but retains about a foot of thick canes to start her off strong every year.

For the record, I'm not old enough to have viewed this roses' namesake Betty Boop cartoons, but for the younger gardeners in the audience, Betty Boop is arguably the most famous sex symbol of animation, a symbol of the Depression, and a caricature of the carefree Jazz Age flappers.  I actually don't think I've ever seen one of the original cartoons, created in the 1930's, but I've always known Betty Boop was a sex symbol instinctively, right down to my XY chromosomes.  If nowhere else, you've seen her painted on the nose of many a pictured WWII fighter plane or bomber, a reminder of home and love to the young pilots of that era.  And the rose 'Betty Boop' captures that image perfectly, reminding a young-at-heart gardener that beauty and perkiness is a good thing for the garden as well.

Beds in the Sun II

In the continuing saga of my back garden beds, today's post details a few more of the beds:



Bed D is an Iris-only bed in terms of the perennial planted there (Okay, in truth there is a bunch of daffodils in the bed as well).  Bed E and another bed that I'll show later were mixed daylily and iris beds (about 60 irises and daylilies in each), but the daylilies there are slowly outcompeting the irises. Or else the irises are fading because they're in a flat area with too much clay and they don't like wet feet. Or perhaps the iris there don't like to live in a rundown daylily neighborhood.  Anyway, Bed E is now primarily daylilies, a few remaining struggling irises, and a Witch Hazel ('Jelena'), while the majority of the irises have been moved to their survival to Bed D, where I hope they get better drainage and where the fighting will stay within the family.

Bed F is a smaller mixed rose and ornamental grasses bed containing 14 smaller shrub and Old Garden Roses and 5 grasses.  One big mistake that I'm about to rectify was placing Panicum 'Prairie Sky' into the center of the bed, because it is flopping over all the roses and smothering them.  The two Calamagrostis in the bed, 'Overdam' and 'Avalanche', are tall and strong and much better behaved.  The roses really are a varied crew; 'Purple Pavement', 'Belinda's Dream', 'Salet', 'Duchess de Rohan', 'Duchess of Portland', the Griffith Buck rose 'Golden Princess', 'Westerland', and 'Austrian Copper', among others.  Right behind this bed (south) lies a small Scarlet Oak (Quercus coccinea), eight years old now and only four feet tall.  Talk about your slow-growing trees!

Bed G is my "Evergreen" bed, containing a small assortment of very common broad-leaved evergreens and conifers, of which the largest is a Wichita Blue Juniper (Juniperus scopulorum).  I also cheated in this bed and placed a volunteer red-flowering peach tree (Prunus rubra) that lights up the spring.

Beds H, I, and J are the newest beds, just started last Fall or this Spring.  "H" contains primarily my newest Griffith Buck roses, just planted this Spring and still continuing to be planted (I added 4 new roses to this bed just this weekend).  So if you've been enjoying my descriptions and pictures of  'Bright Melody', 'Iobelle', and 'Queen Bee', they are from this bed.  One side of the bed outside the roses are 6 divisions of Sedum telephinum 'Morchen', planted there in the spring, and the other side is a line of new daylily starts just planted.  Bed "I" is still under development.  I was thinking a big bed of annual cottage flowers, but now I'm thinking of a bed concentrating on ornamental grasses, particularly timely right now so that I can move all the grasses that are now elsewhere and currently smothering the adjacent roses, into this spot, so they can just lean against each other.  Bed J was started last Fall.  As a teaser for coming attractions, it is full of Paul Barden's creations, and so it is my "Barden" bed, and I'll describe it better next time.

Best Laid Daylily Plans

My, how often the best-laid plans of mice and gardeners succumb to the realities of life!  I really thought I had it set up perfectly this year, my latest attempt at the acquisition of cheap, perfect daylilies, but alas, I failed again miserably in the execution of said plan.

I always look forward to the first weekend of September, because it promises the Daylily Society sale at the local farmers market. Thus it appeals to my miserly gardening pocketbook.  But in the past, I've come to the sale completely unprepared, choosing daylilies because the name sounded nice or because the description of the color seemed promising, only to later find myself disappointed once again that "melon" was orange, and "peach" was orange from more than two feet away.

But this June, I made a special effort to visit the local indoor mall during the annual Daylily Display, an event at which the local Daylily nuts...err..uh...enthusiasts display their prettiest daylilies during the height of the season.  These people are pictured in the dictionary next to the term Addict Enablers, in this case the addiction in question being my incontrollable need to grow the newest daylily varieties.  Several of the evil Hemerocallis pushers are local breeders who also exhibit their latest creations at the Display.  Unlike my previous visits to the Display, however, I came prepared with pad and pen, writing down the names of what I considered to be the choice 15 to 20 varieties. 

When I got home, I even went one step further and typed up the list while my memory was fresh, in lieu of my usual policy of relying on my mostly illegible handwriting and failing memory come September.  I also purchased, for the bargain price of $10.00, an annual membership in the Flint Hills Daylily Society, which entitled me to attend a pitch-in dinner and have first choice at the daylilies for sale on the night before the big public September sale.  I couldn't miss this time.

Well, I did miss.  Work intervened and I didn't make it to the pitch-in daylily dinner, nor to the Extension Master Gardeners bimonthly meeting on the same night.  Desperate, I went first the thing Saturday morning to the sale, armed with my list of delicious names such as "String Theory", "Red Hot Mama" and "Bella Donna Starfish".  And they didn't have any of those varieties for sale.  Oh, some of them had been in the sale the night before, but they had all been snatched up by my fellow FHDS fiends.  So I resorted to looking at the pictures compiled by color of each variety, a time-consuming activity, and I missed several other beautiful cultivars while doing so.  There was even a special table of "expensive" daylilies, some divisions as high as $10, and I failed there as well, looking at the names and then looking at the pictures, and then finding the ones I wanted snatched up before I could decide about them.

But, I guess I did okay in the end.  I came away with 12 or 15 varieties (see the picture above), generous clumps for $5 to $7 dollars apiece that were actually often three small divisions in each clump, leaving me with 35 or 40 new daylily starts for $99.  And such pretty names and colors too. 'Apple Tart'.  'Butterfiles in Flight'.  I'm just sure that the highly touted melon and peach daylilies I purchased won't look orange this time.

September Thirteenth Tribulations

Welcome to the second monthly Thirteenth Tribulations!  As previous readers are aware, the 13th of each month, Garden Musings hosts a blog circus where you can link your blog telling about your personal gardening tribulation.  In other words, link to a blog entry (made within the last month) that describes your landscape design mistakes, your plant deaths, your battles with deer, or your horticultural mishaps, so everyone else can learn from them!  The LinkyThing opens at 8:00 p.m. tonight and will close at 8:00 a.m. on the morning of the 14th. I'll open up the linky thing by the 13th of every month and then close it at midnight on the 14th.

For my own blog on a garden misery this month, I'll just link to my attempt at poetic license previously on my August 23rd post titled  "Oh Woe, Oh Poe!".

I owe an apology also to Sarah and others who have been trying recently to look at August's Thirteenth Tribulations post.  I had started this monthly series under a free trial subscription to LinkyTools which expired, and so the links went away!  But, surprise(!) I paid the annual subscription and they're back up now so check them out at the link above!

Also, I owe a big thank you to Horticulture's blogging editor Meghan Shinn for putting in a plug for Thirteenth Tribulations!  As I commented on her blog post, "we all may not garden together, but we can commiserate together."  Hope we get a load of folks who look forward each month to participating!

Please link away for this month below!

Sunflowers in Heaven

There are times, in all our lives, when an event so large, so memorable, and so life-altering occurs, that ever after we will recall exactly where we were, and what we were doing, when the paradigm shifted.

My earliest memory, from age 4 1/2, is the funeral of President Kennedy, a memory etched in granite because I somehow remember my mother sitting before the television and crying.  I recall where I was sitting, and what our family room looked like, in the middle of the night when the Eagle of Apollo 11 first touched down on the Moon.  I was in a DisneyWorld motel, interested in politics at a young age, and watching live as President Nixon resigned in '74 while my parents and baby sister enjoyed the rides in the park.  When my childhood dreams of space travel died in 1986 alongside the crew of the space shuttle Challenger, I was watching the launch in the lobby of the University of Wisconsin veterinary school next to the students and the NASA-obsessed Dean.  When Columbia failed to survive reentry into the womb of Earth's atmosphere, I was listening on the radio, driving to Topeka with my son to buy a jewelry cabinet as a Valentine's Day present for Mrs. ProfessorRoush.

And yes, I remember, and will as long as I draw breath, the moments of the morning of 9/11/01.  I was in my office, early on a Tuesday, a surgery morning for me, when a buzz rose from the adjacent client lobby of the veterinary school.  Coming out, I saw the small TV in the lobby tuned to the national news, news-anchors just starting to try to explain the video of smoke coming from the World Trade Center, long before we knew about the Pentagon attack or about Flight 93.  I saw the live video as the second plane hit.  When the first tower fell, at 8:59 a.m. CST, many in the room missed it, but my surgeon's eyes saw the floors drop away into the dust cloud and I knew instantly that hundreds, if not thousands, were gone.  And I remember the days following, glued to the news every spare moment, until it was finally undeniable that the nightmare was real.

All those lost, the innocent souls in the Towers and planes and the Pentagon, and all the brave men and women who tried to rescue them, I like to think of and pray for them all now as bright Kansas sunflowers shining in Heaven, surrounded by a blue Kansas sky, the same clear blue sky that is said to have been over New York on that day long past.  It's a simplistic view of Heaven, I know, but I can think of none better or more perfect. The peak Fall bloom of the Common Sunflower (Helianthus annuus) along the Kansas roadsides is forever linked to my memories of September 11, 2001, because I saw them each day, as I drove safely here in the Heartland to and from work, while America mourned our dead.

And as for the murderers, the subhuman scum who caused the wanton destruction and loss of life ten years ago today, I know that this is not a very kind or noble thought, particularly from a gardener who is trying his best to follow a good path through Life,  but I hope those cowards are rotting in Hell, in the driest and hottest desert without water or food, with scavengers ripping at them every second.  No, I haven't forgotten, nor have I forgiven.


Addendum:  I noticed that my blog friend Hanna, of This Garden Is Illegal, has also blogged about September 11th.  I want to publicly applaud and acknowledge her husband's service and the sacrifice her family is making for our freedom.  Join me to pray for his safety and quick return.

Beds in the Sun

A week or two back into the past, GaiaGardener asked if I would take the time to post some overall pictures of my garden beds to help readers place some of the plants that I write about into their respective 3-D spaces. 

I have agonized for a time over the thought.  Reasonable though the request seemed, it involves an act that many, if not most, gardeners find to be unnatural;  that of the complete exposure of our gardens, with all their un-deadheaded plants, dehydrated hydrangeas, and misplaced statues.  No sanitized focus on the occasional perfect flowers or the dynamic foliage as we see in most blog posts, showing the overall beds will expose the drought-stricken, insect-eaten, fungus-stained reality show that is my garden on most days. I was too young for the free-love movement of the late sixties and have no naturist bent, but I'd bet most of us would sooner post au-natural pictures of ourselves than our naked entire gardens.  The latter seems just a little too exhibitionist-like, a little too revealing for a conscientious gardener.  

But, given the choice between displaying an old man's wrinkles and moles or exhibiting the deficiencies of my garden design, I suppose it is more humane to readers if I choose the latter.  So here we go.  I'll apologize preemptively for the drought-stricken appearance of my sun-blessed garden and for it's lack of overall acceptable design and any number of other faults you may find with it. 

The photo above is a broad, unedited view of what we'll call the Main Garden, taken from my bedroom window. This view is behind the house, faces due south, and shows a corner of my back patio and the surrounding bed, and a broad view of the beds in the "back yard" that slope away  from the small pergola down to an unseen farm pond and then back up towards the Colbert Hills Golf Course and Manhattan proper.  Outside of the photo, to the left,  are two Purple Martin houses and farther on, nothing but prairie, and to the right lies four unpictured trees (Sycamore, Buckeye, Magnolia 'Yellow Bird' and a 'PrairieFire' crab), and then a electric-fenced vegetable garden, a few lines of grapes and blackberries, and a small, slowly-growing orchard wraps to the west.  As you can see, there is no shade in this garden whatsoever, from the unmowed areas of prairie grass in the foreground, to the rose beds at the back.

For the bed descriptions themselves, we'll use the second picture, below, of the left half of the garden.  I labeled the beds with letters, so we can talk about them, and it'll likely take us a couple of posts to get through them.

Bed "A" is what I refer to as my "peony bed," so-named because the main grouping is a collection of about 20 peony varieties in the center and right hand side, backed on the left (east) by some ornamental grasses, forsythia, and Rose of Sharon. If I blog about a peony, it likely exists in this bed since there are only a couple of others scattered about my landscape.  At the far end of this bed is another pergola, covered by a pair of wisteria, that provides an east "exit" to my garden.  

Bed "B" is the second-oldest of my shrub rose beds and it contains about 20 old garden, Canadian, and rugosa roses. I call it my "East Rose Bed." There are no perennials except roses in this bed and the only ornament is my Aga Marsala statute, a chaste young woman reading a book.  In this bed are, among others, 'Pink Grootendorst', 'William Baffin', 'Harison's Yellow', 'Alchymist', 'Robusta', 'Maiden's Blush', and 'Reine Des Violettes'.

Bed "C" is a long narrow bed stretching across half the garden that I know as my "Hydrangea Bed."  It contains, as it's name suggests, 6 Hydrangea paniculata cultivars, from 'Limelight' on the east end to 'Pink Diamond' on the west.  But this is a very mixed perennial bed, with 8 roses, 7 ornamental grasses, a peck of daylilies, a forsythia, and other assorted shrubs.  The centerpiece of the bed is a 7 foot tall wire-supported Clematis paniculata tower.  This is also the bed where I've moved the Zen Frog into a permanent home.

I think we'll stop there and pick this back up in a couple of days.  Stay tuned next week, dear Readers!

Anguish and Joy

Yes, I know that I haven't posted in several days.  No big excuses here, though.  When last Tuesday came around, and the thermometer crossed back over the 100F mark and stayed there through yesterday, I just couldn't face my garden or anything to do with it.  Aside from watering a few potted plants and the surviving roses of the Heirloom Roses shipment from a few weeks back, I hibernated and dreamed of winter.

And dreamed of rain.  We haven't had over 2/10ths of rain in the past month and things are beyond drying up, they're dry.  I haven't done more than mow the edges of the blacktop (where the crabgrass always grows fastest) in a month, so I guess the positive side is that I haven't been sitting on a roaring mower every week.   Last weekend, knowing that summer wasn't saying goodbye without another heat wave, I watered many of the beds, feeling guilty that I was breaking my "no extra water" rule but wanting to protect the  roses, and then I withdrew from the garden and garden thoughts.  Read some trashy vampire-mystery novels (James Butcher and Laura Hamilton) and pretended I was in Alaska.

But, as the psalmist wrote "...Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning" (Psalm 30:5).   Temperatures today (Saturday) in the low 90's are supposed to lead to daytime highs in the 70's through the weekend and a 40% chance for rain tonight.  I don't hold much hope for the rain, since I've seen several weeks of 30% chances come and go, but at least the temperatures will mean that whatever moisture gets added to the garden might stay around more than 30 minutes.

I'll leave you with this; one of my favorite pictures of my now-grown son.  He was born in Wisconsin but we moved here shortly before his first birthday, and in this picture, taken at about 1 1/2 or 2 years of age (he walked before he was 9 months old), he proved himself to be quickly adapting to Kansas weather as he was rejoicing in a surprise shower after a long hot dry period.  I remember I could hardly get him to hold still from slapping those bare feet down in the puddles on the still-warm concrete.   I don't think the Batman shirt would fit me, but this is otherwise exactly what I plan to do the next time it rains here, if it ever rains here again.
   

Sweet Fragrance Abounds

'Sweet Fragrance', 8/26/11

In contrast to my last, less than glowing post about 'April Moon', let me show you a rose that HAS earned a permanent spot in my landscape.  A local nursery that I frequent, Lee Creek Gardens, has a number of the  Bailey Nursery "Easy Elegance(tm)" rose offerings, and several years ago I picked up three of them to try out.  The best of these, I believe, has turned out to be 'Sweet Fragrance', a coral/apricot rose that is aptly named for the sweetly fragrant blossoms.


'Sweet Fragrance' (registered as 'BAInce') blooms continually in my garden, but the sometimes occasional blossoms are bordered by four to five waves of blooms during the season.  She is a Ping Lim-bred rose, introduced in the US by Bailey Nurseries in 2007.  The picture at the right was taken recently during the 4th bloom phase of this summer, still quite prolific despite just coming out of the recent heat wave.  I did not edit or crop the picture at all, it is straight from the camera (except for some compression), as flower-filled as it was taken.  Buds of 'Sweet Fragrance' are hybrid-tea-shaped, but open into somewhat unorganized double blossoms in large clusters that have tones of yellow, orange, coral, pink and apricot all mixed together.  The older the blossom, the pinker it becomes.  The three foot high shrub has had no dieback in three winters and it needs no spray here in Kansas to keep it healthy. 'Sweet Fragrance' was awarded Portland's Best Grandiflora in 2008 and again in 2010.

Ping Lim has only recently come to my attention, but he is already an acclaimed rose hybridizer, with three All American Rose Selections ('Daydream', 'Love and Peace', and 'Rainbow Sorbet') to his credit.  On his website home page, http://www.rosesbyping.com/, there is a fabulous picture of a cream pink and yellow 2012 introduction named 'Music Box' that has me drooling already. Please don't go look at i,t because I'm afraid everyone will want one and they'll be sold out before I find one.

Easy Elegance(tm) roses are all grown on their own roots, and they came to me potted as fairly large plants compared to most marketed own root roses.  All three of the varieties I grow are vigorous and healthy, and sooner or later I'll blog about the rest of them.  But for now, search out 'Sweet Fragrance' to add a peachy note of color and fragrance to your garden.

Too Hot for April Moon

Batten down the hatches! Unusually for me, I'm not going to try to spin any perfect yarn about my love for the rose in today's blog.  Dr. Griffith Buck's 'April Moon' is one of those roses that I've tolerated, but that has yet to grow on me.  It isn't that it is terribly diseased, extremely ugly, or a sparse bloomer, it is simply never quite lived up to my expectations for it.

'April Moon', introduced in 1984, is officially described as a "medium yellow shrub", with "lemon yellow buds" tinted red, opening to double (25-30 petal) blooms of lemon yellow (color code RHSCC 14C).  Here's a neat note;  according to helpmefind.com, 'April Moon' has "28-30 petals.....large double (17-25) petals) bloom form."  Let's make up our minds, shall we?  Is it 30 petals or 17?   'April Moon' is supposed to grow 3 foot tall and four feet wide and have a sweet fragrance.  It was a cross of 'Serendipity' with a seedling of 'Tickled Pink' and 'Maytime'.    

So what is my problem with 'April Moon'?  Let me count the ways.  First, I would never in a million years have called her lemon yellow.  The only blossoms I ever see are white with maybe the mildest yellow tinge.  Perhaps she just can't stand the summer heat in Kansas.   Buck's 'Prairie Harvest' is a much better yellow from that breeding program, if still a very light yellow one.  Second, the rose is barely double in my eyes, seldom reaching 20 petals. And it opens so fast that I've never been able to photograph a bloom in that "half-open" phase.  It seems to be tightly wound in bud one day and then fully open the next.  It has no fragrance that I can find, and three years old, my plant has barely made it to two feet high, let alone three.  In fact, my 'April Moon' is so different from descriptions that I wonder if I was sent the right rose when purchased.

Are there positives about this rose?  Yes, of course there are.  It does seem to be completely hardy without dieback in my Zone 5b climate, and it has good disease resistance.  The photos on this page were taken recently and you can see from the healthy foliage that blackspot is not an issue on this rose (remember that I don't spray for fungal disease in my garden).  The bloom does repeat well throughout the growing season. Most importantly, if you are the sort of rosarian that likes to rave about golden stamens, then you may like this rose because it has stamens in spades.  Me, I'm not ready to spade-prune this rose, but so far, it has been a poor sister to 'Prairie Harvest'. 

Jens Munk mystery cont.

Well, I stuck to the plan and exhumed my dead Jens Munk rose.

I have to be truthful here and admit that I did not carefully follow and dig around each separate root to definitively examine the entire root ball.  In engineering terms, what I did would be described as considering all available environmental factors and determining that the best way to facilitate a solution to the issue was to apply increasing lateral mechanical force to an anchored beam, resulting in a separation of the fauna/soil interface. To the rest of us, it means that on a hot (97F) day, with the Kansas sun bearing down on me, the best I could manage before my body turned to dust was to dig out the soil around the crown of the plant to a depth of 3 inches and encircle it with a really thick rope.  I then tied said rope to the trailer hitch ball on my Jeep, jumped into the air-conditioned Jeep,  put it in first gear, and jammed the accelerator down until I ripped the plant out of the ground.  That is why the remaining roots look so short in the picture to the right.

I learned nothing, essentially.  I could not determine any earthly reason why Jens Munk died.  When you look closely at the picture above, you can see that what I really had here was two plants, the plant at the left of the above picture that died first, and the plant to the right of the picture that recently died.  I cleaved them apart with an axe, as you can see at the left, and examined the cut surface, as you can see below.  Yes, there was a little dirt in the center, but the wood and roots all around that area were firm and showed no evidence of rot.  Cutting into the crown above this with a saw demonstrated no hollow areas of rot or borer damage. There were no cankers or below-ground mushrooms growing here.  No chewed away roots or tunnels running into the prairie soil.  The soil around these roots was moist (but not too moist) and had a pH of 6.4, well below the prairie soil that exists outside my mulched beds, which normally runs in the pH 7.2 range.

So, I can't tell you that I learned anything to shed light on the apparent suicide of Jens Munk.  I have a small, actually a miniscule hope that one of the pieces of roots, now deprived of its above ground Master, will be healthy enough and have enough stored energy to put out a new stem of its own.  Hope, but little faith.  But I'm willing to give it some time, until next Spring perhaps, to see if a miracle will occur.  Then, I'll follow my usual pattern and plant something else in this spot, and shortly thereafter I'm sure that I'll find that Jens Munk is growing again, about one foot to the side of where I just placed the new rose.  It has happened to me that way time and again, but I'm quite willing to accept tempting the Fates, if that is the price of adding Jens Munk to my garden again.

Good Morning Queen Bee

'Queen Bee', 8/26/11

 As I think about what I'm planning for the next few blogs (and including yesterday's blog), I'm afraid in danger of spending a little too much time on roses at the expense of offending those readers with broader gardening minds.  But, hey, what can I say?  Deep, deep down, I'm a rose guy and the Fall flush is coming.  Bear with me and I'll try to intersperse a few blogs on something else. 

But today I certainly can't resist showing you the candelabra growth on my young 'Queen Bee' rose, finally opening last night.  I noticed yesterday that it was blooming too late to get a decent shot (or at least what I'll accept as a decent shot, poor though it would be to a professional photographer). So I ran out this morning as the sun rose to catch this glowing red rose at its best, in this case backlit by an eastern sun at 6:30 a.m.  I can't wait for this rose to get some growth on it beyond this first year in the ground, because I've got a hunch that I'm going to be royally pleased with 'Queen Bee' for years to come. 

'Queen Bee' is a 1984 introduction from Dr. Griffith Buck.  She has dark red buds that open to cupped, very double, blood red blooms with a decent fragrance.  You can see from the foliage of this rose that blackspot is not an issue here in Kansas.  Since this is 'Queen Bee's first year in my garden, I can't vouch for her hardiness here yet, but this complex cross of  a seeding of 'Rosali' X 'Music Maker' to another seedling of 'Square Dancer' X 'Tatjana', should be able to do fine in my Kansas Zone 5b climate.  She is, however, the most floriferous of the 6 new Buck roses I planted last Spring, literally blooming her head off all summer. 

I love bright red roses in general and this one is destined to become special to me. 

Rainbow's End

I was recently asked by an anonymous email if Mrs. ProfessorRoush has a favorite rose, and if I know which rose it is.  I am suspicious that it was Mrs. ProfessorRoush, herself, who may have asked the question just as a test to see if I've been listening, but I'm going to answer it here anyway to prove that I DO know the answer as every good gardening husband should.

'Rainbow's End' miniature rose

Mrs. ProfessorRoush has long been captivated by miniature roses. In the heyday of Nor'East Miniature roses, I planted a number of miniatures right outside the kitchen door for her enjoyment, but that was also during a time before I discovered how hot, dry, and windswept that particular planting area really was. Needless to say, the miniatures dwindled there over time, despite my best efforts, and I have since moved the survivors to more hospitable sites. Her favorite rose, however, then as well as now, was the Nor'East miniature introduction 'Rainbow's End'. Since I know which side of my bread is buttered, I strive to keep a couple of them around, and I leave a few blooms on her nightstand from time to time.  I don't know what it is about that rose, the color, the form or the general cheerfulness of the blossoms, but 'Rainbow's End' is the one rose that Mrs. ProfessorRoush commands me to keep around.

'Rainbows End' (Registered as 'SAValife') is a 1984 introduction by Harm Saville that grows about one foot tall and in diameter for me.  It has beautiful, perfect, hybrid-tea-shaped double, yellow 1.5 inch blossoms whose edges are dipped in red.  The red spreads towards the center as the blossom ages, and no two blossoms on the same plant ever look alike.  'Rainbow's End' is a cross of the classic yellow miniature 'Rise n Shine' and the pink 'Watercolor'.  It won the Award of Excellence (AOE) for Miniatures in 1986 and it is often an award winner on the flower show tables.  Disease resistance in my garden is good, although very near the end of the season I sometimes see a little blackspot or lose some leaves at the base of this rose. I see some dieback in my Zone 5b climate, but Kansas winters haven't killed one yet. There is a climbing sport on the market, but I have only grown the bush form.

So, whoever asked if I knew which was Mrs. ProfessorRoush's favorite rose, I hope that I passed the test.  If it was actually Mrs. ProfessorRoush being sneaky, I'm glad she didn't ask me for the color of the Bobbi Brooks pantsuit she wore on our first date or, for that matter, what the names of the kids are or if I know how many years I've been married.  Non-gardening things are sometimes to difficult to recall. 

Oh Woe, Oh Poe

Once upon a noontime dreary,
while I staggered hot and weary,
ending up my daily chores.
I came upon a redbud stout,
with dying leaves and stems about,
and branches on the garden floor.

The wind had capped it, neatly snapped it,
When? I'll never know for sure.
But less than I could not go by
and leave this at my backyard door.
I could not leave this mess to clutter,
but was loudly heard to mutter,
"Help me Lord, don't test me more."

So up the tree went tools and me,
I climbed the trunk and scraped my knee
I sawed till I was dearly sore.
The dead branch I removed forthwith,
The blighted look is now a myth,
And dead leaves I saw nevermore.

I heard the tree cry "Nevermore!"

(For those who prefer their explanations in more clear language than my feeble attempts at Poe-ish poetry, I was dead tired last Sunday, when I noticed that a branch had been broken off Mrs. ProfessorRoush's favorite redbud.  Even for a dehydrated, overheated gardener, the dead leaves were a dead giveaway.  So, knowing that Mrs. ProfessorRoush would be highly displeased if I failed to trim the damage on her favorite tree, I climbed and handsawed off the broken spire, which happened to be the growth leader of the tree.  Darned fickle Kansas winds!) 

 P.S.  As you can see from the sky in the top picture, it may have been beastly hot, but it was otherwise a gorgeous Kansas day!   

50 and Counting!

I've not much time in my blogging phase today since I'm busy at the real job, but I thought it's an appropriate time to note that Garden Musings gained its 50th public follower this weekend!  I want to recognize and thank all those whose readership and encouragement keeps me blogging.  Whether you follow my blog publicly or through email or feeds, Thank You!  My occasional sanity depends on you, each and every one.

The sunny face at the right is a volunteer descendant of some 'Mammoth' sunflowers I planted last year.  This one cropped up outside my garden fence line in the prairie, happy as can be, not as big as her forebears, but just as cheery. 

Final (Touch) Daylily

'Final Touch' daylily

Whew!  One of my favorite daylilies, dual clumps that lie next to either side of my front steps, had not bloomed at all this year and I had given them up as bad drought actors until yesterday.  Daylilies, however, are as dependable as the sun in Kansas and finally these late actors both bloomed, taking center stage as my landscape begins to take on Fall tones.

This is 'Final Touch', a late-blooming daylily as one would expect from its name, but I never expected it to start blooming quite THIS late.  This beautiful diploid has 4 inch soft bicolored pink and cream flowers with a green throat and it is quite fragrant.  It is classified as winter dormant, but of course that means nothing to gardeners in Kansas since every daylily is dormant here.

'Final Touch' belongs to a group of daylilies labeled as "Trophytakers®."  I had never heard the term before, and my Gogglefoo powers must be weak today, because I still can't definitively find out what organization or individual is behind it.  The original website for the group seems to be down.  From hints here and there, I think these may be selections by famed daylily breeder Darrell Apps of Woodside nursery;  not all are his daylilies, but I believe he was the evaluator of all of them.   I was able to find out that it is a group of 50 outstanding daylilies that must all bloom for a minimum of 42 days, more than double the average daylily.  I can't find what climate they are supposed to bloom for 42 days in, but if Mr. Apps selected them all, it must have been in Kentucky.  Certainly, any daylily that starts to bloom in Kansas in late August may not have 42 days left until first frost.  Trophytaker® daylilies must be vigorous growers and hardy to Zone 5.  They must be "beautiful" (however that may have been determined), the foliage must remain attractive till late in the season, and they must be insect and disease resistant.  I don't know why I've never heard the term, because I grow a number of the other Trophytaker® daylilies; 'Barbara Mitchell', Red Rum', and 'Joylene Nichole', among others.

Regardless, I view 'Final Touch' as a fitting end to my daylily season. If there has to be a rear end to the long string of daylilies, at least it's a beautiful rear end.

Death of a Monk

'Jens Munk', 8/19/11

The game is afoot Watson, for a great mystery has arisen on the prairie.  On Monday, I returned from a 4 day trip, little knowing that gloom and despair had visited my garden in my absence.  From as far away as the windows of the house, though, I could easily see that a monk had died in my garden.  A 'Jens Munk' Canadian Rose, that is. I took a picture of it this morning so you could view the dearly departed with me.  Completely sad, isn't it?  Click on the picture if you absolutely must see it in vivid detail.

'Jens Munk', 4/24/11

I'd been watching and nursing this beautiful shrub rose along for over a year, pampering it with judicious compost and water, but now that it has given up the struggle, I'm determined to investigate the death until the culprit is identified and blame is assigned.  As regular readers of my blog know, I first noticed the rose had a problem last fall when approximately half of the bush suddenly died and I talked about it then in this blog post.  At the time, I was blaming the late summer drought we had last year and you can bet that I lavished some extra care and water on it this year, especially in the long stretch of 100+F temps we had in July.  It started out the year pretty decently, with the remaining bush leafing out well and looking healthy as you can see at the left.  A couple of new canes had sprouted in the vicinity of the dead ones I had pruned, and I had hopes that the bush was going to recover.  Alas, in the span of a few short days the rest of the bush went from green, to brown and shriveled, and it did it in the period after we had finally had some cool relief from the drought and summer heat stress. 

I'm slightly torn between digging it up to get "at the root of the problem" or leaving the roots alone in case some surviving tender rootlet wants to regrow.  This rose has never suckered as most Rugosa hybrids do, so I don't have the benefit of being able to get an easy start of it.  I've decided to uproot it to inspect the roots anyway.  I can't imagine what the issue was;  no visible disease, no rot in the canes I cut off last year, no rodent activity in the area, no sign of iron chlorosis. I've never seen crown or rose gall here on my roses and there is no evidence of it on the surface of this own-root plant.  The other roses closest to it, including 'Robusta', 'Blanc Double de Coubert', 'Alchymist', and 'Louise Odier' , are all doing well and look healthy.  At least two of those are also Rugosa hybrids, so I can't blame the bloodlines.  I'll examine the root system, the canes, and also test a soil sample for pH.  One thing I'm sure of is that the rose didn't get too dry this year.

In memory of this cold-hardy beauty of a rose, taken from me in the prime of her life, despite her excellent overall form, healthy foliage, nice pink blush, and the few plump hips that I always admired winter, I give you 'Jens Munk', glorious in May of 2009, before the decline started:

Bountiful Bourbon

'Coquette des Blanches'

It has taken only four years to realize that the Bourbon rose 'Coquette des Blanches' was a great selection for me to grow here in Kansas.  My records show that I planted it in 2007, but I have absolutely no idea where I came across this rose.  Several posters to the Internet talk about getting it as a bagged cheap plant at Home Depot, so perhaps that was where I found it in the spring of '07.  I also don't know, other than the fact that I love the Bourbon fragrance, why I thought this Zone 6 rated rose would grow in my 5B climate.  But grow it does, and it rivals the continuous blooming shrub roses in my garden for floriferousness in the summer heat.

'Coquette des Blanches' was a 1871 introduction by Mons. Lacharme, who was reportedly trying to breed a pure white rose.  Unfortunately for Mons. Lacharme, 'Coquette des Blanches' isn't white, but rather a blush white or pale pink. The French translation of the name, "vain of the white ones" is probably a snooty  comment on the impure color.  At least it wasn't grubbed out at birth, but was recognized as a beautiful and valuable rose to pass on to civilization.  The flower is fully double and slighly cupped, with a strong Bourbon scent.  It often opens to show that little green pip at the center that I appreciate in Old Garden Roses.  It stands about 5 feet tall here in the Flint Hills at 4 years of age, with a nice vase-like shape and healthy foliage, but I've seen descriptions from California where this rose makes it to 9 feet tall.  I can attest that it is hardier here than the Zone 6 it is commonly rated at because I've seen no winter dieback at all over 4 winters here in 5B.  No blackspot either, and I never spray it.



06/29/2011, 2nd bloom

The real value of this rose however, other than the beautiful pale pink tones of the flowers, lies in the fast and reliable repeat of the blooms.  This is not a typical Bourbon in my climate like 'Variegata di Bologna', repeating once, sparsely, if I'm lucky. in the Fall.  'Coquette des Blanches' blooms almost continously and drop cleanly, leaving no hips behind.  Just take a look at the second bloom phase, from June 29th of this year, shown at left.  Additionally, for an almost white rose, the petals don't turn brown and linger on the bush as 'Blanc Double de Coubert' or 'Frau Karl Druschki' are apt to do, but they fall away pink. I don't deadhead my roses, so you can see from the picture at the left that this is one of the most self-cleaning roses you'll ever grow.  My 'Coquette des Blanches' is in it's fourth bloom phase right now, just out of the extreme heat of summer, and every bit as covered as the 2nd bloom cycle pictured.

If and when you can find it, give 'CdB' a try.  I wish I could tell you where to obtain it, but you won't regret it if you get it in the ground.

 

Hummer Time

My gardening year is now complete because the hummingbirds have finally appeared at my feeder.  I don't know how it is in other parts of the Midwest, but here in Kansas, I go through a distinct pattern every year taking care of the hummers and I generally feel a little slighted by them in the late spring and summer.

I always watch a migration website carefully in the spring and put out my feeder just after they are sighted in Wichita. Then I spend the months of May, June, and July, waiting, filling the feeder, watching the ants and the wind empty the feeder (liquid doesn't stay long in a feeder that is blown horizontally by the wind), cleaning the feeder, and refilling the feeder.  It is a never ending cycle.  But for at least the last five years, I haven't seen any hummingbirds until early August.  Maybe they head for town first and around August people tire of feeding them in town so they have to look around more.  Maybe the nectar opportunities in the rest of my garden are better in May, June and July and so they don't have to resort to the artificial stuff where I'm more likely to spot them. Perhaps they visit me now because they're storing up for the fall migration and I provide them ready, rich food. Maybe they have a betting pool to see how long the stupid gardener will keep at the fruitless endeavor of filling the feeder.

Regardless, just about the time I stop paying attention to the feeder, when the hot weather breaks, I almost always suddenly spy one exploring the feeder, as I did early this week on a cool morning.  I immediately filled the empty feeder, and now, once again, I have a pair of Ruby-Throated hummers darting in every few minutes. The Ruby-Throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris) is the only hummer I've seen in this area and its migration route comes right through the center of Kansas. The male, pictured above where you can see a hint of his deep-red throat, actually spends most of his time sitting on top of the feeder stand, guarding the feeder and all he surveys. He is not very chivalrous, as is the nature of his species after mating, because he regularly chases the female away.  Ruby-Throated hummingbird males are not committed spouses, so after quick courtship and copulation on the ground (something they have in common with humans), the males don't stick around to provide a stable living for the family (okay, perhaps another thing in common with an increasing percentage of humans). It's the female who builds the nest and raises the young.  The female of the pair, pictured at left, scurries in and out when the male is gone and I probably should follow her to see if she has had a nest somewhere nearby.  By now, any nest should be empty, but it is possible she has been hanging around all summer spending most of her time at my honeysuckle and salvia and has raised a brood here.

I'm not current on my slang or rap music, but as opposed to "hammer time," "hummer time" sounds, and is,  quite a bit nicer (no jokes here, please).  I certainly appreciate the visits to my garden from the hummingbirds, however late they may be, for the lightness and cheerfulness of their presence.  They're about as close to being real garden fairies as I'm ever actually going to see.    

Thirteenth Tribulations

Well, everyone, let us give it the old College try, shall we?  As promised before, I'd like to try hosting a monthly blog link party with the subject of garden trials, mistakes, and bad outcomes.  There are several link parties for beautiful pictures or interesting blog posts out there on the web, but I've always thought that I learn better from mistakes.  Maybe by sharing our mistakes here, we can help others avoid them.  We'll call it "Thirteenth Tribulations," because it'll run the thirteenth of every month and because I am fond of alliteration and I needed another "T", and a "tribulation" is "an experience that tests one's endurance, patience, or faith."  I don't know about you, but I find my gardening patience, faith and endurance tested almost daily, so I'll always have plenty of material to link.   I'll open up the linky thing on the 13th of every month and then close it at midnight on the 14th.

And this is the inaugural linking post!  So everyone, please dig in and link to a post on your blog or website that is about a gardening lesson learned;  some plant that doesn't do well in your area, some poor plant color combination that you tried, some episode where the squirrel dug up all your tulips, or a story about that time that the ice storm snapped off your Japanese Maple.  For the first one, we won't worry about how far back the original post was, but after this, we can try to keep to posts within the previous month or so.  Everyone ready?  Link away!

(I'm being especially bold, by the way, because I'm posting this first linky during a period where I'm going to be away from the computer for a day or so.  Well, God loves children and fools and...hopefully...bloggers stretching their abilities). 

The Biggest Disappointments

Sometimes it doesn't pay to get your hopes up, does it?  As my own example for tomorrow's inaugural "Thirteenth Tribulations" blog party, I'll give you a look at a plant that I had the most tremendous hopes for.  Early this spring, the yellow-foliaged plant pictured at the right popped up in one of my beds and I couldn't remember planting anything like it for the life of me.  I was able to identify it later from my plant maps as Coreopsis tripteris ‘Lightning Flash’ (introduced in 2007), which I had planted in 2009 but don't remember seeing at all in 2010.  All spring and early summer it grew up, keeping the delicious yellow foliage until a few weeks ago.  The picture is from April 27th, but the clump eventually got over 3 feet tall and kept that yellow hue to the foliage, a fine counterpart to the bluish Panicum it was planted near. 

Well, at least it kept the yellow hue until it got ready to bloom.  At about the 3 foot height, this beautiful plant turned a nondiscript green and disappeared into the border. I was still hoping for a spectacular bloom from it, but alas, the pretty yellow flowers, pictured up close at the left as they began to bloom last week, are lost from a distance as you can see below to the right.

Talk about your letdowns. None of the published descriptions of  'Lightning Flash' that I could find suggested that it would have a disappointing bloom, although the Kemper Center website suggested that it is "perhaps better known for its foliage than for its yellow flowers."  The plant IS drought tolerant and needed no extra water in full sun, so I'm not going to throw it out of the border, but it has left me wanting.  I'm hoping that all those buds that remain open simultaneously to give me one last, large peep show.  I never expected such an exhibitionist plant would turn so shy as it flowered.