Montebello's Duchesse

It is with more than a little surprise that a recent post on GardenWeb.com reminded me that I've never blogged about one of my favorite Old Garden Roses, the Gallica 'Duchesse de Montebello'.  The sheer delinquency of my neglect bothers me deeply and is a worrisome sign of my aging.

'Duchesse de Montebello' was bred by Jean Laffay in 1824, and is variously referred to as a Hybrid China or a Hybrid Gallica.  Whatever her breeding, this etheral, exquisite, once-blooming pink double rose is one of the upper hoi oligoi, a regal lady of the rose world, comfortable associating in snooty company such as the beautiful 'Madame Hardy'.  She is, in simpler modern terms, a Supermodel of the rose world.  She opens from rounded buds into a quartered and sometimes cupped form that usually has a greenish-white pip at the center.  Her hue in my garden seems to depend on the temperature, with deeper pinks seen in cold weather as evidenced by the difference in the blooms pictured on this page.  'Duchesse de Montebello has a strong sweet fragrance and has a minimally thorny nature.  Her overall form, both flower and the vase-shaped bush, is delicate, but she is very hardy in my 6A climate (the Swedish Rose society recommends her for Sweden!)  and she is free of blackspot and mildew without spraying. 

At maturity in my garden, 'Duchesse de Montebello' stands 5 feet tall and 3 feet wide this year.  She did get up to 6 feet previously, but I severely pruned her two years back and she has behaved herself since.  I will tell you that I've noticed some tendency to roam as she has aged, recently finding a couple of nearby-suckered daughters growing at her feet like illegitimate offspring from a seven-year-itch inspired dalliance.  I have not reprimanded her for her promiscuity, but merely transplanted the daughters across the garden, spreading the wealth, as it were.

'Duchesse de Montebello' is so good that she has been used in the breeding programs of several rosarians, among which are David Austin and Paul Barden.  I have previously written that Paul Barden has mated her with  'St Swithins' to breed 'Allegra' and 'Abraham Darby' to breed 'Marianne'.  Paul Barden writes  that her ability to pass on genes that result in remonant offspring suggests that she is, in fact, a result of a Gallica cross with China or Noisette blood, as some have suggested.  Whatever her heritage, this is a rose I can recommend to anyone who looks to add a classic Old Garden Rose to their gardens.

A Lost Rose

Saturday, on Gardenweb.com, I learned that the great rosarian Peter Beales had passed on to a more perfect garden on January 26, 2013, at the age of 76.  There are few, I'm sure, in the group of gardeners who love roses or follow rose breeding, that are unaware of Mr. Beales and his legacy of roses.  Born on July 22, 1936, he started out early on a path that would lead to a lifetime working with roses, first as an apprentice at LeGrice Roses and then serving as manager of  Hillings Rose Nursery in Surrey, working under the guidance of Graham Stuart Thomas and later succeeding Mr. Thomas as Foreman of Roses.  In 1968, he formed Peter Beales Roses in Norfolk, a firm still in existence and found online at www.classicroses.co.uk.  He started exhibiting at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 1971 and won 19 Gold medals during his lifetime, the last just in May of 2012.  He twice won the  RHS Lawrence Medal for the best exhibit of the year at an RHS show, and served as president of the Royal National Rose Society in 2003. 

Helpmefind.com lists 23 roses bred or discovered by Peter Beales and another 42 roses bred or discovered by his daughter Amanda, who continues to run the business with her brother Richard.  I'm sad to admit that not a single one of these roses has made it across the Pond to my garden, at least under their British names, but I'll make an effort to purchase at least one for his legacy in my garden.  Where Mr. Beales had his greatest influence on American rosarians, however, lies in the prolific output of his pen.  Helpmefind.com lists 9 books on roses authored by Peter Beales.  I have copies in my library of the 1992 edition of Roses (1985, Henry Holt), and the 1997 edition of Classic Roses (1985, Henry Holt).  Both are classics of the field and I refer to them often for authoritative information on old roses.  As a simple testament to Peter Beales' influence in the world of roses, if you look on Amazon at Peter's author page, and then move over to the side where it lists other authors with books purchased by people who have bought Peter's books, that list reads like a Who's Who of rosedom;  Clair Martin, Stephen Scanniello, William Welch, Thomas Christopher, David Austin, Graham Stuart Thomas and Liz Druitt, among many others.  During a search on Amazon, I learned of his third classic work, Twentieth Century Roses (1988), which I must find a copy of and  soon.  Later works that I'd never before glimpsed, including A Passion for Roses (2004) and Visions of Roses (1996), also look interesting.   Mr. Beales' obituaries also list a 2008 autobiography, Rose Petals and Muddy Footprints, that I can't find for sale anywhere right now, but which I'll keep an eye out for in the future.

From his obituary on the  website of The Telegraph, I picked up this most interesting story;  "Once, while visiting Jersey to give a lecture, Beales was passing a garden when he spied a peach-coloured “Gardenia”, an old climbing variety bred in America in 1899 which had been thought lost. He knocked at the door and, getting no reply, turned back. But one of the rare rose’s shoots had caught on his trousers, and when he got home he successfully propagated it — one of many varieties he managed to save from extinction."   Yeah, right.  So there you have it;  Peter Beales, extraordinary rosarian, author, nurseryman, father....and, just like the rest of us, not above stooping to a little discrete rose rustling for the greater good of mankind.  A rosarian after my own heart.

Generous Gardeners

If you've spent any quality time among gardening people, you know that they come from all walks of life and exist in all spices and flavors.  Even after several years of association with a much varied group of Extension Master Gardeners, I would be hard-pressed to name five common traits among the various personalities.  I believe, however, that I have identified one characteristic that all gardeners seem to have in common; generosity.  Whether we're digging up starts of daylilies for a passing stranger, handing out flower seeds at garden shows, or just plain sharing our knowledge of our hobby, gardeners are generous to a fault.  Well, to be completely honest, except in those few occasions where we've got a new plant that no one else is growing.  In that case a little one-up-man-ship is certainly excusable as a very human failing.

I was the recipient of grand gardening generosity recently when I received a surprise package from a reader just after Christmas containing two marvelous DVD's.  Knowing of my rose passions, this thoughtful individual sent me a DVD of Louise Mitchell's 2012 documentary of the preservation of the roses in Sacramento's Historic Rose Garden,  and what appears to be a bootleg copy of Roger Phillip's 1993 six-part series for the BBC titled "Quest for the Rose."

I've enjoyed both immensely, initially diving quickly into the Cemetery Rose documentary, for a fascinating story of the collision of passion and opportunity among old rose lovers.  Lately, however, I've spent time again and again with Roger Phillips on his travels.  That six-part documentary is not only great entertainment, it's highly educational, and a perfect companion to Phillip's book of the same name.  With his friend and coauthor, Martyn Rix, popping in and out of the series, Roger Phillips travels the world following the development of modern roses, from the first 35 million year old rose fossils found in Colorado, to Turkey, to China, to France, to Britain, and to America.  Along the way he visits Josephine's Malmaison and Alcatraz, he has a British museum expert write the word "rose" in the scrawl of ancient Babylonia, and he follows Petrie to the monasteries of China, traveling in cars, boats, bikes, and on foot.  We meet rosarians who are all old friends to us through their writings: Graham Stuart Thomas, Peter Beales, Fred Boutin, Miriam Wilkins, Ellen Willmott, and Clair Matin, among others.  To hear the real voices of these people, several now dead, strikes me as deeply as listening to John Kennedy's inaugural or Neil Armstrong's first moon steps.  Phillips, himself, comes off as one of those eccentric rose fanatics we're all familiar with, inseparable from a really hideous orange pair of reading glasses, and bounding up mountains in France in search of a wild rose whose location is known only from notes in a 100 year old book.  The scene of an ecstatic Roger Phillips dropping to his knees on a steep hillside to sniff a wild R. gallica will be with me forever.

I can't thank my benefactor enough for my Christmas gift, this entertainment that has sustained me through the winter, but as you have probably noticed, I am keeping the source unnamed here lest he/she be hounded by hordes of salivating rose lovers seeking copies of their own.  I have, however, in gratitude,  passed on a copy of Phillip's series to another rose nut, another link in the chain of a passion passed on from enthusiast to fanatic, zealot to fellow addict.

David Thompson Lives (For Now)

It is a poorly-kept secret that our Government officials, soon after being elected or appointed, quickly learn to use Friday as a day to dump bad news on the unsuspecting public.  Few of us, the over-taxed serfs, take notice of anything except family and fun on Friday nights and weekends.  The goal is to divulge the bad news Friday after the newspapers have been written and then hope that it'll be forgotten by Monday.  Following that example, I'm going to use the dead of winter to finally discuss 'David Thompson' in Garden Musings.  Maybe that way someone, somewhere will still find him worthwhile to grow.

'David Thompson' is one of the Explorer Series Collection of roses.  It was released by Agriculture Canada in 1979 and bred by Dr. Felicitas Svejda.  Named after a famous British-Canadian fur trader, 'David Thompson' is officially a medium red Hybrid Rugosa rose that repeats occasionally throughout the summer.  My mature, 11 year old specimen has never grown lower than three feet tall nor higher than four feet tall, and it has is 3-4 feet in width as well, a rotund aging specimen much like the local gardener.  The leaves are strongly rugose, and the flowers open quickly to flat semi-double disorganized disks with golden stamens.  'David Thompson is thought to be the result of an open pollination between 'Schneezwerg' and 'Fru Dagmar Hartopp'. 

I thoroughly hate this rose.  It holds a prominent spot in my back landscape bed and I have regretted placing it there from that first summer at this house.   Why, you ask, do I hate 'David Thompson'?  Let me count the ways.  First, the official description of medium red really means, in similar fashion to other roses described as medium red, that it is really a lousy shade of glaring bluish-pink that clashes with the clear pink tones of 'Carefree Beauty' to the west and the pale pink of 'Fantin Latour' to the east (see the photo below).  Second, the frequent white-streak added to the petals only make them look less refined. Third, even though a relatively small Rugosa, it is a thorny vicious beast, grabbing me every time I dare to shortcut across the bed within its reach.  Fourth, although it doesn't sucker far, it does sucker, slowly expanding the width of the clump and threatening to take more lebensraum than it deserves.  Fifth, the flat flowers are as uninspiring in form as they are in color, and they bring to mind a teenager's messy bedroom-nest, a phenomenon that I hoped to have left behind by this stage in life.  Sixth, although described as being "strongly fragrant", it has only mild, if any fragrance, to my personal sniffer.  All of that, and one more thing; the petals crumple quickly in the extreme heat of August, like fried pink potato chips.

'Carefree Beauty', left, and 'David Thompson', right

After reading my previous not-high praise, your second question must surely be, "why don't you spade-prune him if you hate him so much?"   To my constant chagrin, I must, in fairness, disclose that "David Thompson" remains so carefree and healthy that I have not yet become disgusted enough to take that final act, even though I annually reconsider that decision during the first bloom period.  'David Thompson' needs no extra water, no fertilizer, will almost always have a bloom or two somewhere, and he is bone-cold hardy down to USDA Zone 2.  He blooms almost incessantly, although never prolifically after the first flush.  It never has blackspot or mildew or insect damage.  My only hope is that he succumbs to a good infection of Rose Rosette disease.

I did have a good laugh while researching this rose.  A comment from "Monika" on the helpmefind.com listing for 'David Thompson' states it is an "ugly Rugosa thing establishing its sucking roots in my garden only because I mistook it for 'Henry Kelsey', but hey, it blooms!"  Monika, whoever and wherever you are, I think that sums up my feelings on 'David Thompson' perfectly!

Winter's Prayer

Deep in ground where Cold Ones dwell,
The garden goes to rest, so weary
Green Life dormant, tranced by spell
Of glacial Winter, damp and dreary.

Rootlets dream of golden days,
Rain trickling down the pores of earth,
Buds sleep soft in frozen slumber,
Biding strength til their rebirth.

Demeter's hoary breath to mourn
Persephones loss to Hades forewarns,
The time of death, the time of ice,
Has come by now to poach the price,
Of life grown in warm Summer's day,
Vital and verdant put away,
By Fall the stocks of sugars stored,
To yield in Spring their sweet reward.

Like the garden, stills the gardener,
Waiting for the time of bloom,
Aching bones and crying sinew,
Wallowing in depths of gloom.

Gardener's also dream of sunshine,
Warm days, wet springs, gentle mist,
Serves to keep the growers lifeline,
Thoughts of days of Summer's bliss.

Hermes fly with rapid haste
To fetch Spring's maiden for embrace,
The time of growth, the time of life,
Must surely come to ease the strife,
Of frozen Winter, running down,
The sands of Time revolving round,
March the lion, April's tears,
Come May, come June, come back this year.

Deep in ground, where Cold Ones dwell,
The garden waits, and rests and sleeps,
Buds and tendrils wait to swell,
And grow and bloom and ever leap.

Breakneck Barnraising

ProfessorRoush knows almost nothing about building large structures or even Lego houses, but if there's one thing I do know about construction, it is that cement walls get built fast.  A week ago on Friday, there was only a big dirt hole and a foundation when they suddenly began setting up concrete forms for the walls. 






By Monday, the forms were up and the walls had been poured.  It was not impressive to look at since, to me, it just looked like a giant steel fish tank from the top and sides. 





On Wednesday, the forms were down and I was beginning to see the building it would become.  The small door on the left is a walk-in entrance, and the three large openings to the front are garage-bay doors.  All of the latter are going to be manually-operated since I'll probably just open them once on any given work day and I don't feel like robbing the planet for the materials and energy consumed by three more garage door openers.


Yesterday, they poured the floor for the 35' X 20' space and they laid the foundation drains and filled in the back.  Now it just needs a roof to be a functional shelter for the new tractor and implements.

Eventually, the front and about half of the sides gets bricked like the house. You may notice the pipe standing up against the far (north) wall.  There are 4 of these spaced around that third bay and their purpose is to anchor some gates, fencing, and cattle feeding troughs to separate it off from the rest of the space.  This spring, I'll connect that area with the pasture and then, by early Autumn, there are a couple of bred, tame, Angus heifers in my future.  After thirty years of apartment living or backyard horticulture, ProfessorRoush needs some Zen time with a couple of quiet, loving, 800 lb pets.  Stay tuned this fall and we'll have a naming contest for my new girls.

Shockingly Old News

BLAAWH!  BLAAWH! BLAAWH!  I'd like to interrupt my previously scheduled programming with the following terrible news bulletin:  In response to my flippant comment yesterday about the seeming recent dearth of mail-order catalogues and my hope that I wouldn't hear of any new nursery closings, a kind reader has informed me that I have missed the demise of one of my favorite xeriscapic plant sources, David Salmon's High Country Gardens.

Since a quick panicked search of the Internet has shown this to be yesterday's (or at least last November's) news, most of you probably already know about it and may be resigned to it.  I don't know how I missed it, but I do now realize why I haven't seen a catalogue yet this year from High Country Gardens instead of the seemingly monthly catalogues I used to get.  I have that feeling people get when they go out to feed the cats and suddenly realize that they haven't seen them around for a week or so.

All may not yet be completely lost, I pray. The High Country Gardens company website states that mail order may still continue for at least the 2013 season, but it sounds like the retail stores have closed and the company is reorganizing.  Still quite a shock to me, though.  I had recently seen and enjoyed David Salmon as the featured speaker at the Kansas State Master Gardener's Conference and I had been planning a High Country order this spring derived from notes I made during Salmon's presentation.  Where now, am I going to get new Agastache, Gaillardia and Salvia?

I'm afraid, friends, that this is going to get worse before it gets better.  I've seen it occurring in the specialty rose mail-order businesses and to some of the large mail-order nurseries, but I never expected it with a company I thought was as popular as High Country Gardens.  I'm a little worried now that the weekly emails I've been getting from K. Van Bourgondien and others are not just overexuberant marketing, but may be, in fact, a cry for help.  All I can do is make a plea for all of us to help out your favorite speciality nurseries by placing any size order you can afford, and soon.  Walmart and Home Depot may be inexpensive and convenient, people, but they're not going to offer 'Madame Hardy', or for that matter, Agastache 'Desert Sunrise'.  Gardening is going to be a poorer hobby if High Country Gardens does cease business, but it will be unbearable if we're ultimately restricted to purple barberries, 'Stella de Oro' daylilies, and boring junipers because of our shortsighted pocketbooks and lack of effort. 

Caution, Barn Ahead!

Pipevine Swallowtail on Purple-leaf Honeysuckle

So, has the anticipation built enough yet?  I've stayed away from my blog because it is too cold here to even think about gardening.  The world is not  imposing any gardening musings on me either, since I've only received two seed and bulb catalogues in the mail this year.  Is the lack of catalogues a sign of the garden economy?  Next, will I hear that more mail order nurseries are cutting back or out of business?  I hope not.

I have been forced to brave the cold however to plan and keep track of my huge winter project.  I previously wrote about the home farm sale and my trip back home to gain some tools, but one of the biggest tools is yet to make it to Kansas;  a small tractor with all the trimmings for cutting pasture and garden cultivation!  And before it can come, I've got to have storage space built, so I've finally begun construction of an outbuilding/toolshed/barn which will house the tractor, implements, lawn mowers, hoses, and all the other gardening paraphernalia that Mrs. ProfessorRoush blames for dirtying up her garage.  In short, I'm building a big gardener's playhouse and being banished to it.

In my area, outbuildings have to match the design and roof line of the house according to the local homeowner's agreement, so, to limit the amount of brick I have to buy and to decrease the visibility of the structure, I decided to bury it in the hillside just east of the house, pictured above and below, with the 3-bay entrance facing the pasture.  This hillside was too steep to mow, and years ago I planted it with a dozen seedlings of purple-leaf honeysuckle, which spread rapidly to adequately cover the rocky hillside and provides me plenty of pleasurable perfume each spring.

One day, a couple of weeks back, it was an overgrown mass of honeysuckle, lifeless in winter, and infested with pack rats and snakes.  The next day it was a hole in the ground, exposing the rocky soil profile to the world as I noted in my last post.

So, goodbye to the honeysuckle, hello to the barn!  Well, at least temporarily adios to the honeysuckle because although I've never heard her mention it before, Mrs. ProfessorRoush has made me promise to replant "her" beloved honeysuckle that she now claims she enjoys so much.  I agreed in principle to keep some of the honeysuckle, but primarily for the benefit of the Pipevine Swallowtail butterflies and not at all due to the wailings and tongue-lashing from Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  Tomorrow or the next day, I'll show you the walls that have gone up this week.  One good thing about concrete walls;  they go up fast!

Rocky Rumblings

So where, Dear ProfessorRoush, have you been?  My email has been ringing whilst my blog has been quiet for over a week, but yet never fear, back again, I am.

I confess that I have taken a short January break, toppled over by the dual effects of a moderately-severe gastrointestinal flu that sapped my energy for a few days and by an attack of the mid-winter doldrums. Even the winter catalogues seem slow in coming this year and my gardening enthusiasm is at the apogee of annual orbit in my soul.   January, you are so cruel and hard, and my spirit is so weak and desolate without the sunshine.

I have been forced into a winter project, however, to pick up my spirits, and I got rid of the flu by passing it on to poor Mrs. ProfessorRoush, who I then nursed for another few days just as lovingly as she had nursed me earlier.  Married life does occasionally justify its trials by providing a little comfort in the form of a cool cloth and a soothing voice while you are draped limply over a toilet.

But you're wondering about the winter project?  Well, I'll keep you in suspense for a day or two, but I will teasingly reveal, for now, that it involves digging.  The picture is a current cross-section of my soil profile from surface to approximately 8 feet deep, provided here in order to gain your eternal sympathy.  You thought I've been kidding about the rocky nature of Kansas soil, didn't you? Well, here it is, about 6 inches of nice organic soil, followed by 4 feet or so of mixed clay and flint rock, followed by a foot or two of dark brown clay with a little less rock, then a foot of red anaerobic clay without rock, then chalk, then limestone.  They don't call it the Flint Hills for nothing.

Now imagine digging through this dry nut-sprinkled mud pie.  Your shovel, no matter how hard you jump on it, penetrates no more than three to four inches until it reaches rock.  Or imagine that you are a root, a baby rootlet reaching deep to stretch your tender fingers between the sharp shards of flint. Ouch!  See the roots, just short of half-way down the image?  Those are from purple-leaf honeysuckle bushes, the most recent inhabitants of this particular bit of soil.

In a few days I'll reveal my new project in it's entirety, but for now, content yourself with thanking your lucky stars that you only have to contend with sticky Georgia clay, humus-poor Florida sand, or perfect Kentucky loam.  Or we could both concentrate on the perfection of that clear blue Kansas sky taken early this morning, peeking from the top of the picture here.  Ain't it pretty?



    

A Ruby in the Rough

In a quick, winter-boredom-induced search for roses on which to report, I have identified several Canadian roses that I have yet to mention in this blog.  I intend to rectify this oversight over the next few weeks, and I believe I'll start first with the unusual petals of  'Morden Ruby'.

'Morden Ruby' is a Parkland Series Canadian rose bred by Dr. Henry Marshall in 1964 and introduced in 1977.  It forms a small, well-behaved pink-blend shrub that has occasional repeat bloom throughout the summer.  The 3" diameter cluster-flowered blooms open quickly from ruby-red buds and are fully double with an old-rose form, but they have little or no fragrance.  My twelve-year-old multi-stemmed specimen stays about 3 feet tall and four foot wide and has required absolutely no trimming.  In fact, the bush is certainly not vigorous, but neither does it seem to have much disease or cane dieback, so I can't remember needing to attend to it at all for the past 5-6 years.  The leaves are matte green and fairly blackspot resistant, and the stems turn reddish-brown in winter. Several references mention hips, but I have not seen an appreciable fruit on my bush.  If 'Morden Ruby' has a fault, it is that I rarely notice him unless I make a specific effort to visit it.  This is not a rose that will make an impact in your garden when viewed from afar.

I'm not one to belabor a point (okay, I am, but I'm ignoring all evidence to the contrary), but 'Morden Ruby' would be a little-noticed shrub except for the beautiful and unusual deeper red stippling of the petals that you can see in the picture at the upper left.  I came across a comment in Swedish about this rose that google-translated to "freckles on the cheek", and that phrase describes the bloom nicely.  This is a rose to view up close and personal, where you can examine the perfection of each petal.  He is a pretty thornless rose in character, so you can also get that upclose view easily without danger your life and limb.  A cross of a seedling and the floribunda 'Fire King', 'Morden Ruby' is said to be a sister plant to 'Adelaide Hoodless'.   I believe the stippling may be the result of the R. arkansana heritage of this rose.  Reported to be fully hardy to Zone 2b, I haven't seen any dieback at all here in Kansas since I got the rose established here.

One reference stated that 'Morden Ruby' is a good rose that should be more widely grown, and I agree with that statement, but unfortunately, it will never have the garden impact of Knock Out.  Of course, 'Morden Ruby' has its own internal beauty, but since when has the world taken notice of that?

New Year's Cherubim Blessing

As a Christmas gift to myself, Mrs. ProfessorRoush had encouraged me to bring back a new garden statue from Indiana while I rented a moving van to retrieve items from the farm.  At first appearance, that may seem a long distance to go for a cement statue,  but just south of where I grew up is a large statue nursery, with great prices.  It is the site of the nude and voluptuous "Eve" that I wrote about in my Garden Musings book, and over the years we had shopped it on occasion, purchasing small items when the mood struck.  At Thanksgiving, the missus and I together had noticed this adorable cherub, and we were in agreement that it enhance the theme of my garden and provide a nice focal point.  And here it stands now in my garden, 700 miles and six weeks later.

The theme of my garden? I like to think of it as a reading garden, a quiet garden for contemplation and knowledge acquisition, combining my dual loves of the garden and the written word.  My ideal garden structure is not the construction of a simple greenhouse or potting shed, it is of a comfortable, cool, and well-lighted structure in which to read and write amidst of my garden.  Somewhere there, in that vision of personal paradise, I hope to spend my golden days, engaged in the quiet study and worship of life on this prairie. 

I knew enough to call my new statue a "cherub," and I thought the "shushing" gesture was cute, but I was really unaware just how well this particular little cherub would fit my garden. I had little previous knowledge of cherubs except that they are depicted as fat little infants with wings.  I was woefully ignorant of a vast amount of religious symbolism and myth, for cherubim are not simply angelic infants floating in heaven, they are the second of nine orders of celestial angels in Christian theology, the personal attendants of God who hold in themselves the special gift of wisdom.  This little stone angel with a finger to its lips fits my garden far better than I ever dreamed.

I've introduced you before to one of my other "reading garden" statues, my Aga Marsala, holding her book high among the roses.  But while writing this blog entry, to my shock, I realized I've never shown you the first of my readers, the angelic reading statue (pictured now at left) that was a birthday gift from Mrs. ProfessorRoush and her diminutive clone many years back.  Little they knew at the time that they were gifting me a garden theme and a focus for my days to come.  It is a little scary for an old man to realize how transparent he is to the females in his life.  An open garden book, perhaps?

Hog Heaven

During my scavenging trip to the home farm, one of the garden items that I was going to bring back by hook or crook was the large ball pictured at the right.  And now you're wondering, "what the heck is that thing?"  And some of you are wondering, "how do I find one of those for my own garden?"

This, my friends, is a hog oiler.  As you can see in the picture below, it even says it's a hog oiler.  Long ago, when people bought their bacon "on the hoof" rather than in vacuum-packed sanitary packages at the grocery, a local farmer was raising those pigs and most of those local farms had a hog oiler.  You poured oil into the base of the oiler (plain old motor oil as I remember, in those halcyon days when we didn't realize that oil was toxic) and then the pigs rubbed against it to coat their skin with oil.  Evidently pigs liked that.  Oiling the hogs was supposed to keep the lice and other critters down on those free-range hogs, although its efficacy was questionable.  Mostly, we got only oily hogs and oily hog pens from hog oilers.

Our hog oiler was used on our farm until the late 1960's, after which it was retired along with the last pig and set to rust in a barn for 30 years.  It's a very heavy cast iron model, evidently rare today because many of the cast iron ones were gathered up in WWII for scrap metal.  If you want one, I understand they're quite pricey these days.  My father resurrected it for his garden about 10 years ago, painting it black, but after a few years it went back to the barn to partially rust.  When I got it 10 days ago, it merely looked like a neglected black ball.

I'd had my eye on this oiler for ages, sometimes lusting at the thought of putting it into my garden.  I've avoided the glazing/reflecting ball cliche in my garden all these years because I can't stand the things, but this hog oiler is going to grace the center of my daylily bed as soon as I find a large enough pedestal to elevate it a bit.  I've painted the ball silver, as you can see, hoping that it may reflect a little color and light in the Kansas sun, but if I tire of the shininess, I can always spray it back to matte black.  Or let it rust.  Rust would be perfect.  I'd be as happy as a pig in, well, oil, if my hog oiler would rust all at once.   I've got a shiver running right up my spine as I think of a big rusty ball as a centerpiece to my garden.  God knows why, but you feel it too, don't you?

Miracle Reed or Malignant Weed?

From the Weather Channel, of all places, I recently learned that I've been growing the next great energy fad, completely unaware for the past 10 years of the potential gold I could be harvesting from my landscape.  I'm referring, of course, to the recent spate of news reports which herald the enormous biomass production capacity of Arundo donax. Evidently, some biofuel investors in North Carolina have discovered that Arundo can produce up to 20 dry tons of foliage/acre, far ahead of its closest competitor, and they plan to join with Chemtex International to build a production plant for synthetic fuels made from the grass. 


Gardeners who aren't into Latin may not recognize the name Arundo donax, but I assure you that all of you would recognize it by the common name, 'Giant Reed' grass.  I've grown the variegated form of this grass for the past decade as a better-adapted substitute than pampas grass to camouflage our septic tank from view.  In Kansas, it grows approximately 10 feet tall each year with absolutely no care or extra watering, and it maintains a decent appearance until late in the Fall.  My feelings have run both hot and cold for Arundo as long as I've grown it.  I admire the easy-care maintenance of the grass because it requires only cutting it back to the ground each spring; no extra water, no fertilizer, no shaping.  It stands up to the strongest summer storms.  On the other hand, even the variegated form is so uninspiring that I've never taken a picture of it.  Ever.  I can't even show you a picture of it as it appears right now because I've already cut it to the ground for the winter.  It is planted on the far edge of my garden so it doesn't even appear in the background of garden pictures.  The picture above, cropped and blown up, is from a wider view of my back garden and it at least gives you an idea of the clump of Arundo in my garden, separated from the rest of the garden by a good margin.  This far away, you can't even see the variegation, just the tall, maize-like nature of the plant.  Arundo just sits there each summer, a tall blob in my landscape, too stiff in the wind to provide any interest or motion to the garden, uninspiring in flower, and dull brown in winter.  Who would think that it had any real value as a production plant?

The danger to the ecosystem, of course, is that Arundo donax has naturalized in 25 states and it is considered a noxious weed in California and Texas where millions of dollars have been spent trying to control it.  Are you surprised that a plant that grows so large so easily might become a bully to some poor little Monarda? Some experts fear that Giant Reed could become the next kudsu, out-competing native flora in a apocalyptic expansion.  My only contribution to the discussion is that my clump has not yet escaped the confines I've given it in my garden, nor have I seen it crop up in the native pasture.  Seeds are supposed to be sterile, but it can spread from every node of a green plant if it gets broken off.  I suspect the danger for spread would be far greater in areas where grazing animals trample it and help to spread it.

Some of you will want to try Giant Reed in your landscape, and if you do, I've got plenty of starts that are guaranteed to grow, so just come on by.  I can't, however, provide you a decent  picture of the plant until next fall, when I'll try to keep a mental note to specifically photograph the plant.  Until then, take my word for it, it will never be the star of your garden although it may someday fill the gas tank of your car.

Spring at Christmas

"Oh, the weather outside is frightful....Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow."

Merry Christmas, everyone.  The temperature here in Manhattan Kansas is a balmy 18°F and the wind is blowing at 12 mph straight from the north (and gusting to 21 mph), feeding the rain and snow storms down in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.  We've got a few snow splotches left on the ground from the storm last Thursday, but I could stand a little more if the 35% chance for flurries actually arrives.  Say what you will about the cliche, there's always something special about a White Christmas.

Inside, ProfessorRoush is all warm and toasty from my morning walk and Mrs. ProfessorRoush, her diminutive clone, and the HellDog are all snug in their beds.  I'm fully in Christmas cheer here because, before my walk, I checked on several rose cuttings that I started inside about 10 days ago and low and behold, they are starting to leaf out, all secure in their winter greenhouses in a sunny window.  The picture you see is of 'Charlotte Brownell', secure in her infant crib, one of four roses that I started using the method recommended by Connie of Hartwood Roses in a post on her blog.  I tried it once last summer and it worked great.  It looks like it will be four for four this time, in the middle of winter, spring come early to this barren Kansas prairie.  Follow me, have yourself a merry little Christmas and let your heart be Light.

I chose to propagate both 'Griff's Red' and 'Wild Ginger' because my plants of those varieties aren't very robust, placed with their southern backs against a row of viburnums who are overshadowing and just plain outcompeting them.  I thought I should give them a trial out in the sun, where they can find more water and light to grow.  I also started 'Freckles' again simply because I love her and I'd like to make some gifts of her to the KSU rose garden and among other friends (with a second goal of spreading her around to protect her survival from the coming Japanese Beetle horde).

And 'Charlotte Brownell'?  I chose her simply because she is so beautiful.  My sole plant is a $3.00 bagged rose, grafted to an unknown rootstock and full of mosaic virus, but she still finds the strength to put out blossom after blossom.  Virus or no virus, I'm wanting to see how tough this old girl is on her own feet.  I'm taking a dangerous chance, though.  If those creamy blossoms get any larger, I might faint dead away and Charlotte will be fighting off suitors and in danger of being carried off in the night by gardening thieves.  And then 'David Thompson', 'William Baffin', and 'Cardinal de Richelieu' will want to rescue her and that will might set off a war that could annihilate my garden.  Oh, the chances one takes for love.

Hoe Hoe Hoe

ProfessorRoush just returned home with a vast number of new gardening implements and ornaments purloined from the home farm in Indiana, which, as I've noted before, my parents are selling.  Among other items from my father's vast tool collection, I present to you the half-dozen hoes I brought home.  I could use some help identifying some of them, if you know about them.  Maybe my hoe-collecting friend Carol, of May Dreams Garden, can help out.
 
Pictured from left to right, they are: a common garden hoe, a Razor collinear hoe, a Dutch-type or push hoe, a Ho-Mi (Korean) hoe, an unknown monstrosity, and my grandfather's "tomato-planting hoe". 

I haven't a clue what type of hoe #5 is.  It has no markings to aid identification.  It could be even be something other than a hoe (a gravel-spreading instrument?), and it is fairly heavy, but the curved edge opposite the triangular tines is beveled and quite sharp.  I've spent several hours searching the Internet for it, including pages and pages of Amazon.com garden hoes, but I can't match it.  And please, be careful searching the Internet for "garden hoe".   The term brings back a much broader set of images than you would expect.  You might be surprised by the items and pictures you find, the most benign of which was the Dirty Garden Hoe coffee mug I ran across and the Gale Borger mystery "Death of a Garden Hoe" (about the murder of a prostitute and a missing garden hoe, of course).  Researching various garden hoes, however, is always rewarding.  I had forgotten, for instance, that collinear hoes are "thumbs-up" hoes, to be used in a pull-scrape motion rather than hacking at the ground.

I'm most intrigued to test the Ho-Mi Korean hoe, although I have no idea where my father came by it. The name translates to "little ground spear" in Korean and the tool was first made in Korea during the Bronze Age.  Jeff Taylor recommended it's use in his book, Tools of the Earth.  It is light and seems similar to a Warren hoe, my favorite planting tool, but also seems to combine the best features of a Warren and a Collinear hoe.  I'm already planning to try it out as soon as the ground thaws here. Five thousand years of use is about as time-tested as anyone could want, but I'll put in my two cents as well.

The award for sentimental value, of course, goes to the heirloom tomato-planting hoe.  If you look at the picture of it closely, you'll see a narrowed, darkened area near the midsection, the result of years of hard use and calloused hands.  Modern ergonomic designers could take a lesson from this hoe.  When I grasp the hoe at that spot, it balances perfectly and seems to snuggle into my hand, transmitting in an instant the infinite toil and sweat this hoe has shared with my ancestors.  I'll also use it this Spring, planting my tomatoes with it and carrying on a tradition embedded deep in my genes.

I already had a number of hoes, so this collection adds to my own swan-neck hoe, half-moon hoe, Warren hoe, and Nejiri gama hoe.  The new hoes will take a little work over the next week; they all need sharpening and rust protection, and their handles need a good coat of linseed oil.  My father and I share the gardening gene, but only I hold my maternal grandfather's respect for care of my tools.  At the home farm, I left behind the scuffle hoe (which I used as a young boy and have an intense hatred of) and our venerable two-pronged hoe that my father plans to keep in use at his new home.  And stay tuned for blogs about other items I brought back.  My trip to Indiana was primarily to retrieve a grandfather clock, but I think my garden benefited the most from the trip.  In the meantime, ProfessorRoush wishes everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Garden Hoeing.

 

One Last Sunrise, One Last Rose

If the Doomsday Prepper interpretations of the Mayan Long Count Calendar are right, this blog will be the last I post, the last electronic series of 0's and 1's that reach the ether from my winter-dessicated corpus. 

To the multi-dimensional creatures, or clattering insects or slimy green aliens who are reading this, I tried, I really tried, to grow a decent garden here in the mid-Continental region currently known as Kansas.  I primarily grew roses because of my love for them and because roses have a natural affinity for this gardener-grinding area.  If this struggling prairie has returned to its former state as the bottom of an inland sea, or if it is now a part of a towering mountaintop, it could scarcely be harder now to grow a healthy plant than it was in my time, so I wish you the best of luck.  If, on the other hand, the Earth's poles shift just enough so that Kansas is where Texas used to be, and this area is now a more temperate, rain-glutted paradise, then a pox on you and your beautiful Tea and Noisette roses.

Myself, I'm not too concerned about tomorrow's sunrise.  I'm a results-oriented guy and the Mayan's didn't predict their own demise in the middle of a piktun, so I grade their track record as pretty dismal.  Anything short of the Yellowstone Caldera blowing up tomorrow is survivable.  A nice solar storm that puts us back to the Dark Ages would be good for the planet, if perhaps not for mankind.  On a more minor scale, if the magnetic poles reverse, but nothing else happens, then I may live the rest of my life directionally disoriented, but the crops will still grow and at age 53, I'm a simple guy.  Leave me food, fun, and females and I can pretty well muddle through the remainder of my days. 

If I'm wrong, however, and the sun doesn't rise tomorrow for me, or for anyone else, I leave you with this rose, 'Madame Hardy', the greatest creation of Gardening Man, in my humble soon-former opinion.  If 'Madame Hardy' is the sole measure of mankind's existence, then I depart satisfied and reverential before her unmatched beauty. 
  

Garden Book OCD

In hopes that no one will mind, I thought I'd take a minor break from "real" gardening to tell you what my obsessive-compulsive "Mr. Hyde" personality has been doing off and on for a few days.  During a search for iPhone barcode inventory applications, I came across a nifty little app called Home Library, by a programmer named Shahab Farooqui, who appears to be based in Australia. 

Occasionally, during my perusal of second-hand book stores for gardening texts, I have purchased a duplicate of a garden book that I already have, usually a newer or foreign edition of the text I have.  It's more than a little aggravating, because although I remember most of my books, especially the ones that I've read cover to cover, there are those that slip from aging memory or that I can't remember if it looks familiar because I've seen it before in a bookstore or because I've seen it on my own shelf.  I also occasionally wonder how much money I've wasted during my life on books and I'm quite sure that many other gardeners share my guilty feelings in that regard.

Well, Home Library is quickly solving both those problems for me.  It scans the barcodes on the book, automatically searches the Internet for it, and adds the book to an inventory that includes a picture of the book cover, title, author, description and estimated replacement cost.  In about 2 hours, I've catalogued 5 shelves of gardening books, with 6 or 7 more shelves to go.  Sometimes, it can't find the book by barcode and I have to search the title, but that takes only a little longer and seems to be about 10% of my books, mostly the older ones.  Right now I'm at 187 gardening books and let's just say that before I'm done, the estimated replacement total is likely going to match that of a nice Hybrid car.

Home Library has some great features, such as letting you keep track of loaned books, and allowing a search by author, title, collection, subject or lendee's.  You can rate your books or summarize them.  You can export and share your library online or via email to an Excel compatible database.  If you have some older books, without bar codes, there is a manual entry function that allows you to enter the title and/or author, and the Internet search function will invariably pop up the book..  The app also categorizes far more than books;  it has built in categories for music, movies, games, and "other stuff". 


I thought I should share because others of an inventory control freak nature might want to try out the app.  Please note that I have absolutely no connection to Mr. Farooqui nor financial interest in the Iphone app.  It's just working for me and it's working better than a major competitor, SmartBook, which I also tried.  Yes, inventory of a home library may be a little nutty, but hey, anyone who tries to garden in Kansas has to be a little nutty right from the start. 

Zombie Gardening

As near as I can tell, the gardening industry has overlooked a vast area of marketing that has the potential to start a new gardening revolution among young folk and thus to grow a new generation of gardeners in this country.  Following in the footsteps of a current wildly successful television series, The Walking Dead, and alongside the frantic marketing spin offs such as the Airsoft semiautomatic plinker pictured here, ProfessorRoush thinks that some creative gardener needs to spin off some zombie-related gardening programs and paraphernalia to enrich our gardening experiences.  That should be me, so that I could make a zombie-related fortune and hire other people to do my digging, but it could also be you as well.  Just cut me in for some of the profit from the idea, okay? 

If you do a simple Google search on the words "zombie" and "gardening", you get some nice links to a zombiefied garden gnome named "Gnombie" ($224.99), and a resin zombie garden sculpture that resembles a corpse crawling out of the ground from thinkgeek.com ($69.99).  You also are referred to several links that will enlighten you on kitchen scraps that will regrow in your vegetable garden (celery, avocados and pineapples. among others).  All-in-all, I suppose those are all nice products and suggestions, but they're just scratching the surface of what I'm proposing.

I'm thinking of a line of Zombie Pesticides, with nice green fluorescent labels, that will paralyze Japanese Beetles so they don't squirm when you pick them up and squish them, or a Zombie Insect Spray that will cause your hornworms to blunder blindly about your tomato plants without damaging them.  I'm thinking about a group of specialized gardening implements, for instance a Zombie Repelling Hoe with a spike opposite the hoe blade so that it can be used for defense if you're attacked in the garden by zombies (or by city administrators, often difficult to distinguish from zombies, who demand that you rip up your front vegetable garden).   I envision a Zombie Compost  Fork with an ergonomic handle designed to decrease arm fatigue whether you are tossing compost or zombies.  I myself would surely purchase a Zombie Water Cannon with a sensor primed to shoot when large moving bodies such as zombie deer cross the path (I think this product may already exist, but it is missing the added zombie marketing power).

We need a garden prophet creating videos and pamphlets about plants that will fortify your grounds against zombie invasions (a nice hedge of Rosa eglanteria might suffice), or plants that will recover quickly from trampling damage caused by hordes of aimlessly rambling zombies (they would also be useful for gardens frequented by neighborhood children).  We need a writer proposing designs for garden "rooms" where we could escape and hide from zombies (or nongardening spouses).  We need Scott's to quit poisoning the environment and fund the breeding of a Zombie Grass that would stay neat and green without mowing or watering.

I suppose the latter suggestion is a little too fantastic to hope for, but any or all of the others should take the gardening world by storm and bring a few of the television-addled zombies out there back into the garden.  If some editor out there wants to put together a Zombie Garden Manual, count me in for a chapter on roses.  Is anyone out there interested in a very dark red, extremely thorny rose called 'Zombie Lover?'   Even better, it could be alternately marketed as 'Zombie Knockout'.  That will, based on my previous experience, really draw in the zombie gardening multitudes.

Crape Charisma

'Centennial Spirit'

The increased number of warmer and dryer winters in Kansas, to say nothing of the hellishly hot and arid summers, is forcing a similar slow adaptation of the gardener to the flaming reality of climate change.  From a glass-half-full perspective, it also offers some previously underperforming plants a chance to shine, a brief time of their own in the spotlight.  In my garden, it is the crape myrtles that are beginning to steal the harsh spotlight of late summer.

Fifteen years ago, I tried and lost a few crape myrtles, placed here seemingly north of their native ranges.  They would grow and look nice for a summer, and then even when they survived a winter, they struggled during the subsequent growing season and then expired the next.  Even when I attempted a more hardy variety, like the National Arboretum release 'Tonto', it froze back to the ground each winter and returned in spring as a short bush.  In contrast, over the last five years, every Lagerstroemia I've put into the ground has seemingly flourished, sometimes emerging through the winter whole, sometimes with a little die-back, but always healthy.  The big summer advantage of crape myrtles, as any good sweet-talking southern belle could tell you, is that the dainty flowers don't crinkle in dryness or fade in heat, they just bloom on and on.

'Centennial Spirit'

Lagerstroemia indica ‘Centennial Spirit’, pictured above and left, remains my favorite of the bunch for its shocking red flowers and reddish-orange fall foliage.   In early August, every eye in my garden is drawn to the bright crimson and bodies tend to stray in that direction unbidden by conscious mind but controlled by happy feet.  Take a close look at the picture to the left. This past August, in the worst of the drought, even the daylily at the foot of this bush was having a tough time of it, shedding leaves and conserving its resources, but 'Centennial Spirit' is lush and bountiful, laughing at the worst of the heat.

'Natchez'

Lagerstroemia 'Natchez' is a variety that is quickly growing on me.  This perfectly white specimen was planted 2 summers back as a one gallon plant purchased at summer's end for $2.  Despite the poor nutritional start to its young life, it has bounced back, with no winter die-back for two years, and it threatens to overshadow the witch hazel that growing nearby.  The summer centerpiece of this bed of daylilies, it seems to shine like a queen over its subjects, poor peasants at its feet.





I grow other crapes of course.  I've previously mentioned dwarf 'Cheery Dazzle' and 'Tonto', and both have their places in my garden,   I even grow an unknown variety or two, like the lavender variety pictured at the left.  This one was a purloined clone of a specimen displaced for road work, and I think it is probably the common variety 'Royalty'.   Its exact identity may never be known, but it is rapidly growing on me, like my other crapes, as the summers become longer and hotter and winter disappears into memory. 

The Missing Hart

My game camera has recently confirmed a phenomena hitherto known to me only from warnings by traffic authorities.  We've all heard that the rate of car to deer collisions increase during the Fall rutting season on roads and highways.  I've got new evidence that deer to garden visits also increase in November.  In like fashion, plant damage from deer subsequently seems to increase by at least a factor of 10 during the same period.  I am gravely worried about the 'Conrad Ferdinand Meyer' in front of the doe at the left, because she seems to visit it over and over again, night after night.

I had previously captured only three visits of solitary deer to my garden up from April through early November.  In the most recent few weeks, however, it seems that the local large furry rats have been scheduling extra time to pose for portraits.  I've now counted 8 separating visits of deer to my garden over a 20 day period, at least two of them lasting more than an hour.  They come morning and night, most often about an hour before dawn or around three hours after sunset.  And the nibbling little fiends aren't coming alone anymore, they're bringing company.  Or at least they're bringing relatives.  This little mama at the right seems to be dragging her offspring around behind her, taking advantage of a two-for-one special feast in my rose garden.

I've also captured my resident rabbit, a fox, and a coyote on their nightly rounds.  The little rabbit sitting in the middle of this bed had better hope that the thorns of the surrounding bushes provide it some protection, because it is now playing in a dark and dangerous land, away from home long after the carnivores come out to roam in search of just such tender morsels of flesh.  This particular rabbit has been around all year, but I fear that it is unlikely to see Spring unless it modifies its schedule immediately.


The most garden-damaging culprit, however, has so far escaped my game camera, but it has not gone unnoticed.  This weekend, I found damage on the trunks of three widely separated trees in the garden; damage that can only be created by the rubbing of tender velvet antlers on the trees in preparation for combat.    Somewhere in my neighborhood, the father or uncle of the yearling fawn above has rejoined the herd, hoping for a repeat of last Winter's fleeting pleasure.  This little family has been missing its Hart, but I predict a sibling for junior will soon be in the works.  Just what I need, a population explosion among the browsers. 

When they attack my prized Sycamore, I view it as neither cute nor endearing, but as a declaration of war.  Perhaps, in similar fashion to this YouTube video that I have linked for your listening pleasure, I can just move the "deer crossing" signs to a neighbor's yard and the vermin will shift their migratory pattern and leave my garden alone.  Or perhaps not.  My other annual anti-deer measures, including the placement of chicken wire around the tree trunks and the furtive scattering of pungent repellent, are now in effect.  In fact, after realizing that the caller to the radio show in the aforementioned video probably also votes in important national elections, I feel the need to go create more deer repellent right now.  This is your benevolent naturalist, ProfessorRoush, signing off.  

Memory Keepers

I don't know where the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words" originated, but sometimes even a picture is inadequate to plumb the depths of thought and emotion induced by the simplest of stimuli.  Take, for example, the still life in brown pictured at the right.  An unknowing, unaware observer might recognize the presence of a little loose soil, a number of brown vegetable-origin structures, and the background of brown prairie grass, trimmed short in the late days of Fall.  A very astute observer might recognize the brown tubular structures as roots, and perhaps the most knowledgeable and experienced gardeners, looking closely, might discern some bud eyes peeking from the crowns of those roots.

I can confirm, for the curious, that these are peony roots, ready to be transplanted.   These roots are divisions that I purloined at Thanksgiving from my boyhood home, healthy survivors who were growing in good Indiana soil long before I drew first breath.   There are 5 different peony starts here from a row of peonies that always separated orchard from vegetable garden, large clumps that sagged with each rainfall and became obstacles to be mowed around during the verdant summer and then to be mowed off short at the start of Fall.  You can see, in the closeup at the left, plump buds biding frigid Winter, waiting to clone and grow again in my Kansas garden.

They are, at once, both unique peonies and common peonies, unremarkable to the average gardener, but precious everafter to me.  They are common because I suspect that the varieties are just the same tired pink and white and red peonies that our grandparents grew and that probably sell for $3.95 per 3 clumps now each Spring at Walmart.   Odds are that one is 'Festiva Maxima', and another 'Sarah Bernhardt',  and it is likely that I already grow all or most of these, purchased at local nurseries.  They are exceptional, however, these 5 peonies, because they are now weighted down with childhood memories and ghostly fields stretching as far as a boy could roam.  They bear this heavy load because this year, after 50 years of living in one place, my parents are selling the home farm.  I have only the opportunity to start them here, these keepers of memory, so they can whisper to me of family picnics in the Spring, and sweet corn grown tall in Summer, and of the peaches and apples that fell from the nearby orchard trees, destined only to rot and fertilize these roots.

 In my garden, these will be the heirlooms of my boyhood, these few ancient peonies planted by those who lived before me, to live on long after me.  They will rub shoulders with sedums and columbines from my grandmother and with trees planted by my children.  They will carry for me my memories of another place and another time, simple and carefree, when the world was new and every tree a mountain to be climbed.  I planted them here now, sprinkled them with the remnants of the good soil that nurtured them, and watered them in so they'll grow and outlast me here, transplanted with me to foreign soil.  Memory keepers of a far away place and time.

And you thought it was just a picture of a few brown roots and dirt.