Yellow and more Yellow

In contrasting fashion to Picasso and his blue phase of painting during years of depression, ProfessorRoush seems to be going through a yellow phase of uplifted spring spirits.  Everything in my garden (well, except for some blue iris and a very splashy pink 'Therese Bugnet') seems to be yellow at the present, all of them a bright cheery yellow sufficient to join me in a celebration of the coming warm weather.  My yellow celebration really began on Friday last, as my first ever Tree Peony (Paeonia suffruticosa) opened up a single bloom just after our rainstorm. The satisfaction of seeing this bloom washed over me like a rainstorm across the prairie.


Tree Peony experts in the audience are laughing, but they don't fathom the difficulties I've transcended to get here.  This is my fourth attempt at a Tree Peony and the fourth year here for this one.  I've lost them to cold and drought and had them toppled by marauding critters and wind.  Growth has been slow, and I thought I'd lost her once, but she is settling in and looks like a survivor.  She is sited in the most protected spot I could give her; walls on the north and west to collect and reflect the sun's warmth, amd open only to the south and east where gales are least likely to topple her.  There is shade in the afternoon and she is protected by chicken wire on all sides, a virtual fortress erected to be impenetrable to man or beast.  Thus, you can understand my elation at getting this far, even though she dropped petals quickly and is now but a memory.

Just finishing up is my prize Magnolia 'Yellow Bird', an exciting bush that I've bragged about before.  It continues to grow and do well, now almost twice the size of when it was planted 4 years ago.  The bloom this year was a delight to see and more prolific than ever.  I can attest now that 'Yellow Bird' must be at least Zone 4 hardy, since that seems to be the degree of winter it has just survived and thrived through.  Rain sometimes dims the brightness of these blooms, but even the soft yellows of a dampened flower are pleasing to the eye.  

The most dependable and brightest yellow on this Kansas prairie comes, as usual, from the chrome-yellow rose, 'Harison's Yellow', just beginning to bloom profusely.  Almost one in every four buds on this rose is now blooming, so it will get better yet, but it's pretty good right now, don't you think?

How long will my yellow phase go on?  Not much longer, I think.  The irises are taking center stage and a whole bunch of pink roses are about to steal the show here.

Timid and Demure

On Saturday last, I discovered this tiny retiring flower hidden deep within my climbing 'Jeanne Lajoie'.  Nestled and covered by the new foliage, visible only from inside the pergola on which the climber rests, she is the first blossom from 'Jeanne Lajoie' for the new season.  What a metaphor for the year we're having, this coy little pink jewel hiding and protected within a green-leafed cave.

I've wondered if the climate is ever going to settle down this year; warm, then cool, warmer, then back to freezing.  Yesterday it was 90ºF in Kansas, but there was snow on my son's lawn in the Colorado foothills.  I finally purchased tomato plants on Sunday and then found that I couldn't plant them yet, learning this morning that the lows of the next five nights are all in the low 40's, a temperature that will stunt the tomatoes.   I have full sympathy for the reticence of this quiet pink blossom to cast caution aside and declare that rose time has really arrived. 

My Saturday chores included an effort to finish trimming the roses near the house for the second time this year.  I had pruned most of them minimally near the end of March, but late freezes in April had blasted the canes of many down to near ground level.  'Jeanne Lajoie' survived at her six foot height, but the canes of her arbor neighbor, 'Zephirine Drouhin', were blackened and dead, similar to several other roses in that border.  Separating and removing dead canes from within foot-high new basal growth is a delicate task, requiring concentration worthy of a jigsaw puzzle enthusiast.  One should always, however, pause respectfully from one's labors in order to admire great beauty.  The lure of a beautiful woman or a perfect flower both similarly affect an aging gardener. 

 My Merriam-Webster dictionary defines "coy" as having a shy or sweetly innocent quality that is often intended to be attractive or to get attention.  I doubt that a better description exists of this early flower of 'Jeanne Lajoie'.  It playfully caught my eye as I was quickly examining the bush looking for dead canes, quietly whispering from within the shaded interior in an effort to be noticed, to be appreciated for the gift of its mere presence.  This is not the first of my roses to bloom.  'Marie Bugnet' led off the parade a few days prior and 'Harrison's Yellow' and 'Therese Bugnet' have since joined the queue. This flower is the first to remind me, however, that full summer is just around the corner, just a few days or weeks farther down the path.   I paused in quiet homage to the demure gem and then moved on, secure in my new knowledge that at least one rose believes that the world is due for another summer.

Impulse and Impact

Oh, ProfessorRoush was a bad boy today.  A very bad boy.  I did the exact thing that every good gardener knows to avoid.  Further, I did it joyfully, happily, and ecstatically, even with full knowledge of the potential mistake that I was making.  I made an impulse buy in the garden center.  At the Home Depot garden center to be exact.   Can you tell what I bought from the photo at the right?

I had ventured forth innocently this afternoon to buy a couple additional cans of Thompson's Water Seal for the concrete patio.  As is my habit in the early days of a new gardening season, I entered Home Depot through the garden center.  I mulled over one of the new "Smooth Touch" thornless roses, but decided to investigate them more before buying any.  I looked for a new S. vulgaris lilac to replace a really ugly forsythia  in the side yard, but I could only find short and squat 'Miss Kim'.  It was then that I noticed a few small trees with this really unusual leaf coloring sitting off to the side.  For the unwashed, this tree, the tree of my dreams, is Fagus sylvatica, the European beech.  And not just any European beech.  No, this is Fagus sylvatica 'Roseo-marginata', also known (incorrectly) as F. sylvatica 'Tricolor'.

I first came across this tree years ago on a family visit to New York City.  I had slipped away for the afternoon to the Bronx with my father and son to visit Wave Hill.  In the midst of that gorgeous public garden, I first fell in love with the dark and brooding Copper Beech (Fagus sylvatica purpurea) shown to the left, but even then I knew better than to place this dark purple blob in the middle of the prairie.  Later on the tour of Wave Hill, however, I came across the Fagus sylvatica 'Tricolor' pictured below and I knew that someday I'd own one.


You would not be wrong to surmise that this tree would be on my bucket list, if I actually had a bucket list.  Yes, I know this is a tree of deep and humid woods and that the tender leaves may burn in the Kansas sun.  Yes, I know that it will do better in partial shade and moist soil and I have neither.  Yes, I know it is slow growing and I likely will not live to see this tree top 30 feet tall.  Who cares?  My $50 impulse buy may not live to see next Spring.  But it is worth every penny to try.


Where to put it?  Where it will be shaded by a Cottonwood?  Down on the flat where the clay is so wet the roses struggle?  High in the front yard where, if it survives, it will be visible for miles around? Imagine.  Just imagine the impact it could have in my garden.  

Beware of Boxwoods

ProfessorRoush would like to call down a pox on all those garden authorities who have advocated various winter hardy boxwoods to be excellent landscaping plants.  A further pox on the "Big Box" stores who sell the cheapest boxwoods available and thus limit the selection of available cultivars to us.  Boxwoods are everywhere these days.  Southern Living, for instance, has an 18 page internet extravaganza on boxwoods as "the backbone of Southern gardens for centuries".   Boxwoods for landscaping.  Boxwoods as the perfect container plants. Trim and tidy boxwoods. Lavender and boxwood gardens.   Boxwood...BS, I say!

 

I jumped onto the boxwood welcome wagon a number of years ago when I grew tired of mustache landscaping with junipers and arborvitaes.  In Kansas, those two conifer stalwarts are plagued annually by bagworms, leaving the gardener only a choice between marathon hand-picking sessions or toxic wastelands.  During the landscaping of a new home, I went with less traditional choices for my front entry; large-leaved evergreens such as hollies and boxwoods.

 

I was so enamored by the survival of my first boxwoods that when it came time to screen the wind near my front door and outline the circular driveway (or, if you prefer, to slow and divert the feng shui flow of qi in the area), I chose to buy 12 inexpensive Buxus microphylla koreana 'Wintergreen' plants to create a hedge.  I will admit openly that the effort has created a really functional low-maintenance hedge over the years, at times a bit winter-damaged as I've noted previously, but a very nice screen as pictured above.

 

Functional, yes , but undesirable.  You see, the one thing that most boxwood advocates fail to disclose is that boxwoods, at certain times of the year, smell like....well, they smell like cat urine.  Unneutered male cat piss to be exact.  If you realize the source of that stench around your house comes from the boxwoods, then search terms such as "boxwood" and "cat piss" will turn up any number of entrys about the problem, ranging from how it will diminish the sale value of your home, to sources where the authors claim to like the odor, claiming "it reminds me of happy hours spent in wonderful European gardens, surrounded by brilliant flowers, the hum of bees and the redolence of boxwood."   I'm sad to confirm that if you park your car in my circular driveway right now, the odor as you step outside the car will not remind you of happy hours in European gardens.  Until I read that the stench should have been expected, I thought my cats were using the area as a toilet.

       

Adding insult to injury, however is not beyond the reach of the most diabolical garden authorities.  One D. C. Winston, author of an EHow article I found titled "How to find a boxwood that doesn't smell like cat urine," is a prime example. The advice given in the article?  Avoid the Buxus sempervirens cultivars because they are have the strongest "acrid" odor.  Seek out the species Buxus microphylla.  Mr. Winston specifically recommended 'Wintergreen'.  Ain't that a hoot?

 

Take it from me,  don't plant boxwoods by your front door. Ever.

 



Charred Satisfaction

Yesterday was Prairie Burn Day for my neighbors and I.  We waited till very late to burn the prairie this year compared with previous years, all the better to suppress invasive sumacs and other brush plants which are now fully leafed out and more susceptible to fire.  In fact, the burn went slowly because of a lack of wind and all the green grass underneath last winter's detritus.  There were no casualties this year, not even to any of our electrical boxes or minor outbuildings.  Most of my prairie is presently characterized by blackened earth punctuated by smoldering piles of donkey poo.

Burn Day's are communal and family events.  My wife and daughter both participated, tolerating my constant direction about water stream and fire spreading technique as they complained incessantly about spider webs and the possibility of giant female-eating ticks.  Burning Day also allows me to burn my garden debris piles in relative safety (surreptitiously photographed by my wife in the upper right picture) and they are a chance to burn out pack rat nests which accumulate in the woods around the pond.

This year, I took advantage of the occasion to check on the health of my son's Scotch Pine, shown here next to my daughter.  It was a gift from some well-meaning foresters at his elementary school some 17 or 18 years ago, a tiny seeding that I planted near the pond in hopes that it would be isolated and escape the rampant Scotch Pine disease in the area.  Its stands now almost 20 feet tall and healthy as an evergreen ox.

During every burn, I learn more about the prairie and my little portion of it.  This year my daughter found and rescued this little turtle crawling in the grass about 50 feet from the pond and wanted to keep it.  She was less excited when I told her it wasn't a box turtle but a snapping turtle searching for water.  We left it down by the pond, safe from the prairie fire sweeping in its direction.  I can't count all the rabbit and pack rat sightings of the week.

I rest now, content to let the passage of a few days clothe these burnt hills in emerald green.  In the picture below, you can see the blackened prairie to the north of my house, and the green hills of K-States Beef Unit, burned three weeks ago, beyond.  Soon the entire horizon will look like those hills, a sea of green grass ready once again for the summer passage of ghostly prairie schooners.    

Good Lilac Intentions

What was the old aphorism about the "road to hell being paved with good intentions"?  Or maybe, "no good deed goes unpunished?"

Each year, as the lilacs and peonies bloom, ProfessorRoush tries to brighten up the desk staff and waiting room by occasionally bringing in fragrant flowers (of appropriate purple, cream, or lilac colorings since those are the school colors).  This morning, I gathered a bouquet of lilacs, light 'Annabelle', and darker 'Patriot' and 'Sensation', unceremoniously stuck them in a Mason jar, and drove them into school to place them in the waiting room.

I often wonder if the practice will have to end when a client will finally complains about the strong fragrance offending them or setting off their allergies (what a world we live in now!), but if that occasion ever occurs, the flowers can be easily moved.  What I never dreamed of is finding, as I did several hours later, that they would attract bumblebees into the building.  I suppose it is possible that this little guy could have been hidden within a blossom as I collected them, torpid from the cold night air.  Surely, however, the warmer air of the Jeep would have awoken him as we drove.  An alternative, but hardly more likely hypothesis is that somehow this bumblebee followed the fragrance and found these flowers through double doors about 30 feet away from the outside.

If his presence had been widely noted, I'm sure it would have called for much clamor and strife, but luckily he seemed satisfied to perch on the same spot for awhile and then disappeared about ten minutes later, never to be seen again.   I do hope he found his way back out through the double doors and stocked his larder up from the trip so he doesn't return later.

I Think That Any Rain is Good Rain

And if that's true, then this morning we had a great rain. Thank the skies above, I heard the thunder at 4:30 a.m. and then rose with the patter on the windows reminding me to close the windows that were open. One thunderstorm followed another and by 7:30a.m., I woke singing to an old Bachman Turner Overdrive song;

"She said, I've had it comin' to me

But I wanted it that way

I think that any love is good lovin'

So I took what I could get, mmh

Oooh, oooh she looked at me with big brown eyes

And said, 

You ain't seen nothin' yet

B-b-b-baby, you just ain't seen n-n-nothin' yet"

Rain on the Kansas Flint Hills is always a time to rejoice. Parched spirits are replenished along with the thirsty hills who are just waking to Spring. In the midst of euphoria, I had enough presence of mind to set up the iLightningcam app so that I could capture the moments of lightning and rain on my greater garden. In the photo above, you can see the paths of the garden turning green, emerald against the prairie grasses still cloaked in winter gold. My tower of Sweet Autumn clematis is greening in the center, and behind it, a Jane Magnolia holds onto it's last rain-soaked blooms. At the left foreground, my iris bed readies a banquet of blooms, the aptly named 'First Edition' already in flower. An early viburnum or two stand out white against the dark foliage of the early morning in the greater garden. Even in the golden carpet of the foreground, you can see the forbs greening up, the genesis of wildflowers that will come along as the seasons mature. This is the area of native prairie between the house and garden that I mow just once a year, every Spring, to allow the wildflowers a chance to compete. Fed by the rain and by the nitrogen generated out of the lightning, all this is going to explode these next few weeks, a bounty of foliage and flowers miraculously generated from dead twigs and brown earth.

It's 10:30 a.m. now and I just braved the continuing lightning and sprinkles to check my closest rain gauge. There is 2.4 inches in the gauge and it is still coming down, more slowly now as if the skies know the earth needs some time to bask in the glory of wetness spreading deep beneath the surface. According to this morning's sodden newspaper, we were 2.86 inches behind average rainfall for 2014 yesterday and an inch behind April's average rainfall. No more. Now the promises of the peonies and the roses are freed to fill us again with joy and beauty and grace.

Kansas-Tested, Bella-Approved

Remember the "kid-tested, mother-approved" 1970's jingle from the Kix cereal ads?  Well, my recently blooming, Kansas-tested Paeonia tenuifolia was Bella-approved during a walk yesterday.

I had the exuberant and rambunctious puppy out for one of her many daily jaunts when she spied this blooming peony from across the garden and made a Beagle-line for it.  Since Mrs. ProfessorRoush and Bella have recently confessed to accidental beheading of a foot-tall concrete garden gnome (and I suspect the same irresponsible pair for the recently-broken wing of a small garden angel), I allowed Bella to approach the peony but with some trepidation, expecting her to plop on it enthusiastically like she does on the cats.  Instead of blundering into the clump however, she halted a foot away and tentatively sniffed first one bloom and then another, sampling the plant's aroma like an oenophile assessing a new vintage. 

During the sampling, Bella kept a respectable distance as if expecting the plant to bite, and it occurred to me that the impressions that she and I get from the same plant are likely very different.  I wonder, even, if we could agree on anything about the plant's fragrance?  I haven't spent a lot of time investigating Paeonia tenuifolia for fragrance and I don't recall if it has any fragrance at all.  In fact, I can't even confirm that I've ever buried my nose in it, a deficiency that I intend to rectify tonight.  For me, however, to take a fragrance description beyond sweet, fruity, or musky would be a tremendous leap of imagination.  To a half-Beagle nose like Bella's, for all I know, Paeonia tenuifolia could smell like anything from milk chocolate with a sprig of mint, to a drunken sailor unwashed from a month at sea, to a hungry Cretaceous predator.  The latter may, in fact, be the more likely possibility based on Bella's reticence to get close enough to allow the plant to bite.

Paeonia tenuifolia does look a little bit other-worldly with that finely segmented foliage and single bloom at the tip of each stem, but I haven't observed a similar reaction from Bella towards other plants, so I'm at a loss to explain the behavior.  Come to think of it though, this is one of the first plants, other than daffodils, to bloom at her shoulder level, and it was the first bright red plant to bloom at all this year.  Bella is only a baby and she hasn't experienced the garden in all its bountiful glory yet so this may just be the first of many surprises to come.  I waited for her to go ahead and ravage the plant, but after a few gentle sniffs, she turned her attentions elsewhere, as if to say "Well, I know what that is now and it is not interesting."   ProfessorRoush, however, is left now to wonder just how different my garden looks to a dog's nose.  And what I wouldn't give to experience it like Bella, just one time.

Renewal

Friends, I knew that we had a long, hard winter here, but I didn't know how exactly how hard it was until my normal spring chores came around to my "formal rose bed."  You can see it below and then from a different angle, just after cleanup, open and bare, ready to begin new growth again.

It has been years since this bed looked so bare, so lacking of the beauty within.  It probably hasn't looked this way since I first planted it, over 10 years ago.  In most years of late, as Zone 6B has moved up to our region, I've given most of these roses a mere trim with a hedge trimmer, leaving 3-5 foot bushes throughout the garden.  Only one or two Hybrid Teas get a regular scalping, and sometimes even 'Tiffany' or 'First Prize' stays at the 3-foot level.  This year, however, most every rose was either growing back completely from the roots or had only spotty growth higher on the bush.  I could hear them whispering.  "Renew us."  "Help us."

Many of the 50+ roses in this bed are cane hardy to at least Zone 4, so that really tells me what our winter was like.  The remaining tall roses of the picture are 'Therese Bugnet', 'John Franklin', 'Martin Frobisher'  'Earthsong', 'Variegata di Bologna', 'Red Moss', 'Leda', 'Blush Hip', and 'Coquette de Blanche'.  Notice that most of these are either Canadian Roses or Old Garden Roses.

As for the chopped off group, they're a varied lot of fame.  Two English roses, 'Golden Celebration' and 'The Dark Lady'.  About eight Griffith Buck roses went down, including 'Prairie Harvest' and 'Autumn Sunset'.  'Sally Holmes' and 'Lady Elsie May' became midgets, along with two Bailey Roses including 'Hot Wonder and 'High Voltage'.  Even two Canadian roses, 'Winnepeg Park' and 'Morden Fireglow', got burr cuts.

I would be upset at the winter kill, but, to be truthful, this wholesale destruction needed to happen anyway.  The bushes here were tangled and overgrown, some of them massive things that were shading out more delicate neighbors.  And, in the end, it is fitting that the renewal of this garden took place on the eve of Easter.  What better day to ready oneself and one's garden for a new beginning?

Devastation

This is what a night low of 25ºF does to a beautiful magnolia flower. The only casualties seem to be this magnolia and one other, an apple tree full of open blossoms, and the daffodils that were blooming.  Thankfully, everything else, including the baby roses made it with minor or no damage.  Until next time.

Stellar Magnolia

Magnolia stellata 'Royal Star'

Despite the lack of much rain, there is a bright spot in my garden.  I've mentioned it before, but a nine year old Magnolia stellata is once again the center of attention in my garden...or at least it was yesterday.  A "center stage" performance, even though it is positioned in the wings of the garden, east of my peony bed.

My M. stellata is a cultivar named 'Royal Star', according to the label.  Those wonderful waxy white blossoms began opening a week ago and seem to be peaking today.  I believe this year's performance is the best of its short lifetime in my garden, and perhaps because it is reaching towards the heights promised at maturity.  My 'Royal Star' is about 5 feet high and 3 feet in diameter, a bit below its advertised 10'X8' maturity, but still a respectable size to make an impact.  She's reportedly hardy to Zone 3B, and I've never worried about her health, only about whether a late spring freeze would shorten the life of these blossoms.

M stellata's best input to my garden is undoubtedly sensory.  During these showy days, a unique fragrance wafts across the garden.  Although I'm not a "fragrance expert", I'd describe this one as dense or heavy, warm, moist and musky, a suiting aroma for a genus that first made sugar from sunlight in company with the dinosaurs.  If I were to make a dinosaur park, a playground reminiscent of Crichton's The Lost World, I'd surely fill it with magnolias from edge to edge.  Those thick heavy petals also echo the mists of time and the presence of swamps and humid breezes and dark jungles. Creamy white at first glance, if one looks closely at a flower, one also sees a slight pink blush when the flower first opens, as if it were embarrassed to be caught in such an immodest display.  Born new into a world when asexual means of plant reproduction were old and unfashionable, and pollen and stigmas and flower sex were new and "hot", magnolias exude sex, from the heavy musk of their fragrance to their brazen display of desire.  "Come up and fertilize me sometime," says this early Mae West.

So, if there's a plus side to not yet having spring rains, its that M. stellata is blooming in peace, petals unstained, perfect and beckoning in the sunlight.  It is a sad thing to think that I'd trade all this beauty for a measly inch of warm spring rain.

Update:  I wrote this before things turned bad yesterday.  This morning my 'Royal Star' is almost stripped clean by last night's wind.  Plus it's below freezing out there.  A fleeting moment of beauty followed by bare nothing.  I'll bet the dinosaurs went out the same way.

A Thor Kind of Night.

ProfessorRoush is angry today.  Lightning bolt throwing angry.










We need rain here in the Flint Hills. Lots of rain.  As a result, I've been waiting all week for the predicted rain this Saturday and Sunday.










Last night, we saw this thundercloud form just to our west.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush was excited for me and for the garden.

I watched it, however, with a sinking heart.  Because I saw this pattern all last year.  And I knew this cloud was going to move north and west of us.









And it did.  Oh, we had a wonderful lightning show.  My iLightningcam app triggered off 220 pictures in under 5 minutes. Click on the pictures if you want to see more detail.

I was happy to get the pictures, however, I had to quit because the cats kept rubbing around my legs.  Standing in a lightning storm with cats rubbing their fur all over your legs is probably not a good idea.  Think static electricity.



Not a drop to drink here though.  Another storm also came and went to the south and east of Manhattan.  Nothing.  We've got a 60% chance here today, but nada currently visible on radar.


We'll see.  It's going to get cold here again tomorrow.  There's a predicted low of 27ºF here Tuesday morning.  Maybe it'll snow.  Does anyone else see a sneering face in the middle of this cloud pictured at right?  Cause I totally think it's laughing at me.

Excuse me now, I need to go cover a few baby roses.  And throw some more lightning bolts around.  Stupid weather.



Update 2:46 p.m.;  Got 0.3 inches rain at noon, but the predicted high today was 72ºF.  It only reached 52ºF an hour ago and is back to 50 already with a stiff north wind.   Yesterday, remember we had a high of 86ºF   Predicted low tonight has gone from 38ºF to 32ºF a...a 54 degree swing in a little over 24 hours. And snow is now predicted after midnight.  Tuesday morning's low is now predicted to be 23ºF.  That would be a catastrophe to just about everything...lilacs, roses, magnolias, etc.   Maybe I can mow it all off and just have lawn.....

Sensory Saturation

Newcomers to the Kansas Flint Hills, during their first March or April in residence here, are often surprised to see seemingly mentally-stable new neighbors and friends turn into enthusiastic arsonists that happily participate in the wanton torching of the surrounding countryside.   This annual ritual, a Spring rite of passage in the Flint Hills, is a necessary part of proper range and ranch management.  Carefully timed burns suppress invasive shrubs and trees and keep them from out-competing the prairie grasses and forbs.   Burns also improve the pasture quality and increase the weight gain of grazing animals the summer after a burn.

Prairie burns also have a number of opponents for various and sundry reasons.  Burns from the prairies increase the daily ozone levels in nearby overpopulated cities; this serves to distract the affected public from directly facing their own contribution to the perpetually marginal ozone levels in these regions.  Lately,widespread annual burns have even been blamed for contributing to the endangered status of the Lesser Prairie Chicken by destroying habitat, as if these beautiful and elusive birds did not evolve in the midst of frequent natural prairie fires.

Setting all of that aside for a moment, however, I always enjoy the majestic beauty of the Spring burns and savor my participation in the age-old cycle of burn and renewal that anchors the existence of the prairie ecosystem.  Columns of smoke from these burns provide grand and epic visions when the burns are controlled, and can terrify and panic the greater region when they are not.  The massive fire pictured above occurred recently on a beautiful spring Saturday and was on the horizon directly to the north of my house.  At such times, one prays for an southerly breeze and good fortune to keep the flames at bay.

The most beautiful burns, however, occur at night, such as the one above. I captured this image of the living flames near my neighbor's house last night.  He wanted to burn the pasture directly behind his house and I assisted, at times worried about the slightest gust of unanticipated wind and at other times bathing in the childlike joy of playing with the fire at my feet.  The sensory impact of a prairie fire is unique and spectacular.   Lines of fire grow from darkness, move forward, meet and blaze up, and then die back to charred earth.  The sight and smell of rising smoke and the crackle of flames in the dry grasses fills the immediate universe.  Smoldering piles of horse and donkey dung add earthy scents to join those of burning sage and prairie earth.  Heat licks at your face while damp night air slithers down your back.  Feet are sore from walking on the flint-strewn ground and muscles tired from spreading and monitoring the fire.  At times you're still, watching the fire creep forward with tentative fingers, and at other times breathless and running to check a worrisome and suspicious area of smoldering debris.  In the midst of a prairie fire, the Earth and the prairie and you are one, merged beneath the timeless gaze of distant stars in a black firmament, one entity enjoined in this single moment of today, in this cycle of cleansing renewal and rebirth.    

Oh, Bother!

"If memory serves"....but memory often seems to fail to serve the old gardener, doesn't it?  I'm always exasperated when I find that I failed to write the name of a plant down or failed to note when I moved it.  I like to call things by name and know where they are.  It is partially a surgeon thing; it's comforting to be able to name the warm and glistening organ beneath your fingertips, and also to know where it should or shouldn't be in a body.  As a gardener, it is especially taxing to me if the plants in question are beautiful and even more if they're a rare and special shade of blue that isn't often seen here.   As Winnie The Pooh often said, "Oh, bother".

These few beautiful iris pop up every year in my "viburnum" bed, protected and shaded during summer beneath a number of roses and viburnums, but they rise early in spring in the dappled shade of the bare stems of the neighboring shrubs.  They are likely Dutch irises (Iris xiphium or Iris hollandica).  Except that I have no memory of planting any Dutch iris here.  I do remember planting some Siberian irises (Iris siberica) in this bed.  And the cultivar names 'Harmony' and 'Sapphire Beauty' ring a distinct bell in the back of my mind.  Except that the latter cultivars are Dutch irises, not Siberian irises.  Oh, bother.  

My planting notes say absolutely nothing about planting anything but tall bearded irises in this border.  In fact, my planting notes say nothing about planting any Siberian irises anywhere in the garden (and I'm sure that I have).  My notes do say that I planted 30 bulbs of the Dutch iris 'Sapphire Beauty' in the "peony" bed in 2006.  That's nice, but there are no iris of any kind in my peony bed.  What happened to all those Dutch iris bulbs in the peony bed?  Internet sources say that they often fade out and disappear, but all of them lost in a few years?  Did a squirrel root them all up and move them to another bed?  That would be a fine theory but there aren't any squirrels (or large trees) within 300 yards of my garden.  Did I write down the wrong name when I noted the planting bed and these are the few survivors of those 30 bulbs? That might make sense, but I seem to recall these iris blooming in this bed long before 2006.  Oh, bother.

I shouldn't care.  They're there and they return and they are beautiful, a sight for sore eyes after a long winter and their quiet tones are much more restful than cheery yellow daffodils or bright forsythia.  I'm darned well going to plant some more around.  Just as soon as I remember what they were.  Oh, bother.

I need to stop saying "oh, bother" too.  I already vaguely resemble Winnie The Pooh as I putter around the garden, tottering slowly from plant to plant.  I avoid bright red t-shirts in the garden for that very reason. Adding "oh, bother" to the mix might further dampen my manly appeal to Mrs. ProfessorRoush.

Peas and Dirt and Worms, Oh My

Peas and dirt and worms, oh my
Tendrils climbing to the sky.
Peas and dirt and worms, my word,
Winter's gone and Spring's occurred.

Little worm digs deep to hide,
Last year's straw mixed deep inside.
Little worm churns dirt and rubble,
Making soil from all that stubble.

Broken soil now wet and cold,
Clods and clay and loam and mold.
Broken soil to hold the seed,
Grow the crop or grow the weed.

Soon the peas come bursting out,
Growing, stretching, flowers sprout.
Soon more peas will fill the pods,
Sun-kissed by the garden's Gods.

Continuing my pattern of the past few years, I waited until well after the traditional St. Patrick's Day target to plant spring crops.  For Midwest gardeners of this latitude, the 17th of March is the day that our fathers told us to plant, but the delayed Springs of late have me reaching deep down within for patience before I put hoe to ground and plant my own.  This past weekend however, the rare conditions of afternoon warmth and personal energy and spare time all collided in a whirlwind Saturday of planting and pruning and cleaning.  There will be other days like that to come, of course, but my vegetable garden is now squared away for the season; new strawberries started, peas and potatoes properly planted, and empty trellises placed to await tomato vines.  
These peas look happy, pre-soaked and plump, ready to be covered by soil and to begin the cycle of replication once again.  The ground temperature in my garden was 46ºF when I planted them, proving once again that one of the most essential tools that a gardener can own is a soil thermometer.  The ground here is still pretty cold for peas, even though it was March 29th when I planted them.  The Kansas Garden Guide, from K-State Research and Extension, is an excellent resource for vegetable planting, and it tells me that I may still be planting peas too early.  Other Internet sources, such as the University of Vermont Extension, suggest that soil temperatures around 45º are adequate for pea germination.   I've come to the conclusion that I can plant peas and potatoes on March 17th and then wait 4 weeks before they come up, or I can plant them 2 weeks later and wait a week for germination and not have to wonder if they've rotted in the ground.  Maybe Global Warming can get us back to planting on March 17th, but for the near future, I'm staying near April for potatoes and peas.  

Donkey Droppings

There were times this winter, as I trudged through bone-chilling early morning winds and snowstorms to feed the cats and donkeys, that I wondered if deep insanity had prompted me to adopt these money-burning parasites or if I had merely been prey during a weak moment.  Today, however, I was reminded why I took on housing of the donkeys, Ding and Dong.  It was all about their poop.

I trust that many of you who read this blog followed your normal Sunday routines this morning, perhaps coffee and paper with a loving spouse, or time spent in pursuit of spiritual knowledge or experience. ProfessorRoush, however, was not engaged in such high-minded or polite endeavors.  I was loading donkey crap into a cart shovelful by shovelful (as pictured above) and then, as any self-respecting rosarian would, unloading it in measured fashion as more shovelfuls onto my roses.  Four carts of donkey dung were distributed among approximately 200 roses by early afternoon, interrupted only by a minor drip in the basement ceiling and by personal time to rehydrate.  I threw donkey poop onto the feet of 'Charlotte Brownell' and 'Maria Stern'.  I cast manure onto 'Queen Elizabeth' and at 'Madame Hardy'.  I even tossed a little donkey crap on 'Jeri Jennings'.   I should apologize to the latter since it is entirely possible she could run across this blog entry, but Jeri is an outstanding rosarian of great reputation and I'm sure she will understand my transgression.
  
Four heaping carts of donkey crap may sound like a lot of work, but I'm a long-time feces-slinger.  When I was the tender age of 12 or 13 or so, at the end of our first year with registered Polled Hereford cattle, my father decided the barn needed cleaning and bade me to load the accumulated manure into my grandfather's 2-ton manure spreader.  "It'll only be a couple of loads," he said.  Two weeks and 28 tons of manure later the barn was clean and Dad and I had reached an understanding that he was going to buy a front-end loader for the tractor.  Today's job was not nearly so taxing as that, and this afternoon I have a garden that looks like the bed pictured at the left, roses surrounded by piles of donkey poop.

There were learning opportunities today, as always.  After some period of applying donkey-based fertilizer, it dawned on me that Mrs. ProfessorRoush was not going to be happy about the aroma in the vicinity of our house after the predicted rains later this week.  Additionally, based on personal experience, I can now recommend that those who shovel donkey excrement into the face of a Kansas wind gusting up to 41 mph should take care never to exert themselves to the point of breathlessness and open-mouth breathing.  Such inattention to detail may have dire consequences, the least of which is the likelihood that Mrs. ProfessorRoush, upon reading this blog, will subsequently withhold any affections until she forgets or at least stops gagging at the thought.  The latter is, as stated, the least of my problems because after shoveling, unshoveling, and aspirating dust from four cart loads of donkey muffins, I could frankly use the rest.

Encore! Encore!

I'm sorry, Mother Nature, you must have misunderstood me.  I was not shouting "Encore!  Encore!" in hope of seeing winter continue.  I was shouting "No more, no more!"  Not even the best available weathermen and scientists predicted yesterday that I would wake up to more snow from you this morning. When will it end?

You are getting old and hard of hearing, aren't you? Fighting to stay when you should be welcoming rebirth and youth.  Now look where we are, my crocus babies shivering and buttoned up to hide from your icy touch.  Trust me when I recommend that you let those last tired, cold, and scrawny bones of Old Man Winter splinter and crack back to dust.  Let winter go.  I'm done with it and you should be too. Stop trying to cling to last year victories and move on.  Please.

Let Spring cover naked limbs with fresh new wood, sprout plump buds that seep sticky sap, and ripen flowers that open to sunshine.  Let light green leaves be your epitaph, shiny new skin to cover the tortures of winter.  Let roots warm and stretch beneath the soil to welcome rain and feel the embrace of earth.  Let fruit swell and blush and drop for the nourishment of all.  Fight not against life's end, but welcome at last the cycle of renewal .  Live again as moonlight and warmer winds, as brighter sunshine and as dewdrops.



Oh my beautiful snow crocus, mere yellow streaks now, memories of the glorious palette of creams and yellows from only yesterday.  Will you come back?  Encore, crocus! Will you wait out the frozen rain to bloom again this year?  Encore, crocus! How much more can you take?  How much more can I take?       

Hollyhock Hunger

Friends, I really miss my many hollyhocks.  Yes, I pine for peonies and rave on roses, but today I'm thinking only of light, cheery, woolly hollyhocks.  They bloom at the end of the roses for me, staring down the barrel at the coming heat of summer, but they've never failed to brighten up the borders as the early garden wanes. 

Stubborn and unknowing gardeners lump hollyhocks with other heirloom plants and disdain their contributions to today's gardens, but our grandmothers, as always, were sound and wise with the few ornamentals they chose to trouble with. 

Alcea 'Black Beauty'

We garden today with a multitude of companion plants for roses; of the value of clematis for complementing the bloom of a rose, of the tidiness of phlox and verbena and bulbs to extend the flowering season of a rose border, of the solid background of an ornamental grass.  But many have forgotten the lowly and coarse hollyhock in their rush to modern garden design.  Forgotten the height and structure and texture contrasts that hollyhocks provide against the shiny new rose leaves.  Forgotten the bright blooms that open wide each sunny morning and then fall cleanly to the ground a few mornings later.   








I sing today of the wonders of my hollyhocks.  I sing of the ethereal beauty of those cupped blossoms, translucent against their backgrounds but colorful and substantial in the border.  I sing of the large light green leaves, fuzzy and rough, hardened against drought and wind.  I sing of their rapid reach skyward, to tower for a brief time in the sunlight, to fade into the fall background of foliage and seed.  I sing of their carefree nature, self-seeding themselves into the perfect niche to complement a rose, requiring neither deadhead nor cultivation for procreation or survival.

Witness the delicate membrane of petal, fragile as glass.  Notice the feathery stamens and glistening pistil, aching to join forces. See the play of form and color between rose ('American Pillar') and hollyhock as pictured to the left.  Hail the vibrant crimson of 'Charter's Double Red' to the right.  Alcea all, rosea some, tough and proud faces turned to scorching sunshine, defiant and strong to wind.

I choose and covet my hollyhocks by their survival and their deep color.  I have long friendships with  'Charter's Double Red' and 'Black Beauty' and a beautiful pink variety whose name I've lost to the depths of time.  I've been briefly acquainted with more fickle visitors such as 'Charter's Double Yellow' and 'Queeny Purple', who have disdained my hospitality and faded on.  But if they live, they stay, and if they stay, they serve.  What more can I ask of a plant that can outshine a rose?

Cat-a-phoria

Yesterday was the day I've been waiting for, hoping and praying for, so long now.  Pure golden sunshine, a minor warm breeze, and 75ºF.  I attacked the garden at 8 a.m., determined to get a start on the Spring chores, to feel sweat on my arms and aching muscles again.  Determined to soak in the sunshine, to end up with red-tipped ears and rosy cheeks, melanoma be damned.

CatMint 'Nepeta cataria'

I was not the only creature on God's earth waiting for this day.  The Eastern Bluebirds are back and the Killdeer showed signs of nesting on their usual spot.  Moose, our Maine Coon cat, demonstrated his blissful enjoyment of the day by rolling over and over in the first bunch of catmint (Nepeta cataria) that I uncovered.  You can see it there next to the top of Moose's head.  Another clump is beneath him.  As I related before, I originally was thrilled to discover this native Kansan and I carefully nurtured it wherever it self-seeded.  These days I spend more time grubbing it out then preserving it, else I'd have a garden of white catnip and be overrun by most of the cats from neighboring Manhattan.  You can see in this picture how Moose was affected, his tongue hanging in drugged stupor. This picture isn't very flattering, but the silly boy deserves a few moments of Nirvana.  He's had a rough winter recovering from being the victim of a tug-of-war by two neighboring dogs back in November.

All in all a successful day for both of us.  I cleaned out the back patio bed, cut off all the ornamental grasses in the garden, reattached the lawn mower deck and leveled it, greased the tractor, crab-grass-prevented the buffalograss lawn, fertilized the sprouting daffodils and crocus, potted some left-over tulips bulbs I discovered in the garage, and mused about what I was going to move this year.  This morning I am sunburned indeed, a little bit sore, scratched up from tying up my 'American Pillar', and completely satisfied.

About 7:00 p.m. last night, the wind started howling out of the north, and this morning it is 30ºF and the wind is still threatening to lift the house from its foundations and send it rolling across the prairie.   I don't suppose I'll get much outside work done today although it it is tempting to enlist the wind on my side and just go out, tear out the brown remnants of perennials, and toss them into the air to let the wind dispose of them instead of having to drag them to the compost pile.  In the meantime, I'll leave you with the thought that those brash yellow crocuses that I wrote of just a few days ago look much better when joined by their blue and white cousins,.  Don't they?



  

Acquired Yellows

At this early date, there are two and only two blooming plants in the garden of ProfessorRoush; both  falling somewhere into the ugly brassy or chrome yellow range of the flower world.  Adding to my gardening irritation factor, they are also about 2 weeks later than in the average year.  These lovely plants are, of course, some yellow snow crocus and my 'Jelena' witch hazel.   I'm not at all sure that I like either of them, but now, a brief week or two past the snow and in contrast to the tired color of the dried grass everywhere else in my landscape, I suppose I should take what I can get.

My acceptance, nay, my naked lust, for snow crocus is based entirely on the fact that they are the first blooms I see every year.  If they flowered in late April in the wake of larger and flashier tulips and daffodils, I'd never grow them.  If they bloomed in September, just past the burning fires of August, I might give them the time of day but I also still might not grow them.  They're just too low to the ground and small to receive notice.  Still, I'm thankful every year when I see them in March.

Besides, I'm not that crazy about yellow flowers in general.  I was interested to learn recently that yellow is supposed to be the color of the "mind and the intellect," for those who follow the "psychology of yellow,"  whatever that is.  Yellow "relates to acquired knowledge," and "resonates with the left (or logical) side of the brain stimulating our mental faculties and creating mental agility and perception."  It "talks," it is "non-emotional", it is the "entertainer, the comic, the clown."   Poppycock!  The only part of that I agree with is the "acquired knowledge" part.  After years of hard-won gardening efforts, I acquired the knowledge that the first two plants that will survive a Kansas winter and bloom are two screaming yellow plants;  snow crocus and witch hazel.

As for the witch hazel, my devoted readers know that I've struggled with it here on the Kansas prairie.  I've never been impressed with the bloom and its impact on my Spring garden, but for the first time, I'm a little closer to tolerance for it.  My 'Jelena' has finally bloomed with enough gusto that I can see that it is blooming over ten feet away.  That's not much, but it's a worthwhile beginning on the road to acceptance, and what I've seen is enough for me to keep the plant around for another year of growth.  Perhaps, someday, I can hope to see it blooming from the house windows so that I don't have to walk right up to the plant to check on it.