Wild and Neglected Gardens

I spent a few days away the past week, visiting my son in Colorado, but thanks to automatic posting, probably the only readers who knew I was gone were the commenting readers to the last few posts, to whom I was slower than usual responding.  The time away was good family time, and it gave me a chance to explore some landscapes that were not my own familar, rapidly-dehydrating garden.  Let's just say that every time I looked at a weather report for Manhattan, Kansas last week, I watered the Colorado wildflowers with my tears.

Castilleja integra (left) and Penstemon whippleanus (right)

Certainly, I couldn't have gotten much farther away as a contrast from my parched Kansas landscape than the Rocky Mountain National Park, where I captured the pictures on this page of what I think I have correctly identified as Aster alpinus (Alpine Aster) pictured above, and Castilleja integra (Orange Paintbrush) and Penstemon whippleanus (Dusky Beardtongue) both of which are pictured to the left.  They were all growing at about the 10,000 feet elevation in the Park, and seemingly out of solid rock.  I'm going to have to look for seed for that Dusky Beardtongue, also known as Whipple's Beardtongue, because I love the color.  I'm pretty concerned, however, about the exact meaning and root of the species name of Dusky Beardtongue. Talk about your awkward Latin (sorry, but I just couldn't leave that one hanging out there).

Erysimum asperum (at the left)

The wildflowers were everywhere, and, in fact, so prevalent that I didn't even notice some of them until I was reviewing the pictures at home.  The Western Wallflower (Erysimum asperum) in the picture at the right was a simple bystander to the little ground squirrel/rodent/rat that I was photographing and I didn't notice it when the picture was taken.  For help with the identification of Colorado wildflowers, by the way, I'd like to give a big shout-out to a fellow veterinarian, Dr. Mary L Dubler, who has a great website called Wildflowers of Colorado, filled with lots of fabulous pictures. I think my identifications here are correct and I owe them to Dr. Dubler's website.

Another interesting aspect to our trip was the contrast of the wildflowers in the Rocky Mountain National Park with the back yard at the new house my son just purchased in Littleton.  I was envious because his entire new back yard is providing him with the opportunity for a fabulous archaeologic plant dig.  It was neglected by the previous owner, but somewhere in the past, a "real" gardener had terraced and landscaped the back yard.  Amidst the weedy grasses, thistles, and bindweed are peonies, clematis, honeysuckles, irises, various flowering shrubs including a lilac and forsythia, a grapevine arbor, an herb garden where I could identify basil, oregano, spearmint and rosemary, and many other formerly-cultivated plants.  There were evergreens, and a flowering dogwood, and crabapple trees. There was even a small stagnant pond over to one side, a feature that Mrs. ProfessorRoush (who has been forever wanting me to place a pond or fountain in our garden) was sure to point out to me.  I believe that all that my son has to do is pull the weeds and apply some water to have a fantastic garden start. 

I just wish I had a week to spend with him and help him clear it all out.  But alas, I'm back to the Great Grass Desert of Kansas, watching my own garden suffer in the heat and sun.  

Coincidental Catnip

For some time, I had been admiring the drought fortitude of a couple of particular perennial clumps in my peony bed and that of another identical plant in a bed close to a 'Jeanne Lavoie' rose.  These happy-go-lucky plants had a textured medium green foliage that never burns or wilts, and they had began flowering recently, drawing in hundreds of honey bees while providing a nice light-pink (or is it white?) flower for my landscape. 

In a flash of unaccustomed brilliance, I realized this was obviously a plant that adapts well to my Flint Hills weather conditions, and so I resolved last week to divide and propagate it in a few more spots.  Since it was already present in a few spots, in fact, I thought that I had probably already come to that conclusion before, divided it, and then forgot about it.  Old age can be such a bummer.  Seeking to learn again the name of this little pet, however, I consulted my landscape maps in each place that it grew and I came up short.  To the best of my knowledge, I had never placed a plant matching this description anywhere near their locations.

The solution of the mystery, of course, was to acknowledge that I was likely coveting a native Kansas weed, er uh...wildflower, and to turn once again to KSWildflower.org for identification.  And, as usual, a quick search there informed me that I had been admiring the native Catnip (Nepeta cataria), which grows wild over Kansas and, in fact, over the entire United States.  And as I looked for it more carefully, I realized that this member of the mint family was growing throughout my garden; eight separate clumps, although some had not yet started to bloom. As I compared it to the cultivated forms offered locally in fact, it was obvious that my native form is identical to what I could buy for prices between $3.99 and $12.00 depending on the size of the pot.  Talk about your serendipity!  I should be digging this stuff up and selling it instead of looking to acquire more.  

Catnip, also known as Catswort or Catmint,  has a long history of use with humankind and our feline brethren.  It contains a steam-distillable terpenoid known as nepetalactone that has a slight numbing effect on people and drives cats absolutely bonkers.  In the case of felines, it is believed to mimic a natural cat pheromone to which about 2/3/rds of cats are genetically susceptible.  So, of course, people have used it in teas and poultices and smoked it, and cats have just; well, cats just view it as a self-aphrodisiac and general whoopee-maker and they just make fools out of themselves rolling around and basking in it whenever they can.  Luckily, our personal cat, living outdoors now because I want it to earn its keep in the form of mouse mutilations, seems to be immune to the effects and so my clumps remain standing tall.  Or perhaps my cat just hasn't discovered it yet, since bruising the leaves enhances the drug's effects on cats.  If you have a cat addict, you'll have to remove the plant from your garden because keeping it there is as cruel as drinking alcohol in front of a recovering alcoholic.

One last thought; nepetalactone is reputed to be ten times more effective at repelling mosquitoes than DEET in the lab but it is supposedly not effective when the plant is rubbed on the skin.  I'm going to try it out because I frankly don't trust those researchers, who are likely just capitalists trying to keep us from using a plentiful and inexpensive alternative to DEET.  Of course, their motive could be to prevent me from being molested by a herd of drug-craving cats, but there are some crosses we all have to bear in the name of science. 

Oopsies

Well, I'll start off year two of my blog by showing you a recent little oopsie that constitutes my biggest garden error; EVER, bar none!  This little mistake was not on the same level as placing a Stella de Oro daylily next to a magenta phlox.  Nor was it quite equivalent to planting Houttuynia cordata 'Chameleon' between the stepping stones of a walkway (although that would be a pretty big error).  No, this bonehead move resulted in horticultural murder, mayhem, and genocide in my garden.  I may need to convene a Gardener's War Crime Tribunal to clear up this aftermath and assign blame.

Before I confess, I must, in my defense, state the mitigating circumstances.  It was a hot Saturday.  A very very hot Saturday.  And I had been working in the garden for several hours, and likely was operating under delirium brought on by heat stroke.  And there were several things left to accomplish on my list before I melted away, including mixing up "Over-The-Top" spray to kill some grass invading an heirloom group of irises and my strawberry bed, and I was in a hurry.   So I reached for the Hi-Yield Grass Killer sitting benignly on my killing shelf (as Helen Dillon refers to it), measured out the proper amount, added some sticker-spreader, and sprayed the aforementioned areas.  And with a little left over, decided to also spray some Nut Sedge (Cyperus rotundus) that had surrounded a 'Jean Kenneally' miniature rose and some crabgrass that was romping across an island bed.

Alas, about 45 minutes later it occurred to me suddenly that I had picked up the identically shaped and sized bottle of all-purpose herbicide that I used on the buffalograss this spring. Oops.  A quick check of the label indicated that this herbicide took two hours to become rain-proof, so I made a frantic run for the hoses and quickly washed off what I could.  The only hope that I really had is that in many areas of the strawberry patch I had directed the spray only on plants choked by grass and had not generally sprayed the entire bed.  The end result is that the strawberries mostly survived, I can't bear to show you the irises, and I can only bear to show you the miniature rose.  If you peer closely at the picture at the left, you'll see that the green foliage at the bottom of the picture, taken 3 weeks after the mishap, is a surviving part of the rose.  Thank God this rose was own-root and several years old because it has a chance to recover someday. 

There are a couple of lessons here.  First, the old adage about never to "ass-u-me" anything because it makes an ass out of -u and -me applies here.  Just because I knew the bottle shape and size didn't excuse the fact that I should have checked the label.  Second, my practice of writing the concentration in bold marker on the bottle so that I don't have to search the label for it may not, after all, be a good thing.  If I had to go looking for the fine print, I might just have noticed that what I was holding wasn't what it should have been.

I've been thinking about trying to host a monthly "show your garden errors" blog day.  What do you think?  Would a display of public humility either be educational or cathartic for you?  Do you think that all of you out there with perfect gardens would find enough problems and  be willing to disclose them to make it worthwhile?  Or did I just act out the horticultural equivalent of Will Ferrell in the movie "Old School," streaking along by myself and expecting the gang to follow?

One Year of Mind and Garden

Today, though I can scarce believe it, marks the first-year anniversary of this blog. 

From my first post, an introduction and explanation, to the most recent post Tuesday evening, 227 posts along, my blog is still evolving and changing. It has filled my need to occasionally free-associate and ramble and sometimes rant outside of my normal daily grind, and it has allowed me to explore, a little bit, the new social media outlets and think about applying them to my day job.  It has given me a chance to learn more about gardening and especially about roses, through research and from others.  And it has opened some doors to inward reflection.  I now know more about the passions that exist in my life and have an ever-so-slightly better appreciation of the important things in life from writing about them.

I appreciate, most of all, you readers and regular visitors to Garden Musings.  I've gained friends that I've never met in person and I've learned from each of you through your own observations and comments about my entries.  I've explored new plants and new thoughts because of this blog.  I've learned that sometimes the better part of  being a blogger is simply thinking about what went right or wrong in that most recent garden effort.  On the other side of this electronic divide, I hope you're enjoying a glimpse of Flint Hills gardening and that you can continue to tolerate the lens of humor and irreverent bemusement that I view the world through.  Please feel free to drop me a private line about anything you see that will help me to improve, either my gardening or my writing.  I also hope you realize that Mrs. ProfessorRoush, who is gracefully continuing to evolve into my garden muse, is not so much an onerous gardening cross that I have to bear as she is a loving and supportive companion who at least tolerates my eccentricities and the time I spend away in our garden.

As for the future, I'm content to let it develop as it will.  One thing that life (and gardening in Kansas) surely teaches us over time is that we all need to take it a little less seriously and be able to roll with the seasonal and sometimes tornadic punches.  Somewhat-daily blogging has slowed down my efforts on a second gardening book, but I hope it continues to better my writing and helps me find a unique voice.  Certainly, my grammar is slowly improving and the ideas are stacking up.  

And, anyway, blogging is but a garden of the mind, sometimes budding to bloom, sometimes wilting in the harsh light, but always expressing life in every thought and paragraph.