Sub Rosa Surprise

While my fellow blogger Hartwood Roses was accompanied by a bumblebee in her garden this morning, I had a more stealthy companion of my own as I gave my young roses a good deep soaking during the cool part of the morning.  Caught out between 'Gallicandy' and 'Marianne', the creature pictured below was trying to lay still, silent and unnoticed, all to no avail.

Or perhaps, it was trying to invite me for a literal sub rosa meeting to discuss some important aspect of my garden chores.   This is, of course, a small portion of the caudal half of a Common Red-sided Garter Snake, (Thamnophis sirtalis parietalis), whose overall length was about 3 feet and with a girth of around an inch at widest.  It was likely a female due to the short length of the tail, and that would be about my luck since the females bear up to 85 young in mid-summer.  I'm sorry that I can't show you all of it, but by the time I retrieved my camera and returned, it had moved quickly out of the open and it was obviously not inclined to introduce itself and make friends this morning.  I tried and failed to capture a better photograph than this, but once it realized that a large predator was stalking it, the snake stayed good and secure under a rose bush, not even moving when poked.  Yes, that's right, I stalked and speedily shoved the stealthy sub-rosa snake with a stick, but it slowly slithered under shelter and stayed silent.

I would be normally be very personally proud of not shouting or jumping at the first surprise sighting of the reptile, however I believe that the snake should get most of the credit for my own calm attitude since it was laying perfectly still (probably hoping not to accidentally get a cold shower from the hose).  It took me a few seconds to realize that the bright orange specks and the yellow-white stripes didn't belong among the light brown shade of the grass clippings I use for mulch.  

I appreciate the garter snakes of my garden for their control of rodents and spiders, and they are beautiful creatures, but I'd generally prefer that they perform their part of the garden maintenance out of sight and out of mind.  They certainly shouldn't feel the need to entertain me in conversation as I water.

Nothing But Blue Skies

'Blue Skies'

I'm afraid to admit that I'm falling in love all over again with yet another rose, in this case one that has trifled with my affections before and left me sobbing over its sudden disappearance.

'Blue Skies' is a Griffith Buck rose (with the registration name of BUCblu) that I have long desired to grow and, in fact, I have tried and failed to establish it twice before.  I can chalk one failure up to an overbearing and smothering nearby Panicum sp., and the other to a poor specimen (a grafted, bagged, $3.00 Grade 2 rose), so I hope that this time, the third time, will really prove a charm.

And, so far at least, so good.  This rose is so spectacular that it hurts me.  I purchased a band of 'Blue Skies' this Spring from Heirloom Roses and it arrived in excellent condition and now, 2 months later, is a one-foot tall rose "toddler" that has bloomed twice already and is heading rapidly into its third flush.  I cannot, of course, speak to its winter hardiness in my zone, but I wasn't going to wait until next Spring to blog about a rose of this perfect-ness.

I have not, in the past, been a real fan of "blue" roses, but I'll make an exception for the pink/mauve/lilac 'Blue Skies'.  Released by Dr. Buck in 1983, its parentage, according to Mary Buck, is  [(Soir d'Automne x Music Maker) x Solitude] x [(Mainzer Fastnacht x Tom Brown) x Autumn Dusk], a combination that I can't quite get my head around.  Whatever the heritage, 'Blue Skies' has, even as a small bush, provided me with a good number of perfect hybrid-tea style buds on long stems.  The double blooms have a strong fragrance and it may well be one of the fastest repeat cycle bloomers in my garden.  I hate to report a final assessment yet, since it is such a young bush for me, but disease resistance is excellent at present, absolutely not a blemish on the foliage anywhere.

 ProfessorRoush doesn't grow many Hybrid Tea-type roses, and Mrs. ProfessorRoush has soft spots for both lilac-colored roses and for Hybrid Tea blooms, so I'm keeping my figures crossed and watching this rose closely.   Because, of course, I want smooth sailing at home and 'Blue Skies', nothing but blue skies, from now on.

Mely-rid-me-of-it

Melyridae (Soft-winged flower beetle)

"Mrs. ProfessorRoush is not fond of bugs."  I'm sorry, but that statement isn't strong enough to accurately summarize the situation.  "Mrs. ProfessorRoush hates bugs!"  Yes, perfect, that wording is more descriptive of the depth of her emotions.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush hates spiders and ants and chiggers and ticks and bagworms and generally just about anything that has six or eight legs and gains entry to her home or body.  And she's also not very happy with ProfessorRoush when insects hitch a ride on his flowers into the house.

Thus, we reached a domestic crisis when a number of the creatures pictured here began falling out of every rose bloom that I, her knight-in-shining-armor, so chivalrously tried to gift her.  And as I examined my roses closer, these were everywhere, hiding in the open blooms and running around or abandoning ship at the first sign of human interference or disruption.  The blooms seemed to tolerate these free-loafer tenants without damage, but the bugs were surely putting a strain on the whole "I'm sorry for breathing, here are some roses to make up for it" sequence of my marriage.

Thanks to the Kansas State Extension entomology and their excellent diagnostic service at gotbugs@ksu.edu, I now know that these are beetles in the family Melyridae, also known as soft-wing flower beetles.  They do not, in fact, harm the roses, but are omnivores that primarily feed on other insects and insect eggs, and that sometimes add a little pollen and nectar to their regular diet.  Their larvae live and feed in the soil and there are 520 species in 58 genera of Melyridae in North America.  The "melyrids" as the bug people refer to them, are nuisances to those of us who bring flowers indoors, but they will not eat the carpet or survive long in our homes.  From a fascinating publication titled The Coleopterists Bulletin (2003;57:154-160), I learned that melyrids may even be important pollinators in the western United States, and that my personal melyrids probably visit other flower species as well as my roses.  The author of that article seemed more excited by that discovery than I felt upon reading it, but hey, how much does it really take to excite a coleopterist?

 Melyrids were once recognized as the "Bug of the Week" by someone calling herself "The BugLady," who appears to work for the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Field Station.  These beetles may contain batrachotoxins, potent heart and nerve toxins that are also found in poison dart frogs in the South Pacific, so I would recommend that you do not make Melyridae a mainstay of your own diet even though you'd have to eat your weight in them to be harmed.  I think I'll keep the latter information from Mrs. ProfessorRoush, lest she begin shaking the blooming roses over my soup du jour.

Regarding my melyrid infestation, I view them as a simple byproduct of my religious conviction to not indiscriminately use insecticides in my garden. If I were spraying the roses with Silent-Spring-inducing poisions instead of allowing nature to find the controls for me, I'd have less melyrids, but also less ladybugs, and I would increase the chance that some insect that the melyrids normally eat would proliferate and cause more damage.  So, I'm going to let bygones be bygones and simply shake out the roses a bit more carefully before presenting them to Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  And hope that she forgives me.