Blowing Wind

West of Salina, Kansas

Every time I make a little trek west on I-70 from Manhattan to Denver, I become more and more impressed by the rapid expansion of efforts to harvest wind energy, and simultaneously more and more amazed that anyone or any organization could be opposed to them.  There are two stretches of wind farms on the route, one west of Salina Kansas stretching 20 miles long and another near Burlington Colorado.  Along a highway of inner America where the landscape is charitably described as stark, where the population is scant, and where the per-acre profit for dry-land farm income and ranching is minimal, I can't imagine a better place to build an industry based on the value of what is above the land, rather than what is beneath it.

ProfessorRoush is part of a generation who were told as children that by now, in the second decade of the 21st century, the world would be completely out of oil.  I admit that I feel it is a testimony to science and human ingenuity that there are now believed to be more oil reserves (and ways to get at them) than were ever dreamed of in the 1970's.  On my most recent trip to Colorado, a radio program celebrated that the United States is again the world's largest producer of oil this year, surpassing even Saudia Arabia.  I'm surely not alone, however, when I say that record oil production is not a positive event for the Earth in the long term.  I say leave it all in the ground. 

Oil is nice. Natural gas and coal are nice. They're known, dependable entities, somewhat like the skanky relatives we'd like to pretend not to know.  But they're not renewable.  Whether it is this decade or this century, they will run out. Even a global warming skeptic, like myself, can admit that we'd be better off if we didn't use fossil fuels in any form.  And the answer is right in front of us, clean, free for the taking and equally profitable right now. Wind. Wind blowing across land whose best use as a Buffalo Commons was once proposed by some meddling Easterners. Wind driven by the energy of the sun across the vast grass prairies, almost free for the taking. I complain about the difficulties of gardening against the wind in Kansas constantly, but I applaud any effort to use that wind for the better. 


The future, stretching into the distance.....

I'm astonished, sometimes, at the opposition to wind energy, but then, I also recognize that "all politics are local", and that most of the groups in opposition just don't want the turbine towers in their back yards.    Heck, I'll take them in mine.   Riley County has several "experimental" turbines of varying heights that are already visible from our home. I think they're haunting and beautiful, clean and statuesque.  Concerns about effects of wind turbines on wildlife and people have either been proven unfounded or have been minimized by design changes.  Wind farms are a source of local jobs and an extra income source for ranchers who can still farm and graze cattle beneath them.   On a per-kilowatt basis, taking into account initial capital costs, maintenance, fuel, and operation, and excluding tax incentives, wind energy is already cheaper than "clean" coal, nuclear, and solar technologies (according to the US Department of Energy), equal to conventional coal and geothermal sources, and only slightly more expensive than hydroelectric power.  Other sources list it as being among the cheapest of all sources of electricity generation.  And it will only get cheaper as the technology develops, and better as we learn to store the generated energy for use when the wind doesn't blow. Take that, oil wells.

I'll fully admit that my aesthetic tastes are often questioned, but I think these clean, white towers are the picturesque equal of the Parthenon or the Taj Mahal.  And they're the best outcome that modern technology can give to the 7th Generation and to the Earth.  I dare you to convince me otherwise.

Green Gold

News flash!  Stop the presses!  ProfessorRoush has won the gardener's lottery! 

Sunday, I noticed that my southern neighbor was out doing chores, so I walked down the road to greet him with idle chatter.  He was out removing the dried remnants of native Baptisia australis (Wild False Indigo) from his western fence line. Baptisia blow around like tumbleweeds out here on the prairie and then act to catch snow drifts and help pull down fences.  During a 20 minute conversation, that mainly consisted of cursing the damned Baptisia, another neighbor came driving up in the way of country folk, whose neighborhood meetings are often spontaneous roadside conclaves convened to discuss the weather and current state of the Kansas State Wildcats football team.

This latter neighbor, however, had an agenda.  She wanted to ask me if I'd like to be the beneficiary of weekly reoccurring five gallon tubs of purest manure from her horses.  Would I???  Quickly picking my jaw up off of the gravel, and putting aside any qualms about who I'd have to kill for her in trade for the manure, I accepted on the spot and without reservations, doing a little dance of joy in my soul.

I'd been wondering, in my treeless landscape, how to make up for the compost generated annually from the 50 or so bags of leaves that another friend had previously supplied.  That, now former, friend had listened too well to my advice about starting her own compost pile and, thusly realizing the value of what she had been giving away, had chosen to cut off my pre-compost supply. 

It seems, however, that what the Garden Gods taketh away, they giveth back, in plentiful greenish nodules of purest gold.  I finally stopped to take the photo above after I had already emptied half the tub around some rose plants and realized that I should stop to commemorate the occasion.  From this day forth, every Saturday will find me picking up another five gallon bin of odoriferous splendor, and spreading it to the hungry roses.  My garden is now a happy place, and destined to remain so until the first rainy Spring day when Mrs. ProfessorRoush opens the windows and learns what I've been up to.

Night activity

As Fall moves along and Winter draws ever closer, ProfessorRoush is not the only creature participating in increased garden activities.  My game camera has been rather quiet all summer, but as I checked it today, I saw a sudden increase in the number of automatic exposures taken, so I brought the chip in for download.

 

I've only seen this doe twice before this summer, assuming it is the same doe each time, and the last time I'd caught her was on September 28th at 9:15 in the evening.  She next shows up on October 15th, early in the morning.  The picture at the right was taken at 05:56 a.m. and I'm sure if I had looked out the window that morning, I'd have seen her since I usually rise about that time.
 
There were several pictures of her that morning, all taken while she nibbled on the two-year-old 'Conrad Ferdinand Meyer' closest to the camera.  I have evidence that she'd been around since at least 5:27 a.m. that morning, because if you look closely at the picture to the left, you'll see her head just on the left most edge of the picture.  Sneaky, aren't we?



She came again Friday evening, October 19th, but this time she visited in the evening again, at 8:34 p.m.   She must not care that we're home, because you can see the lights on in the house at the upper right corner of the photo to the right.







I've captured a new visitor as well, a coyote, sneaking through just at dusk (7:31 p.m.) on October 16th.  You can see the twilight sky in the picture in the background, as further evidence that this guy is starting early on his night of hunting.  It's the only time I've caught a picture of a coyote this year, and the big question on my mind is whether he knew that October 16th, 2012, was my 30th wedding anniversary to Mrs. ProfessorRoush?  We were dining out ourselves at the time the picture was taken, so it is entirely possible that the little guy sensed the quietness of the house and took advantage of new mousing territory.  Seeing a coyote is no surprise here on the Kansas prairie because I can hear them frequently on clear nights when I leave the windows open.

The little doe and the coyote haven't been causing any visible damage to the garden (unless it was the coyote who dug the holes recently), so I'm leaving them alone and allowing them to enjoy my garden.  The increased frequency of the visits tells me, though, that the search for enough energy to tide them through Winter has begun.  I can also tell from my camera that All Hallow's Eve is surely near.  Twice, on October 10th and October 20th, the camera has been tripped between 12:00 a.m. and 12:30 a.m., but no living creatures are visible on the photos.  Since the animals only seem to trip them at dusk and at dawn, I can only conclude that ghosts are coming into the garden now during the witching hour.  I do wish they'd show themselves on the photos, though.  Imagine what those pictures would be worth!

UnElectrifying Failure

'High Voltage'

I'm sure many of you out there in roseland grow some of the Bailey Nursery Easy Elegance Roses, a new-ish line of shrub roses bred over the last decade by Ping Lim.  Ping's roses are gaining wide acclaim for health and performance, and have won a number of national awards, including the honor of having three recent AARS winners. I grow and enjoy several of the Easy Elegance line myself, among which are 'Sweet Fragrance', 'Super Hero', and 'The Finest'.  I'm especially fond of the apricot color and fragrance of 'Sweet Fragrance'. 

'High Voltage' at 2 years of age

In the interest of full disclosure I have to tell you, however, that I'm disappointed in the light yellow Easy Elegance shrub 'High Voltage' ('BAIage'), introduced by Bailey in 2009.  I am not trying to deny that 'High Voltage' is a vigorous and healthy rose.  At four years of age she stands about 4 foot tall and wide in my garden and I've never seen her badly affected by blackspot or other disease. And she is reliably cane-hardy in my climate.  The rotund little vixen has not, however, atttained her advertised "vase-like" shape, and the stiff thick canes are now making a massive attempt to smother adjacent, less vigorous roses.  I am also not overwhelmed by the beauty of the light yellow, double blooms. They are small and barely double and definitely not electrifying.  The advertised moderate to strong fragrance has not appeared and the color of just-opened blooms is not bright enough to grab my eye as a garden fixture.  Here in the blazing Kansas sun, they fade quickly and melt, and the delicate petals seem to spot easily with rain. 

'High Voltage' hips

Most disappointing of all, to me, has been the lack of rebloom.  As you know, I don't deadhead the vast majority of my roses and I wouldn't even think of deadheading this shrub offering any more than I would deadhead  'Knock Out'.  I discovered this year that if you don't deadhead 'High Voltage', at least here in Kansas in a drought, you get a mass of ultimately uninspiring dull orange hips, but no significant rebloom. This year, I admit, has been a tough test, but although this rose put on a strong first showing, there was not a single bud again until very recently, when a few random blooms appeared right before the freeze that ended my garden year.  And those just aren't enough for the formal part of my rose garden.

Since I'm one of those gardeners who is unable to kill a plant outright, I think I'm going to move it next year to one of my beds with more non-remonant roses, where I won't be so disappointed in its inability to rebloom.  Maybe somewhere out there, among the pilgrims, it can still earn a place in my garden, but I can't recommend her as a landscaping plant for the more-discriminating homeowner.