Garden Bookoholics Anonymous

It is not often that ProfessorRoush steps away from his libertarian politics and asks for action by the authorities-that-be, but someone really needs to step in and close down Half-Price Books before this vile, crack-den masquerading as a commercial enterprise drags me deeper into garden book addiction and debt.

We should form a club of garden book addicts, calling it Garden Bookoholics Anonymous or something similar, with our own twelve-step program.   I'm already a member of Garden Statueholics Anonymous, so I'm already halfway down that path anyway.  I've always enjoyed reading garden-related literature, particularly essay-type pieces based on experience, but whenever I cross over the threshold of Half-Price Books, I seem to fall into an abyss, wild-eyed and avid, with no evident self-restraint or shame.  Take last week for example.  I was on an innocent visit to my parent's home and wasting time while my wife shopped, when I happened across this local book-pusher's establishment.  On the feeble justification that I only had a few minutes and wasn't likely to buy anything, I stepped inside.  In hindsight, I now recognize that such excuses are common among addicts;  "I only tried the Burgundy to see if it differed from the Boone's Farm," or "I only stepped inside the strip joint to see what it was like," are identical in intent, if not in prose. 

In five minutes I walked out with 6 hard-back books, all purchased at "a bargain," and all irresistible to a garden-book collector.  How could I deny that I needed Gardening With Grasses by Piet Oudolf himself?  How to abstain from the pleasures of Suzy Bale's The Garden in Winter?  Peter Loewer is a well-known garden author and I couldn't forgo Thoreau's Garden, could I?  Growing Roses Organically just spoke directly to my rose-nut soul and I listened.  A trip to another Half-Price Books addict den two days later yielded another four books.  Jefferson's Garden by Loewer was another classic.  Bizarre Botanicals was essential in case I ever wanted to grow a Venus Flytrap or some other tropical monstrosity.  McNaughton's Lavender, The Grower's Guide had some beautiful pictures that might help me identify the varieties in my presently-blooming lavender bed.

As others with similar addiction know, I've previously reported cataloguing my garden books collection on a nifty little phone app, and it came in handy on my recent binge, preventing me from buying books I already own.  To reveal the depths of my depravity, I will note here that my collection now includes 486 gardening-related books.  Yes, I know that one is not supposed to reveal the extent of one's collectibles on the Internet in case enterprising thieves are lurking, but I feel there is little danger that someone will break in to steal my garden book collection.  Anyone who wants the collection for their own use deserves only my sympathy and pity, and, for money-motivated thieves, the whole collection is probably worth about $12.78 if sold to a second-hand book store.

Gardening bibliophiles with a similar addiction, please repeat after me.  "I admit that I am powerless against the lure of books by Sydney Eddison and Henry Mitchell and Sara Stein."  "I hope to believe that a Power greater than myself can restore sanity (if not God, at least a forceful spouse might intervene)."  "I will continue to take inventory and promptly admit when I've bought a bad book."   Oops, that last one may not help. Curses, a pox on Half-Price Books!  I don't really want to stop.  Can it really be that terrible if my garden book addition keeps me away from the Devil's Brew and out of strip clubs? 

Distant Drums Disclosure

'Distant Drums', fully exposed

ProfessorRoush finally conceded to convention this summer and purchased the widely-acclaimed Griffith Buck rose 'Distant Drums'.  This uniquely-colored rose has been rising in popularity over the past few years, but I'd previously resisted it because that same unique-color just turned me off.  It always seemed a little murky, a little too mauve, for my tastes, and so I inevitably opted for other rose choices each time I considered it. 

I had sort of obliquely promised that I'd try 'Distant Drums' to Rev. Keneda of Red Dirt Roses last year, however and since I'm giving an upcoming talk this Fall about the Griffith Buck roses, I decided that I shouldn't give it without at least a season growing 'Distant Drums'.  I asked for it for Father's Day but it didn't appear, so I did what any good father would do and purchased it for myself under the premise that I am a decent father and deserved it.  In reality, my family probably wouldn't have gotten the name right anyway and I might have instead been given some hideous Hybrid Tea like 'Big Daddy' or one of the two frightful Floribunda's named 'Drummer Boy', so this seemed the simpler and more direct approach.

'Distant Drums' is a shrub rose introduced by Buck in 1984.  Officially a mauve or purple blend, I believe the bloom color of this rose varies with the temperature and season.  I've seen it as very "mauvey" coming from the greenhouse, but so far my (unfortunately) grafted specimen has fortunately been more orange and pink, a color combination that I approve of.  It seems to start with pinkish-mauve buds and then open up with gold tones to reflect the Kansas sun.  It will be interesting to see what it does this Fall as cooler weather hits.

'Distant Drums', early bud opening

The very double blooms have a strong fragrance and it blooms both singly and in clusters on a healthy bush with medium green foliage.  Obviously, I can't attest to winter hardiness of this offspring of 'September Song' X 'The Yeoman', but I expect it is fully winter hardy in my climate.  I can tell you that I've got a young own-root 'September Song' that was also started this Spring and I'm very impressed with it's rebloom rate, so I've got high hopes for the rebloom of 'Distant Drums'. 

As I look over the reviews and marketing for this rose, it is no wonder that 'Distant Drums' is growing in popularity.  A writer from Ellensburg WA wrote "This is an unusual color rose - sort of a coffee/cream inner color, fading to a mauve outer color. It has an antique look to it - very old fashioned feminine."  Feminine?  Obviously this writer is wrong because 'Distant Drums' seems to be a male rose to me.  The Weeks Roses tag that came with my rose was nauseatingly effusive: "Stop, Look, and listen up!...Distant Drums grows much like a Floribunda in habit, drumming out clusters of pointed brunette buds that swirl open to revel ruffles washed with orchid pink.  All this set to music against dark green foliage makes for a toe-tapping commotion in the landscape."  A toe-tapping commotion?  Hmmm, I haven't toe-tapped in my garden for some time.  And what, pray tell, is a "brunette bud"?  If Mrs. ProfessorRoush finds me growing other brunettes in my garden, I'll surely find myself bedding down in the gazebo. 

Ambrosia Abounding

The quote "Earth laughs in flowers," is from a Ralph Emerson poem named Hamatreya, and it really doesn't have the sweet, happy meaning that everyone attributes to it.  In Emerson's poem, the Earth is literally laughing at Man; any Man who dares to presume that a portion of Earth is his, denying that man dies while the Earth endures....laughing at us with flowers.

I realized today that "my Earth" laughs at me too, only it laughs in Ambrosia artemisiifolia.  That's Common Ragweed to you and I, also known as Annual Ragweed.  Everywhere that I sink spade in soil, this pernicious weed pops up.  I never see it on the unbroken prairie and I've never let it set seed in my garden, but I would estimate, from the frequency it crops up as a weed, that half of the mass of any given spadeful of my soil must actually be ragweed seed.  

I had an infestation in my iris bed this year so bad that I considered, for a time, selling the house merely to rid myself of it.  Here it is (above), growing in the middle of a daylily.  There it is (below), hiding at the roots of a rose.  It spreads, I think both by runners and seed.  It laughs, I know, at my feeble attempts to remove it.  It's partially resistant to glyphosate, shrugging off the first blasts from the sprayer like it was being watered.  I suspect that it suppresses growth in plants who dare to grow in the same soil with it, like a walnut tree with soft velvety leaves and a pollen that brings tears to the eyes of man.

I've got a hunch that the very name, Ambrosia, was a joke by Linnaeus himself.  Ambrosia, of course, was the food of the Greek gods, thought to bestow immortality to those who consumed it.  "Food of the gods," my royal hiney!  The only immortality ragweed provides is to itself.  Once established, it's impossible to unestablish. 

My favorite wildflower website, kswildflower, lists the habitat of Common Ragweed as "disturbed sites, roadsides, waste areas, prairies, pastures, stream banks, pond and lake margins, old fields, fallow fields; wet to dry soils."  Mull on that for a moment.  Ragweed grows anywhere that the soil is disturbed, like it was created for the sole purpose of badgering mankind.  Each plant produces over a billion grains of highly allergenic pollen in a year.  I don't believe all that pollen is necessary just for reproduction.  Perhaps one billion pollen grains per plant is just the Earth's way of getting even with us for disturbing it. 

Crabby old Emerson was  only partially right.  The Earth doesn't laugh at our fleeting folly in flowers.  It laughs in ragweed.  Thoreau probably learned that at Walden's Pond, but never bothered to tell Emerson.

Vie et mort dans le jardin

The Spider and the Fly is a poem by Mary Howitt (1799-1888), published in 1829. The first line of the poem, "Will you walk into my parlour?' said the Spider to the Fly," is one of the most quoted lines of poetry, although I would guess that most of us wouldn't know anything about the author or the rest of the poem.

The quoted line sprang quick and sure into my mind when I looked at this recent photo of 'Leda', the multicolored Alba that so vexes my rose-growing abilities.  The second line of the poem, "'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy," certainly fits this blushing rose; so delicate and beautiful if caught at the right moment.  This spider set up shop on main street, following classic marketing principles of visibility, attractiveness, and access.  Business, it appears, is good in this neighborhood.

I don't think I knew the spider and the fly were there when the photo was taken.  Still, here they are, caught up in the struggle of life and death within my garden, a still life in my personal version of an NSA spy drone, the camera lens of my Canon capturing the moment.  I wonder, does the spider care that I've captured it in the moment of conquest?  No matter that the gardener thinks he controls the garden, I am reminded again that I am merely another tool in this garden; a tool to provide water and mulch and flowers for the vast symphony of life that ebbs and flows beneath the surface.

Howitt's poem is a cautionary tale to warn the unwary about evil creatures who use flattery and charm to draw us in, and she ends with the words "Unto an evil counselor close heart and ear and eye, And take a lesson from this tale of the spider and the fly."  She was obviously writing as an advocate for the fly, but once written and distributed, words and meanings are subject to interpretation and change by the greater world, much to the chagrin of many an author or politician.  As a gardener, I'm rooting strongest here for the maligned little spider.  This minuscule fly probably wasn't harming my garden, but if it sustains the spider until the first fat, juicy Japanese Beetle comes lumbering by, then it was well worth the sacrifice.  Predator and prey, dancing together through the cycle of life.