Behold the Lamb

Easter arrived at last, a rebirth of spirit and earth that is long overdue this year.  March came in like a lion, went out like one, and winter continued into April here in Kansas, more overnight freezes in the forecast and a chance for snow predicted tonight.   The closest thing to a Lamb evident in my garden this week was the small, peaceful concrete fawn that graces my viburnum bed.  I found it last week, half-buried under a year of debris, and laid it on this nice new bed of straw for comfort.  There perhaps, watched over and aided by the last daffodils of the season, it can tempt the weather to act more like springtime before the furnaces of summer fire up.

We began to at least pretend it was spring here this week by burning the prairie, our annual ritual here of welcoming warmer weather and clearing the fields for growth.  My neighbors and I got together Friday and burned in mass, teams spread out on the periphery to protect the town from our exuberance and teams within to protect our homes from ourselves.  This year's burn started out on a cold morning at 35ºF but rose to 60º temperatures by midday and it was a fine burn, windless when we were burning the edges and a mild breeze when we wanted the fire to sweep across the barren grasses.  You can see the result here, a few piles of donkey dung continuing to smolder long after the fire was out elsewhere.  Donkeys repeatedly pile their digested offerings in discrete places rather than sprinkling it over the area like bovines, so theses piles often burn slowly into the night, appearing as stars glowing on the dark prairie during windy times.  Sometimes we combine the prairie burning ritual with a sacrifice, usually of a random shrub, fruit tree, or 4-wheeler caught in the fires, but this year we got away almost clean, with the only casualty a late-afternoon singeing of a bridge at the neighboring golf course.

I was pleased, during my rounds of the grounds after the fires, to see that my secret small grove of redbuds in the bottom had not suffered the late freezes of the ones adjacent to my hilly home.  This little group sprang up volunteer a few years ago in a low area protected by the upwards slope to the south and the temperature-moderating pond just to the north.  I encourage them yearly by mowing down the grasses to limit competition and very controlled burning of the area to eliminate the cedar invaders.  Despite their precarious exposure to the elements, the deer, and rodents, they've done well, and I appreciate their kindness by blooming here in this little hidden world of my heart.



Within the house, spring is at least trying to overcome winter.  Appropriate for Easter, this white orchid began to bloom in our sunroom this week.  I apologize for the reminder of winter in the still-blooming Christmas Cactus behind it, but the purity and beauty of the orchid embraced by the warmth captured by the south-facing windows tells me that Easter, as always, foretells rebirth and the arrival of more tranquil days to come.

Interesting Times

I was mowing the other day, my commonplace first mowing of the year that consists more of whacking down precocious weeds than cutting actual green grass, and as my mind was wandering during the interminable yard laps, I was mulling over the COVID 19 pandemic and my mind recalled the phrase "May you live in interesting times."  We've probably all heard that backhanded blessing in the past and not thought much about it, but right now, in the midst of "stay-at-home" and global economic and human catastrophe, my immediate thought was "What adrenalin-junkie, world-class ADHD nutball authored that statement?"  Benjamin Franklin?  Edgar Allan Poe? Rasputin?



Curious, as I'm sure you now are, I stopped the mower, whipped out my trusty iPhone, and quickly google-searched my way to the conclusion that "may you live in interesting times" is widely regarded as the English translation of a traditional Chinese curse.  Isn't that just all kinds of ironic, given how and where this pandemic started?






I don't think I need a national poll to find out that none of us really want to live in interesting times.  We don't really want to go through pandemics or 9/11 terrorist attacks or foreign wars or Recession or the Challenger explosion.  I'm pretty sure we just want to live our lives, love our parents, spouses and children, be productive and kind to others, and leave the world a little better.





I've been so engrossed in the "interesting times" that it took me until yesterday to realize my Redbuds haven't bloomed this year.  Last week it appeared they were getting close, but they have done nothing yet and my other magnolias have also not followed up on the beauty of my Star Magnolia this year.  Tonight, I took a closer look at the flower buds on the Redbuds and saw, as you can see from the two pictures above, that the cold dip into the 20's of last weekend has killed the buds, all but a very few who will likely get smashed by the cold snap and late snow coming this weekend.  This 'Jane' Magnolia was also quite damaged.  She's struggling to come back, but if you click on the picture and look closer you'll see three brown buds for every mangled blossom that has managed a little color.  I'm not even going to talk about the damage to her sister 'Ann'.

I don't know how I'm going to tell Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  She might not even notice the magnolia didn't bloom, but the redbuds are special in her heart and their bloom a special time for her and she will miss them dreadfully this year.  Daylilies and hollyhocks, beautiful as they are in mid-summer, just won't fill that void for her.  Interesting times?  No, she will just see it as disappointment.

I'm really concerned at present that the flowering crabapple blooms at top, and my just-opening Red-blossomed Peach, will be walloped this weekend, further victims of this lost springtime.  Interesting times, my posterior patootie.  Oh yeah, and these wormy web-things are now active.  Why doesn't the intermittent freezes kill them?  I want a beautiful garden, not one of "interesting times."

Cleaning Celebration

It's a frigid Saturday here in Kansas and ProfessorRoush has been indoors nearly all day, quarantined and safe for the most part.  Okay, in full admission, I did venture out a bit this morning for a post-office posting and then one errand led to another and then another.  I suppose thinking if I must allow a little exposure that a little more won't matter isn't the best stay-at-home attitude, but I'm counting on the fact that community spread has not yet happened in this area.   I also have to admit that Manhattan without its normal hustle and bustle is a fantastic place to live; no traffic, no lines, no hassle.  Although I surely wouldn't want to lose half the population in a permanent manner to our current plague, there are some advantages to the 30-40% less travel we're logging as a community as long as the infrastructure doesn't collapse.  Such a fine line there is between civilization and chaos!

It was warm enough a couple of evenings to work outside this week however, and I did get some necessary garden chores done.  The straw and mulch got mostly spread, and I finally tackled the multitude of my ornamental grasses.    A "before" picture above, and an "after" picture to the left of the last grass clump, the latter also exposing my burn pile of the previous cuttings, doesn't begin to relate how nice it felt to unclump my ornamental grass clumps, creating an overall orderliness to several beds and removing a lot of the remaining brown foliage.

Next to that last grass was also my garden suckering champion, a slowly-disintegrating Purple Smoke Tree that has needed desuckering all winter.  Once composed of several strong trunks, only one trunk now survives the repeated ravages of our Kansas gales, but it has been suckering ceaselessly for several years.  I wrote about a mysterious cavern that opened up at its base before, but I never did find out who or what lived there and the hole has disappeared.  A short visit with the loppers the other night was uneventful and this mess now looks less messy. I fear, though, for the survival of that last trunk, standing at an angle and exposed to the elements.

Spring continues to dribble in by fits and starts.  My Star Magnolia was at peak bloom on Thursday evening, the previously frost-browned early blossoms obscured by the main display.  As the forsythia starts to fade, other Magnolias are coming on line, pinkish "Jane" and dark purple "Ann" trying to open despite the cold.  Best of all, I was able to harvest those first few spears of asparagus and Mrs. ProfessorRoush banished them fresh to the oven, pre-basted with a little olive oil, salt, and Parmesan cheese.  There is nothing like fresh asparagus, straight from garden to oven, to bring those first fresh vitamins and sunshine into the house.  Hopefully, no virus will ever break through our asparagus-borne health to spoil the celebration. 

Quarantined Quiet

ProfessorRoush was captive in a circle of solitude this morning, smothered by a silent world generating its own form of isolation for me, a blanket of clouds held low to dampen motion and moment.  Riley County has declared a two week minimum "stay-at-home" period, effective tonight, and the entire state of Kansas added its own, effective Monday, so the fog is a perfect partner to events local and afar. We are battening down the hatches here at home, anxious but able, resolved and ready.

I'm ready for this time, this transition to tomorrow.  As you can see from the photo at right, there is plenty to do here.  These few bags of mulch are a small fraction of those pre-placed around the house, ready for spreading as soon as the predicted winds diminish.  As the quarantines were announced, I ran out for straw and mulch and project supplies to substitute for activities that soon cannot be.  For some time to come, I'll be mulching instead of dining out, renewing pantry shelves for Mrs. ProfessorRoush instead of watching movies, weeding instead of worrying.  More fortunate than most, I still have work too; as a veterinarian there are always sick animals to care for and as a teacher there are always lessons to prepare.   And it never hurts ones ego to be designated as "essential personnel," however true the reality of it.

For this morning however, it's pleasant, the fog, and the privacy it imposes.  Invisible birds sang as I took these photos, a morning choir unseen but heard, at hand, but also away.  Neighbors and their houses have vanished, foretelling the next few weeks, a safe "social distance" seemingly mandated and enforced by Nature itself.  The mysteries deepen ahead of us; concerns for health and loved ones, uneased by change, disquieted by the quiet.   God-willing, as the fog lifts into sunlight, so our lives will climb from this uncertainty to normality, not the normal of before, but a new normal to travel onward.  Stay healthy, my friends.