The Surrender of ProfessorRoush

When the detailed annals of twenty-first century gardening history are collected and indelibly written to the internet, today will be noted as the day that ProfessorRoush grudgingly conceded his unwilling submission to the Japanese Beetle horde.   I have lost my solo battle here on the Kansas Flint Hills, completely and irrevocably, crushed by the sheer prolific mass of beetle fertility.  How many beetles do you count on the single 'Hanza' flower at the upper left?  There are at least 14 engaged there in disgusting Caligulan debauchery by my count.   

Poor 'Hanza'

I wave the white flag at last, an unworthy descendent of the heros at Thermopylae, Masada, and the Alamo.  Despite twice-daily rounds of the battlefield under the searing summer sun, hand-picking and crushing the chitinous slobs as they fornicated in their own frass, and occasional mass desperate dispersals of chemical weapons, I can no longer pretend to be winning and must face defeat.  I know the war was lost long ago in the eastern and southern United States, but the battlefront continues its westward move.  The closely-cropped beetle mass at the top is only the most visible today.  Looking at the greater picture (at right) tells the true story, with smaller numbers of beetles on all the nearby blossoms, foreground and background.  At night, I dream now only of the crunch of the beetle masses as they feast on the roses, of their laughter during coitus in the bright Kansas sun.   

Beetles on 'Martin Frobisher'

I blame my defeat on many factors, not the least of which is lack of a national sense of emergency.  Forget the concerns of ecology and species diversity, Japanese Beetles hold no value to the world.   The extinction of these lazy disgusting creatures would make no measurable impact on the world's ecology.  They have no enterprise, no natural predators, no redeeming virtues to promote their preservation, seemingly existing for the sole purpose of consumption, defecation, and procreation.  Where are, I ask, the chemists to create a poison aimed directly at the demise of this sole species?   Where are the enterprising engineers to envision a fleet of affordable micro-drones capable of capturing beetles to transport and release in the fires of  Hell?  Where are the biologists to create infertile clouds of male beetles to slow their spread, or to genetically manipulate a lethal virus specific to Japanese Beetles ?  Where is, Lord Darwin, the evolution of the insectivore who views beetles and beetle frass as a delicacy?   

Today's pyrethrins and insecticidal soaps are worse then worthless on adult beetles.  Yesterday I drenched these beetle clumps directly in modern insecticidal death and an hour later, they still moved and defecated on poor virginal white 'Blanc Double de Coubert' at abandon. I dream, at times, of finding and deploying an old bottle of DDT.  Would it be worth a Silent Spring or three to rid the earth of Japanese Beetles?  I hear now only, in my mind, the Beetle Voldemort laughing at poor Professor Dumbledore; "You've lost, old man."

Daylily 'Sonic Analogue'

Future minstrels will not sing ballads to the losing effort of ProfessorRoush, but upon reflection I take solace that I am a true descendent of those at Masada and the Alamo. After all, despite their valiant and principled stands, they lost too, surrounded by enemies too numerous to count, without aid from the greater world.  If there is hope for the gardening world, it is in Old Garden Roses, resistant to Rose Rosette disease and too early to be ravished by Japanese Beetles, and also in daylilies.  I leave you with this 'Sonic Analogue' daylily, seemingly immune at present to the beetle appetites.  I may have laid down my weapons, but I keep hope that beetle predators will evolve faster than beetle defenses and these daylilies will remain to brighten the rest of my summer days.

Sunshine, Lilies, and Beetles

ProfessorRoush has been waiting breathlessly for these 'Kaveri' lily buds to open, desperately afraid that a strong wind or the neighbor's dog would take them down prior to their display.  They seem to have self-seeded or spread over about a 10 foot area and they're all strong and healthy.  Not bad for a free gift from a gardening company!

And other lilies are holding sway right now, the taller accompaniment to the daylilies which are coming in.  To the left, Orientpet 'Purple Prince' holds a proud place as the protector of a 'Beautiful Edging' daylily on my front walk.

Nearby, this group of 'Yellow Dream' and 'Purple Prince' (below)  will brighten up the area in front of the garage for the next two weeks. You know from my previous posts how much I wait for and love 'Yellow Dream'.   Downwind from this group is always a sweet fragrance treat that I have to stop each time and admire.  'Purple Prince', himself, is maybe not so pretty (at right), but he's a strong and stalwart fellow in the garden.

And then, somewhere in the back garden, this first of Asiatic's paints it's blood-red way among my viburnums.   I always see this lily first, only to watch it fade as the rest come on.

Last but not least, this is obviously not on a lily, Orientpet or Asiatic, but I always try to mark the first arrival of Japanese beetles in this blog so that I can keep track of them.  And here one is, first found on June 28, 2021, on top of  'Fru Dagmar Hastrop', frass sprinkled among the petals.  Thankfully, the disgusting creatures prefer this rose and 'Blanc Double de Coubert' and leave the others alone.  The spray I'm using doesn't seem to make any difference, sadly.  I'm just hand-picking and gleefully smashing under my heels.  Quite a sad comment on the activity of an otherwise peaceful gardener.

2021 Manhattan EMG Garden Tour

ProfessorRoush seems to have slipped comfortably back into his continuing role as the unofficial photographer of the Extension Master Gardener's Manhattan Area Garden tour, albeit with a break during the skipped tour last year due to the pandemic cancellation of the Tour.  I won't comment here on the folly of canceling a GARDEN tour in a time when more of the population would have attended then ever, but that's all rain clouds and opportunities missed. 

Most importantly, I had planned to share in this blog what I thought were the 6 best photos from this year's tour, however, as usual, I'm failing miserably.   It's fairly easy, among 609 photos taken in 4 hours today, for me to weed out all the pictures with identifiable people in them since I shouldn't/can't post people without permission.  And my best intentions to catch a bee in the act of nefarious nectar collection went awry several times today; it was cloudy for most of the tour and the camera shutter speed just wasn't up to catching them as a still life.

It is more difficult than I anticipated to choose the best from the 50 or so daylily pictures and the various vignettes of gnomes and garden ornaments and from the delightful plant arrangements that were everywhere.  Ego aside, many of the pictures are quite good, despite the overcast and early start to the day.  My goal of  posting six photos became a battle to narrow down from 50, and then from 20, until I settled on these 8.   Well, on these 9 if you count the last wanna-be.  Who, anyway, could resist this bronze heron sculpture at the K-State Gardens in the middle of the created wetlands? 

Every photo here is unedited, just as I took them.  Normally I would have cropped them for the blog, maybe removing some of the blurred green space at the top of the picture of the fancy echinacea at the left, and perhaps reducing their size, but I thought you'd like them in all their vivid detail.  Point and click if you want to see them larger.  I apologize, in advance, for the multi-megabyte nature of this blog entry, but most these days don't have the limitations we used to have on download speed, do they?  I hope not.

Trains seemed to be the "thing" for the day and model railroads were laid out at two of the 6 gardens on the tour.  ProfessorRoush perhaps didn't fully appreciate their contribution to the garden, but the many children on the tour certainly enjoyed them.   I just kept thinking, "Okay, that's cute, but after a few times around the track, what would I do with it then?"   To each, their own tracks, I suppose.

With the garden tour a few weeks later in the year than normal, the daylilies were blooming everywhere.   I thought the prettiest daylily photograph that I took was of the pair shown at the top of this blog, but for a single entry, this yellow and purple-eyed daylily was too perfect to ignore.  

There was plenty of wildlife in the gardens today, with one garden featuring a box turtle enclosure with a half-dozen unfortunately photo-shy turtles.  I couldn't share the picture of one owner calling to her turtle, and a soundless still photo wouldn't do the moment justice anyway, but I can share these two sister felines who were intently hunting and torturing a vole in a garden.   Their actions seemed to dismay the garden owner, but then, cats will be cats, won't they?

I loved this quiet pathway fork, lit by the Japanese Maple on one side and shadowed by the 'Forest Pansy' redbud that hung above it all.  I was quite captivated by the light coming through the multi-colored leaves of 'Forest Pansy' and so the tour will cost me in real monetary terms since I'll have to seek one out now.  This was a hard area to catch without people walking through it, but thankfully, if you can identify the legs of the two ladies taking the fork on the right, then you're far more observant, or intimately knowledgeable of these ladies, than I am.

I'll close with this almost-picture of the Monarch butterfly on milkweed.   When the Monarch landed within reach of my lens, fluttering it's wings as it settled for a snack, I was adamantly sure I was about to get the perfect photo for the day, the crowning jewel of my efforts.  For a brief instant, I was still, waiting for this beauty to open its wings so I could capture that instant of miracle, of life and ecology in a single picture.  And then a nearby bumblebee came in like a Stuka dive bomber and the butterfly was gone, beyond my reach,
before my reflexes could trigger the shutter.   Such are the disappointments that come hand-in-hand with these many glorious photos.  Maybe next year.  Or the year after.

Earth's Bounty, Garden's Beauty

ProfessorRoush hasn't blogged, he knows, for quite a while during this busy June, but while the blog may suffer, the garden is never far from my mind.  Nearly every morning and evening I'm there, watering or worrying, watching and waiting.   Watering the new plants, and sometimes old, as we settle in to a very dry summer.   Worrying about that struggling new Rugosa hybrid and watching diligently for the first Japanese Beetles.  Waiting for the daylilies to bloom, for the rain to come, and for the heat to break.

It's been hot, friends, hot like late July, far too early now in June to see the ground crack and the forsythia wilt.  And a month since significant rain, a drizzle here or there, dried on the cement before I can don my shoes.  I water strawberries and tomatoes, petunias and pots on regular rotation, pouring hope onto the soil carried gallon by gallon from the house to the garden.  But nothing grows at temperatures over  100ºF.  Tomatoes don't bloom, daylilies drop buds, and the roses, oh the roses, pout like the garden prima donnas they are.  The garden is static, in summer stasis, waiting on cool September to save it.

Still, there is beauty in the garden, and bounty to find.  Some plants, like the Prickly Poppy (Argemone polyanthemos) at the right, defy the heat, producing these impossibly delicate blossoms in defiance of the searing sun, the poppies of heaven, set down on earth.  Here is the beauty for me to behold, a wild weed given a home for my pleasure and a grocery for the ungainly bumblebees wallowing in the petals.  That bumble in the top photo, a plump glutton of industry, is surely going to please his friends, bearing baskets of pollen to feed the hive.  The luscious blackberries in the second photo, they're for me, first, and then perhaps Mrs. ProfessorRoush if any of the purple pleasures survive the walk to the house.  It's a dicey thing, showing up at the house with stained empty hands, purple mouth, and a smile, one's life spared only by inches and whim.  But that the photo of the blackberries makes you want to reach into it and fill your hands, doesn't it?  Imagine how good they were out in the garden, fresh off the bramble, warm and juicy, the taste of sunshine in every drupe.   Any just jury would stay my execution on the promise of a future handful.

There is, too, in the garden at many corners, feasts for the soul, saving sights for sun-seared eyes.   My gentleman rabbit comes calling, a cheerful lily over a concrete shoulder.   Blanc Double de Coubert, jealous of the angelic pristine poppy, attempts a second bloom cycle, not quite as white, but more fragrant and visible against the dark green foliage.  Panicled hydrangeas begin to bloom, Russian sage forms a mound of airy blue, and everywhere grasses stretch to the sky.  

Blood-red Asiatic lilies have budded and bloomed, giving way now to Orientals and Orientpets.  And yet, I wait still on the daylilies, the main event of the Kansas summer, aliens become dominant in an unforgiving landscape, every view become a fleeting festival of color, a riot of shapes and sizes.  They're beginning to pop up now, a yellow note here, a purple there, a symphony sure to come as summer has arrived.