Garden Musings

Pink Sunrise

2012-02-23T09:33:00.003-06:00

Just as a tongue-in-cheek post at my readers who follow this blog from states other than the gardening utopia of Kansas, I present to you the sunrise of yesterday morning, taken on my short drive to work. It's only an i-Phone picture, completely unedited, but I think it represents why I persist in fighting the flint rock and prairie fires to garden here.

The colorful sunrise turned into a really nice, sunny afternoon suitable to be outside sans coat, and ProfessorRoush took the afternoon off to trim the ornamental grasses off, mow the remnants of the tall prairie grasses, and spray dormant oil on the fruit trees and roses. What a blissful day!

Totally aside from the beauty of yesterday morning, are others on Google's Blogger having trouble using the blogger interface because Blogger has stopped supporting Internet Explorer? Google seems to be forcing me to go to Google Chrome and that's just going to be a cold day in Kansas because Google Chrome, frankly, sucks. I'm about ready to switch blogging platforms if they don't reconsider, and if I get fed up and that happens, I'll post the new link here and hope you migrate with me.

Bit of Yellow

2012-02-22T10:08:00.000-06:00

Here is it again, another sign of an incredibly early Spring. My first glimpse of yellow Snow Crocus (Crocus chrysanthus) occurred this year on 2/22/12. The previous record of my notes was on 2/25/09. In 2009, I have a note that the forsythia started on 3/6/12; which means that we're only a couple of weeks off of undeniable Spring. And I've done absolutely nothing yet to clear the garden, dormant spray the fruit tress, or cut off the ornamental grasses. As it so happens, though, this afternoon is supposed to reach a sunny high of 67F, so I'm already planning to play hooky after lunch. See ya tomorrow with a full report!

Valentine Thanksgiving

2012-02-14T08:48:00.000-06:00

I'm still in a posting funk (and busy as heck doing other things), but I can't let Valentine's Day pass without some mention of the things I love. I'd been thinking of writing a post about the things I'm thankful for, so the two seemed to coincide nicely this morning.

I love Mrs. ProfessorRoush, whom I'm currently trying to aggravate by growing a goatee (got to keep them on their toes!). It doesn't seem to be working since she hasn't yet mentioned it, even to comment on the gray creeping into it. Or maybe she's only pretending not to care to get my goat.

I love my daughter, diminutive clone of Mrs. ProfessorRoush, despite the throes and trials of her teenage years. Only this morning, she was mentioning how her first choice next year for college apartments was just across the street from the Vet School. I think she was reconsidering that choice after I mentioned how happy I was that we could then have lunch together every day.

I love my son, enlarged and enhanced clone of mine, lost into the wilds of uncivilized Colorado. That apple thinks he's far from the tree, but keeps rolling back towards the trunk as he ages.

I love my extended family, far flung and always only a call away.

I love my day job, with hundreds of patients and clients, especially when I'm happily ensconced in a surgery where the world shrinks away from my consciousness.

I love this blog, the relaxation and release I get from writing it, and the hundreds of friends I've met through its creation.

I love my garden, verdant despite the Kansas winds, sun scorch, drought, ice, and fires. And the many roses growing within, like 'Hope for Humanity', the deep red soul of my garden.

I love my blue Jeep, with its spare tire cover message of "Life is Good", because indeed it is.

And yes, despite my put-on moans of woe, I love this hard, stony, clay sodden, infuriating Kansas landscape, golden rust-brown now in the deep of winter. Signs of spring lie everywhere, as hope slowly fills the sunflower field in the eternal summer of my soul.

Slick Catalogues

2012-02-05T15:59:00.001-06:00

Oh, the catalogues! Pictured here are some of the many catalogues that arrived chez ProfessorRoush in the snail mail during the month of January. Mrs. ProfessorRoush, I think, was quite put off in the last few weeks by the number of catalogs laying in stacks on the various end tables and nightstands around the house, judging by the number of loud sighs and sideways disapproving glances specifically designed to stimulate my actions to sort and remove them. I am most certainly a trainable husband if the correct stimuli are used to elicit the desired Pavlovian reaction.

I must confess that the deluge of brightly colored pictures contained within all these unsolicited pages is pleasant, but they are wasted on me in this winter of my discontent. In fact, I am always skeptical of the power of advertising to sway my purchases and this cold winter I am completely immovable. There are some firms represented here that I feel offer stellar quality plants or seeds, and others that I view with a little less charity, but all in all, I found little this year to entice me, even as I starve for green pastures and colorful borders. I glanced through all of them, and I'll likely come back to one or two particular catalogs that may have a few treasures, but otherwise, I'm just not in a plant buying mood this year.

I've always doubted the cost-effectiveness of unsolicited and mass-mailed catalogues, no matter the field. The days of the Sear's catalogue dominance are long gone. I can't fathom how much profit it took just one of these horticultural firms to produce a colorful catalog and distribute it to their hundreds of thousands of potential customers. In this day of the Internet, however, I feel that there must be far less expensive ways to reach consumers. Even when similar catalogues have opened my wallet in prior years, I only order a few plants from each company, probably not enough merchandise to make producing it a profitable enterprise for them.

If you are reading this, you company presidents and CEO's, my advice would be to eliminate your advertising budgets along with the slick-talking leeches that create those fleeting enticements, and place the savings towards reducing the costs of your plants. Word of mouth in the social media will take care of the rest. Most of your loyal customers are happy to search out your plants on the Internet, reminded by a timely special email or electronic notice, or just reminded by their own greed to purchase another 44 roses for that new bed. We don't need reminders stuffed into our mailboxes and we don't want to max out the credit card balances for our yearly fix. My apologies to the millions of marketing people I just recommended for unemployment and the for the further losses to the beleaguered US Postal Service, but, like lawyers, a few less "ad men" won't be missed. And Mrs. ProfessorRoush won't have to move stacks of catalogues to dust the furniture.

Geez Genista!

2012-01-30T15:31:00.000-06:00

Yes, I was aware that the weather has been abnormally warm in Kansas this season. I know that the Bluebirds have stayed put this winter rather than heading south for a month or two. A Kansas duck hunter told me that this season is the best hunting season he's ever known because the geese are staying farther north this year. I, myself, was about ready to start pruning roses yesterday (something I've never done in January before since I value the mobility and integrity of my fingers).

Even knowing all that, I was still surprised when yesterday, on January 29th, I discovered the flower pictured at the right above, giving me this solitary bloom on January 29th in an east-exposed bed next to the house. This is a Genista lydia, a shrub I planted some years back and then promptly forgot whatever was the actual cultivar name. I planted it originally due to some plant propaganda leaflet dropped upon me that raved about how drought and deer resistant the Balkan native was. In fact, I've found it so invasive here since I planted it that I've been trying to grub it out for the past 2 years. Part of the Fabacaea family, it is a low-growing deciduous shrub classified by some as a groundcover and by others as a pernicious pest. The pea-like bright yellow flowers bloom only a short time, but they bloom thickly, covering the plant.

I knew that Genista is one of the earliest in my landscape to bloom, but this time it has outdone itself for horticultural confusion. Blooming on January 29th? The earliest I've previously noted Genista to begin blooming was March 5th (in 2005). Based on that timeline, I should expect to see forsythia blooming within the next week and daffodils by mid-February. This goes far beyond the USDA's announcement last week, that my garden has moved an entire climate zone south, from Zone 5B to Zone 6A. I must have slept through the move because I don't remember potting things up and replanting.

On one hand, I hate it when WEE's (Wild-Eyed Environmentalists) get any evidence in their favor. I haven't been a big believer in the idea that Man, however stupid we are, can destroy the Earth, but I am starting to waver in my conviction. We may be setting record temperatures today, January 30th, when it is supposed to reach a balmy 70F in Topeka, but I always try to keep in mind that the previous record on January 30th was set in 1974, a time when I recall that scientists were predicting industrialization would result in a new Ice Age. If the experts can change their minds, why can't I?

On the other hand, why fight it? At this rate, a couple of more decades of global warming and I'll be in Zone 7 and can grow real antique Tea Roses in my garden. Wouldn't that be something?

Heart's Safe

2012-01-28T22:21:00.000-06:00

First October, red and gold,
Spread through forest, cross the fields,
The Garden long past summer's heat.
Squash rich and heavy, corn hangs low,
The frost moves in and seedlings shiver,
The Gardener sounds a swift retreat.

November leads to bitter cold,
Barren soil and harvest done,
The Garden runs to fortress strong.
Hiding from approach of Winter,
The sunlight dim and hours waning,
The Gardener mourns as days grow long.

Then December's shortest days,
Night grows long and silence deep,
The Garden bides its time secure.
Tall grasses dance in frigid wind,
The Solstice comes and starts the siege,
The Gardener braces to endure.

Blizzards howl and Janus reigns,
His icy hands a death force hard,
The Garden lingers brown and dormant.
Dead some would say, its bones exposed,
The green of life stripped from the bare stems,
The Gardener wails of sunless torment.

Yet deep within the seedman's chest,
Secluded well from Hornung's lash.,
The Garden lives and safely grows.
On through Winter, on to Spring,
The beds are turned, the planting planned,
The Gardener stirs and finally knows.

That March will come again in glory,
Blooms will burst with April's rain.
The Garden lives inside, apart,
From Winter's cold and stony grasp,
Within a fortress warm and verdant,
The Gardener safes it in his heart.
The Gardener holds it in his heart.

Thank you, Milady

2012-01-26T13:46:00.002-06:00

Sorry everyone, I've been in a bit of a posting funk this past week, probably as a result of the lack of green vistas or other garden stimulation to get me moving.

'Milady Greensleeves'

Thankfully, I was momentarily rescued last evening by an email from a daylily hybridizer/AHS volunter asking to use my 'Final Touch' daylily picture to serve as the picture of that particular cultivar for the online AHS database. I got a little excited about the thought that, however anonymous and unanticipated, I am able to make a contribution to the database. That got me to looking at my other daylily pictures from last season, which led further to this post.

A standout daylily picture that caught my eye this morning was that of 'Milady Greensleeves'. I captured 'Milady' on the 3rd of July, just at the beginning of our summer heat wave. She is a delicate but large blossom, 7 inches in diameter, and fragrant as a rose. I love the gradation of the green throat morphing into yellow and leading to the pastel lavender petals, marred in this picture only by the orange pollen staining the top petal. 'Milady' is a dormant midseason daylily, and despite her size is supposed to be only a diploid. Hybridized by Lambert in 1978, I think she displays her color better on cloudy days here in the Flint Hills, where a harsh mid-day sun will bleach her out in minutes.

It interests me that I have used a number of pictures of daylilies from this 2011 group, but that until now this picture had escaped my notice. Am I so hungry for color and the start of the new garden season that I've widened my criteria of beauty? Or did I just get overwhelmed last year in the midst of all the blooms and photos and miss this delicate prize?

Unknown Yellow Daylily

Regardless, if there was ever a perfect yellow daylily, it is pictured at the left, another forgotten photo that I ran across. This one is an unknown for me, but the soft yellow hue and perfect form has no peer in my garden. Those frilly petals and ribbed sepals rival the finest ladies lingerie, I think.

Gracious, what am I thinking about? I most definitely must need some warm weather, sunshine, and flowers to work off my pent-up winter energy. For now, still in the grip of January, a cold shower and dreams of daylilies will just have to do.

Burn, You Must

2012-01-17T13:37:00.001-06:00

Somewhere in the midst of Winter, I've begun to think of Spring, and thoughts of Spring here on the prairie lead to plans for burning of the prairie, if not annually, at least on a periodic basis. Around this same time, in preparation for the clouds of eastward-blown smoke, regional newspapers begin to spew forth various editorials for and against the prairie burning, with "pro" articles highlighting the benefits to the local environment (i.e. the immediate prairie) and "con" editorials bemoaning the detrimental effects for air quality in the eastern cities. Take note here that both arguments are based on ecologically-principled arguments. Particularly, in the last few years the EPA has begun to regulate the prairie burning with the excuse that it raises the ozone levels in Kansas City (already high from their human infestations) to unacceptable levels.

But, echoing Yoda, if prairie is to exist, burn you must.

So, ProfessorRoush, surely you exaggerate? No, I'm afraid I don't. While driving down the road this weekend, I took just a few pictures to illustrate the point. In anticipation of the gnashing of teeth and wails about air quality loss, I'd like to make sure all my readers understand what will result from a complete ban on burning of the prairies. If you don't burn the prairie, after three years or so, you get a view that looks like this:

I've referred before to the colonization of the unburned prairie by Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana). Red Cedars are dense, slow-growing evergreens that are native to the MidWest and they are quite simply fatal for the prairie grasses and forbs who cannot exist at their dry, sunless feet. Underneath a stand of cedar trees in the Flint Hills is a barren ecosystem; bare, arid dirt without the slightest hint of herbaceous plant or moss. Perhaps there will be a scattering of needles, which themselves raise the pH of the soil, making it more alkaline and the nutrients less available for plants. The Red Cedar has been found to reduce the nitrogen available in prairie soils and, more importantly for those who hope to store excess CO2 from industrialization as soil-bound carbon, have also been found to reduce the carbon content of the soil, in contrast to the deep-rooted grasses that they outcompete.

In ten years without burning, it looks like this, an impenetrable thicket of stiff, worthless weed trees.

If these were California Redwoods, beautiful and pristine, or some useful tree species to man or animals, I might feel differently. But even when they're allowed to grow with plenty of space around them, Red Cedars often aren't very pretty or useful. The lower branches get singed by burns or die off one by one, and sometimes you're just left with a naked trunk and branches, bleached white by the sun, which stand alone for decades before the rot-resistant wood succumbs to wind or weather. And then it lies on the ground for another decade unless removed by man.

So please remember, when you're complaining that the air is a little hazy or smells a little burnt this April, there really is no alternative to burning if we want to keep a prairie.

Bliss in a Garden

2012-01-13T07:00:00.005-06:00

My primary reading material this week (now that I've gotten past the latest Tom Clancy and Stephen Hunter novels) is The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner.   Subtitled "One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World", the book is exactly that; a tour of places in the world where people seem to have high levels of happiness, from Bhutan to Switzerland, to Asheville. This was a bargain-bin hardback I picked up last week for $2.98 and it is, as bargain books often are, slightly outside of my normal reading genre, but I've found it both entertaining and thought-provoking.

So how, you might ask, is this book related to gardening? And my answer is that it isn't, but there are many lessons inside it to apply to our gardens.  As you read, you internalize some of Mr. Weiner's thoughts on the nature of happiness and realize that Eric is on a quest of places with high average happiness.  And that leads you to thinking that you don't care about Bhutan's penis-adorned fertility shrines, or the legal pot and prostitution party that constitutes The Netherlands, or the regimented clockwork society of the Swiss. What you care about as you keep reading is thinking about what would make/does make YOU happy, or your immediate family happy, right there in your own little world.

So, my fellow gardening friend, what makes you happy? And how much of your happiness is tied to your garden? These are the deep questions of our gardening souls and each strikes at the reasons we bother to garden at all.

ProfessorRoush, unlike the grumpy Eric Weiner, is generally a happy guy. I have my manic times, but those are not balanced much by black periods; in other words, I have lots of "ups", but very few "downs", generally making myself a cheery nuisance in the lives of those nearby me who prefer instead to go through life in a sour mood. And part of my happiness does indeed come from my relationship with my garden, but, as I think about it, not in the way you might expect. I don't gain a lot of joy from walking around patting myself on the back for the beauty or design of my garden (it commonly lacks both). I actually grumble a lot about my frequent poor vegetable production or strawberry production from my garden. My frequent readers can probably easily recall a number of blogs complaining about the drought or Kansas soils or freezing rains, or the wind. You'all know that most of those complaints are tongue-in-cheek, right? Or at least good-natured grumbling?

No, it is the PROCESS of gardening that strokes my happy note. The simple daily activities of planting and pruning and digging and caring. The blooming of a baby rose, a daylily not yet seen, or just the tall and rapid stretch to the sky of an ornamental grass. The sweetness of a blackberry warmed by summer sunshine, or the sound of rain quenching the thirst of the earth. The intense concentration and smile on Mrs. ProfessorRoush's face as she inhales the perfume from yet another new rose.  I go through my garden work in a Zen-like trance probably closer to Bhutan's Buddhist lamas than I would have admitted. Those are the good days, the days of not thinking, but just being, in my garden. Outside the garden, my happiness is in life, in total, lived once and lived well. If only I could stay on that path every moment, there would be no regrets at the close of daylight.

So what, my friends, makes you happy about your gardening? For some of you, we've spent enough time corresponding that I could almost guess; for others, I have yet to learn your dreams. But we would all benefit from taking time, in this winter of our leisure, to think about happiness, in our gardening and in our lives.

Perfect the Dawn

2012-01-11T07:30:00.023-06:00

Last fall I finally broke down and planted a classic rose on a new pergola leading from my garden down to the cow pond; a 'New Dawn' climber that I hope will grow next year to grace the south side of the pergola and cover the 8 foot span.

'New Dawn', KSU Rose Garden, 2010

I don't know exactly what took so long for me to finally add 'New Dawn' to my garden. Perhaps the poor quality of the plants I'd seen, limited availability, or always having a different or better choice to make when sending in a mail order let me keep putting it aside. But a local nursery had them on hand, and potted, late last season I was filling a new spot. Of course, I don't have a picture of the rose in bloom yet in my garden, but the picture at the left of the 'New Dawn' in the KSU Gardens should suffice so that all can appreciate the spectacular display of this beauty. At least I already know the rose is a survivor in my climate because I've watched the KSU rose through ten seasons now, trellised against the north wall of the old dairy barn where it gets little sun. It has been an incredibly healthy rose at the KSU rose garden, and never has blackspot despite its site in long shade. Here in Kansas, the moderately full blooms occur in small clusters at a frequency of 3 flushes over the summer. The rose has a moderate sweet fragrance, but the beauty is in the blush pink coloration of the blooms, as pictured at the right, below. The canes grow about ten feet long and 'New Dawn' puts up many strong canes every year.

'New Dawn'

There are probably very few gardeners who aren't familiar with this rose, but, if you have missed out, this beautiful light pink Large-Flowered climber has a bit of a mystery of a history. It is believed to be a sport of the single-blooming Dr. W. Van Fleet (hybrid Wichuraiana), and was, according to most sources, "discovered" by the Somerset Rose Nursery and introduced into the US by Henry Dreer in 1930. I was fascinated to find out that The Plant Patent Act was signed into law in 1930 by Herbert Hoover and 'New Dawn' has the distinction of being the first patented plant in the United States; PP1. 'New Dawn' was also named one of the first of Texas A&M's Earth-Kind Roses, adding still more evidence for its vigor and health in the Great Plains climate.

Unknown white climber, single blooming

I do have an unknown identity short white-flowered climber, a rose I obtained from rustling a cutting near an elementary school in town, that I initally thought was 'White Dawn', but due to its lack of repeat bloom and decreased number of petals, I now think this one is an entirely different animal. I don't, however, now have any clue as to what it might be. Pictured as a young rose in my garden at left, it seems to be healthy and grows canes about eight feet long. It blooms every year in a nice display over several weeks, but then its done, finished, for the year. It's beautiful, but it'll likely remain a mystery as long as it grows in my garden.

Construction Sunday

2012-01-09T18:00:00.002-06:00

Since the unseasonably warm temperatures are holding, I spent my Sunday out on the concrete garage pad making a few more of my own North American Bluebird Society-approved bluebird boxes. Five boxes took me 3 hours, including the time it took to haul all the saws and drills out of the basement and into the sun. I did the work outside so I could gain the advantage of the sunlight on my retinas to also ward off any seasonal affective disorder, which I'm not really prone to, but everybody can use some extra Vitamin D in the winter. You might say I was both holding back the blues and preparing for the blue (-birds) at the same time.

Yes, I know that the entry holes on a few of them are a little askew and there may be a crack or two in the fitting of the sides, but hey, I never claimed to be a carpenter. Anything over changing the oil in the lawnmower or reprogramming the garage door opener tests ProfessorRoush's competencies. And I'm paying the price today for my three hours of labor performed standing, sitting, or kneeling on concrete and waving a heavy battery-powered drill around. When I put bone plates on dogs, I rarely need more than 10 screws. Every birdbox here is 17 screws, predrilled and then placed. But, whining aside, they are done and I needed them to replace a few of my older style boxes. And soon, because them Eastern Bluebirds will begin nesting here in a few weeks.

Turd Trees

2012-01-08T07:00:00.000-06:00

Quick! Can everybody identify these seemingly big brownish-green turd-looking things laying among the brown-er prairie grass of my pasture? I'll give a hint to the non-MidWesterners...they're a fruit.

But not a fruit that anyone really wants to eat, since it is mildly poisonous and may cause vomiting. Probably to no one's surprise, this is the Winter appearance of the ubiquitous Hedge Apple, Maclura pomifera, also known as the Osage-orange tree. Second in number only to the invasive Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana) in Kansas, they are a very, very common weedy tree here, originally native to the Oklahoma-Texas region. We can probably blame FDR for the invasion of these trees; the WPA's Great Plains Shelterbelt" project planted hundreds of millions of Osage-orange trees on the Great Plains between 1934 and 1942.

Personally, I tend to hate Hedge Apples; thorny, multi-trunked, small trees that are impossibly hard to chop down and nearly impossible to kill since they sprout back every time from the stumps (unless you resort to herbicides). In fact, another reason they're believed to be common in the Flint Hills are because they are often used as fence posts and if you plant a bright orange-yellow fresh post, with a little bit of bark still on it, you'll often have a living tree soon afterwards. The species tree is pretty lousy as a gardening specimen, but it was useful to the Native Americans, who made bows of the strong, springy wood, and to the prairie settlers as fence posts, resistant to rot and very strong, in fact so strong that it is difficult to pound a fencing nail into a seasoned post. Usually I get a couple of good whacks at it and then the nail goes winging off into another dimension or bends in half before it is buried enough to hold up the wire.

All that aside, the large, heavy, fruit fascinates me. There is a large Osage-orange tree near my fence line that I've left alone primarily out of lazy aversion to dulling a chain saw or two on the trunk. Last year, I noticed that the tree had no fruit at all and I speculated about the effects of the late Fall drought in 2010, but this year, in a full low-rain and very hot summer, the tree produced more fruit than ever and the ground is covered with these hard lumps oozing sticky white latex. It makes mowing a jarring, messy experience, at the very least. Now, I'm wondering if the tree wasn't so much stressed last year as just demonstrating its diecious nature. Is it possible to be a male tree one year and a female tree the next? And if so, would these trees be allowed at all in the yards of Religious Right Republicans or banished from the kingdom?

Osage-orange trees also bring out the dinosaur-fascinated child in me. Most fruits, you'll remember, have evolved to be attractive to one or more species that were likely to harvest the fruit and aid in distribution of the seeds (often after passing through a digestive tract). But if we look around the prairie today, no animal is a distribution host consuming the Osage-oranges. They lay there all Winter and finally rot after multiple freeze thaw cycles, never moving far from where they fell. Neither cows, nor horses, nor even mice seem to care for them. Current theories for the "dispersal-host" of Osage-orange ranges from extinct giant ground sloths to other extinct Pleistocene megafauna such as the mammoth, mastodon or gomphothere. Now isn't that a neat idea? Just picture a giant sloth picking one of these off a solitary tree on the prairie, or a mastodon picking up one with its trunk and dropping it down the gullet.

A few thousand years back, that was the prairie, an endless savanna of big animals. Another ecosystem lost in time, represented today only by the grasses and the Osage-orange trees. And by me, wondering what used to be around to eat and digest these big rubbery balls.

Alexander Mac

2012-01-06T12:00:00.011-06:00

One of the more straggly roses that I grow on the prairie is the deep pink Canadian rose 'Alexander MacKenzie'. She provides a bit of frequent color for me in my "rose berm" bed, but more often than not, this rose is an afterthought for me when I'm looking through the garden. I hate to say it in such sexist terms, but I think of 'Alexander MacKenzie' like an old style prairie farm wife; a tough and thorny hide to the world and never needs any extra attention, but with occasional glimpses of beauty. That is, when I think of her at all.

Yes, I know I'm referring to 'Alexander MacKenzie' as a "her", but, in keeping with my gender-biased impressions of plants, I just don't feel this one as a male, even if it is named after Sir Alexander MacKenzie, a Canadian explorer who trekked across Canada to the Pacific Ocean in 1793. 'Alexander MacKenzie' is one of the larger Explorer-series shrub roses, bred by Svedja in 1970 and introduced by AgCanada in 1985. Officially a red-blend flower, I think of her primarily as hot pink, maybe a little deeper towards the red side than other Canadian roses such as 'William Baffin', and accordingly much easier to blend with other colors than the latter. Heirloom Roses describes her as "deep raspberry-red" in "sprays of six to twelve." 'Alexander MacKenzie' has very full (over 40 petals), but small buds, which are occasionally perfect, but more often a little raggedy as pictured above and I don't detect much fragrance from the rose. The clusters repeat several times over the summer, with breaks of four weeks or so between flushes. Several times, I've noticed that the flowers tend to ball up with Botrytis blight in damp Springs. On the plus side, I've not had to spray her for blackspot at all and the foliage is sparse but stays glossy and green. She grows to an unpruned height of around 6 feet for me, with vicious thorns and long whipping canes that punish you when you attempt to prune her within bounds. Frankly, I tend to give this rose a wide berth when I'm walking down the path near her. So far, she's been bone-hardy, cane hardy, with no winter dieback at all in my Zone 5B climate. Officially she should be hardy into Zone 3.

I'm portraying her as a "bad" rose, but she's really not that bad, she's just not my favorite by any means. Certainly others like her more; I noted that on Dave's Garden, one comment from New Hampshire stated that the rose was "possibly the best rose in my garden." I believe perhaps that I was mislead to expect too much from this cross of 'Queen Elizabeth' and ('Red Dawn' X 'Suzanne'). I love the pink perfection of 'Queen Elizabeth' and thus refuse to believe she could ever have offspring that lacked royal bearing or beauty. Perhaps, if instead of naming the rose 'Alexander MacKenzie', it had been otherwise designated "Prince Charles", then I might have developed more realistic expectations for her impact in my garden.

New Year Activities

2012-01-05T11:52:00.000-06:00

I don't know how the rest of you MidWest gardener-types spend your dreary brown winters, but beyond my feverish browsing through the plant and seed catalogues that now appear in my mail box every day, I spend the early Winter catching up on chores and planning for next year's gardening. And enjoying my Christmas presents.

Mrs. ProfessorRoush presented me with a Christmas gift this year that allowed me to do all three activities at once (chores, planning, and enjoying presents, that is). Knowing that my Purple Martin gourd-type houses are on their last legs, she presented me with a second Purple Martin condo to put out this Spring. As those of you who stoop to providing these plastic monstrosities to the Martin masses are aware, these houses must be assembled from detailed plans, and that was how ProfessorRoush spent his New Year's Eve this year; first spreading out the parts over the living room floor and then watching it slowly form a new bird domicile. What a wild and crazy New Year's Eve that was. What, you thought I'd do it outside? It HAS been unseasonably warm in Kansas so far this Winter, but I'm not that crazy.

I realize that I should probably go after something more classy for my garden than these pre-fabbed S&K Manufacturing Purple Martin Houses, but these are all that are easily available from Tractor Supply or Orschlen's in this area, so that is the harvest I reap. And, anyway, the Martins seem to love them.

Do you keep Martins? I've become convinced that beyond entertaining me with their acrobatic antics as I mow, my Martins really do cut down on insect problems in my garden. Since I don't spray insecticides anymore, the area is safe for their families; ideal really with their house perched fair above the prairie grasses. And maybe, just maybe, when the Japanese Beetles make it this far west, a family or two of Martins will create a Japanese Beetle non-copulation zone around my rose garden.

Elusive Nature

2011-12-26T10:32:00.000-06:00

I admit I'm not the most patient of photographers, but I'm completely convinced that Nature herself conspires to keep me from capturing a number of what would be really great images.

Take for example the picture at the right. This is a photo of an upper level window in our stairwell that faces due East. I was downstairs and calmly browsing the web a few minutes ago, trying to keep quiet so that the wife, daughter, and visiting son could sleep in, when suddenly I heard "flutter, flutter, flutter"....."flutter, flutter flutter"...repeated over and over. As I got up to see what was going on, I found what I think was a Mockingbird flying into the window, presumably fighting its own reflection. In the growing morning light, snapping on the light didn't make any difference, so I thought, "okay, if you want your picture taken, I'll oblige by going to get my camera." A quick trip downstairs, a quick trip upstairs, and I'm ready. Evidently the bird was ready too because it never appeared again from the moment I got the camera turned on. Fink.

I've had a similar problem all Fall and Winter trying to get a picture of a hawk. They're everywhere on the prairie in winter, watching over the fields by day for the slightest mouse-like creep or squeak. But every time I try stopping the car or getting close enough to grab a picture with even my long-range lens, off they go. And I've got such a good blog planned around a hawk picture. I'd hate to waste the writing on a picture of a stark, empty tree limb.

Why, oh why, can't Nature just cooperate?

Ornamentation

2011-12-22T14:28:00.001-06:00

A mere mention of the word "ornament" to a gardener usually brings forth a variety of mental images of garden gnomes, gargoyles, naked statues, cement rabbits, or abstract art laying around the garden. I confess that it is no different for ProfessorRoush, who has detrimentally overpopulated his garden with beloved cement statues that range from the thoughtful to the absurd.

But, it occurred to me this week, during the Christmas season I practice a different form of garden ornamentation, although to no less excess. You can essentially forget about "stewardship of the planet" during Christmas at my house.

The other members of my household, Mrs. ProfessorRoush, the absent son, and my diminutive clone of my mother, all are in agreement that the annual Christmas tree in our house must be "live," or rather, one of those cut-off but once-living classic Christmas trees. In fact, it must be a Frazier fir, preferred by all for the stiffness of the branches and the longevity of the needles. I've personally been tempted to obtain the orderliness and ease of an artificial tree, but I've been overruled for a number of years now. And, due to my confusion caused by the various advocates for potted living trees or for the plight of poor Christmas Tree farmers and the distractive screaming of the WEE (Wild-Eyed Environmentalists) who bemoan the fossil fuel consumption represented by an artificial tree, I'm not sure what is the ecologically correct solution anyway. So every year, I'm hauling in another dying tree to hope that it doesn't become a fire hazard before I can dump it into a pond (for fish shelter) after New Year's Day.

Regarding ornamentation, however, that poor dying tree is gaudied up to the nines every year. And the ProfessorRoush household isn't into the scene of a purchased set of matching Christmas ornaments or a store-bought, designer approved, ornamentation schema. No, our tree gets decorated with a hodgepodge of ornaments, all individual and all weighty with family meaning.

They start at my favorite, the Kansas Wheat Ornament pictured at the very top right of this blog, handmade by my daughter in nursery school. This one, so special to me, represents Kansas and my former toddling daughter all at one time. There are a number of other homemade ornaments as well like the one pictured to the right, this particular one made by ProfessorRoush himself in a ceramics store to which he was dragged against his better judgement at the time.

There are ornaments to commemorate vacation visits, from the White House and other areas. And friendships, like the one given to my wife by her best friend and carrying each of their names. There are a whole bunch of soft cloth ornaments like the one at the left that were handmade by my mother one year early in our marriage, most of which still make the tree.

A very special group of ornaments that decorate our tree represent a tradition started by my father, to give an ornament as a gift most every year to the children, so there are various anonymous ornaments representing a child's age (as for my son's 3rd Christmas at the right) or some that are more professionally done that are personalized to each child, like the one pictured below. The latter group, of course, will follow the children someday to their homes and I'll be left missing the ornaments at Christmas, probably almost as much as the children.

Alas, it may be a dying tree that provides holiday cheer in the ProfessorRoush home, but it is given the best prettying up we can give it, with each bauble and bangle cherished all. Merry Christmas to all!

Christmas Cactuses (or is it Cacti?)

2011-12-16T16:29:00.000-06:00

I feel that I must confess. I'm a crazy collecting Christmas Cactus closet connoisseur. (Yes, I also have a fondness for alliteration). I can't help but purchase any new color of Christmas cactus I run across. There surely must be some twelve-step program to help me. Hi, I'm ProfessorRoush and I am a Christmas Cactus addict....

There is, in my estimation, no easier houseplant to grow than the Schlumbergera sp. epiphytes, otherwise known as Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Crab Cactuses (Cacti?). I should reveal that at one time I grew over 30 orchids, 15 Christmas Cacti, a handful of African Violets, and some assorted other houseplants. When we went away for Christmas one year, somehow the heat for the house got turned off and upon our return one week later, I found one frozen upstairs toilet that had to be replaced and a whole bunch of dead orchids and violets. The supposedly tropical Christmas Cacti survived somehow. Or maybe it wasn't such a miracle since one plant hunter has described collecting specimens in areas of overnight temperatures down to 25F. I've got one fuchsia Christmas Cactus that's been alive for 20 years and has produced umpteen offspring. How many other houseplants do you grow that can claim such longevity in the face of the desert-like house conditions and the poor care of a typical homeowner?

Most of the year, they sit there in my windows, dark green and healthy, needing water only about every other week and a repotting in organic matrix every third year or so. But now, around Christmas, they bloom forth to add to the colorful holiday. I know there are lots of instructions available for bringing them into bloom by exposure to cold nights and decreasing photoperiods, but mine are right on schedule this year, aided only by the decreasing light level of the insulated windows they sit next to. They're even quicker to bloom if you've got them in an old house with single-pane old-style windows. If you have to resort to trying to force buds, flower buds will form reliably by providing 16 hours of darkness daily for 8 days at 61F temperature.

I've seen no insect predators on the plants and the biggest danger to their survival is by overwatering them; remember that these are succulents and treat them as such. An overwatered Christmas Cactus will shrivel up and become limp, which just encourages more watering by the unwary, killing the plant. Most sources say to keep them away from strong light sources such as South-facing windows, but yet mine seemed to thrive this Summer outside, placed in a corner of the house where they got full Eastern and Southern sun exposure from sunrise through about 1:00 p.m.

The easy reproduction by rooting stems of Christmas Cactus makes me look like a genius to the friends who have benefited from the divisions I've given away. To propagate them, twist off pieces of stems one to three segments long and then allow them to dry for 3-4 days to allow formation of a callus at the broken end. Planted into a suitable humus-rich medium, they'll usually then root quickly in warm environments.

Native to the moist coastal mountain forests of south-eastern Brazil, Schlumbergera are leafless epiphytes with segmented green stems. The tubular downward-facing flowers, composed of 40 or so petals that are actually "tepals", are adapted for pollination by hummingbirds, although my Christmas Cacti won't ever benefit from the arrangement here in Kansas. You can find named cultivars, but typically all the cacti we ever see for sale locally will be labeled only by color. The white Christmas Cactus above is, however, named "White Christmas", and I think the true red one at the left may have been "Kris Kringle". But, whatever their names, at this time of year when everything outside is bleak, brown and drab in Kansas, I welcome the color they bring to the interior of my house. And at least I can say that I'm able to keep a houseplant alive.

By the way, according to the dictionaries I can find, either "Cacti" or "Cactuses" is the correct plural. Evidently, for once, we're allowed to choose.

Pineing Away

2011-12-13T16:49:00.001-06:00

I saw Greggo's recent beautiful sunrise picture and post about the recent marriage and move of his son shortly before my bluebird trail cleansing Sunday and while browsing onto parts of my land I don't see routinely, I happened across a large reminder of my own son.

This Scotch Pine (Pinus sylvestris) was planted, as I recall, when my son was about a 4th grader, or about 14 years ago. He came home excited from school with the gift of a small seedling tree for his father, provided to him during a demonstration by some local foresters at school. When we planted it, down near the pond, it was approximately 4 inches tall and I protected it then, and still protect it, by mowing the tall grass around it every summer so that the lower branches don't catch fire during a Spring prairie burn. The pine overlooks a small fishing dock that we built together and from which I used to watch him fish the small bass in the farm pond. You could call this area and this pine my "memory bank" of my then young son.

Now towering over 10 feet tall, it is healthy as can be, either resistant to the pine wilt disease that has run rampant all over central Kansas in recent years, or more likely, just lucky. Certainly, the disease incidence seems tied to drought and high summer temperatures and we've had enough of those lately to stress this one to the limit. I knew about pine wilt even as I planted the tree with my enthusiastic son. You would have thought that the foresters knew better in the late-90's than to give a bunch of kids a susceptible tree to plant, but I guess they didn't. Most of the pines in Manhattan have died of the disease over the past decade, so perhaps the disease has passed my son's tree by and moved on without a reservoir of susceptible trees around. I had hopes that its isolation, about a mile from landscaped Scotch pines in town, would save it from pine wilt and the associated Sawyer beetles and nematodes, but I was discouraged recently to read that pine wilt disease usually only attacks trees that are more than 10 years old. So it is possible that I've protected this tree through childhood and young adulthood and I still might lose it soon. Just when I thought we were beyond the danger.

I was surprised recently to see that the tree has made it to puberty and now develops pine cones, as pictured at the left. I'm hoping that the development of pine cones is not a sign, since the tree and my son seem to have matured at the same rate, that Mrs. ProfessorRoush's dreams of grandchildren are to be fulfilled anytime soon. I'm happy to plant a few seemingly wilt-resistant Scotch pine offspring around, but this gardener is not ready for grandfatherhood. I'm not nearly that old or cantankerous yet.

Bluebird Nest Boxing Day

2011-12-11T14:06:00.001-06:00

The combination of an otherwise overcast and dreary Sunday, a warm south wind, and the sighting of a pair of Eastern Bluebirds, male and female, this morning convinced me that it was time to traipse over these grassy hills I call home and clean out my bluebird trail boxes.

Regular readers know that I try to do my part for the survival of the Eastern Bluebird and I maintain a number of boxes over 20 acres of Kansas prairie. In fact, last year I got my own nest box design approved by the American Bluebird Society, which pleased me to no end. Regular cleaning of the nest boxes, removing old nests and debris, is important to keep disease and overwintering insects to a minimum and thus improve the fledgling rate from the boxes. And it must be done in the cold weather of late Fall, since the bluebirds begin nesting right after the worst of winter.

On this year's box cleaning hike, I found that 10 of 16 boxes had been occupied by nesting bluebirds, and three others looked like nests had been started but abandoned before completion. It's easy to tell a bluebird nest from other nests, for instance from those produced by wrens, because the bluebirds build a shallow messy nest, usually of grass, as pictured at the right. Heck, if I was starting my own nest in chilly February, as the bluebirds do here, I wouldn't be very particular about the construction either. I have three sets of boxes out; my new box design, which had 5 nests in 6 boxes; my older box design, which is identical except for a smaller lid and which had 4 nests in 6 boxes, and 4 older NABS-type boxes, only one of which was previously occupied.

There's always a little maintenance to do on the boxes and this year was no exception. The older-style box pictured at the left must have had a rough year, showing signs that it was pretty singed by the Spring burn here on the prairie, but it will make it another year, I think. I was most disturbed to find 3 boxes knocked off of the fence posts and lying on the ground. I'd never seen that before, but at least I don't think it was due to human activity. The pastured cattle this year were a bunch of steers who liked to rub under the boxes and I had already put one back up near the house that I had witnessed them trying to destroy. I don't know what complaint this particular group of steers had against bluebirds but this is the only year that I've seen them single-mindedly attack the boxes.

All in all, it was a pretty successful Bluebird year here on the prairie. Now I just need another warm day to get busy and build a few more boxes to replace some of the older ones. Happy Bluebird Trails to everyone!

Eclipsed Morning

2011-12-10T16:09:00.001-06:00

I'm not a superstitious gardener, nor a howling Druid worshiping every single tree in my garden, but I do try to take note of celestial happenings when they occur, lest the gods take displeasure that I'm ignoring their handiwork. I was therefore pleased when CNN warned me this morning that a lunar eclipse was underway. CNN, after all, has to be good for something besides keeping me up on Kim Kardashian's short-lived marriage and the actions of the latest nutball in the sports world. At 7:23 a.m. this morning I was able to grab this shot of a partial eclipse just before the moon dropped below my prairie horizon:

A lunar eclipse occurs twice a year during a Full Moon when the Moon is "behind" the Earth and the Sun in "front" resulting in the passing of the Earth's shadow over the Moon. In fact, I snapped the picture above at a special time called "selenehelion," which occurs when both the Sun and the eclipsed Moon can be observed at the same time, just at sunrise or sunset. In my case, the Sun was just cresting the horizon over my right shoulder. Mr. Moon is looking a little reddish because the sunlight reaching it is being scattered by a long passage through a long and dense layer of Earth's atmosphere. While again, I'm not superstitious, lunar eclipses have played a part in a number of historical events and were quite frightening to prehistorical cultures. No wonder that some cultures cover their wells or eating utensils to prevent contamination by the blood-colored Moon during a lunar eclipse. Christopher Columbus is said to have intimidated the natives of Jamaica into provisioning his ships by predicting a lunar eclipse on February 29, 1504. Hey, his superior knowledge may have been just another exploitation of a less-developed culture, but at least all that navigational expertise was good for something.

I don't know what part, if any, today's lunar eclipse played in my garden's ecology, but I'm not holding my breath. Maybe, next year, I'll think the red roses have taken a deeper crimson hue and I'll think back to today. But I doubt it.

Slow Love, Busy Life

2011-12-09T08:25:00.000-06:00

I've been caught up reading Slow Love by Dominique Browning lately. Subtitled "How I Lost My Job, Put on Pajamas,& Found Happiness," Slow Love is not so much about gardening as it is about facing change and growing older. I picked it up because I've enjoyed several of Browning's other, more garden-centered works including Paths of Desire and Around the House and In The Garden.

This one, though, is not so much about gardening as it is about life. I seem to be on a binge of reading works more suited to despairing or overheated middle-aged females than crusty old males, but I still enjoyed Slow Love. Perhaps I should see my physician for a testosterone-level check? Well, anyway, I enjoyed the book except for all the hand-wringing relationship angst about a non-committal male nicknamed "Stroller", so there still may be some hope that I can keep my grouchy and crotchety image for the public. I also had a little problem identifying with Ms. Browning's divorced state, since the extreme patience and tolerance of Mrs. ProfessorRoush has allowed me to avoid that particular moniker. Mrs. ProfessorRoush, however, does always takes care to point out that I'm continually on thin footing.

What Slow Love does offer, for the gardener, is a little bit of gardening advice mixed in with a lot of good life advice. I was particularly taken by two ideas. One was the simple idea of running your own current troubles by "the stranger in the street". In other words, if you explained the situation to a stranger in the street, what would he/she/they think about it? Following this advice would make any person face their problems to the point that if any of the "Kardashians" or the characters of "Teen Moms" would think about it, they wouldn't be nearly as successful on TV as they are. I've always used this one, whether I consciously knew it or not, because of a really good innate ability to step outside myself and look at things fairly objectively. It works in gardening too. Try it. The next time you place that hot pink impatiens next to the orange marigold, just ask yourself, what would Sydney Eddison or Lauren Springer-Ogden think of that combination? Would they vomit uncontrollably, laugh in derision, or applaud your boldness?

The other interesting thought from the book was Mrs. Browning's definition of introverts and extroverts. She states something to the effect that "extroverts are energized by public encounters while introverts need to recover from them." I agree wholeheartedly with this one, since I function acceptably in public, but I need loads of alone time, reading or writing or in the garden, to recharge and rest. My introversion comes honestly and genetically from my own Mother, with whom I share many personality traits, not the least of which is the ability to keep myself occupied and perfectly happy free from contact with people and society in general.

It is a useful trait for a gardener, this ability to withdraw into nature for long periods of time, but not so useful for the gardener's family life or relationships. I could have told Ms. Browning that without reading Slow Love, but that would have cheated both of us from her enjoyment of writing the book and mine of reading it.

Large Rats at Work

2011-12-05T19:00:00.002-06:00

While inspecting my garden this past Saturday, I noticed this (pictured) damage to a small deciduous tree that is placed in the middle of my Evergreen bed. I think it occurred sometime during the previous week, although, since I didn't see my garden in daylight hours last week, I am not absolutely sure of the exact day. ProfessorRoush is definitely NOT an expert on wildlife biology and behavior, nor do I have any extensive knowledge of garden pests or their control beyond personal experience, but I'm pretty sure that the picture at the left is evidence that several large prairie rats with long skinny legs, fluffy white tails, and antlers have been visiting my garden. This particular varmint must have been suffering a mighty itch along those antlers to scratch out this big of a section of trunk. Alternatively, I suppose this rutting stag could be some sort of a garden snob offended by the fact that I put a deciduous tree in a bed otherwise composed of evergreens, and he simply expressed his displeasure by trying to off the tree.

The particular tree in question is a volunteer Double-flowering Red Peach (Prunus persica 'Rubroplena'), an offspring of one of my other landscaping trees, that cost me nothing as a volunteer, but with whom I was well-pleased. The trunk is currently about three inches in diameter and the tree about 8 feet high. I don't have a vast experience with damage of this magnitude, but I'm pretty sure it will permanently damage the tree. Any bets out there?

I'm not sure why this tree is the only one damaged at present, but truthfully, fully half my young trees are protected by fencing wire just for this reason. And I'm partially at fault here, both for not circling this tree with fencing and because I haven't yet instituted my standard deer repellant program this winter. I guess if I had to pick a tree to sacrifice for the purpose of honing the antlers of rutting deer, this was about as good as I could have chosen, but that doesn't mean I'm mitigating the death sentence of the bounding hart. In the long run, I may have to fell my baby tree, and if I catch the perpetrator in my garden, he's going to unwillingly contribute more organic fertilizer to my garden than the little pellets he left near the tree. We must protect the children (or in this case the baby trees).

Dear Santa, Bring Christmas

2011-12-04T12:55:00.001-06:00

Dear Mr. Claus,

I'm having a little trouble getting into the Christmas spirit this year, dear Santa, and someone suggested that writing you a letter might open up my floodgates to holiday cheer and goodwill towards marauding deer and nibbling rabbits. However, I feel I've got to be truthful to you here at the outset, since I'm, after all, writing Santa, and trying to be good for goodness sake and all. I need to acknowledge that I feel a little awkward writing to you as a gardener searching for Christmas, because, abiding up there at the North Pole, Santa, you're not exactly the patron saint of gardening. I mean, I'm sure you've got a nice warm greenhouse nearby, and I'll bet the elves can create spectacular topiary, and all that reindeer poop must result in some fabulous compost. But I suspect there's not much green in your landscaping and that red roses are hard to come by as a gift for Mrs. Claus. Come to think of it, it is a good thing I don't live near you, because I don't know what I'd do without the roses I grow to help me beg forgiveness for the many trials and tribulations I create for Mrs. ProfessorRoush.

My malaise is probably just that the Kansas skies are clear and blue and the sunshine is overwhelmingly bright, like the August sun except that it doesn't last as long every day. I look outside the windows and I think, "What a nice sunny day to go work in the garden," and then I step outside, and my toes start to blacken and my fingers grow icicles and I remember that Spring is a long time away. A little bit of brief warm wet snow or a few more days of heavy frost would actually go a long way, Santa, towards getting me into that holiday spirit, but I suppose that weather miracles actually are a little beyond your powers and more in the realm of the real Child of Christmas.

I've been a good boy this year, Santa, and I think even Mrs. ProfessorRoush would grudgingly allow that I've tried hard to toe the line of good garden principles and to be a moderately-tolerable husband. I confess that I should have deadheaded a whole lot more and that I didn't get that viburnum moved, and that I should have trimmed back those forsythia last Spring. And I admit that I could have brought more roses inside for Mrs. ProfessorRoush to enjoy and that I could have raised better tomatoes and peppers so that she could make more of her prize salsa. I know you don't like excuses, Santa, but I do feel I did the best I could despite the late Spring freezes and the Summer drought and heat.

So, if you could see fit to sprinkle a little Christmas cheer my way, Santa, I'd appreciate it. I'm not asking for much in the way of presents, maybe a gift certificate from the elves promising they will trim back the roses for me this Spring, or even just a little bottle of cougar urine to repel the rabbits. Or, if you could see fit, a 10X12 foot greenhouse placed just to the south of my vegetable garden would go a long way towards improving my holiday spirit. Just let me know and I'll stake out the area and get the water line run down the hill for it.

Yours truly, ProfessorRoush

Wonder 'bout Wonderstripe

2011-12-03T06:00:00.004-06:00

For those who are searching out the "unusual" for next year's garden, I thought I'd add a preliminary note on a rose that tweaked my interest this Spring. In my annual Heirloom Roses order, I included one of the roses that John Clements (of Heirloom Roses) bred himself; the striped yellow and pink rose he named 'Wonderstripe'. I can't testify to its full performance yet, but I can tell you it does pretty good in an extended drought when provided a little extra water.

All who read this blog know that I'm a sucker (pun intended) for striped roses. I don't know what it is about seeing stripes, particularly on Old Garden roses, but put a thus-afflicted rose in my hands and I'm a goner. I'm the same way with Rembrandt tulips and I'm sure that if I'd been alive during "Tulipmania", I'd have lost the farm while trading in virus-infected tulips. I was no less resistant to 'Wonderstripe', which offsets its pink tones not with white, as in most striped roses, but with a creamy yellow.

'Wonderstripe', which also goes under the registered name 'Clewonder', was introduced as a shrub rose by Clements in 1996. The blooms are supposed to be large (4 inches) in diameter and double to the tune of 98 petals according to the Heirloom catalog, but so far my young rose has only been extended about 2.5 inches in diameter and is mildly double. It did bloom several times after I planted it as a band in the Spring however, and based on a thread about the rose on a Gardenweb forum, I have hope to believe that by the third year it will make a thriving bush with the promised large blooms. Again, I don't know how the mature bush will bloom, but I would rate the fragrance so far as moderate. In a single season, 'Wonderstripe' is now about 2 foot tall and it showed no sign of blackspot this year.

I guess I'm about to see how this Zone 5-rated plant does in a Kansas winter. I'll keep you informed about the condition of this rose in the Spring, after we see if it can survive this first winter unprotected here in my Flint Hills garden.

Queen Matrona

2011-12-01T15:30:00.000-06:00

September, in the Flint Hills, is the time that sedums become the stars of the garden, or at least they become the stars of my garden. In my "add no extra water" garden, sedums are a great group of plants to propagate again and again throughout the garden, tying it together and allowing you to fulfill that "repeat theme" fundamental of good garden design.

'Matrona', pre-bloom, mid-summer

My favorite sedum, and one I'd recommend for every garden, is 'Matrona', full of gray-green foliate, dark red stems and pink flowers. This one is a four season performer for me; tall, strong and disease free through Summer, colorful in Autumn, a copper-brown support for snow in Winter, and then with the cutest little purple buds in early Spring as I clean off the beds. I've copied 'Matrona' over and over in my garden, and just this year I started a hedge of it on the southeast edge of my newest rose bed. I'm hoping the 10 or 12 clumps planted there will make a nice and neat, if tall, border to its rose backdrop next year. The entire 20 foot line cost me just one clump from my front garden, divided a dozen ways with a shovel early this Spring.

The foliage of 'Matrona' always acts as a foil for its neighbors, either through the fleshy, thick character of the leaves or by color contrast with the purple-blue-green color of the leaves and red stems. Look at it at the upper right, planted alone as an accent among green shrubs and daylilies, or as pictured to the left, in the garden and in full pink flower in front of 'Wine and Roses' Weigela and between Blue Lyme Grass (Elymus arenarius) and 'Emerald Gaiety' Euonymus. Isn't she just the center of attention?

'Matrona' was a 1991 selection from Germany, and she received recognition as the "Perennial of the Millennium' from Europe in the year 2000 and also received the Royal Horticultural Society 2006 Award of Garden Merit. The name comes from the German word "matrone", which means "lady of well-rounded form", so just in case your spouse spends a lot of time on the Internet, I'd suggest that all the male gardeners reading this resist any temptation to compare their wives to the beauties of 'Matrona.' In the Netherlands she is known as 'hemelsleutels', which supposedly translates as "keys to heaven", so perhaps we should refer to this sedum by that name. 'Matrona' grows trouble free to about 2 feet tall in my garden in a nice compact clump, and she gets no extra water or care. The one mistake to avoid with 'Matrona' is NEVER overfertilize a mature clump. Fertilization with high levels of nitrogen just causes her to grow lanky and sprawl over her neighbors, a little too voluptuous for her own good. If she is in extremely rich soil, it often helps to give her a little beheading in late June, to keep her compact, and I sometimes use peony supports on the bigger clumps so that the Kansas wind doesn't flatten her out. Mainly, just keep her in full sun and leave her parched and 'Matrona' will be a star in your September garden.