Garden Musings

Truncated Spring

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 10:53:00 -0500

Merely a few weeks back, on March 14, I wrote a blog full of hope for a gradual and beautiful Spring. "Irrepressible Spring", I titled it. At the time, we'd had warm weather and it looked like everything was in place for a gradual, unprecedented garden year. The plants were all greening and budding up. Redbuds and lilacs looked like I've never seen before. To borrow the style of our current President, "no one in Kansas has ever seen anything like it before, it was going to be spectacular!"

It turns out that Spring can he suppressed. Now I'm reminded of Euripides; "Deus quos vult perdere, dementat prius", which Google translates as "God first drives mad, those he wants to destroy." One very cold night about two weeks ago, as in my last blog, my hopes turned to dust, to browned buds of yet-unborn flowers and shriveled leaves. Early growth on the roses was wiped out, daylilies were killed down to the ground, and most buds on lilacs browned and fell off. My redbuds never bloomed, nor did the forsythia to any great degree. The bloom of Magnolia stellata I featured in the previous blog is, alas, the only one I am to see or smell this year. To give you some idea of the losses, the picture at left is Magnolia 'Jane' just 3 days ago, a few stray buds blooming near the ground, nearly every other bud on the bush a dried and shriveled husk.

Of all my lilacs, only 'Declaration', a Syringa hyacinth cultivar, bloomed in any abundance, an entertaining treat to the bumblebee as pictured above. Three or 4 years old, it struggles in a dry summer, but is now repaying my efforts to periodically give it some extra water. I'll gladly accept its tribute to my toils.

Paeonia tenuifolia, the Fern-leaf Peony, survived the cold, which didn't surprise me now because I know the delicate foliage hides a resilient nature. A month ago, this clump was 6 inches high and the new foliage felt like velvet, its promise still curled against the cold. Now it blooms alone in my front landscape; a bright red remedy for a broken heart.

Of all my Magnolias, only the blooms of tardy 'Yellow Bird' survived the frozen night. Now, it lights up the back yard, the only sign of its struggles perhaps that its yellow hues are a little lighter than in previous years, at least it made it through the cold. A lot of my Spring optimism rides with 'Yellow Bird' each year, so I'm thankful to see that its delayed timing strategy worked once again.

Now, I bide my time, waiting to see what recovers; to discover what will develop and flower normally and what may still yet be affected. The peony, rose and daylily seasons come in rapid waves of succession soon, and, chastened, I hold no anticipation now that all will be normal in the year to come. I merely will wait and hope the garden will provide.

Calamities & Casualties

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 12:35:00 -0500

Dead/dried Forsythia blossoms

"If you want different weather, just wait 15 minutes and it will change." Every Midwestern American gardener knows some version of the prior statement, but I maintain that Kansas gardeners live and suffer this axiom daily. For proof of my assertion, I offer this blog to prosperity, a historical, if not hysterical, example of the trials and tribulations in a Kansas garden. Start, if you can stand the pain, with this photo of the dead and dried remnants of forsythia that remain today as testaments to the trials and despair of gardening in Kansas.

A promising display snuffed out

If you review the lovely early blooms and thoughts in my previous blog entry of 3/13/2026, and the scrumptious photos of daffodils from 3/01/2026, it will be obvious that this year I had high hopes for a rare, gradual transition to Spring weather, gentle winds, slowly-increasing daily high temperatures, and soaking periodic rains. Today, I look wistfully back at those hopes and want to shake myself out of a nightmare, curious only to know who spiked my cereal with hallucinogens to create such fantasies, and what actual pharmaceuticals were used. The photo at the left is the same Forsythia bush that is the second photo in my blog of 3/13/2026, without any of the just-starting-to open yellow buds of the latter.

These once were daffodils

On approximately 3/15/2026, the weather patterns took a sharp cold turn, record lows on several nights leaving me with the remnants of formerly jubilant plants that are pictured here, gasping and crying at tattered and dwindling dreams of paradise denied. Not only did the cold spell crush any nascent anticipation I had for the most vivid forsythia display in many years, it prevented any recovery from unflowered buds. It also transformed growing sprouts of plants that normally are quite cold-resistant into shapeless and slimy piles of dead vegetation. These daffodils had only 2 days of bloom and no time at all to store energy for next year. Can they survive?

These used to be irises

And worse, there has been no real moisture yet, no showers to quench the thirsty soil and replenish the ground stores stolen in our arid winters. The earth around these plants is dry dust, no help for sparking any rebound in these poor perennials. How can an Iris come back from this kind of damage?

Even the daylilies are in shock

I have yet to spend much time in the garden this season, weeks and nearly months delayed beyond normal chores, and I feel despair at every step into the outdoors. I fear, presently, that the garden will lose an entire season, bypassing spring bulbs and blooms in all their pastel glories and moving on straight past lilacs to peonies or roses, if indeed, either of the latter survive to bloom. I've never seen daylilies in this condition after a spring freeze and every clump looks like this. Will this be the year without daylilies? What spark remains for the gardener's soul when hope has fled?

Irrepressible Spring

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 10:41:00 -0500

The first 2026 Magnolia stellata

Color is returning to the landscape, foretelling Spring right around the corner, just past another cold spell or two, and along with the cheery garden tones rises the mood of ProfessorRoush. I'm starting to feel the itch, aren't you? You know which itch that I'm talking about; the itch to get outside, breathe clear air, feel the sunshine on your skin. The itch to feel alive.

'Meadowlark' Forsythia

Oh, if only the wind would die down just a little more and the sun would shine just a smidge brighter, and the air would feel just a touch warmer on my cheeks! I don't feel I'm asking for too much; it is not like I expect yet the soil to be warm and moist as I run my fingers into the ground, or that I am disappointed that the asparagus is not yet bringing forth a fresh crop. These things will come along in their time. Right now I just want Paradise: sunny days, gentle breezes, thirst-quenching gentle rains at night, and a gradual transition to Spring. A return to Eden is the eternal dream of Man.

Dutch Iris & complimentary Siberian Squill

But, alas, these brave early explorers, the precocious first open bloom of Magnolia stellata, the vivid yellow blooms of 'Meadowlark' (Forsythia ovata X Forsythia europaea) and 'Golden Times' Forsythia (Forsythia intermedia 'Golden Times'), the shy grape hyacinths (Muscari sp), and the purple Dutch iris (I think?) complimented by the self-spreading squill, these are, all of them, soon to be punished for their boldness. They've brought joy and light and color into my world at present, but tomorrow's forecast is for snow and 60 mph sustained winds, a blizzard busting in on my celebration.

Grape Hyacinths

I could rave on and on about the necessity of Forsythia in the Spring landscape, even while the yellow hue of most cultivars is seldom perfectly clean enough for my taste. I could disclose the nostalgic reasons for maintaining this single clump of grape hyacinths in my garden, the descendants of memories brought with me from my boyhood Indiana home, even as they display the ravages of my fickle Kansas climate. I could lament the brief display of the Dutch iris blooms near my front walkway or the foolish waste of the blushing Star Magnolia bloom, destined tomorrow to be merely a brown shriveled husk, if it can be found at all.

'Golden Times' Forsythia

Nay, I will instead speak here only of the gift and the beauty of these flowers, however fleeting. They are portents, harbingers of sunnier days and warmer soil to come. Promising Spring, they prophesize the awakening of the world, a new season of growth, and the banishment of all forms of ice from our lives. Blooming now, they call me out into the world, they stir my soul, and they awaken my spirit. I am forever grateful for these first flowers of Spring.

Halfway Insanity

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Sat, 7 Mar 2026 19:02:00 -0600

Scilla siberica

You all know ProfessorRoush hates the seasonal time change even under the best circumstances, right? But, facing the semi-annual, government-imposed, tyrannic shift of one hour in my biorhythms this weekend, just when I thought the world couldn't get any more crazy, it did indeed take one more step towards the abyss. I was minding my own business the other day, deep in my morning pre-work routine with the local news playing in the background, when I heard something said about a proposal before Congress to make Daylight Savings time a 30 MINUTE shift instead of a full hour. Since no one could conceiveably be that cuckoo, I assumed I was hallucinating and went on about my day.

But, NO, if you look it up, a U.S. Representative, Florida Republican Greg Steube, has introduced the "Daylight Act of 2026", proposing to permanently set US clocks ahead by a HALF HOUR. Now, make no mistake, I am completely down with moving to permanent Daylight Savings Time, but a full hour forward, not just 30 minutes! Of all the idiotic, backward, confusing, imbecilic, dumb (I'm now out of adverbs) ideas, this one is a prize-winner.

Abeliophyllum distichum ‘Roseum’

American's have enough trouble with the metric system, but now some Floridian moron wants us to remember that the time in England (Greenwich Mean Time or "GMT") is now 5.5 hours ahead of the Central Time Zone? Or that, if I am phoning Berlin Germany, it is 6.5 instead of 7 hours ahead? Why not just go ahead and make the shift 35 minutes ahead while we are trying to complicate life? Or 29 minutes ahead?

Folks, we have to kill this bill and quick. The sentiment to get the government out of our biologic clocks and stop messing with us on a semi-annual basis is spot on point, but let's keep it simple and make it an even hour, please, so that we aren't further down the rabbit hole of separation from the rest of the world. Write your Congressman, write your Senators and voice your opposition! Let We The People be heard!

Abeliophyllum distichum 'Roseum'

Sometimes, I am tempted to support a return to tarring and feathers, and this is close to one of those times. If that's what it takes to keep this insanity from becoming policy, then I'll supply the firewood.

Oh, yeah, regarding the photos here: Spring is coming on strong, and I've witnessed the first Scilla siberica (top right) this week, and the Pink Forsythia (Abeliophyllum distichum ‘Roseum’‘Roseum’) is in full bloom. I always wish the latter had a better, less straggly form, and more prominent blooms, but this early in the season, I try to cherish whatever I can get!

Brave Little Warriors

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Sun, 1 Mar 2026 17:27:00 -0600

A warm couple of late February weeks teased this early single daffodil out into the open in my back patio bed yesterday. Foolish little one, I could have told you this warm sunlight wouldn't last, for I, an apex consumer and representative of a species that has some grasp of weather patterns, knew the coming forecast calls for a cold snap, a light snow, and several days of cold rain. And this afternoon, I sit cozily indoors, writing in this blog, while rain patters on the adjacent window and you shiver in the back yard.

The courageous daffodil above has many brethren nearby who weren't so brave, weren't so foolish with their lives and resources, and they conserved their time and effort, comfortable to delay and follow the crowd; individuals not, but safe in number. They won't be first in line for pollination or growth, but their patience may yet be rewarded by the chance to procreate and spread. At least they will be growing and blooming in less-dry ground, nourished by the Spring rains we have coming.

Outside too, this Winter Jasmine, Jasminium nudiflorum, is beginning to bloom, this southern-most-exposed clump blooming while a greater mass behind it waits for warmer weather. I don't recall where or when I purchased this plant, but, come February when it blooms earlier than anything else in Kansas, I'm ecstatic once again that I have it. I don't know much about this plant, but its hardiness and tendency to form local clumps suggests to me that in the right conditions, it could be invasive. Here, restrained by winter droughts and drastic climate changes, I'm just happy to see it survive each winter.

And inside, this Amaryllis I showed you in the last blog is just outdoing itself in abundance, spreading joy through my little world. The morning sunlight behind the blooms really highlights their happy-go-lucky orange-ness, don't you think? This is the sight that greats me each morning as I feed Bella, and every day it gives me strength and promises me the sun and warmth will come back yet another season. I go off to work with its memory daily, clutching this picture in my mind while I wait for Spring.

Tree Holes and Ground Tunnels

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 16:26:00 -0600

ProfessorRoush has been absent from the blog lately, but I've not been idle! Various work and other duties have stolen my time away from the garden and the blog, including the loving, care, and feeding of Mrs. ProfessorRoush. We're nesting a bit, buying some furniture upgrades and aiming for some functional and cosmetic house improvements. One thing to watch for is a report on the Great Deck Replacement Project of 2026!

Meanwhile, last year's Amaryllis is beginning to bloom again (photo top right). I keep these "disposable" bulbs in large pots outside during the summer after they've bloomed, and then I winter them in the garage from late October through January once their foliage starts to dry. I brought this pot indoors about mid-January and began to water it and the 3 bulbs of the pot have thrown up 3 strong flower stems (4 if you include the one that Mrs. ProfessorRoush snapped off this week by closing the adjacent window on it). In the background of the photo above, you can still see the fog that stuck around until about 11am today (photo at left). Hey, at least we don't have snow anymore!

One thing I wanted to include today was a plea to not be quite so tidy in your gardens that you destroy habitat. This seedless cottonwood near the barn died last year, its weak wood topped by wind and snow, and I almost removed it this summer; or, more accurately, offered to "let" a friend remove it for the lousy firewood it would hold. I changed my mind when I realized a flock of cedar waxwings were using it this spring as a collecting perch for their flock and I decided to keep it around another year.

And now a year later, it holds a secret and I can't bear to think about cutting it down. A couple of months ago, as I was staring at these wretched skeletal remains and thinking about brittle, falling, cottonwood limbs, I noticed that it now holds a residence for a large "something." Look closely at the previous photo and you'll see this 3"X4" nest hole about 2/3rds of the way to the top of the trunk. Squirrel? Owl? Hawk? I haven't seen the new resident coming or going yet, so its identity is a mystery right now, but I'm willing to wait and watch. Personally, I'm hoping for "owl"; a nice screech owl family would be welcome tenants.

So, the new cottonwood hole is a great example of letting nature have its choice in our gardens, to increase our tolerance for that planned garden neglectfulness that Mirabel Osler described in A Gentle Plea for Chaos. I'm advocating for that, and yet at the same time, I'm wondering what creature is behind a second mystery that is occurring in my garden and I'm planning an attack on the latter. Can you see the raised, superficial tunnels in the photo at right? My back landscape beds are filled with them and they extend slightly into the yard around. If I were back home in Indiana, where I encountered this frequently in the soft, sandy soil of my boyhood home, I'd say these were moles, but I've never had moles here before in my garden, nor found them at large in the prairie surrounding me. The ground is just likely too heavy and rocky to entice them to even try to tunnel here. These current tunnels are only in the cultivated bed and area of the grass and I fear they're another form of incursion into my space by pack rats and I won't tolerate that. My embrace of natural ecology only extends so far!

Brave New World

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Sat, 3 Jan 2026 15:59:00 -0600

2026 has just begun and I'm already salivating with the anticipation of another spring and summer ahead. I certainly felt that 2025 ended on a high note, prompted, perhaps, by this amaryllis, a Christmas gift from a friend, that began blooming the day after I received it and bloomed across both Christmas and New Year's Day. It is just now beginning to fade into the background and I need to remove the "waxy rubber" coat from the bulb, pot it up, and see if I can coax it to bloom again next year. It certainly bloomed itself onto center stage for the holidays, a bright spot indoors when the seasonal grays imposed. Look upon it, all ye, and despair not!

Outside, in the garden, all is quiet and dormant. I keep the bird feeders filled with sunflower and thistle in the hope of keeping SOME movement and life in the garden, all while I also keep the rat bait stations filled to diminish the pack rat population and quell the seeming overpopulation of the filthy creatures. I have recently noticed some "tunneling" in my back bed, and I'm wondering if moles are making a first-ever incursion into my garden or if the pack rats are merely switching tactics.

Garden statues, and other garden "bones", stand out in winter. Mine are even more gray this year because I recently observed that my beloved "reading angel", a long-ago birthday gift from my wife and daughter, was disintegrating. She had toppled over in fall, and her wings were in pieces on the ground and her concrete weathered and worn out on exposed dorsal surfaces. Another statue, a long-eared rabbit, had lost an ear and broken off a paw over time. I repaired both as best I could with some concrete patch repair and then I spray-painted most of my plain concrete statues to protect them, with the resulting flat gray appearance you see here. Once it warms up, if the paint seems to protect them from weather and freeze-thaw cracks, I'll spray other concrete statues and then keep them painted in rotation. One must care for our bones!

At this time of year, any color other than brown and umber stands out in the garden, so I was delighted to find this Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard' in fine leaf and full variegation despite the frigid temperatures we occasionally see. I have transplanted this clump twice over the years, and it has cloned itself locally, but this cultivar doesn't seem to have near the self-seeding tendencies of my more common variegated Yucca varieties. And therein lies my primary observation of this blog entry; whenever you actually want a near-ideal plant to spread like a weed, they don't, but turn your back on any common perennial and they'll soon be choking out your most prized plants!

Have a happy and productive 2026 gardening year, my friends!

Bluebirds Down!

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 11:19:00 -0600

The unseasonably warm weather of the past few days lured ProfessorRoush out of the house and into the garden. Christmas Day and Friday it was 60ºF or over, and the fog was heavy in the mornings; heavy enough to wet the grass and bring out the umbers and reds of the Bluestem grasses. Mrs. ProfessorRoush loves the foggy mornings when the house feels isolated in a sea of gray and the garden edges are the limits of our world.

Friday, high 65ºF, I straightened the garage, wandered the garden, target shot for awhile, and just generally enjoyed the free space of the garden, while yesterday it was outside "chore day" in the still 60ºF temperatures of the late morning and afternoon. I started the day replacing the rat bait in the secure bait stations to diminish the pack rat population of my neighborhood. All the bait stations were empty; am I poisoning the rats, or merely feeding them? Afterwards, although I never claim to be any sort of a mechanic, I took a flat tire off of the lawn mower and attempted to repair it with placement of a rubber innertube. That seemingly simple act involves getting the jack out of my jeep, assembling it, jacking up the lawn mower, removing the tire, and cutting off the existing valve stem in preparation, which all took about a half-hour. Two hours after that, completely frustrated and defeated, I called a still-open tire shop (Burnett's Automotive of Manhattan Kansas) and took it there where they placed the tube and aired it up in 10 minutes free of charge. Following that fiasco, putting the wheel back on the tractor was a cinch, the jack and tools were put back into their proper places and the job was complete.

At that point, I should have quit, but the weather forecast for today (Sunday) foretold stiff winds and a massive drop in temperatures, and in the back of my mind was the nagging thought that my twenty-four or so bluebird trail boxes had not been cleaned of old nests and paper wasp nets yet this season. So I set out and rode the lawnmower where I could, and walked where I couldn't, to service the boxes in the spring-like temperatures. It's a stiff up and down walk for an old man to the far reaches of the pasture where our house and garden is a distant dot.

Bluebird box nest

I am dismayed to report in hindsight that I found only eight or nine boxes with Bluebird nests and one very twiggy chickadee nest. Many boxes were empty and I'm at a loss to explain the overall nest decrease from my previous high of 20 nests. I had not noticed it during the summer, likely because most of the boxes that had Bluebird nests were boxes around the house and garden, so the Bluebirds within my daily vision had not diminished appreciably. Distant boxes on fence posts of the pasture were routinely empty. More predators? There did not seem to be more paper wasp nests in the boxes, and my impression is the latter were also decreased this year. Poor environmental conditions? More rain? Less rain at critical periods? A colder winter last year? Are Bluebirds domesticating themselves, becoming dependent on populated structures and artificial nest boxes?

Roush Bluebird Box design

I did get the impression that the newer boxes of my own design were more likely to have nests, and many of my older boxes are nearing 20 or 25 years old, so I have resolved to make more new boxes in the near future and to site them on isolated T-posts instead of on the fence lines so snakes and other predators have a harder time getting to them. A proper Bluebird home is the least that I can provide as my contribution towards rectifying the environmental excesses of my own footprints on the prairie.

Christmas Galore!

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 11:24:00 -0600

I had long planned to post on Christmas, but this is not at all what I had in mind as late as 6:00 p.m. yesterday. I apologize that I've been away from the blog for over a month, but it's a long story that I won't bore you with, at least on this most important day of the year, Christmas Day, 2025 A. D.; 2025 years since the birth of Christ, the Son of God. I had planned a post with pictures of the house and snowless garden engulfed in the thick fog of the past two mornings, but, as often occurs, fate intervened to change my plans.

Leaving work in the dark on these recent shortest days of winter and traveling towards the grocery, I had recently noticed some Christmas lighting popping up in the K-State University Gardens. So last night, Christmas Eve, I asked Mrs. ProfessorRoush if she would go with me to see them. I didn't expect such a display, complete with Christmas music over loudspeakers, that would draw us out of the car, and have us walking around the garden in the chill air, but that's what we got. Evidently, for the 150th anniversary of Kansas State University Gardens, the Friends of the K-State Gardens went all out! And now, I'll shut up and let the pictures speak for themselves, because the Director, Scott McElwain, and the K-State Gardens outdid themselves this year!

The view from the parking lot approaching the daylily and rose display gardens

The old K-State Dairy Barn, now the Gardens Welcome and Office Center

The "setback" between the Garden's Center and the south wing of the barn

This tree near the walk was spectacularly lighted in bright white

The "setback between the Insect Zoo and the Garden Center

Look closely at the rose garden greenhouse to see the reflection of the Christmas lights in it.

If you'd like to see the display, it's open through December 31st and the music hours are listed on the website linked above. And if you want to donate to support the display, this QR code works:

Lot's of people were taking selfies next to the backlit statue here!

Merry Christmas to all and all the best wishes for you to have a fantastic 2026 year (gardening and everything else)!

Redemption and Judgement

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 10:47:00 -0600

If I hadn't felt a responsibility to remove (mow) the spent peony foliage down last weekend, I would have entirely missed the annual bloom of the nearby and sadly neglected Hamamelis virginiana, my erstwhile 'Jelena' that I now believe was sold to me falsely identified. In fact, the pale yellow blooms, plentiful as they are, might have still been missed if the foliage of the shrub had not already dropped. My love-hate relationship with this shrub has not improved over the past few years during my abandonment of its care, but with this latest attempted display of blooms when nothing else braves blooming, I have resolved to follow Luke 6:29, "offer the other cheek", and allow it a chance at redemption.

That last statement, written down and seen and reread in words, seems blazingly presumptuous, an open declaration of my self-proclaimed status as the garden's judge, jury, and executioner; carelessly risking a lightning bolt or two cast in the direction of my blasphemous gardening soul. Upon further contemplation, however, I do view the gardener as the God, or at least the stand-in Caretaker, of their garden, making annual and daily decisions about the lives and survival of all the creatures within the gardener's gaze. Perhaps we are merely the Instruments of Divine Provenance, under illusion that we have any control in the garden, but the act of gardening is at least pretending that we are the ones deciding what to plant, where it goes into the ground, and how it is cared for.

I think that's quite enough digression into the philosophical abyss for one day, ProfessorRoush. Returning to the subject du jour, suffice it to say that I have allowed this Hamamelis to be overrun by the wild Rosa multiflora that has been growing in the same space, and the Witch Hazel has suffered greatly in the absence of my attentions. I first noticed the R. multiflora several years back, and have enjoyed its spring display of blossoms and the orange hips that follow it into autumn, but enough is enough; a choice must be made. One can hardly discern the straggly limbs of the Witch Hazel from their entanglement with the long slender canes of the rose. This Judgement Day seems overdue for these two plants.

At its base, shown here, the multiflora rose is seen growing to the left and slightly behind the Hamamelis. Low to the ground, I braved the thorns and branches and, one-by-one, chopped the rose canes off close to the ground, spraying the still-green stumps with brush-killer to prevent any regrowth. Finally, the only chore left was to disentangle and remove the rose canes from their close embrace with the Witch Hazel, a task accomplished with only a minor release of profanity and loss of blood by the gardener. The common name, Witch Hazel, was appropriate for the "toil and trouble" it caused me this day.

It stands now, alone, my (likely) Hamamelis virginiana, looking perhaps despondent at the loss of its volunteer companion, but with a better chance for growth and survival. I will prune it this spring to encourage it to fill in and prosper without its former competitive neighbor. The blooms themselves are not as large and brightly-colored as I expected when I planted it, but as my garden shuts down and awaits winter, I'll accept whatever gifts it may meagerly send in my direction.

Peony Planting

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 11:50:00 -0600

'Coral Sunset'

I don't know about the rest of youse, but ProfessorRoush, he is off in the world planting peonies today. A late "backorder" from John Scheepers came in this week, and today I must, I must, I just MUST, get these into the ground alongside the Orientpets and other bulbs from that establishment that I received and planted some weeks ago.

That darned Scheeper's catalogue, along with its sister site, Van Engelen Inc., are becoming a major drain on my annual planting budget as my gardening focus turns towards low-maintenance plantings. I already planted a number of new daylilies this fall and the Orientpets that I'm fascinated with often come along with a few other miscellaneous bulbs that catch my eye in the catalogs. I'd forgotten, however, that I'd ordered 4 new peonies from Scheepers. Today, I'm planting 'Raspberry Sundae' (a peony I've long coveted but it struggles here), 'Sorbet' (my previous start purchased at a big-box store is, in reality, likely a common 'Sarah Bernhardt'), and two roots of 'Joker', the latter an irresistible pink-edged white double peony that caught my eye as I viewed the catalogue offerings. Hopefully, next Spring I'll be showing those off to you!

Today, however, the peony of focus today is one I planted just last year, blooming for the first time in my garden. The photographed peony on this page is 'Coral Sunset', an early bloomer that captures the sunny disposition of May in Kansas and gifts it back to the gardener. I've wanted this 1965 Wisser introduction since I saw it on a slide in a lecture Roy Klehm gave at the National Botanical Garden in 2008, and I finally planted a labeled specimen last year. It was healthy this year for me, and produced 5 or 6 of these beautiful blooms that perfectly color-complimented the potted pink Pelargonium behind it. 'Coral Sunset' received an APS Gold Medal Award in 2003.

If they are not in bloom and you can't confirm the variety visually, there are really only two ways to buy plants that you covet. First, purchase a known start from a trusted local or online nursery and hold them accountable for its identity. That's the smart way to spend your money. Alternatively, you can purchase a bargain plant whose name you vaguely recognize from a big-box store and hope and pray to the gardening gods that it is not mislabeled. Sometimes, the latter works out as it did the year I purchased my 'Lillian Gibson' rose from Home Depot. Often, it doesn't. I can't tell you how many peony roots I've purchased that were labeled as something I wanted but turned out to be just one more 'Sarah Bernhardt' bomb. However, two years ago, I purchased a container of two peony roots labeled as 'Coral Sunset' and, looking at the picture to the right as one of them first bloomed this summer in my south-facing back bed, they just may be 'Coral Sunset' or its nearly identical but taller older sister, 'Coral Charm'. Wouldn't it be something if I have three of these gorgeous coral creatures already?

Surprise Snake

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Sat, 8 Nov 2025 06:00:00 -0600

There I was, minding my own business last weekend while I was doing some fall-cleanup chores; you know, things like putting the peony supports up for the winter, filling the bird feeders, and mowing off dead peony stems. And there it was, trying to be inconspicuous and camouflaged for the surrounding. Luckily for both of us, it moved. Do you see it? As you look closer, please be courteous and ignore the fact that most of the "green" stuff here are weeds (Common Dayflowers). Sometimes, one surrenders to the chaos.

Here, I'll outline it for you. Now can you find it? Thank God, at the time I discovered it that I wasn't weeding on my knees with bare hands like I did in this bed during the hottest part of the summer! It seems late in the season to come across a snake, and it was relatively cool that day, maybe 55F at the time I took this picture, so I certainly didn't expect the encounter. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of snakes in the grasses of the prairie, but I rarely see one. Just search for "snake" in the search box on the right hand side if you want to see other species that I've encountered here.

I'm sure this is a North American Racer (Coluber constrictor), and a big one too. If the species maximum length is up to 55.5 inches, this one was every bit of 50 inches long and 2 inches in diameter at its thickest area, although I didn't ask it to hold still for any measurement, nor did I go inside and come back out with a measuring tape. In fact, once it recognized that I had noticed it, it quickly slithered away, gone as I attempted to zoom in for better detail. I got more detail than I really wanted anyway; just click on any picture here to see it full size.

Here, I'll give you a closeup of the head. Now can you see it? Internet sources tell me it is harmless, not really a constrictor, and prefers to dine on insects, frogs, lizards, small mammals, and small birds rather than large, hyperventilating gardeners. But if you've read my blog since its beginning, you know that factoid doesn't bring me any comfort. I hate snakes, although I do acknowledge their value in controlling vermin in my landscape and I am less prone to running headlong into the next county at the sight of one then I used to be. Regardless, if this guy's (girl's?) home territory is really 25 acres, I'll likely never see it again. Or so I hope. One sighting is more than ample.

Missed the Memo

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Sun, 2 Nov 2025 10:37:00 -0600

Sweet Gum

ProfessorRoush woke up this morning a little late, reading on his bedside clock that it was just prior to 7:00 a.m. Normally his eyes shoot open, fully awake, at 5:30 a.m. and he seldom sleeps past 6:00 a.m, so that was a little odd, but pleased at gaining a little extra sleep, he went about his Sunday in his usual pattern; 1) close bedroom door so Mrs. ProfessorRoush can sleep in, 2) let Bella out, 3) feed Bella, 4) get on the computer to read the news and forums and blog. It was dark still, and a glance out the window told me there was frost on the ground, but I entirely missed realizing that it was still too dark for 7:00 a.m.

It wasn't until Mrs. ProfessorRoush rose an hour later and turned on the television for the news, expecting that she was a little late for "Meet the Press" and finding "Sunday Today" in its place, that we realized that the governmental tyrants had once again failed to repeal "Daylight Savings Time" and have forced themselves upon our biological clocks. Again. It was still 7:06 a.m. and I'd been up for over an hour.

This morning, I had intended to blog about the changing colors in the landscape and the beauty that Fall brings to the prairie, but instead, I'm aggravated that the time arbitrarily changed and the madness continues. I have nothing to look forward to except a week of being sleepy early in the evening and driving to work with the sun in my eyes.

Sour Gum

Along the way, I was planning to point out the fantastic colors of the Sweet Gum, Liquidambar styraciflua, (photo above) that I planted near the barn, and to talk about the pros and cons of my Black Tupelo, Nyssa sylvatica, which is also known as a "Sour Gum" or "Black Gum" tree. The latter is one of the most dependable trees for red foliage each fall, but I've found that you had better be quick to enjoy it because the leaves turn and then the first cold wind will strip them off. I could be also waxing poetic about my Red Horse-Chestnut (photo below), Aesculus x carnea, a true "three-season" tree with pinkish-orange flowers in spring, yellow fall foliage, and the brown chest-nuts I pick up from around it in the winter.

Red Horse-Chestnut

I should, instead of ranting about the authoritarian time change, be planting the bulbs that arrived via mail this week, admiring the fall colors of the prairie, and enjoying the last relatively warm days before I have to force myself out into the cold each week for necessary seasonal chores. But thank you, One World Order, for this disruption in my pattern as I once again face your unreasonable demands and the upset of my entire metabolism. A Pox on both houses of Congress!

County Crush

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 11:02:00 -0500

In the modern world, there are many, many things that the curmudgeonly ProfessorRoush does not understand. Chief among these is the proliferation of late night television ads promoting iPhone and video games such as "Candy Crush." Growing up in the era of "Pong" and "Space Invader" standalone kiosks, ProfessorRoush never caught the passion then, and subsequently never became addicted to the generations of video and computer games that followed. Are these TV ads really cost-effective ways to promote the games and make money? Or are the games themselves just a doomsday plot by nefarious actors, a mass way to engage the masses, similar to the gladiators of Rome? Does no one else remember a young Ashley Judd acting in Star Trek Next Generation Episode 106, circa 2002 and titled "The Game"?

Sorry, I'm off on a tangent from my original goal for this blog entry. This isn't supposed to be about all the things I don't understand. My original intent before the temporary mental digression was to rant as coherently as possibly about a specific recent action by the country roadskeepers. Bear with me, Readers, as I get to the point.

Walking Bella down the road on September 19th, I noted that the wild Liatris punctata clump that I watch for near the road and that I'd written about previously, had bloomed once again and was, in fact, proliferating nicely (see photo above and compare with the previous year). Tall and colorful, and breathtakingly beautiful, it came complete with some pale yellow Clouded Sulphur (Colias philodice) butterflies as this photo proves.

More recently, however, I noted that the county had mowed the roadside with a bushhog, as it does annually to increase traffic visibility near turns and make the roads "neater," an activity that my German genetic heritage regretfully approves of. This year, however, the county mowed a broader swath, a "two mower-wide path", and in the process cut off all these beautiful Liatris clumps before they could form seed. Please take a moment of silence here for this elimination of beauty from the prairie and mourn as well for the butterflies and bees deprived of food. Dear County, was that act of environmental fascism really necessary? Ozymandias, King of Kings, gaze on what you destroyed!

Thankfully, on a brighter note, even a two mower-wide swath didn't reach these fledgling Liatris further down the road. I can only hope to see these mature and spread across the untouched prairie of our neighborhood.

What's my purpose here? In a broad sense, it is to write again that, as always, nature is better left alone and I'm happier when it is. And also I recognize that perhaps, just perhaps, ProfessorRoush doesn't fit so well in the "modern" world.

Lilacs, Lavender, & Lepidoptera

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 18:17:00 -0500

ProfessorRoush fully realizes this entry may seem like a rerun of last week's post, but he came back from a short trip today to see that Syringa vulgaris ‘Nazecker’ had bloomed in his absence; more blush pink than the springtime blue tones it normally holds, but blooming gloriously nonetheless. And fragrant, sweetening the air, detectable by my non-discerning nose for 10 feet around it!

Once again, these blooms are covered in butterflies, luring in this beauty with its folded upper wings and slightly green body as one example of the attention it captures. I'm terrible at butterfly identification, but I think I can legitimately limit this one down to the Skipper family, and further, as a Grass Skipper (subfamily Hesperiinae) due to the vertically-held upper wing pair and other characteristics, such as the oval club ( or "apiculus") on the antennae tip. But which Grass Skipper? It could be a Sachem, or another Skipper entirely. I can't find a perfectly matching picture and there is a lot of variation within the species and genders of this group. I don't believe it's a Fiery Skipper because it has longer antennae than that species, but I need an assist to ID this one correctly. Phone a friend, please?

In contrast, the Common Buckeye (Junonia coenia) feeding on this nearby lavender is easily identified by the large, colorful eye spots on both upper wings. I enjoyed reading and learning about this widespread species, including the fact that it was featured in 2006 as a US Postage Stamp.

The 'Nazecker' lilac pictured here provides a backdrop to my lavender "hedge", so these two species and more are concentrated and attracted to a small area of bloom right now. Are they drawn to the area by fragrance, bloom color, bloom form, or some other factor? I'll never know, but I do know it was first the sight of the bountiful lilac and then the movement of the Lepidoptera that drew my attention here.

I wish I could identify a few more of the Skippers that were moving around, but, as you can see, many are shy about opening their wings to help a fellow out. Oh, if only I could make time stand still at will, to freeze a moment so I could experience it fully and examine them to my deep content! Alas, like the life of a butterfly, these instants pass quickly in my own life, experienced briefly, but never still. I'm just not willing, as the Lepidopterists of old, to kill and "pin" these specimens for my leisurely examination.

Lilac Libations

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 18:27:00 -0500

Earlier this week, ProfessorRoush noticed that one of his "old French" lilacs was blooming. It is not, in itself, an unusual occurrence for a lilac to bloom here in the Fall, although I am always grateful and attentive when they do. This year, this old and anonymous Syringa vulgaris has already dropped most of its leaves but is quite prolific in bloom, a half-dozen inflorescences adding fragrance to the cool morning air. A neighboring pink 'Maiden's Blush' and lilac-colored 'Wonderblue' are also blooming in this row, more sparsely, but blooming nonetheless.

When I first noticed the bloom, I merely thought "well, that will be my blog subject for the week," and snapped a few pictures to document the occasion in time and memory. The shrub is ugly at this time of the year, bare and worn, and the panicles mildly out of place against a background of drying prairie, but the presence of a lilac out-of-season is still a gift from the gods and an occasion to celebrate.

I was entirely unprepared, however, two days later, when I saw a Monarch (Danaus plexippus) butterfly flitting about the blooms, and I failed to capture more than a blurred butterfly-silhouette at the time. I was more deliberate and careful today, however, when I noticed, not one, but several Monarchs on the fragrant blooms.

They were patient, these Monarchs, uncaring that I hovered nearby as they slowly made their way over the panicles, briefly feeding at each floret as they went round and round the inflorescences, silhouetted and then in full glory to my phone camera. One of my frequent failings as a photographer is to capture images of insects in perfect focus on plants, but these golden subjects were nearly posing still, allowing the lens and the photographer to sync up for a frozen moment of glory.

As I marveled and frantically took photo after photo, I finally noticed that not just Monarchs, but other butterflies were taking advantage of the offering of late-season nectar. The fuzzy-bodied Silver-Spotted Skipper (Epargyreus clarus) in the photo at the right, is likely the third "flight" or generation of this year, but it too was patient enough to pose for the admiring ProfessorRoush. I owe the ID, by the way, to this amazing Pocket Guide to Kansas butterflies.

A "libation" is a ritual pouring of a liquid as an offering to a deity or spirit, and in this time, in this place, the lilac is surely offering a libation, its precious remaining energy as nectar, to these delicate deities of the wind. God Speed, Monarchs and Skippers all, on your travels to the future. May the flowers in your path be sweet and the wind be always at your back.

A Hawk's Garden

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Sun, 5 Oct 2025 12:31:00 -0500

It never fails. Every spring, ProfessorRoush is a neat freak in his garden, and then, come every autumn, I'm exhausted by the constant effort to stay atop the endless chores, acceding to the clamor of chaos, and waving the white flag in surrender to the wildness of weather and weeds. And yet, somewhere in between spring and autumn, there always appears an opportunity to choose. To choose between anarchy and intent in my garden, to choose between disorder and design, between entropy and enlightenment.

Such was my choice, this past summer, to perhaps remove this blackened Cottonwood stump or to leave it in place. Once a mighty, young, and hearty tree, its health was wrecked by an ice storm years ago and it spent a decade struggling to regrow damaged limbs from exposed heartwood and then, last year, the final large branches fell and it failed to grow any leaves at all. I let it burn with the prairie around it this spring, and indeed encouraged it to burn by piling dry debris at its base, hoping to erase its presence and its memory from my landscape, but this blackened and hardened stump persisted.

For some time, I contemplated asking a friend to fell this stump along with another dead and starkly-branched tree in the back yard, but then one day I saw a plethora of Tufted Titmouse (Titmice?) using the latter as a gathering spot and decided on the spot to postpone removing these blights from my yard. Blessedly, what was once a spur-of-the-moment random decision has become a monument to my garden's nature. Thank you to the Titmice and the Hawk.

The Red-Tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) pictured here and above has been hanging around for the past few months, using the cottonwood stump as a primary hunting perch as it lives out its hawk-life existence on the prairie. I've also caught it sitting higher on the house roof twice as I came home from work, and once on the frame of my shade house, as you can see pictured here and below. In the meantime, the eternally hungry rabbits have all but disappeared from my garden beds and I have high hopes that the local pack rats are quaking in their urine-soaked, disgusting debris-pile homes. Red-tailed Hawks are the most common and the largest bird of prey on the tallgrass prairie and you can see that this one believes it is King (or Queen?) of all its domain.

Once, while mowing, I barely missed snapping a picture of what I call "my" Hawk lifting off from the ground, snake carcass in its talons, but I will never forget the thrill of that final "swoop" and the calm Hawk sitting in the grass looking satisfied at its catch. Gardening friends, if you face a similar choice, I promise you won't regret letting hawks be hawks, and in a broader sense occasionally allowing nature to be in control for a day, for a week, maybe even for a season. Some say a garden is defined by its boundaries, by the vision of the Gardener, but I submit for your consideration that our best efforts are spent in concert with the natural world around us, not fighting against it. And I can't help but feel that this Hawk agrees with me.

Clear Skies and Long Views

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 19:02:00 -0500

It occurs to me that some of you may fear that this blog is, at times, in danger of becoming a "weather report", justifiably so since ProfessorRoush shares that same fear with you, and yet I still cannot resist showing you this view, as it presented to me a couple of evenings back as I turned onto my road:

In the west, I saw this view and thought, "that's a rain cloud," and yet we had no rain predicted. I was not prepared, however to check the weather on my phone and see that this thunderhead belonged to a single isolated cell that was still more than 60 miles distant (radar screenshot taken at 6:49 p.m.)! Salina Kansas, to the storm's south, is 66 miles from me! How's that for clear air quality?

I haven't calculated the earth's curvature over that distance, and I know this storm probably reached tens of thousands of feet into the air, but, still, I can scarcely believe I was able to see it coming at that distance. The world is a wonderful place, full of surprises if we only let them in.

I watched the cloud through the evening as the storm tracked from our direct west. At 8:07 p.m., it was still more than 25 miles away to our west, but it ended up passing barely to the south later that evening. My last view of it below is at dusk, 8:07 p.m., still to the west and at the same time as the radar capture seen to the left, with barely enough light from the setting sun remaining to outline the storm cell. Lightning was flashing in the storm itself as I watched, and it is no wonder that the Vikings could conclude that Thor was angry in the center of that cloud.

Perhaps now you can better understand my fascination with weather events here in my view from these semi-arid, rolling grasslands where rain is sometimes measured in drops and the wind can strike fear in a brave heart. Better at times, I wonder, would we be if we were this garden spider, a Yellow Garden Spider (Argiope aurantia) that has patiently tended its web in this exact spot near my back patio for over a month. I can't tell you how many times I've almost shortcut across this bed into this web, but so far it has survived obliteration from myself, Bella, the neighbor dog, and the weather. I'm happy for the spider's presence because it is another sign that Fall is coming and it seems to justify my seasonal neglect and provides some natural pest control for my garden.

Everything's Alright

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Sat, 6 Sep 2025 10:29:00 -0500

Believe me, ProfessorRoush is very aware that he's been "blog-absent" for a couple of weeks, but life sometimes makes other plans for us. This past 2 weeks, the "other plans" have included some emergency medical visits and surgery and hospitalization of Mrs. ProfessorRoush, and the mere fact that I'm blogging now should be taken by all as a clear sign that she is mending. Slowly, but progressively.

During a period where I was traveling back and forth from home to hospital, missing my wife and worrying about her surgery and recovery, I was struck one evening by the likely Divinely-inspired appearance of the Sweet Autumn Clematis that grows on my now-neglected gazebo. I built this hexagonal gazebo nearly two decades ago merely to have a place deep in the garden to escape from the sun and sit on a swing on a hot day. Surrounded by a honeysuckle on the south, a struggling 'Romona' clematis on the west, and the Sweet Autumn clematis on the north, I've neglected the gazebo a bit, especially the last couple of years, and it is beginning to show its age.

Hence, as I have not paid any notice to it this summer, I was surprised when I saw it suddenly in bloom from my bedroom window and I realized the clematis had climbed through the top of the gazebo. In my tired and lonely mental state, I was struck speechless by the gift and the perfectly-timed message from nature, and I received that message loud and clear. I took this sweet-smelling, perfectly-white, delicate but determined floral display as a certain sign that my beautiful bride of nearly 43 years would be okay, and my fears and worries melted away at the sight of it.

A view of the inside of the gazebo reveals the path of the clematis as it sought out the sunlight and clung to the cross beams. "Life", as Michael Crichton wrote, "always finds a way". This Sweet Autumn clematis is the only one I have allowed in my garden for several years because I've learned it will self-seed everywhere here in this climate and become invasive. But now that it has demonstrated its resolve to thrive, and superimposed itself on my mind's eye alongside my love for Mrs. ProfessorRoush, it is likely that I'll allow others to grow here in the future. After all, who am I to deny the forces of life and ignore heaven-sent messages?

Mowing Musings

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Sat, 16 Aug 2025 16:33:00 -0500

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (dark form)

If you've followed this blog long, you have probably guessed that many of my photo inspirations, and the majority of my "musing" time occurs during mowing. That means that while he gathers his thoughts and the materials for these blogs, ProfessorRoush is often sitting atop steering a rapidly spinning knife moving at 2-4 miles/hour across the lawn and around, over, or through various obstacles, some of which turn into lethal projectiles when they exit the mower deck. And this all occurs while my attention is distracted to the borders or plants beside my path of mowing rather than staying focused on the task. It is a miracle that I have yet to injure anything more dear than an errant clump of groundcover.

Flowers, animals, insects, weather, and my general sense of the world are all fair game for my attention and interest while mowing. For instance, within the last two weeks, I've mowed while simultaneously racing the absolutely beautiful rainstorm encroaching from the northwest (photo at left), and I've had the (I believe) newly hatched, dark form Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus, photo at top) fall from an ash tree right into my lap as I passed. The "dark form" of this dimorphic butterfly means that this specimen is almost certainly a female.

In the former instance, I kept one eye on the sky as I mowed, both hoping for rain and hoping it would hold off a few extra minutes until I could finish. In the former, this beautiful and delicate creature that my passage disturbed was unable to fly, and so, afraid that the circling Purple Martins would spot it struggling in the grass, I stopped the mower and gently lifted it back into the lower branches of the ash, under concealment and away from the hungry Martin eyes. After, of course, I took an extra moment to photograph and document its presence and beauty.

Flannel Mullein

As I mow near the periphery of my influence, where the "yard" changes over to bovine-grazed or bush-hog-mowed native prairie, I keep an eye out for blooming wildflowers, learning their identities and habitats, timing my worldview by their annual growth and bloom cycles, and discovering which insects or fauna each attract. On a recent mowing, the bright yellow, nonnative, drought-tolerant biennial Flannel Mullein (Verbascum thapsus) was blooming (above and at left). This woolly-leaved plant is said to have been traditionally boiled with lye to make a hair dye, presumably for use by those who believe that "blonds have more fun"/ Left alone, unmowed unlike the clump above, those yellow eye-catching spires reach taller than my head and spread enormous, soft, hairy leaves across their base.

Blue Verbena (Verbena hastata) was also blooming on "mowing day" and was attracting an energetic Clouded Sulphur (Colias philodice) butterfly to pollinate and feed from it. Blue Verbena, also known as Blue Vervain, is a native, very drought-tolerant plant and a common tall perennial of my prairie. Its seeds are a major source of feed for the finches and sparrows of the area, and, as you can see, its nectar attracts its own admirers.

Blue Verbena & Clouded Sulphur butterfly

The complimentary coloring of the light yellow butterfly and violet Verbena naturally-form a nearly perfect color-wheel contrast, and I couldn't resist stopping the mower once again to grab these photos. Capturing this rapidly-moving butterfly in a still moment takes patience and time, both of which I provided and yet I was still unable to capture a suitable photo of it with wings outspread.

Some weeks, my mowing time is extended from around 2 hours to 3 or 4 hours depending on the scenic distractions and the number of times I stop for photos or to remove random offensive weeds. But can you really blame me?

August Surprises

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Fri, 8 Aug 2025 16:37:00 -0500

In the Kansas Flint Hills, late July and August is a dreadful period for gardeners. There is often a seasonal lack of rain during those weeks and oppressive waves of heat build and sear plants (and gardeners) on a daily basis, turning leaves brown and suppressing plant growth and melting away any resolve to keep the garden in prime condition. The roses, in misery, pause their blooms and the daylily season has ended and the landscape is left almost colorless, a bland dull green turning brown and not yet displaying any autumn coloration.

I said "almost colorless", though, because there are some intrepid garden denizens who provide some relief from the blandness. First, I want to recommend loud and clear that every gardener, particularly if you garden in Kansas, needs to obtain some "Surprise Lilies" because this period of summer doldrum is their preferred bloom time. One minute there's nothing in a spot, and the next, PINK goodness erupts. I plodded out to my every-other-morning pity-watering of the tomato pots on the last day of July and saw the miracle pictured above. A few days later, the buds were all in bloom and it was yet even more captivating. All this from seemingly bare ground!

I've seldom been able to catch them in actual growth, but here are a few early sprouts in process. In spring, this is a clump of green grass that appears from nowhere, stays green into early summer, and then quickly dries up and disappears. You can see their remnants at the base of the stems. The flower stems appear in the same spot a couple of months later, usually unnoticed until they bloom in just a few days. Sometimes, I think if I watched them closely enough, I could see them grow before my eyes!

My other life-saving perennial at this time is a native, Salvia azurea, the Blue Sage, which is a moderately uncommon but not rare plant in my region. The clump pictured here is a volunteer in my front landscape that I allowed to remain as a welcome invader a dozen years past and it gets more bushy and floriferous each year.

I'm simply in awe of the gentle sky-blue color and the drought resistance of the plant. Flowering in the most in-hospitable season here, there must be some survival advantage in being the sole source, or one of the few sources, of pollen during the heat of summer that led its distant ancestors to flower now. I'm just thankful for all the bees it draws and feeds here, and for the color it brings during an otherwise drab end-of-summer. And right now, I'll welcome color in any form, however it wants to appear.

Blackberry Beginnings

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Sat, 2 Aug 2025 11:23:00 -0500

ProfessorRoush received an unusual offer a couple of weeks back; an offer via email from Tom Doyle himself to grow and promote Doyle's Thornless Blackberry™ plants. Specifically, Mr. Doyle offered some free plants and a host of other inducements in exchange for a few blogs on the blackberries' performance, including a 10% commission on sales directed to his nursery. As you know, what I share on this blog is written for my own enjoyment and I've declined Google Ads on the blog and don't look to make money off of its viewers, so I turned down his offer of income from sales. I was, however, intrigued by his description of the vigor and high yield of the patented blackberry plants, and flattered by his awareness of Garden Musings, so after a little negotiation Tom did send the plants and other gifts, and I'll be writing a few blogs over a couple of years to tell you my experiences with them.

The Doyle Blackberries are from a small, family-owned blackberry nursery in Washington, Indiana, and, small nursery or not, I've got to give the Doyle's credit for reaching out into the social media world for marketing. The original Thomas Doyle passed in 2001 at over 100 years old, so I presume the individual contacting me is his son, Thomas E. Doyle, Junior, carrying on the family business. In the fifteen or so years I've been blogging, only one other firm has offered any item for evaluation and, while I recognize Garden Musings isn't taking the non-gardening world by storm, it DOES average around 3000 visits each day. So, my mouth watering for future blackberries, my ego deftly stroked, and to help out a fellow Hoosier, I'll happily lend a few words here. Besides, you know how I love blackberries and trying another variety is a treat all by itself.

The plants were shipped soon after we reached agreement, and then I was left to fret while their original 3-day UPS trip turned into 8 days, and during the hottest time of the summer! However, my concerns were misplaced because the nursery plans for a 15 day delay in shipping and planting and packaged them accordingly. Four small but healthy rooted plants arrived in good condition, peanut-cushioned to protect everything from mayhem, along with a copy of Rose Doyle's Blackberry Recipies, a very nice T-shirt, liquid fertilizer, mycorrhizal root booster, a proprietary trellis, trellis clips, fertilizer, and other items, many of which you can see pictured here. Rose Doyle's Blackberry Recipes alone is worth obtaining, with 186 pages of recipes that use blackberries for everything from Blackberry Chicken to Blackberry Brandy and on to Blackberry & Cantaloup Salsa! NOTE: If you order from Doyle's, use this link for 10% off. I get no commission, you get a larger discount!

In fact, one could accept the shipping delay as God's Will, since the plants arrived at the end of the hottest stretch of weather we've had. I unpacked them, watered them, and waited through one more 90ºF+ day of highs and then planted them Thursday, July 31st, just as we begin an unusually cool period of 70's and 80's predicted for the next week.

They're protected as best I can for now behind fencing from rabbits and rodents, and mulched with prairie hay squares on either side. I've warned Mr. Doyle that, as tough as he claims his blackberries are, they're now in Kansas and they'll be field-tested and tried to their limits. Drought, rodents, coyotes, searing sun, frozen winters, they'll experience it all here. As the Doyle nursery 19 month plant warranty covers everything except a soil pH outside of 5-6.5, I will, however, apologize in advance for my pH 7.2-8.5 prairie soil, but there's little I can do about that. And I haven't unpacked the Trellis yet; the plants won't be big enough to need it for awhile.

I would be remiss if I didn't repeat, here at the outset, the advertised qualities of Doyle's Thornless Blackberry®, and share the contact information for the nursery. Doyle's Blackberry is a trailing plant grown on grape-type trellises, produce 10-20 GALLONS of large and exceptionally sweet blackberries/plant, are hardy to Zone 3, and are featured in the Agricultural Hall of Fame in Kansas City, Kansas. Production is reportedly slow in the first year but reaches normal in the 3rd year after planting, and the plant is a biennial, canes fruiting in the second year, and so it should be pruned accordingly. Doyle Blackberry, Inc. is located at 1600 Bedford Road, Washington, IN 47501 and can be reached at (812) 254-2654 or via the website at www.fruitsandberries.com

For now, the plants are out there in the midst of my Kansas prairie, protected as best I can from critters and drought. They'll have to do the rest!

Dayflower Difficulties

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 17:47:00 -0500

While the rest of the world is occupied with either embracing or avoiding the inevitable summer heat of July and August in the Northern Hemisphere, ProfessorRoush is additionally fully engaged in my annual war with the Common Dayflower, Commelina communis. Not as strikingly blue as its cousin, the Erect Daylily (Commelina erectus), C. communis is described in KSWildflower.org in unglowing and uninspiring terminology as "A common weed. The flowers bloom for one day, wilting into a moist, blue mass after a few hours." I would add that if a "weed" is benignly considered to be any plant that is growing in an unwanted place, then the Dayflower is an overachiever; pernicious to its neighbors, invasive, impervious to glycosophate, and seemingly impossible to eradicate.

As an aside, the Wikipedia entry regarding Dayflowers is a model of "more than you ever want to know," and was obviously edited by some wild-eyed and socially questionable Dayflower fanatics.

Dayflower is supposed to be an annual (I'm not as convinced about that as Internet sources seem to be), so my primary angle of attack is to rip it out before it goes to seed. Unfortunately, it has an uncanny ability to hide among irises and daylilies as it creeps along on the ground, popping up only as it gains the unsanctioned support of an neighbor plant, so I have to watch closely for the light blue flowers and rip them out at first appearance. Equally unfortunately, the plant blooms during the hottest days of the year, so I battle both the plant and heat stroke simultaneously during my periodic forays into my garden beds.

Often, I find the Dayflower imitating and then trying to replace a desired plant (like an alien pod of 1950's science fiction) while mowing the lawn, as I did the weedy clump pictured above. Beneath all those Dayflower stems and leaves is a desired 'Vintage Wine' daylily, which was blooming without care only the week before. So, in this instance as in many others, I stopped mowing and attacked, wiping sweat away from my eyes periodically so I could discern daylily foliage from dayflower, and just generally resembling a bulldog attacking a bowl of soup. Anyway, the final result looks much better (photo at right), a relieved daylily with a chance at survival.

I'll finish by taking this moment to show you my latest lawn tractor modification. I took this old 5-gallon bucket and have attached it to the tractor "hitch" point in order to always have immediate access to pruning tools and spray bottles of "Grass-B-Gon", yellow nutsedge herbicide, and brush-killer. In other words, all the things I can't live without as a gardener in Kansas. As I mow, I often spot a random clump of wild dogwood in a rose bush, or some yellow nutsedge in a bed, and it is much more effective to hit the brake and take care of it in the moment, rather than try to remember later what it was that offended me, where it was, and then make another trek to get the tool or spray I need to fix it. I love my new bucket-basket!

Published Serendipity

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 13:02:00 -0500

Serendipity is defined by the Oxford dictionary as "the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way." As we travel down that serendipitous rabbit hole, we learn further that the term was coined in 1754 by Horace Wadpole when, writing his friend Horace Mann, he related a surprising discovery in a painting he received from his friend that he related to a Persian folk tale, the "Three Princes of Serendip". And while I could have continued my meager existence without knowing the etymology of serendipity, I was intrigued by a list of serendipitous inventions in Wikipedia which include Corn Flakes, safety glass, Popsicles, Teflon, superglue, LSD, the microwave oven, and penicillin. I knew of the latter due to my veterinary training, but I would rather not know that Corn Flakes were created after John Kellogg inadvertently left out some wheat dough overnight and didn't want to throw it out. I used to like Corn Flakes.

'Austrian Copper' watercolor by Nanae Ito

It was certainly serendipitous, however, that I chose to make a quick stop by a Half-Price Books on a recent weekend trip because I happened across a couple of texts that I've never seen before and was unlikely to look for. The first was a worn hardback copy of Roses of Yesterday, by Dorothy Stemler, the latter a well-known name to any Old Garden Rose afficionado. Roses of Yesterday is a scant 54 pages, but it contains passages about 18 Old Garden roses written by Mrs. Stemler and illustrated with water color prints of Nanae Ito. The 18 roses chosen include my beloved 'Madame Hardy', 'Celsiana', 'Koenigin von Daenemarck', 'Austrian Copper', and 'Charles de Mills'.

'Madame Hardy' watercolor by Nanae Ito

About 'Madame Hardy', named for his wife by the breeder, Monsieur Hardy, Mrs. Stemler wrote "This rose is considered by many people the most exquisite white rose in exisence. It has the elegance of emeralds and old lace....If he had never produced another rose in his lifetime, his name would still be famous."

My second acquisition was a paperback copy of a similarly short (103 pages) self-published 2016 monograph, The Complete Guide to Gardeners, by Joseph Tychonievich. Subtitled "The Plant Obsessed and How to Deal with Them, Tychonievich brings a highly tongue-in-cheek attitude into a semi-organized list of the trials imposed on a nongardener who is living with a gardener. There is dry, sarcastic humor throughout, as the author approaches the topics of the Notable Behaviors, Seasons, Care and Feeding, and Subspecies of Gardeners, as well as some advice on Troubleshooting Your Gardener. I found Tychonievich's description of "gardener's myopia", a term referring to gardeners who can only see the weeds on their home turf rather than the beauty of his/her/their garden, to be very accurate. I was also driven to thought by his advice regarding "gardener's paralysis," the tendency of a gardener to become complacent over the years and the garden to stagnate as a result. I'm certainly self-afflicted by "gardener's myopia", but am I also guilty of "gardener's paralysis? Hhhmmmph!

Weather Thou Goest

noreply@blogger.com (ProfessorRoush) — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 06:00:00 -0500

On his way home from work Friday night, ProfessorRoush turned onto the road leading to his house and, facing west, the sky ahead was this:

My first thought was "that's a rain cloud forming." My second? "But there's no rain predicted until at least Sunday." I took the picture from my front windshield to capture the moment.

Such, my friends, is the fickle nature of moisture in a Kansas summer. Six weeks ago, we hadn't had any rain for several weeks after a fairly dry spring and the prairie grasses were showing some signs of drought. Then it rained 6 inches in thirty-six hours and filled the ponds and soaked the ground and on a day no rain had been predicted. Following that we had no rain for a month and the grasses were going into dormancy. Earlier this week, we had 1.5 inches, predicted as a 30% chance, but the previously predicted late week and weekend chances all faded away as the weekdays passed. Just this morning, the local weather channel and my phone app predicted only small chances on Sunday. And nothing today (Friday) or tomorrow.

But the cloud pictured above came in and provided a 30-minute heavy downpour, dumping an inch of badly-needed rain in that period. To further illustrate our fickle weather, as I wrote these words, the radar looked like this as another storm moved in and yet, by the time I finished, the sky had cleared and this storm had evaporated, providing no moisture to ground level. How could it miss? How could it not rain? The leading edge of that rain is only 5 miles from my location!

Eastern Giant Swallowtail butterfly

But enough nonproductive ranting and on to more pleasant topics. I was pleased, recently, to have this perfectly formed Eastern Giant Swallowtail butterfly (Papilio cresphontes) cross my path while I was weeding, allowing me a brief "hello" and photo opportunity with this member of the largest butterfly species in North America. I'm convinced God made no creature more fragile yet more exquisitely colored in a detailed pattern of intricate color than this butterfly. Dante Alighieri was most certainly correct when he said "Nature is the art of God."

Arrowhead Orbweaver spider

I was a little less pleased, but still fascinated, that very same afternoon when I noticed this Triangle Orb Weaver (Verrucosa arenata) hanging out around the garage door as I passed by to enter the house. Once I determined it was harmless, I returned its favor of benevolence and merely paused there for a photo of its adornment. It is easy to see why one of the other common names for this spider is the Arrowhead Orbweaver! One wonders the purpose of such a visible signpost, when surely matte black would suffice for a spider's garb, but, perhaps, its purpose is just that; to leave me wondering about the purposes of the Divine.