Sunday, June 25, 2006

Cool Weather

What’s blooming in the area: Yucca, cholla, datura, milkweed, bindweed, buffalo gourd, golden hairy aster, tumble mustard, wooly plantain, sweet pea, roses, daylilies, bouncing Bess, Russian sage, trumpet creeper, silverlace vine, grama grass, rice grass, three-awn grass. Someone down the road has yuccas at least 5' tall with flowers that bend from their weight; corn in one garden is 24" high with 6" tomato plants in front.

What’s blooming in my garden, looking north: Blanket flower, golden spur columbine, lance-leaf coreopsis, chocolate flowers, perky Sue, Hartweg evening primrose, fern-leaf yarrow, Mexican hat, miniature roses (Sunrise).

Looking east: California poppy, hollyhock, winecup, coral bells, cheddar pink, rock rose, coral beardtongue.

Look south: Climbing rose (Blaze), rugosa, rugosa hybrid (Elisio).

Look west: Oriental lily, perennial four o’clock, white spurge, catmint, blue flax, purple ice plant.

Bedding plants: Dalhburg daisies, marigolds, sweet alyssum, snapdragons, petunias, profusion zinnias, supersweet 100 tomato.

Animal sightings: Power line birds, small green hummingbird, quail appear to be testing the Russian sage for a new home, geckoes, orange Tiffany butterfly, ants, grasshoppers, bees, including bumble bee, crickets; someone down the road has brought in 3 ewes and a lamb to crop the vegetation; gopher attacked one of two hollyhocks that survived last summer, killed one stalk.

Weather: Hot days, warmer nights, mild afternoon winds with area storms that leave no trace; 16 days since last rain.

Weekly update: The solstice has come and gone, and the house is warming up so much during the day it no longer cools off completely in the early morning.

We had a long run of cool nights. It got warm early, but afternoons only turned hot in June. This followed a long fall that saw no killing frost until after Thanksgiving.

Despite the drought, trees and shrubs down the road are haloed in bright leaves. Some trees have branches of brilliant chartreuse among the dark green of old growth. As near as I can tell from the road, most are cottonwoods, some globe willows, and apples.

One yard in town is graveled with a half dozen or so wide yuccas. In one corner there’s a wisteria, that bloomed this year for the first time in several. As long as I remember, it draped sparingly over an arch trellis. Now it’s a large round mound of dense foliage at least as wide as the trellis in every direction.

My woody perennials still have lots of bare stems, but there are also new shoots and growing branches with leaves filling in bare areas. Some, like the Siberian pea trees, look normal. The roses of Sharon look the way they did two years ago. The lilacs, beauty bush and cherries have new growth, while the peach, forsythia and locust have branches blocking walkways. Only the weigela and roses remain diminished.

While some may water or have irrigation rights, I can’t believe every sprouting tree is getting attention. These must be plants more sensitive to temperature for growth than daylight or water. They probably are also established plants with roots deep enough to reach water stored last summer. Young or weak plants of the same species are not thriving. My globe willow and new cherry are only stable, staying alive and prey to grasshoppers.

Nature is indifferent. Lilacs should have had a wonderful, cool spring; and, there was one plant in town that had suckered into a 10' long copse covered with light lavender flowers. But the blooming period was unusually short, and most plants had few panicles. Someone down the road lost his lilac hedge, and in the village there are shrubs like my weigela with few green branches amidst much dead wood.

Nature may provide ways for plants to recover from the hard summer of drought and grasshoppers and the harder winter of drought and cold temperatures, but they are not panaceas. Darwinian selection rules.

Grasshopper watch: First grasshoppers were brown. Then came the green ones, which are dominant now. I’ve seen some with orange and black stripes, and some that had black and brown stripes. Also, there are insects that look like grasshoppers until they spread their wings and fly.

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Doctor Huey

What’s blooming in the area: Yucca, cholla, datura, milkweed, bindweed, buffalo gourd, golden hairy aster, Queen Anne’s lace, local dandelion, tumble mustard, roses, bouncing Bess, Russian sage, trumpet creeper, silverlace vine, grama grass, rice grass, three-awn grass.

What’s blooming in my garden, looking north: Red hot poker, golden spur columbine, lance-leaf coreopsis, enough chocolate flowers to smell in early morning, perky Sue, Hartweg evening primrose, fern-leaf yarrow, Mexican hat, miniature roses (Rise and Shine, Sunrise).

Looking east: Hollyhock, red rose rootstock, winecup, coral bells, cheddar pink, rock rose, coral beardtongue, floribunda rose (Fashion).

Look south: Daylily, sweet pea, climbing rose (Blaze), rugosa hybrid (Elisio).

Look west: Perennial four o’clock, white spurge, Husker’s beardtongue, catmint, purple beardtongue, blue flax, purple ice plant.

Bedding plants: Dalhburg daisies, marigolds, sweet alyssum, snapdragons, petunias, squash, zucchini, sweet 1000 tomato.

Animal sightings: Power line birds, house sparrows, quail, bird with red under neck, small green hummingbird in coral beardtongue, geckoes, white cabbage butterfly, black butterfly, large grey spotted beetle, squash bug, grasshoppers, ants, bumble bee; rabbit has eaten a tomato and killed a young oriental poppy it stepped on to get to the tomato.

Weather: High winds Thursday battered trees and shrubs, snapped small branches off the locust, and knocked petals off roses. Hot days, cool nights continue; 9 days since last rain.

Weekly update: Everyone here tries to grow roses. In our valley created by volcanoes and weather, those in the old village near the river do better than those of us on dry, windy, clay hills where only needle grass and an occasional juniper grow.

Until the arrival of Wal-mart and the big boxes, most came from our local hardware-lumber who got pallets of potted roses from Coiner Nursery. They were cheap, rising from $4.00 a few years ago to $6.00 this year. The labels may have been misleading, but most arrived in bud and bloomed in the store yard.

Most were tea roses, but there were usually some floribundas and climbers mixed in, picked up quickly by the knowing. People who live near the river have bushes at least 4 feet tall, and almost as wide that bloom every summer with large flowers on multiple canes.

People on the road away from the river are less successful. Mixed in with their tea roses are large rambling roses, the rootstock that survives when grafted roses die. As the road winds up to my place roses disappear. I don’t have a single tea rose that’s survived a year, but I do have some rootstock. I have one Coiner floribunda that’s several years old and some rugosas and miniatures I bought from mail order nurseries.

The rootstock is most likely Doctor Huey, a deep red rose with yellow stamens introduced around World War I by Thomas, and adopted as rootstock soon after. Since few bother to prune, clusters of semi-double flowers crowd the ends of two-year-old canes in June, before they subside into shrubs among the Virginia creeper that volunteers on fences.

Some plants along the road are about 5' tall, and even wider. One person in the village has built wooden cages for two large plants in his drive; another has trained one on a trellis to the top of the garage. Mine from 2002 are about 3' high with unbranched canes arching out 4'

Grasshopper watch: I’ve never known if any of my neighbors had grasshopper problems, since few tried to grow much. As a result, I never knew if my problems were worse than their’s simply because I lived closer to the prairie than they. Now that my neighbor has put plants along the drive next to another neighbor’s yard of weeds, I can see insects are eating her hollyhocks and white daisy flowers.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Summer Is Come

What’s blooming in the area: Yucca, cholla, datura, milkweed, buffalo gourd, golden hairy aster, wooly loco, wooly plantain, local dandelion, tumble mustard, roses of all sorts, sweet pea, hollyhock, honeysuckle, silverlace vine, blue grama, rice grass, downy chess grass, three-awn grass, catalpa, tamarix.

What’s blooming in my garden, looking north: Red hot poker, golden spur columbine, lance-leaf coreopsis, red rose rootstock, chocolate flowers, perky Sue, Hartweg evening primrose, Mexican hat, miniature roses (Rise and Shine, Sunrise).

Looking east: Winecup, creeping baby’s breath, coral bells, rock rose, cheddar pink, coral beardtongue, floribunda rose (Fashion).

Look south: Daylily, climbing rose (Blaze), rugosa hybrid (Elisio).

Look west: Catmint, purple beardtongue, blue flax, purple ice plant, Husker’s beardtongue, snow-in-summer.

Animal sightings: Power line birds, quail, small green hummingbird, rabbit, geckoes, earth worm, grasshoppers, ants, bees, small yellow and tangerine butterfly with patterned wings, white cabbage butterfly, large (2" long body) black and grey moth, large grey spotted beetle, tiny bluish-grey butterfly with dark spots, mosquitoes, no-see ‘ums.

Weather: Storms blew through on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to finally drop some rain Thursday night that penetrated about 1/8"; nights remain cool, days hot.

Weekly update: The change of seasons is always dramatic. No "summer is a-coming in" here. One day the afternoons are mild, the next weak plants are dying.

As quickly as the temperature changes, so do the flowers. I drove through the old village near the river Tuesday and Thursday. When I returned from the polls, sweat peas and roses were blooming. Thursday, daylilies had opened and hollyhocks started to bloom. Corn was 6" high in one garden.

I came home to find my daylilies had two flowers. The Mexican hats are beginning to bloom, as is the purple ice plant. My hollyhocks and sweet peas are still buds, but most of the roses are still blooming. Wild sunflowers are beginning to break ground and grow.

Every time I walk along around the curve of my gravel drive and see roses in the shade of the locust on one side and daylilies in the sun on the other, I think back to all those July hikes at summer camp in Michigan when daylilies bloomed in clumps along the dirt roads of Barry county. My mother told me they were tiger lilies.

Plants one would find on any midwestern country road in June are here in the same combinations. They’re the ones that survive bad seasons and neglect of changing homeowners down by the roadside where they get water collected by the gravel or pavement. The harbingers of summer portend it can be survived, and that the memories may survive as madeleines.

Grasshopper watch: So far, the grasshoppers are being picky, going after the butterfly bushes, shasta daisy, raspberries, and, of course, hollyhocks. A friend of mine in a settlement to the south says her’s are concentrating on her small white daisies.

Other news: Second red blanketflower has opened, but is missing some petals. The petals themselves are dark in the center and graduate to lighter red at the ends; only the very tip edges are yellow. The petals of the first blossom are fading to a more glowing, yellow sienna.

Sunday, June 04, 2006

One Red Blanketflower

What’s blooming in the area: Fern-leaved globeflower, golden hairy aster, wooly loco, wooly plantain, goat’s beard, local dandelion, yellow sweet clover, downy chess grass, three-awn grass, June grass, catalpa trees.

What’s blooming in my garden, looking north: Red hot poker, golden spur columbine, lance-leaf coreopsis, red rose rootstock, chocolate flowers, perky Sue, Hartweg evening primrose, miniature roses (Rise and Shine, Sunrise).

Looking east: Winecup, creeping baby’s breath, coral bells, cheddar pink, rock rose, peony, coral beardtongue, floribunda rose (Fashion).

Look south: Remains of spiraea.

Look west: Catmint, purple beardtongue, blue flax.

Animal sightings: The power line bird, a brownish bird smaller than a robin with a light belly; when it flies it has light colored bands on its wings and tail; I usually see it when it calls from the line. Also, geckoes, grasshoppers, ants, flies, bees around coreopsis, small green hummingbird feeding on red hot poker and beardtongue.

Weather: Summer has arrived, house no longer stays cool during the day, winds have died down, no moisture.

Weekly update: Blooming in my bed of pinks and coral bells is one red blanket flower. I didn’t put it there, nature did.

When a summer is tough on plants, like last year with a drought and grasshoppers, I let nature tend itself. I don’t cut dead stems in the fall, don’t pull up unwanted seedlings in the spring. I rationalize my natural laziness as providing tools for nature to reestablish decimated colonies.

So, this year, there are coreopsis, columbines and blanket flowers in my pink bed, a blue flax in my front walk, and coral beardtongues in my yellow garden. They’re all blooming when nothing else is, because the plants that should be blooming were attacked so severely last summer. If they weren’t in flower, little would be.

The red gaillardia could have come from anywhere. It could be what they call a sport, a random genetic mutation from the plants in the north bed. It could be a stray seed from one of the packets I planted there which blew east.
This spring, my neighbor planted blanket flowers along her drive that she bought from some place like Wal-Mart or a big box. They’re large bushy plants, covered with buds, but I think still the dwarf variants. Most of her’s are the usual yellow petals with a red center, but a couple look like mine, red petals with touches of yellow.

It’s not the prettiest flower in my yard, and certainly not a candidate for the county fair. It has several buds, but so far the one flower is malformed, with missing petals. They may have been knocked off by the wind, or the plant may be weak, or the grasshoppers may have gotten it early. The color is a deep red, not burgundy, and there’s a thin line of yellow at the tips of the petals.

But there it stands, one ragged, gap-toothed tribute to nature’s disdain for gardens and a monument to the persistence of life in this hostile desert.

Grasshopper watch: Grasshoppers are still active in areas not treated, but I haven’t seen as many insects in the garden. My peony flower was almost completely eaten in one afternoon, and other plants leaves have holes.. The insects I’ve seen are approaching ½" in size, and are green, rather than brown like the ones I saw earlier