Garden Picture Time

Indian grass rocks

In person, ironweed seed heads glow when backlit

Liatris mucronata among aster

Looking west

Native to Alaska, burnet is too unique to pass by

View from my office window

'Wichita Mountains' goldenrod

A surprisingly good crabapple year

A wash of amsonia about to turn bright yellow, orange, then rust

Sometimes, the right tree goes in the right place

Diversity = More & Stronger Plants, & People

Here in the Plains I'm always thinking about grassland diversity, and how areas of my garden that are thicker and more varied seem to perform better on average (this from a casual observer with no scientific training). Of course, I often think about diversity because there's a corn field over there, one over there, and another right there. Monculture mecca.

A recent University of Minnesota study proves that a diverse plot of grassland species has 2.5 times the biomass of a single-species plot. This means more wildlife and a stronger environment--storing carbon, filtering water, providing food for wildlife, creating natural fertilizer, etc.

Most striking was that after a long period of time, if you take out one species, the plot's biomass decreases. After a while, the plants have become so dependent on one another--each having its own niche--that the greater whole suffers. Reminds me a little of humanity. So if we farmed smarter (non monoculture) we could actually produce more food on less land, thus reducing the need to clear cut forests and the last of the grasslands.

And here's an Ohio study that shows non native plants have an advantage over natives as climate change occurs. This year, flowers bloomed weeks earlier--for natives, that means before their insect pollinator partners emerged (synced up evolutionarily over thousands of years), which translates to no propagation of the next generation.

As a wildlife gardener working with native plants, I see a moral imperative growing season by season. This summer 2.5" of rain in nearly four months has vastly decreased insect life. The planet is changing. More droughts, longer droughts, more violent temp swings, colder winter spells--the more I touch the soil, the more I understand. If we value diversity in humans, why not in the environment? But then again, anyone different from us often gets chastised, shunned, murdered. It's no surprise then what our planet is turning into. If we love our children, we must instill within them the love of what sustains them.

"A change is required of us, a healing of the betrayed trust between humans and earth. Caretaking is the utmost spiritual and physical responsibility of our time, and perhaps that stewardship is finally our place in the web of life, our work, the solution to the mystery of what we are. There are already so many holes in the universe that will never again be filled, and each of them forces us to question why we are permitted such loss, such tearing away at the fabric of life, and how we will live with our planet in the future." -- Linda Hogan, Dwellings.

My Prairie Dream

I want to restore farmland to prairie. It may be better to find some remnant prairie and preserve it, since those are turning into crops at a record pace the last few years. But either way, land in the farm belt is pricey--averaging $8,000-$10,000 an acre or thereabouts. So if a person wanted to restore 100 acres--a very very small prairie that could only support a fraction of the native wildlife--it'd cost one million buckaroos.

But here's the dream that's building, and how I hope to sustain it:

100-200 acres of land somewhat near a population center

House with solar, wind, geothermal, cistern (100% off the grid)

Greenhouse

Writing shed


How to Make Money (this is all part time stuff):

Sell native prairie plants and veg at farmer's markets

Have a "dig your own" prairie plant plot

Have several small cabins for 1-2 week writing residencies on the prairie

Create a semi-manicured expanse or garden, with vista of prairie, for weddings

Have an annual music / writing / arts prairie festival

Open the prairie to school groups and other private tours

Hold workshops for sustainable prairie growing and management


It seems like a person would really have to know their stuff to do this (or be just enough insane to jump right in, full of vigor and faith). Choosing the right place seems critical for many reasons, not only the lay of the land, but the location of that land. Even on a prairie a person is not an island, though they may need inordinate amounts of time being lost out there on the ocean of grass.

What would you do? How would you do it? How much would you risk? Looking back on your life, do you wish you'd put in all your chips for just one big thing?

Hear Me at Vegfest or the Radio

It'll be 48 and chilly, but this Saturday I'll try to talk native plants for backyard wildlife at Vegfest, which is at Holmes Lake in Lincoln. I'm speaking at 3pm, and I'll give away seeds and maybe some plants. There'll be lots of stuff to see, do, hear, eat, etc.

Also, I'll be on the radio program How's It Growin' next Wednesday (10/10) from 11am-noon cst. KZUM, 89.3 on your FM dial. Talking native prairie plants and probably getting into a lot of trouble. I do believe they have a live internet stream.

Take My Hostas and Anemone

The Deep Middle's front garden is getting a total redo, because when Mr. Deep started it 5 years yonder back he had no idea what he was doing, now he does.

Please come take my hostas before the compost pile does. Take divisions of my anemone, too. Monarda as well, a purple / magenta job. You have a few days, maybe a week. Message me asap.

Mr. Deep will be building a bench and sitting area in the shade, and creating a super mini mixed grass prairie in half sun. All for $100. (His wife isn't holding her breath but he promises to grow his own plants from seed this winter.)

Big blue something. Bench goes here.

Cream-splotched something.

Actually a very yellow lime something.

You can tell that hostas aren't very drought tolerant, not this year, and even a little bit of sun scorches them (I think hostas are vampires, therefore the perfect Halloween season plant for you!). They should never have gone in these places, and they have little wildlife value. So as I continue to sell them to you... uh... just please come take them, I'll divide for you if you supply the bucket or bag.

The Prairie is Our Amazon & No One Cares

A recent feature in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about the loss of prairie on the Great Plains has, of course, poured salt on an open wound for me. The last few years I've read book after book, article after article, about the loss of this critical habitat--and it is critical, as much as the Amazonian rain forest, but you don't hear fundraising songs or see national tv ads or billboard signs funded by "Save the Prairie." So, here are some highlights of the article with stunning maps of how much we've lost--even in just the last 5 years.

The Biggest Pressure on Prairie is Commodity Prices 

"Livestock operators just can't compete against the combined forces of crop insurance and high commodity prices. Around Highmore, they estimate they can make $50 to $100 an acre by grazing cattle; corn is fetching $300 or more per acre this year, regardless of how good the yields are [thanks to crop insurance].

In recent years, new varieties of genetically modified corn and soybeans have allowed farmers to push the Corn Belt westward, planting row crops on land once better suited to grazing cattle [because it's so arid]. Today, that tough prairie sod doesn't have to be plowed, just planted. The new corn and soybean seeds are immune to Roundup; farmers can kill the native grasses with the herbicide, then plant right over them."

[And all this marginal farmland needs irrigation--draining reservoirs, streams, rivers, prairie potholes, and the largest underground freshwater formation, the Ogallala Aquifer, which is being depleted so fast it may be gone in just a few decades. The Ogallala spans SD, NE, CO, KS, OK, KS, TX, and NM.]

How much grassland there was

Prairie is a Water Filter and Bird Nursery

"Heavy spring rains, once sequestered by wetlands and deep-rooted prairie plants, instead pour off the cropped fields. Eventually the water, often carrying fertilizer, herbicides, and pesticides, makes its way to the Missouri River, then to the Mississippi and eventually to the Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone'' -- an area near the mouth of the great river, now nearly 6,000 square miles in size, which is so polluted that it can no longer sustain most aquatic life.

"The northern plains that include Minnesota, the Dakotas and Canada are called "the duck factory," because nearly half the nation's wetland and grassland birds are born there, and many of those species are in decline. Many other animals are already gone, especially the large creatures like elk, bison and prairie wolves. Now, the smaller ones are at risk as well."

Prairie as Buffer Against Drought and Dustbowl II

"In the dry summer months, some of the richest soil in the world sometimes blows away on the wind."

"According to one federal study, the 16 South Dakota counties that experienced the greatest loss of grasslands are also the counties most susceptible to drought and crop loss. Farmers in those counties also had twice the insurance payments as the rest of the state."

How much has been converted

How Fast Grasslands are Vanishing

"Since 2008, the rate of land conversion nationally has exploded. In just four years, some 37,000 square miles of grasslands, wetlands and shrublands have been converted to row crops, according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and the Defenders of Wildlife, which analyzed federal satellite images to document the change. Minnesota and the Dakotas alone lost an area the size of Connecticut.

Of the Minnesota land that was once tallgrass prairie, only one-fourth is in grasses of any kind today, according to satellite data. And only about 300 square miles, scattered in remnants across the state, remains in its virgin state."

How much has been converted in the last 4 years

The Other Side

"Brian Hefty, who is reaping the benefits of the new agriculture, sees things differently. He dismisses the arguments for preserving more prairie with a critical question:
"How much do you need?" he asked.
Hefty and his brother, Darren, are third-generation South Dakota farmers. They own 2,500 acres of corn and soybeans near Sioux Falls, and they run a chain of 34 stores that provide farmers in eight states with seeds, chemicals and equipment to drain their fields.
The Hefty Brothers are widely known among Midwestern farmers as the blond and jovial hosts of "Ag Ph.D.,'' a folksy cable TV show where they teach all the latest farming techniques and technology. Their annual farm fests draw hundreds to workshops on topics like patterned tile drainage and navigating wetland protection rules.
In making the case for modern agriculture, Hefty shows a serious side that his TV fans don't always see. He also illuminates the deep philosophical divide between agriculture and conservation. Productive land, he said, is an improvement over land in its natural state. [why do we still have this antiquated, 19th century mindset?]
"Don't tell us what we have to do with our land," he said in an interview. "We are trying to make it better."
True, he acknowledged, South Dakota is "pretty dry" compared to the rest of the Corn Belt. Still, farmers should grow corn here because the new technology and the quality of the soil allow them to grow some of the best corn on Earth.
"There aren't many places better than this," he said.
The latest advances in agriculture are also good for the environment, he said. Roundup Ready corn reduces soil erosion because farmers can plant with less plowing, he said. "Now I can plant seed without massive tillage."
And the new seeds, by generating higher yields per acre, mean less land has to be used to fulfill demand, he said. As a result, Hefty said, the United States has the cleanest water and one of the most productive food systems in the world.
"In a good share of the world, they don't care about the environment," he said. "They want to eat."

My Rebuttle to Mr. Hefty:

GMO corn that is roundup ready encourages mass spraying. Crops that grow more densely don't mean less land is used, as made evident by the amount of marginal land converted in recent years. It's about money. Greed. About navel gazing. About our eyes just on the present moment, forgetful of past lessons, unsympathetic about paying it forward. If you're trying to build a business to pass on to your kids, especially farming, it will be hard for them as global temperatures swing violently (the arctic sea ice melt may cause massive swings in the jet stream, leading to prolonged dry and wet spells).

Don't get me started on the growing links between high fructose corn syrup and diabetes, Alzheimer's and junk food, or GMO foods creating learning disabilities and allergies... or corn fattening up cattle, hogs, and chickens (all pumped full of hormones, making girls begin puberty earlier, hormones that change sex in fish and that stays in our drinking supply for a very long time)--all that corn makes for fatter meat than grass fed animals, leading to increased heart disease.

How much is left

The Ecological Effects

"Once native prairie is plowed, it's gone, ecologists say. It takes decades of careful planting and management to restore the complex web of life that includes microbes and tiny insects invisible to the human eye."

"When preserving wildlife, there are thresholds," said Joe Fargione, a prairie specialist with the Nature Conservancy. "You can keep species if you lose half or 70 percent" of an ecosystem. But if you go beyond that, you start to see losses of species. Compared to rain forest habitat, we may be closer to those critical thresholds."

Why don't you go read this lovely piece by Bill McKibben about global warming. 


Carbon Sequestration

"Perhaps least appreciated, however, is the role grasslands play in storing carbon, which, when released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, is a major contributor to global warming. Their vast underground root systems, which can reach depths of eight or nine feet, hold an astonishing one-third of the world's carbon stocks. That's almost as much as the amount stored by forests, according to the World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank. On average, every time an acre of grassland is plowed, it releases 60 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- about the amount emitted annually by 30 passenger cars.

Preserving grasslands as a hedge against climate change makes sense, even after considering the environmental benefits of ethanol, said Jason Hill, a University of Minnesota professor who studies grasses and biofuels.

It will take a century before the carbon saved by burning corn ethanol equals the amount unleashed by plowing up the grassland used to produce it in the first place."

I Go On

I feel terribly angry and impatient when it comes to conservation. People look out for themselves in the moment, there's no larger image in their minds, no community, no one species looking out for the larger whole. If you want to change the world, you have to do it slowly through red tape, grass roots organizing, petitions, creating awareness, fighting the "don't tell me what to do I'm an American" syndrome, and dealing with corporations and governments bent on self interest--it all feels like a juggernaut of spikey anvils crashing into my head. And I feel we're out of time. How do conservationists keep fighting, especially as they lose more and more no matter what victories might happen? And we need big ones--like a buffalo commons, a Grassland National Park the size of Yellowstone (we have no national park which is prairie).

If I have kids I know the world I'm giving them will be worse than mine. Resources will be more scarce. The luxury of time we had to plan ahead, afford those changes via alternative energy and conservation, that time will be gone--the money will be gone, the priorities shifted in a panic of oil and clean water running out. We borrow the future from our youth, and we're borrowing most of it. We don't care about our children.

I want to leave something more. I want to stand up and shout that I did something, some of us tried our best, some of us wailed hard against the ignorance and the power hungry, money hungry, uncaring majority (or is it a minority). What do I do? How do I do it? How do you change a species? How do you change centuries of culture? How do you change what surely must in the end be human nature? How do we learn that in innovation and restraint comes even more possibility? Like a sonnet whose form is so structured that when you order the syllables and rhymes--when you creatively push against the limitations--something far more incredible transcends the boundaries of imagination. Have we lost the ability to imagine our full potential?

Not My Birthday

But it's my mom's, a big one that I'm sure she'd rather just ignore for a myriad of reasons this year. But seeing as she planted a seed 'o' nature in me--or it's at least convenient to think so--this blog post will honor her. Really, I think when my parents moved us up to Minnesota is when nature opened up to me, especially as I was on the edge of my teenager moody years. My solitary nature, penchant for introspection, and USDA hardiness zone four's distinct seasons collided and turned me into a garden god. Wait. Strike that. Just a minor deity.

I've lost the images I took of my mom's garden before they moved from my childhood home--they may still be on some rolls of real film in a drawer. There was an extensive rock garden out front across the whole hillside, and out back a shade garden with stream and small pond. I asked her to walk the landscape on my last visit in 2006 or 2007 and we mapped out each plant, I even did some sketches:

My "drawing"

Nature's "drawing"

Here's an interview Fran Sorin did at Gardening Gone Wild about growing up outside with my mother.

And maybe you'd like to read an excerpt from my unpublished memoir, Morning Glory, which has a most lovely elevator pitch: "When a relationship between mother and son meets in the garden, her past confronts his future."

But really, this is what you should read, also from the memoir: my essay "Across the Flats" about our car trip to a new nursery in Minnesota after the big move.

An Absence of Prairie

I’ve not seen a real prairie. Haven’t stood on a ridge to see grass to the horizon, or been lost up to my shoulder in bluestem or Indian grass. I’ve put as many plants in my small garden as I could—coneflowers, clover, liatris, winecup, side oats grama, milkweed, aster, mountain mint. I have walked the twenty feet to the edge of my parent’s property line in MN to look over 3 acres of seeded prairie, and in a small stand of perhaps a hundred square feet the inverted turkey feet of bluestem seed heads flail against a pale blue sky. I have walked the never-plowed 800 acres of Spring Creek Prairie in Nebraska where my wife and I were married, where wagon ruts of an Oregon Trail cutoff are almost discernible. I have seen edges of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Kansas, the sheltered Wichita Mountains short grass, and the mixed grass of Black Kettle National Grassland in Oklahoma, but not even all of them together could give me a clue.

  

Maybe the closest I’ve come to prairie is flying over the Plains, a field of clouds beneath, dark blue above, or on the mossy Irish coast looking west toward Iceland. I feel a gunshot hole in my chest, see its shadow on the ground in front of me, feel the air chill my insides, know I’m not just incomplete but desperate—absolutely desperate—to plug the absence. I think about tearing up my small front lawn, seeding with buffalo grass, placing clumps of little bluestem here and there like hiccups. 

But I don’t have the guts or the faith. There is something about dining on ashes that comforts me. Is it nostalgia for something I never knew? Is it solipsism or self pity? Is it just easier to romanticize what we don’t know and never experienced and create an image only, an interpretation whose personal experience makes the unknown seem more real? This is what impressionistic painters must feel—caught between an inner and outer world and unable to completely express the place in between where we live in fear and hope. 

I remember walking railroad tracks as a boy, balancing on one rail, the sharp rock between timbers, the faint sound of an invisible train coming fast from behind; this is what it’s like walking a corn field where prairie once was, and where it could be again. 

Life Returns to the (Dry) Autumn Garden

Yes it's been a long, hot summer, and I'm just now getting out into the garden as nighttime temps reach into the low 40s. Dividing plants, moving seedlings, setting up pots for winter sowing. The garden is coming to life though as the temps cool--hoards of insects, masses of blooms (I do garden for fall). I love fall. The different blooms remind me of family and specific memories--for instance, the scent of zigzag goldenrod is my grandmother's perfume. I wish I could bottle the goldenrod, the asters, the joe pye, the sunflower. All I have is a blog.

We finally had rain this week! 1.7"! Previous 3 months we'd had 0.7"!

Caryopteris is a good, long bloomer for me, and insects, and spiders.

One of the few mantis I've seen this year. Huge, too.

Eupatorium altissimum is covered in 100 insects right now. I swear. There's a joe pye for every season!

One of the monarchs we've released.

Monarch batman?

I love this closeup. Very rich, like autumn.

Coughing, sneezing, or shy? (or angry?)

Sunflowers at sunset.

Do You Have Any Butterflies?

I remember last spring, which feels like last week, when a million red admirals and sulphurs descended on my blooming ninebarks. Then the two weeks of spring we had ended abruptly when it was 90-105 every day for a good two months, with 0.7" of rain since mid June. I haven't spent much time in the garden this summer because I'm a fairly heat-sensitive guy. But I've seen very very very few butterflies this year and perhaps 50% of the normal amount of insects. Right now certain species of joe pye weed are blooming and are always covered in soldier beetles--but this year I've seen perhaps a dozen or two.

We usually raise anywhere from 100 to 200 monarch butterflies from May to September. This year I found a few eggs in June, raised and released. Then three weeks ago I found 16.

That's it. For the whole summer. Apparently butterflies overshot this year into Canada, but you can't deny the effect of drought, coupled with the ongoing threat from spreading agriculture into Conservation Reserve Program lands now expiring (the price of corn is just too tempting not to plant on hillsides, drained marshes, marginal land), and willy nilly chemical applications by farmers and suburbanites.

I believe that no issue our government faces is more critical than that of how we influence our planet. You can't argue healthcare, welfare, and equality if you're starving, have no electricity, no clean water, and the economy tanks because we rely on oil. I believe the one issue no one risks their political fortunes on is the one issue that can solve, in large part, all of the above issues and more. I'm naive, perhaps. But when it rains this fall and we forget about the drought, when we forget about the BP oil spill (we already have even as Issac washed up sunken tarballs on to shore), the climate will still be changing at warp speed in geologic time.

I am terrified when I hear that governments are already clamoring for drilling rights in the arctic as sea ice hits record lows, because I hear no concern at all for the methane bubble in the cold water that will be released once the pressure of ice is gone, nothing about CO2 sequestered in frozen permafrost set to wreak havoc on global temperatures, nothing about the end of arctic animal species, nothing about being farsighted or caring not just for the planet but each other. If I have a child I'm terrified for them. What we do to the planet we do to ourselves one hundred fold. If we're so self centered why don't we care for our own species? A recent poll showed that the majority of Americans believe human pollution is significantly hurting the planet, but a much smaller number believe in climate change.

In 10 days I'll release my only large batch of monarchs of the year into an uncertain future that most will not survive--and then climate change will, in the next few decades, destroy their winter grounds in Mexico even as we prevent logging now. There's always maybe. There's always the human ability for immense compassion, faith, and hope manifested in inspiring action in unexpected moments. There's always that I suppose.

At the End Of August

We are 7.5" behind in rain for the year, and almost 3" for the month. I've watered the garden 3 times--some plants as a precaution, some as damage control. But it's ok. The garden is doing ok. For the most part the drought tolerant plants are near normal, though I'm still amazed at how early everything bloomed, how some plants that bloom once bloomed twice, and that as the year has progressed more plants are closer to on schedule. Wet plants, placed by the rain chain and in depressions, are suffering: turtlehead looks awful, as does queen of the prairie and cardinal flower. In any case, here are some USDA choice images:

A bench framed by way-early caryopteris and indian grass

100 yesterday and four birds at once in the fountain

Lovely Liatris scariosa 'Alba' -- first year in bloom

'Prairie Jewel' and spp. Eupatoriums

This sunflower looks like I just cut it off in traffic in NYC

First year with veg, a few modest successes

Trees or Prairie? Lincoln Needs the Latter

As the drought goes on--nearly 9 weeks without significant rain--we're forced to think about how we use our resources. Lincoln has an odd / even watering ban in force, and since nearly half of our water right now goes to lawns and gardens, it's fair to ask if we need these kinds of outdoor spaces? Water usage on Monday, when a full ban is in place, was at under 30 million gallons, over half of what it was for each day over the previous week. We are draining the Platte River dry, literally, since it's filled with fish bones. How do we use that much water? How do we conserve water and cool the city down?

This piece in the local paper advocates more trees, better managed and placed trees, and better storm runoff and more permeable landscapes--i.e. engineered landscapes. I agree. I also respect the author, but take issue with the trees. We are on theoretical prairie, at least that's what the climate zone is--boom and bust droughts and deluges, the edge of tallgrass and mixed grass.

Union Plaza in Lincoln

What we need are more prairies. I've always lamented Lincoln's inability to plant prairie within city limits. New parks and pavilions and parking islands and hell strips go in, all slathered in attention-needing grass. Union Plaza, a new large green space in downtown Lincoln, is an eyesore to me. Yes, we need a downtown park, a green space, but I see lots of areas that will be infrequently used, areas where massed plantings in the style of the Lurie Garden in Chicago would be breathtaking. Even to imitate the High Line in New York would be something that would make Lincoln really stand out--and it'd be relatively inexpensive. What a gathering place it would be.

More prairie spaces, even in small chunks of 100 square ft, would create a new community, maybe a stronger sense of community and a sense of connection to the land--that latter point being something we really need for emotional and physical health. Trees may cool the heat island, but true water conservation begins with side oats grama grass, coneflowers, leadplant, prairie clover, bluestem, milkweed--all plants that improve the clay soil digging down deep. And the wildlife benefits would be immense, especially for insects that are the base of the food chain. Who wouldn't want to sit in a park watching butterflies and birds by the hundreds? Downtown? Over lunch? Holy cowhusker. And the maintenance costs are this: mow in the early spring, wait until next spring. No chemicals. No combustion engine exhaust fumes or sound pollution. Serenity in the "prairie capitol." A little Chicago or New York (the watermark in the first image says "Lincoln's Central Park," but Lincoln is in the Plains, not in east coast forests).

Lincoln, we need prairie. We are prairie. Teach us about our state and world. Open our eyes to life and one another. Prairie us.

I've Wrastled Me a Monarch Caterpillar

Visited the Lincoln's Children Zoo and enjoyed myself.

The message is -- go plant milkweed, and lots of other native wildflowers, and begin to think like an insect (or child, not much difference I suppose, what with the compound eyes and all).

I start teaching at UNL on Monday, then the following Tuesday at Doane (four classes, my biggest load ever). Expect posts of similar caliber for the next few months.The garden will hopefully pick up some steam if it rains -- just so few insects this year after 8 weeks of 100% drought. I'm expecting an early freeze this fall, followed by weeks of unusual warmth, then a super cold period in winter with little snow, ending with a normal spring. I have spoken.

Outlive Them All

Courtesy of the Wilder Quarterly:

“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast… a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.”

-- Edward Abbey

It's digging season, the best season of all of them. While you're out there messing around, put in plants native to your locale. You'll hit two birds with one stone that way and please Abbey most assuredly. 

Here in Nebraska go to the Nebraska Arboretum's annual fall plant sale on Saturday, September 8. That'll show all those desk jockies who are too busy mowing their evil lawns and thinking it's time well spent with nature.

Can You See Me?

Amidst the Drought, an Environmental Rant Was Inevitable

July was the hottest month in America ever recorded. It's been in the 100s more times than I can count, the Platte river is full of fish bones, we've bad 1/3" of rain in July, and I saw a zombie downtown. Have some temp and drought maps.

What I've really been awakened to lately, especially as I research the memoir, is just how blind and stupid and stupid and stupid we are. Have it all now and suffer hard later, or get smart now while discovering new ways to live which means some amount of sacrifice. I'm thinking big agriculture, how farmers carved up 24 million acres of land (map) in the last four years--marginal lands, prairies, marshes, woods--for more money. Cash that's guaranteed to them whether the crop grows or not. Farm subsidies are killing us. The American public gives farmers twice what farmers pay in insurance premiums, so there's no risk to planting water-loving corn on the high plains where it's supposed to be dry. And we over produce corn anyway. Sure don't need it for making ethanol, which uses almost as much energy to make as it will provide in your car (switchgrass would be far more sustainable as an ethanol source).

But what about corn for feeding the world? We produce so much corn that it's cheaper for people in Africa to import it than grow it on their own. You can teach a man to fish, or send him fish via FedEx. I spent last week driving along I-80 and in farm fields to see 90% of center pivots spraying water, taking that moisture from streams, ponds, and the quickly vanishing Ogallala aquifer, the largest freshwater underground ocean in the world that's lost 200' in the last century.

We need to take better care of the Plains. We need less monoculture and more crop rotation. We need to avoid a farming bubble like that of the housing crisis. We need to preserve resources unless we truly despise our bratty little kids. Yesterday I read the perfect article outlining all of the above, and saying we won't lose anything at all by being proactive about our farming practices.

You can't count on government to look out for our best interests. I don't know how to change anything--maybe that's me feeling angry and hopeless, or even lazy. Sometimes I feel like there are so many causes I can't pick one, if I were to devote myself to one completely. Ultimately, who you vote for president doesn't matter, or into most any federal office. They are bought and paid for by big companies and their lobbyists. We aren't informed about what's really going on, about how our decisions trickle up to the highest levels, maybe because we don't care or because the a/c just feels too good right now on the couch. My neighbors water their brown lawn every morning and it isn't getting greener--should they be fined the $500 and 6 months in prison for breaking the watering ban? Should companies be taxed for CO2 emissions that are likely contributing to the drought? Should all the foam cornheads be burned?

I guess I woke up feeling "liberal." I consider myself moderate because no one has the right solutions. I'm not an activist. I don't like crowds. I'm not an extrovert so I feel limited in what I'm capable of doing. But I can write. I can scream here, because if I screamed downtown I'd be arrested or put into a straight jacket. I'm CrAzY. I could wear a corncob hat and paint "Corn is Murder" across it. Because I'm beginning to think corn is murder--it's intensive to grow, destroys habitat (new fields, unknown gmo effects, spraying), corn fattens our beef and then us, the ethanol it produces is a joke fuel, high fructose corn syrup is doing god knows what to our bodies and brain synapses and fetal development. What we really need is a $60 million dollar high school football stadium.

Mow Better Blues

This first appeared in the July issue of a regional paper, but people keep reporting link errors, so here it is to hopefully a wider audience. Now you really know what I think about lawns.


Finally, it’s the weekend. Lazy mornings where the fog of a long sleep creeps delightfully into every waking observation—the robins feeding their young at the nest, bees hopping from coreopsis to coneflower, the cool breeze before a suddenly warm afternoon. And the belching vibration of the neighbor’s lawnmower along the fence, the sweet exhaust stinging one’s throat on the retreat back inside.

It is impossible to have coffee on the deck or to be heard in casual conversation on most any summer evening or weekend. I have a neighbor who mows three times a week, tossing nutrient-rich clippings, one-third of a lawn’s needed amount, into the trash; and yet the perfect lines this neighbor leaves of “cut” grass do not seem any lower than those of the uncut. Another neighbor clearly prefers to mow less often—he scalps the yard once a week so it turns brown, then sprinklers come out a few days later, usually on a hot and windy late afternoon, evaporating long before the water hits the roots. Why doesn’t he leave the lawn at 3 inches in height and save on the water bill and time moving hoses?

Each weekend 54 million lawns are mowed, together equivalent to the size of Virginia, using up 800 million gallons of gas (17 million lost due to spills). All kinds of cancer-causing, asthma-irritating, blood-flow constricting, sperm-killing compounds are inhaled by the person pushing the mower. In California lawn equipment accounts for 10 percent of the air pollution, pollution that is equivalent to over one hour of driving 10 to 43 new cars (estimates vary) hundreds of miles over the same amount of time. Mowers also run at 90 to 95 decibels, the same level as a Harley. Anything over 85 decibels creates temporary or permanent hearing loss.

So, fine, lawnmowers are the scourge of suburbia, the hope of our mini kingdoms to serve as quiet and sheltered acreages away from the stress of work and school. But what about other tools we use to create and maintain our lawns? Chemical companies have us believing we need to fertilize our lawns four times a year with nitrogen-laden products; the excess nitrogen that lawns can’t use turns into a powerful greenhouse gas, and much of it leaches into groundwater and storm drains, polluting and choking aquatic life. Take a look at the dead zone near the Mississippi delta and in our farm ponds. Artificial nitrogen also sets up a cycle of lawn dependency like a drug addict—the soil life dies, and the lawn needs more juice, so you fertilize and mow and water more often. Don’t forget about the process to produce all that fertilizer—an energy-intensive ordeal that releases many greenhouse gases as a result.

The argument will always be that we need lawns for kids and pets to play in. But trust me—you don’t want your kids running barefoot in a lawn slathered and sprayed in who knows what. Of 30 commonly used lawn pesticides, for example, 19 are linked to cancer, 13 to birth defects, 21 to reproductive effects, 26 to liver and kidney damage and 15 to neurotoxicity (brain development). Twenty-four of these pesticides are toxic to fish, 11 to bees and 16 to birds. And what about cost? An acre of lawn at a church, apartment complex or industrial park over 20 years will cost roughly $20,000 to maintain—whereas the same acre in native vegetation will cost $3,000. Why don’t we see more native vegetation at our workplaces? Why don’t churches and community centers, especially, take a lead in this? And schools? Students who interact with nature are proven to have higher creative and cognitive skills, and children with Attention Deficit Disorder show astounding improvement.

Have some lawn, but border it with relatively low-maintenance native shrubs and wildflowers. Have some lawn, but don’t use inorganic chemicals or even any chemicals at all—top-dress it with one-quarter inch of free city compost, like LinGro in Lincoln. Let those prairie flower and shrub roots amend the soil underneath and create thriving, self-sustaining ecosystems that provide free nutrients and filter our groundwater. Think about using an electric mower, which runs at 70 decibels and costs $5 a year to operate, or the innovative Fiskars reel mowers.

Our backyards are nature preserves—for the birds and bees, and for our children and ourselves. As native ecosystems lose their ability to sustain themselves, through habitat loss and chemical overspray, we can create environments that physically and emotionally sustain ourselves (and other species) with less effort than we give our landscapes now. If anything, think about how good that morning coffee will taste when you’re mowing less and your kids are following a monarch from coneflower to coneflower and across the naturally green lawn. You might even be able to hear the hummingbird at a penstemon.

Purgatory Blooms

The trick for any gardener is to always have something, lots of somethings, in bloom. I'd say late fall is #1 for trouble in that regard, and August is #2. August? It's hot. It's dry. 50% of your perennials are done for 2012. Purgatory. (Of course, maybe the true #1 goal is to create interest without blooms--structure, texture, foliage, sculpture, hardscape, scarecrows, machine gun nests for squirrels.)

Some of my newly favorite plants are going strong right now. Butterfly bush, joe pye weed, culver's root, and some liatris are the obvious workhorses, but here are some blooms (and some not) that keep on giving. I should have an image of white nodding onion, but I don't--it's also doing fantastic.

Wild Senna -- Cassia hebecarpa, saying "come hither bumblebee" for a month.

The microscopic blooms of bushclover -- Lespideza capitata.

This is an 8' sunflower. Ladders are good.

Sunflowers are just as interesting before petal time.

I know, invasive thistle thug. But butterflies love it. I deadhead before it seeds.

Why can't swallowtail caterpillars be blooms?

For three days last week it was 104. Around those days it was 102, 100, etc. Now, it's 94 and it feels comfortable (keep in mind anything above 75 makes me melt like a Greenland ice cap). No rain in almost 6 weeks--0.33" the whole month of July--but the garden isn't complaining as much as the trees and shrubs. Maybe with everything having bloomed 2-6 weeks early this year, the most vulnerable time is over. Insects are slowly returning, having been a bust year for them. Yesterday, I saw both a monarch and a black swallowtail after two months of no butterflies (in spring we had 5 billion). All I know is I'm slowly returning to the garden just in time for the fall school year to pull me away, and the life that makes my garden worth having is also returning--like a long sigh after the first crocus bloomed in March. I hope fall, my favorite season, is a long Spring Part Two: The Butterflies Strike Back.