Garden Tour, June 8

My garden, along with several others, will be on the Garden Club of Lincoln's annual tour. It's free and runs from 9am to 1pm on Saturday, June 8.

I'll have prairie seedlings and seed packets for sale, my books, and maybe more goodies. Below is a listing of all the gardens, roughly along A Street all the way across Lincoln.

Community Orchard Project

Christ United Methodist Church (CUMC),4530 A. St., Lincoln, NE

Directions: Located between S. 40th and S. 48th, the orchard is on the north side of the church

parking lot, 2 blocks north of 45th and A. St., off Mohawk St.

Lincoln's first community orchard is located in the heart-of-the-city on the property of Christ

United Methodist Church. In 2011, after extensive planning, over 30 volunteers under the

guidance of Extension Educator, Vaughn Hammond, planted the first row of 30 trees. The

orchard now boasts 60 dwarf apple trees in ten different varieties. Fruit production is expected

in 2013 with up to a bushel of apples per tree. The harvest will be shared with community

organizations serving the hungry in our community as well as neighbors and church members.

The recent addition of a gazebo, nestled between the rows of trees, provides a gathering place

for neighbors as well as an outdoor venue for church events. Stop by and visit with orchard

volunteers to learn more about this unique mission project and listen to music by the Root

Marm Chicken Farm jug band.

Gladys Jeurink, 4600 Spruce, Lincoln, NE 68516

Directions: Located between S. 40th and S. 48th, travel on Pioneers Blvd. and turn south

on S. 46th. The garden is two blocks south of Pioneers, on the corner of 46th and

Spruce.

This yard has been registered as a Wild Life Habitat for over 20 years. In addition to the

wide variety of trees and shrubs that provide shelter and protection to critters and birds,

there are 300 plant species for birds and butterflies to feed upon. A system of bark

paths allows Gladys to work on either side to care for her plants. She rotates her plants

so you may see a tomato plant in a place where flowers have previously been.

One of her favorite spots in this yard is under a huge cottonwood tree. She enjoys the

falling cotton in the spring and the rustling, whispering leaves in the fall. There have

been over 40 varieties of birds sighted in her yard and Gladys is kept busy cleaning five

bird baths all summer. In the fall, Gladys has counted as many as 75 Monarchs

spending the night on sedum plants while on their annual migration to Mexico. In spite

of some fence damage this winter and squirrels chewing on tree bark, she’s hoping all

vegetation with thrive this year.

Bob and Sue Heist, 6401 Rainier Dr.,Lincoln, NE

Directions: Located between S. 56th and S. 70th, just north of A Street. From

the east or west on A Street, turn on Evergreen (north) and turn right into

Taylor Meadows. Take the first right, Rainier Dr., to the first house on the right.

The Heists bought their “sweet, little ranch-on-the-corner” in 1988. The

developer had left only blue-grey, clay soil and when it rained the backyard

looked more like a pond than a lawn. The first order of business was to install

drain tile around three sides of the perimeter of the yard. That project was

followed by bringing over 40 cubic yards of good soil into the yard to create.

berms, swales, and a large perennial garden.

Initially, the yard was composed of blue grass, two ash trees, a few yews, and

Scots and Austrian pines. Only two Scots pines remain, the others having

succumbed to drowning or pine wilt disease. The two ash trees now provide

shade for the yards. Sue divided the backyard into themed-rooms: the

Mexican room around the east patio, oriental room around the bridge that

spans the dry-creek bed, the small Victorian seating area under a large rose

bush, and a Tuscan/south-of-France patio area which includes a pergola

covered with wisteria. Two unique trellises of recycled rusting iron from Duo

Lift in Columbus, Nebraska, were added to provide support for three grape

vines. The newest addition is a stone retaining wall in the front yard designed

to level the yard and to improve drainage. A rain garden at the west end of the

wall is slowly being developed.

Jim and Carrol Pace, 2201 West Roxbury Lane, Lincoln, NE

Directions:The usual route to this home, West Denton Road, is under construction. From 14th and Old

Cheney Road, go 1/2 block further west, to Warlick Blvd; left (south) on Hwy 77; right (west) on

Rokeby Road (one road past Yankee Hill Road); right (north) to SW 12th; left on Burr Oaks

Blvd; left to West Foothills ; right on SW Woodberry; left onto SW 22; left on Roxbury Lane; and

left into the driveway. You may park on the left side of their lane. The homeowners would

appreciate it greatly if you do not park on the grass. Thank you.

Eighteen years ago, the Pace’s built their own home, on 5 acres of beautiful grass and

forest. In the following years, Jim has done all of the heavy work, planting trees and bushes; he

recently planted a lot of fruit trees. Jim has done extensive heavy block work, making flower

beds for Carrol’s beautiful flowers.

Shaun & Rusty Vanneman, 3190 Sheridan Blvd., Lincoln, NE

Directions: This garden is located in the heart of Lincoln, south of Van Dorn St. between

S. 27th and S. 33rd on Sheridan Boulevard.

This garden is an example of a unique and challenging renovation of both the garden

and the structures within the garden. The renovation created a multi-level, multi-use

garden that includes a variety of unique flowering trees and evergreens, as well as a

variety of flowering shrubs and perennials for both sun and shade areas. Also included

is a raised cottage vegetable garden. The new structures built show excellent examples of how to extend outdoor living areas and include a covered patio area, outdoor fireplace and fountain on several building planes.”

Benjamin and Jaclyn Vogt, 3755 West Plum Street, Lincoln, NE

Directions: Head west on A St. Turn left on SW 36th Street, turn right at the “T” intersection on

West Plum. The house is at the top of the hill on the left.

Nearly 2,000 feet of organic, low-maintenance, native prairie plants with a focus on gardening

for insects. This garden was begun from bare ground in 2007, and it is now a Monarch Watch

way station. The garden was named a 2012 best outdoor space by Apartment Therapy. Homegrown plants and seeds will be available for sale. Visit deepmiddle.blogspot.com for photos.

Garden Pics & Video Tour

My 1,500' native plant garden is remarkable. Each year plants die, others thrive, still others move to places nearby from where I put them as if saying hey, you were so close, but this is what I prefer. Plants evolve and morph before my eyes, and in the rush of May and June growth it's all a gardener can do to keep up. When July comes with all of its prairie blooms, the relatively peaceful onslaught of thousands of insects is a welcome breath of air as many plants complete their annual cycles like punctuation marks at the end of a sentence. So here's what it looks like this week -- even as the baptisia and eupatorium grow 6" a day.

 

Why Corn is Evil Reason #629

"Since the center pivots’ debut some six decades ago, the amount of irrigated cropland in Kansas has grown to nearly three million acres, from a mere 250,000 in 1950. But the pivot irrigators’ thirst for water — hundreds and sometimes thousands of gallons a minute — has sent much of the aquifer on a relentless decline.... A shift to growing corn, a much thirstier crop than most, has only worsened matters. Driven by demand, speculation and a government mandate to produce biofuels, the price of corn has tripled since 2002, and Kansas farmers have responded by increasing the acreage of irrigated cornfields by nearly a fifth. At an average 14 inches per acre in a growing season, a corn crop soaks up groundwater like a sponge — in 2010, the State Agriculture Department said, enough to fill a space a mile square and nearly 2,100 feet high."

Read the full article here on the draining of the Ogallala aquifer. 

Prairie This, Lincoln

Join me at my new venture, a website devoted to images of Lincoln, Nebraska urban and suburban spaces that could be prairie. Send in your photos! To find out how, link on the image. Let's be Prairie City, USA, and cut grounds maintenance costs, increase property value, diversify our natural resources, clean the water and air, and enrich the lives of families, the disabled, and the under privileged.

Hot Hot Hot in the May Garden

Finally done grading my for English classes at two colleges (oh the part time adjunct life), slowly settling into blogging again and a summer of finishing my Oklahoma memoir. On June 1 I'll be presenting part of the research from that memoir at the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment conference, alongside one of my favorite writers, Linda Hogan. So if you want to hear about Mennonite migration in the late 1800s in the southern Plains, I can hook you up.

I've had several more consultations this year for my business, Monarch Gardens, helping homeowners and schools get prairie plantings designed and started. It's very rewarding. Also have given presentations at gardens shows, nurseries, a retirement home, and tomorrow in Omaha at the Ralston Library at noon. I wish this all paid enough to be half my income, or a decent part of it anyway -- what a joy that would be! I have huge dreams for an acreage, prairie, artist residences, a destination garden, small nursery, and something else on wheels.

Below is what's been happening in my garden these last two weeks. Three mornings ago it was a record low of 31, today a record high of 100. I can see it'll be another fun year trying to learn how to vegetable garden. Good thing I have the native perennials to fall back on. On June 8 the space will be on the Garden Club of Lincoln tour, and I hope to have prairie seedlings for sale cheap, along with my books and some refreshments.

New mulch, ready for the tour!

A bit further in to the garden.

Crabapple transplanted from old house to new.

Pasque flowers look good even in decay.

Two weeks ago had a flock of 30 cedar waxwings.

Finally lured in an oriole! A female?

This thing freaked me out when I reached for the faucet.

Birch tree.

Self portrait with birch tree.

Birch tree and sunset.

Can't Have Enough Native Plants

I'm not sure how many of you here also read my articles at Houzz and Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens. Last week I posted the below piece at the latter site and was surprised at the reception I got -- even my wife said it begs for a bigger article. How do you feel about what I say?


I’ll just come out and say something to alienate lots of folks: I believe our landscapes should be planted with mostly native trees, shrubs, flowers, sedges, and grasses. And by mostly I mean 80%, 90%, 100%. I know, I know. But I’m the kind of guy who sees a cause and knows that to even get halfway, you have to push for all of the way. And yet folks still aren’t sure what “native’ means or where it is. Nurseries often have a sparse collection; independents have more, big boxes have practically none. All have cultivars and hybrids — not the straight species plants. Here’s a list of resources.

Ok, so, I believe we should have at least 50% straight species native plants. Trees, shrubs, flowers, sedges, and grasses that, before westward expansion, were prevalent in your town (it’s like the current food movement — most of what we eat didn’t even exist 100 years ago, the same could be said for plants). All of this is not because I have any belief that we can or should return to some pre-settlement perfection; no, it’s about the insects who evolved in ecosystems alongside plants, both adapted to one another from flower to leaf, both symbiotic, all the beginning and end of the food web from bee colony to human dinner table.

“I love monarchs,” someone will tell me, eyes brightening as we both ogle a photograph. I ask them if they have milkweed. “Oh no, should I? I have lilac and butterfly bush, and see them on there.” Do you have baptisia? Willow? Elm? Oak? Do you have side oats grama grass? Viburnum? Bird’s foot violet? Zizia? Bluestem? If you don’t, I bet you see just 1/20th of the butterflies (and their larva) that you should, not to mention other pollinators you never knew existed.

Gardening with natives is about giving up certain levels of ownership to your landscape. Life isn’t a battle royale with nature. Gardening with natives is about sharing, about living with the world and not in it; with the world and not against it; with the world and not apart from it. Bridging the gap. It’s about taking a leap of faith that you are this planet’s faith given momentary form, bound to its rhythms, and when you struggle to remake or ignore those rhythms everything seems intangibly off kilter — we suffer higher food prices, eroding shorelines, dirty water and air, new bacteria resistant to antibiotics.

My wife told me a story she saw on Facebook where someone was concerned about the masses of bees at their blooming crabapple tree. Their kids often climb the tree and might get stung. Should they spray the tree, they asked? Remove it? Someone suggested a dousing of chili powder spray. Finally, someone talked about colony collapse, pesticides, habitat destruction. I have put my head into bloom after bloom for six years now, literally had bees and wasps landing an inch from my nose and ears, and have not been stung. I have, though, been transfixed, overjoyed, unburdened, and generally at peace. Come to my table, I think, come share this great purpose and hope. There’s more divinity in a bumblebee pushing open a baptisia bloom and pulsing its body than there is in a hymnal or stained glass window.

This is my plea, and a sort of pledge I want you to take with me if you are new here or want to do something massive with minimal effort: plant one milkweed. Tell your neighbor about milkweed and the decline of insects. Tell your child. Plant an aster, a mountain mint, a joe pye weed, palm sedge, oaks. Plant one native something that helps insects. Put the plant out front with a spotlight, maybe one of those flashing arrow signs you can rent. Have the sign read: “This is a native plant, adapted, low maintenance, of benefit to dwindling wildlife, and I’m in love with it.” Feel free to change the sign’s wording. Somewhat.

Silphium -- by Aldo Leopold

This is such a powerful little conservation story Leopold tells -- I just love the simultaneous sadness and joy it evokes (as any piece of good writing should do). How do you feel about it? I think I'll schedule this post to go live at the same moment I'll be listening to Wes Jackson of The Land Institute speak.

Silphium

Every July I watch eagerly a certain country graveyard that I pass in driving to and from my farm. It is time for a prairie birthday, and in one corner of this graveyard lives a surviving celebrant of that once important event.

It is an ordinary graveyard, bordered by the usual spruces, and studded with the usual pink granite or white marble headstones, each with the usual Sunday bouquet of red or pink geraniums. It is extraordinary only in being triangular instead of square, and in harboring, within the sharp angle of its fence, a pin-point remnant of the native prairie on which the graveyard was established in the 1840's. Heretofore unreachable by sythe or mower, this yard-square relic of original Wisconsin gives birth, each July, to a man-high stalk of compass plant or cutleaf Silphium, spangled with saucer-sized yellow blooms resembling sunflowers. It is the sole remnant of this plant along this highway, and perhaps the sole remnant in the western half of our county. What a thousand acres of Silphiums looked like when they tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never again to be answered, and perhaps not even asked.

This year I found the Silphium in first bloom on 24 July, a week later than usual; during the last six years the average date was 15 July.

When I passed the graveyard again on 3 August, the fence had been removed by a road crew, and the Silphium cut. It is easy now to predict the future; for a few years my Silphium will try in vain to rise above the mowing machine, and then it will die. With it will die the prairie epoch.

The Highway Department says that 100,000 cars pass yearly over this route during the three summer months when the Silphium is in bloom. In them must ride at least 100,000 people who have 'taken' what is called history, and perhaps 25,000 who have 'taken' what is called botany. Yet I doubt whether a dozen have seen the Silphium, and of these hardly one will notice its demise. If I were to tell a preacher of the adjoining church that the road crew has been burning history books in his cemetery, under the guise of mowing weeds, he would be amazed and uncomprehending. How could a weed be a book?

This is one little episode in the funeral of the native flora, which in turn is one episode in the funeral of the floras of the world. Mechanized man, oblivious of floras, is proud of his progress in cleaning up the landscape on which, willy-nilly, he must live out his days. It might be wise to prohibit at once all teaching of real botany and real history, lest some future citizen suffer qualms about the floristic price of his good life.

Earth Day Blues, Or Greens

It's Earth Day, a recognition that I feel has become as regimented, stilted, and looked over as Flag Day or Professional Assistant II Day (formally Secretary's Day). I'm by nature an introverted, melancholic, misanthropic guy; I contribute to the degradation of this planet. I'm sucking energy from coal-fired power plants right now, a resource ripped from the earth like a kidney from an abducted person for the black market organ trade. My natural gas heat just kicked in. I'll drive five miles to work in my 27mpg car. I'm sure I just ate tons of gmo junk in my blueberry muffin.

In the last day Lincoln has received over an inch of rain -- this is a miracle after last year's 12" drought which is now down to about 8". It's cool outside. The plants are barely poking up, but at least it keeps the anxious lawnmowing husband inside another day or two. I celebrate the rain as the plants ease into another potential drought.

Out here on the Plains high commodity prices are obliterating the last remnants, and I mean remnants, of the tallgrass prairie, and continuing to erode the arid mixed grass prairies. Last week in a class the same old topic came up from students, "Don't we need corn for food?" No. The beef industry needs it to fatten up cows who will some day clog our arteries. Feed lot owners have us wrapped around their fingers, then by extension big agricultural where a few large companies own the entire flyover country, pumping us full of corn syrup, spraying gmo crops that can take pesticides -- unlike the thousands of insects species, unlike milkweed that supports a monarch butterfly population on the brink.

The only hope environmentalists point to is humanity's capacity for emotion and logical thinking, sympathy, reflection, a brain so adapted and powerful it can do anything. Well, it can do anything, but it doesn't. It's easy not to care, not to fight, not to change because, in part, giant corporations have in essence written the state and federal laws that make it so hard for a common person to fight. Change never comes easy, I suppose, and most certainly not good change, not freedom, not the ideals this country presumes to be based upon.

I feel like a serf in a corrupt lord's kingdom. An Indian fighting British rule. A monarch butterfly tiring out, darting and circling among homogenous and barren fields for any milkweed at all.

Gardening is an act of defiance. It is as violent as storming the gates of congress or chaining one's self to oil pipeline equipment. Planting heirloom and organic vegetables is a flipping of the bird to Scott's and Cargill and an embracing of our respect for the planet that sustains us. Planting nearby pollinator-attracting plants like aster, milkweed, ironweed, joe pye weed, mountain mint, and coneflower will increase the number of insects -- the base of so much life in the world.

Touching the soil is recalling a memory as rich and soothing and mesmerizing as being in the womb. Dirt under our nails invokes a primal memory, a latent gene we shove forcibly to the side when we plug in and tune out, when we give up and head indoors, or insist on battling and subduing our suburban kingdoms with petrochemicals and lawns. Gardening is warfare. Gardening is a battle. Native plants are a flag placed on a hill, a line drawn across the Jeffersonian grid that blankets our nation. Gardening is an act of democracy, it produces freedom of body and mind and soul. Gardening brings us home to the pulse of bumblebee wings celebrating with us the power and the glory of creation, and our ability to use our best selves to liberate the planet, which in turn liberates ourselves.

Touch My Beard at Two Big Events

I hope you'll come talk to me at two local events this next week. My native prairie plant garden coaching business, Monarch Gardens, will have a table at:

Lincoln Earth Day, party at Antelope Park -- 4/21, Noon to 5pm, free. 75+ exhibits and plenty of food trucks.

Spring Affair plant sale, Lancaster Events Center -- 4/27, 9am to 4pm, free. The largest plant sale in the Midwest (get there early and wear padding or body armor!). Lots of vendors selling even more garden stuff.

I'll have seed bombs, seed pills, seed packets, my monarch butterfly and personal garden books, bee houses, info on gardening for pollinators, and more.

LEGO My Garden

Last Saturday I read from my new poetry collection at the Nebraska Book Festival in Omaha, and before the reading my wife and I swung by Lauritzen Gardens for the Nature Connects exhibit. Being a Saturday, the place was swarming with kids admiring the LEGO creations. Some day, I'll have a LEGO room again.

I suspect that if stung by a bee this size one would explode.

Perfect.

Not at all perfect. Grrrrr.

A dusting of snow also left this on the last of the iris out back:

As for life, let me tell you. It's insane. Teaching four classes with lots of prep and grading, giving talks on native plants, garden consulting, planning a trip, putting together two books with a hint at a third, trying to figure out the next stage in my life, what to risk and how much. You know how it is. I hope I'll see local folks at Earth Day on 4/21 in Antelope Park, and again on 4/27 at Spring Affair!

It's Time

As the air warms I fall in love again with a new season. It's unlike fall, which is my deepest, most passionate affair every year. Spring is more a delirious spark of temptation. Yesterday I sat on a stone in my garden, about twenty feet from the bird feeder. Juncos, grackles, finches, sparrows, mourning doves, blue jays -- everyone was there. They darted from the feeder to the last cover in the garden I've not yet cut down. One junco would call and suddenly the rest joined in, a loud crescendo like a wave over the landscape.

The crocus are nearly gone. The iris reticulata are bending over to touch their sweet-smelling petals to the soil. The other day I passed people embracing beneath a crabapple that will soon bloom. On campus the shorts and flipflop set are in full flare. It seems that any touch, any smell, any sensory perception can creap up on me and suddenly catapult me into another plain of existence. I don't know why. I don't know how a season does this, let along a walk in the prairie, the bluestem grazing arms, a butterfly settling on a shoulder.

"Suddenly I realize / that if I stepped out of my body I would break / into blossom." Those are lines from James Wright's poem A Blessing.Yet I fear that blossoming, too. It exposes me to the world in an overt way. I could have never been a flower, seductive, flamboyant, having so many insects reach into my heart like that--I'd grow fond of each one and feel the loss deeply when they left, hundreds of times each day. I couldn't be spent like that, yet this is what spring promises -- giving one's self up in the hope of a glorious fling, the shedding of our conceptions about self and world. Let go, spring says. Fly away and taste the fleeting nectar of a coneflower or prairie clover. Settle into the bloom and listen to the hum of wings crashing against the shore of senses we don't fully know but feel pulsing subtly within everything.

See the bee on the iris, nestled between the lips of petals, rubbing its body like a violin bow against the pollen? Carry the world home with you. Be at home in the world. This is your one great chance to be born again.

Milk the Weed -- Create a Wildlife Refuge

I'm not a glass is half full kind of guy -- if you've been visiting me here for a while you've figured that out. I know I'm fighting a tide that will overwhelm and consume me. The push for more ethanol, the high commodity prices, the farm subsidies, the nation of lawns... I know we're losing biodiversity at a pace that will mean we wake up one day and a switch has been flipped in our evolutionarily-unique brains: "How'd that happen? Boy, I wish I had something to eat, or at least clean water." Some believe that switch flipping will happen before 2040, when we add another 2 billion humans (see the link in the third paragraph below).

I am a firm believer that our home landscapes can radically stall the tide, maybe help us transition into the new world we're creating -- this switch is already being seen in public landscape architecture. Native plants instead of lawn mean insects. Insects mean more plants. More plants mean more mammals and birds and other species. More other species means higher quality of life for humans because the miracle of our environmental diversity to this point has, to some degree, been a spring cushioning this 6th great extinction event now in motion (you can read E.O. Wilson for more on that topic).

So when Chip Taylor, director of Monarch Watch, speaks to the above so candidly, I hear the connection I want ALL of us to have -- because we all have the potential to create wildlife refuges three feet out the front door and do something massive quite easily (and cheaply if you use seeds):

"It is very clear that the monarch population is declining. It's declining very, very rapidly and that decline is statistically significant and it's associated with the loss of milkweed in corn and soybean fields. I'm really concerned about what's happening in the United States because to lose monarch means that we are losing habitats that are shared by a large number of other organisms. To lose monarchs means we are losing a lot of other species and the species we are losing are predominately the ones that are doing the pollinating.

...pollinators keep the system together. They provide transfer of pollen for about 70% of the vegetation out there. If we don't have pollinators, we're going to lose a lot of the plants. If you don't have the plants, you don't have the products that pollination. You don't have fruits, nuts, berries, seeds and foliage everything else feeds on. So, you don't have your small mammals. You don't have your ground-nesting birds and you don't have much of anything. We're already moving into that condition in several states in this country where we really have huge areas where agriculture is so intense that there isn't much in the way of wildlife or pollinators. That's to our peril, I believe."

So I started a website and Facebook community called Milk the Weed -- in less than two weeks 250 people on Facebook have pledged to do something. The hope is to get folks planting milkweed native to their area (maps and plant lists are on the website), and once they do this they'll get hooked. The insects that nectar on milkweed, the monarchs that feed on its leaves -- hey, milkweed is a gateway drug to gardening with native plants for wildlife. It sure was for me.

Snow Geese, Sandhill Cranes, Sunset

I've lived in Nebraska since 2003, but only during the last three springs have my wife and I driven 90 minutes west to a choke point on the Platte River. Here, millions upon millions of birds migrate through each year. The first year it was a cloudy, cold day, and we were just floored by the number, size, and haunting call of the cranes in the corn fields -- these are here, in NEBRASKA? The following year, it was sunny and the cranes seemed restless and sparse. This year we set out in the late afternoon aiming for the time when, just before sunset, tens of thousands flock to the Platte to roost for the night among lost friends and family.

On the I-80 exit for Grand Island we found snow geese. People were pulling over off the interstate to see this large group.

We stood there in the unseasonable cold (it's snowing today, should be 55), watching the massive flotilla hold tight to the center. After a few minutes I felt shamefully bored. I'd marveled at the geese flying above my house for weeks, headed west toward the Platte migration area. Then suddenly my wife whispers "oh look look look" and a wave of hundreds, thousands rise up in a cacophony of alarm, or as if an itch went through one side of the lake. Up they rose and settled again like a blanket being placed over a bed. Amazing. They did this several times.

We drove the back fields for cranes. Their calls surrounded every nook and cranny of the otherwise quiet back country. Some danced, spreading their long wings and lifting a few feet, settling, and lifting again. They've come for hundreds of thousands of years, just as the sun has risen and set. By god I hope they come for a hundred thousand more. Looking at the linear fields, the center pivots, the grain silos, the roads and transmission lines, it doesn't seem possible that this wildness can overtake our stilted creation. This drives some people mad. For others, it lifts them for a moment beyond their self-imposed rules and reminds them that being human is being animal, connected to the earth and not something apart -- and so it is deeply right.

We drove for an hour before sunset, trying to find a good place to park, to pinpoint the landing of the first flocks. 20 minutes before sunset and they came from the south -- line after line after line headed for the Platte a mile north. Finally we parked in the middle of a two lane paved road with one eye in the rear view mirror, another to the west where a shadowed tree line seemed to lift off the ground and push north -- a forest of wings.

I admit I left feeling unfulfilled. I want to go back. I want to live there. I want to know the world more by knowing the seasons more, like this season of migration. I wanted to see the birds land on the Platte, but they stayed a mile east of the viewing platform (for good reason, as it was filled with cameras). But in the silence of an empty road the sky was literally filled with cranes -- bodies and voices, echoes of echoes as far as the eye could see. As this late snow falls I remember the centering I felt as a kid in Minnesota, alone outside during a storm, everything soundless, distances distorted through the white haze so I only knew the small space where I was in that moment. Sometimes I feel this in my small garden as I pass my arm over an aster or joe pye weed, when hundreds of insects rise up and settle again in the silent focus of their purpose. I pray in nature. I pray when I don't know it. I pray hope and faith that I will not be the only one to know such moments of agony and rapture out here in these rows of corn.

Brought to You by the Letter M

I was on the tv last week for the first time ever, talking monarch butterflies. You can see my grey hair below.

A lot is going on in my world: gave a talk on butterfly gardening this past weekend, giving one on native wildflowers next. Then it's the Nebraska Book Festival and more events -- including a slew of grading coming up for the English classes I teach. Busy, good work. In the background of all this noise I'm planning a research trip, working on two books, and assuming I have to do some garden cutting down if it ever warms up. A hard life. :) Here's to the thousands of snow geese I've seen passing over my house the last week -- to journeys that begin deep within us and we feel compelled to carry out no matter the physical cost.

Birds on Radar

Today area radar returns showed storms moving north in central Nebraska -- but these are storms of birds, perhaps millions of geese, cranes, ducks, you name it. I am honored to be near this flyway along the Platte River as life cycles thousands of miles north. Every day if I stand outside my back door and wait a few moments, a flock of something flies overhead, sprinting to this meeting ground 90 minutes west of Lincoln. Can you imagine standing under one of these radar returns? Maybe if you can you'll lift off and follow their call.

Nebraska Prairie Land Owners -- I Need You!

I've posted the below call on all my social media, and the last stop is here. Can you help me?

I'm looking for a Nebraska land owner who lives within an hour or two of Lincoln who is fighting to have prairie -- flora and fauna. I need to find someone who's been thwarted in some way by neighbors or officials, someone who believes to the core in prairie ecosystems, and someone who is having trouble along with victories. This implies they know a good deal about how a prairie works and why we need it. Why is prairie important to you? What does it mean? What's your history and experience with prairie? What benefits does prairie have over other landscapes? The acreage size can vary, but can't be miniscule. Know anyone? Message me or email bervogtATgmail.com.

Giveaways, Book Party, Die Lawn Die

So many of my recent posts have been, well, you know, serious -- so I'm happy to lighten the atmosphere and celebrate the release of Lawn Gone by Pam Penick. I contributed some lawn alternative choices for the northern Great Plains, and I am pleased as punch to be part of a book that advocates more sustainable, cheaper, and just plain exciting examples on lessening our typical lawns.

Lawn Gone is full of encouragement and advice -- the section I think is particularly neat is on tips for dealing with neighbors and cities, and converting lawn a bit at a time to ease folks into the transformation. Of course, regional plant picks from around the country are also a good starting point for anyone wanting to get there feet wet with a new kind of gardening that, it seems, is sweeping the country like the harlem shake.

You have until midnight on March 10 to enter for 7 great prizes at 7 great blogs. Leave a comment on this post with an email address (no email, no win -- replace @ with AT to avoid spam bots), and I'll use a good ole random number generator to pick one of you to win my prize from Prairie Nursery (see below). Winner must reside in the U.S. and will be announced on this post on March 11 -- unless I'm too busy ripping out my lawn, or my neighbor's lawn.

WINNER -- Peter! -- WINNER

Here's my giveaway:

Ready to seed a No Mow lawn? Win a 5-lb. bag of No Mow Lawn seed mix from Prairie Nursery (valued at $35). Prairie Nursery's specially designed blend of fine fescue grasses is an ecological alternative to a traditional, high-energy-input lawn. No Mow grows in sun and shade and also performs well as a footpath or border with moderate traffic. With deep roots, it’s drought tolerant and well suited to regions with temperate to average summers.  

The Other Lawn Gone Book Party Giveaways:

1) As a nod to cultivating a moss “lawn” in lieu of grass, Meems at Hoe & Shovel is giving away an adorable Moss Rock in a medium/Cobble size and Toadstool color (valued at $30). Moss Rocks are living sculptures and zen moss gardens all rolled into one. Donated by Moss and Stone Gardens, a design firm in Raleigh, N.C., specializing in moss landscapes.

2) Loree Bohl of Danger Garden is giving away a $50 gift card from Plant Delights, a mail-order nursery that’s a plant lover’s dream. Since 1988, Plant Delights Nursery has been the choice of serious gardeners and plant collectors looking for the best and rarest perennial plants. They have an enticing selection of groundcovers, ornamental grasses, and small perennials, all of which make excellent substitutes for lawn grass.

3) For those in temperate-summer climates, you’ll want to try the 5-lb. bag of Eco-Lawn seed (valued at $55) that Rebecca Sweet is giving away at Gossip in the Garden. Eco-Lawn, donated by Wildflower Farm in Ontario, Canada, is a beautiful, sustainable turf alternative that consists of fine fescues and rarely needs mowing. This giveaway is available to readers in Canada as well as the U.S.!

4) To dig out grass or to weed your new garden, you’ll want a nice set of tools, and Dee Nash at Red Dirt Ramblings is giving away a fantastic tool package from CobraHead: a CobraHead Weeder and Cultivator, a CobraHead Long Handle Weeder and Cultivator, and a set of 15 BioMarker weatherproof plant markers (valued at $115). CobraHead is a family-run business that produces and sells “The Best Tools In Earth.”

5) Genevieve Schmidt at North Coast Gardening is giving away a $50 gift certificate to the charming and tempting online nursery Annie’s Annuals. Annie’s specializes in rare and unusual annual and perennial plants, including cottage garden heirlooms and native wildflowers. They also have a wonderful selection of grasses and succulents, which make great substitutes for lawn.

6) At Digging, Pam Penick is giving away the only patch of lawn you may ever need – a tongue-in-cheek, 13x13-inch “grass” pillow (valued at $60) from Potted, a stylish Los Angeles garden shop and online store. Made from a high-quality synthetic grass, with Sunbrella fabric on the back, these pillows stand up to life out-of-doors beautifully. And doesn’t it look comfortable? Plus you’ll never have to mow this bit of lawn.

Snippets

I've been posting some "wisdom" on my facebook page lately, and I know not everyone who reads the blog follows TDM on facebook. So here you are -- nuggets of thought from your prairie sage (if only I smelled half as good):

I believe that gardens are wildlife preserves. Gardens are moral acts of civil disobedience, the same as if we chained ourselves to tractors digging pipelines or tearing down forests or unzipping last vestiges of prairie. Gardens (native perennial and veg) say no to big ag, big oil, and misguided government owned by special interests. Gardens say no to continuing our violent history with this planet and each other. Gardens are freedom and democracy in the truest spirit. Gardens save lives -- human, bee, bird, wasp, fly, spider, frog.

Out here in Nebraska you can be tarred and feathered for decrying big agriculture. But agreeing that big agriculture destroys just about everything in the environment means we're then complicit -- that the glory days we're in now will not belong to our progeny as we use up everything good; this is a lot to swallow. I don't believe in slowly winning over people, I'm just too impatient and misanthropic. Only through the deliberate work of writing can I order my ranting and raving into something that, perhaps, will slip under the radar and move us back into the world as caretakers and not pillagers. Only through growing prairie plants alongside my writing can I become the language I most want, where words become action then fall away to the glory of butterflies, bees, birds, and some bittersweet taste of hope.

For 5.5 years the subtitle of my blog has been "Poetry, Nonfiction, Gardening, Environment -- All in the Prairie." Today, I changed it to "Living and Writing in the Prairie Echo." It's not a big deal, but I think I finally discovered a term that suits the disconnect between corn fields and prairie preservation / the myth that prairie still exists here. Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Dakotas -- we all live in the prairie echo, and it's getting harder and harder to make out what the echo is saying.