I Need You

To "like" this blog on Facebook. I'll tell you later why. I know this is an odd post and completely self serving. I'd really be very very thankful (especially if you've ever liked anything you've read on this blog).

Remember that tenacity isn't just hope, but it's faith that what you want to happen--that what you believe can happen--will happen.

The Deep Middle on Facebook

On Lorrie Moore's Birds of America

I give you an oh yes moment, then some hearty laughs from Moore's short story collection (which is marvelous--beautiful and real life prose with lovely doses of subtle / clever / smart humor the likes of which I've never seen before).

"Staring out through the windshield, off into the horizon, Abby began to think that all the beauty and ugliness and turbulence one found scattered through nature, one could also find in people themselves, all collected there, all together in a single place. No matter what terror or loveliness the earth could produce--winds, seas--a person could produce the same, lived with the same, lived with all that mixed-up nature inside, every bit. There was nothing as complex in the world--no flower or stone--as a single hello from a human being."

Did you say OH YES? Makes me think about the food chain, a human eating a fish who ate a smaller fish who ate a fly who ate.... It all gathers and accrues and we become everything and each other. I almost wish I could write an essay for the story class I'm teaching.... tomorrow?! School starts tomorrow???  

And now some Tom Swifties, as she calls them (though the way she uses them in a story makes them even better, even more clever and narratively acute):

I have to go to the hardware store, he said wrenchingly.

This hot dog's awful, he said frankly.

I like a good sled dog, she said huskily.

There's never been an accident, she said recklessly.

You're only average, he said meanly.

Take a bow, he said sternly.

Walken in a Winter Wonderland

It looks EXACTLY like this outside as I gaze through the nearest window:

And how about SNL's "Carol of Intimacy"

"Leave me alone! Please go away!
I'm doing fine! Just get away!"



Snowblower Giveaway

Seems liks everyone has one, and the host blogger then gets a free snowblower. Hey, I'd like an electric snowblower (especially if it snows like it did last year). Here's my imaginary giveaway. Feel free to enter.

I'm also willing to "test" an electric wood chipper / mulcher, Audi A5 coupe, and a Frank Lloyd Wright inspired home on 100+ acres of Midwest prairie, lake, and woods.

Sincerely,
Getting Snarky At End of Semester Realizing I Spent Too Much Time Teaching and Not Enough Researching And Whoa It's Supposed to be 15 Degrees This Week

America Needs You

Seems to me we don't, and will likely not soon have, a government that calls us out on what we've forgotten. Namely, that we are Americans, and that as Americans we inherently value, treasure, desire, and thrive on diversity, freedom of speech, and freedom of just about everything. We must still fight for them, unfortunately, or fortunately, even within our own government. Lose these above aspects, and we cease being America. Are we there yet? Getting closer by the day. So, I'm calling you out, and myself--be American before it's too late. (I still hate flagpoles in the garden landscape. That's your first test. Your second test is to vote for anyone who is not an incumbent in any election, even going so far as to choose a 3rd or 4th party candidate. Will we ever take back our country or just continue to be lazy slaves to our own indifference, ignorance, and short sightedness? Amen.) I'm gonna go plant some asclepias now and smell the Salvia azurea 'Nekan' before it stops blooming.

Monartail, Swallarch -- What the Hell Is It?

The Scott's Lawn Care logo is going around like a bad cold, and part of the image is a morphed / fused / hybrid of a monarch and swallowtail.

At least it's a female. Or is that not a good thing? Some are pointing out this may be an actual butterfly mutated as a result of overexposure to a certain company's lawn chemicals.

I can't wait until I go out to dinner and have a steakalad. What if we raised tomacco like on The Simpsons? The world is a wondrous place when you add radiation and chemicals to it. What other wonderful hybrids can you think of? (Keep in mind we already do this with plants--and even food animals--so is the next step inevitable?) Attached with graphics gets bonus points.

Cynicism, Pragmatism, Asterism, Writingism

"People just have no clue about their genuine nature. I have countless friends who describe themselves as 'cynical,' and they're all wrong. True cynics would never classify themselves as such, because it would mean that they know their view of the world is unjustly negative; despite their best efforts at being grumpy, a self-described cynic is secretly optimistic about normal human nature. Individuals who are truly cynical will always insist they're pragmatic. The same goes for anyone who claims to be 'creative.' If you define your personality as creative, it only means you understand what is perceived to be creative by the world at large, so you're really just following a rote creative template. That's the opposite of creativity. Everybody is wrong about everything, just about all the time."

-- Chuck Klosterman

I am not creative. I am, however, cyncial, or pragmatic. I don't know. Depends on the day. Where does misanthrope fit in between the two? I am genuinely disgusted with humanity, but I also have great hope about our basic natures and potential.

As I watch the garden turn colors, even without the help of cold weather, and as a few asters slip open suddenly like the first blasts of popcorn in the pan, I feel an overwhelming sense of loss and discovery, disillusion and joy. And I feel constipated writerly as the world presses in on me like a foot on my chest, and the only way out from the speed of all this impending decay is to create at a similar rate of speed. Some people call this being prolific and stand in awe, but it may simply be frustration, loneliness, or rage (against the machine?) which leads to burnout and pragmatic cynicism. Everything is passing by faster and faster. The tilt-a-whirl is revving up. I think I may soon have no choice but to vomit all over the page if I wish to keep some drop of sanity in my soul.

In other words, though I have many ideas on editing, I am close to saying goodbye for now to my memoir Morning Glory and, if / when time ever allows (or I darn well make it allow), I will soon throw myself into the Great Plains memoir. Too many rejections. Too much not happening. Wrong climate, I don't know. MG isn't clicking with anyone. It's either too memoiry or not enough. This isn't feeling sorry for myself. It's a damn good chuck of words. Denial and anger take many forms, and the best writers turn it into more writing. But the vast majority get caught up in something, anything, that they can do marginally well just to feel good about their existence for a time--manage a Burger King, edit copy, kill squirrels, go to grad school and write unintelligible academic essays via inflated / borrowed ideas from some big name theorist and pass the synthesis off as their own brilliant new scholarship. Or they raise monarch butterflies.

Nothing But Time

I've been watching TV for 3 days and am bored with it, but so dizzy I can't grade papers. So I'm hear, sharing my head cold with you. Isn't it amazing how, when you're sick, you feel like you were the first time you remember being sick in this way?

I remember a Christmas when I was so snotty I watched TV in my room as others ate and opened presents. I recall a spring around Easter when I was maybe 6 or 7 living in Oklahoma. I remember a park. Sunlight like dark chocolate around marshmallow. The warm air full of pollen. Green grass. Dandelions on my tongue.

I feel like whatever I am imagining that, if I stretch my hand out, the scene or the object will appear in front of me and I'll be magically transported back to that place and time. Such is the pain and miracle of sickness.

I forced myself to the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum annual fall plant sale yesterday morning in the chill (today it is 55 and misting, tomorrow it will be 90 and sunny with a 40mph south wind). I bought some asclepias speciosa and purpurascens, some liatris scariosa 'alba' (the purple version is STILL blooming praise be).

Do you stand out in the garden this time of year and think, man, I could put x plant right there and it'll look fantastic next year? Then, do you go buy x plant, stand out in the garden, and try to figure out where the heck it can go? Everything is still thick enough to guide you in placement, to see what can be wedged in where (unlike that infernal spring blankness), but still, the container hangs between the pinch of your thumb on the inside lip of the black plastic, and your pointer finger on the outside. And it hurts. You fingers hurt, you eyes hurt, the impatience is joy and interminable sorrow. Help me.

I've been replaying 80s songs in my head, because I was living in Oklahoma when I first remember being sick like this. The Police. The Cars. Men at Work. Belinda Carlisle. Golden Earring. Lyrics flood my mind in a jumbled haze like the bees, butterflies, soldier beetles, wasps, and flies flood the garden on a calm and sunny autumn day only weeks before the first frosts. There is panic and desire in the garden this time of year. Frustration and antsy fear.

I am wasting my life trying to heal myself, this earth, and I am doing exactly what I need to do, to be--sitting still, restarting, rebooting, making a list, pulling myself back like an arrow or a slingshot until the moment when I can let loose and make those edits to the memoir, read those books, send out those submissions, plant those asclepias and liatris, embrace the memory I am making and will return to decades from now. When the bullet hits the bone....

Yeah there's a storm on the loose
Sirens in my head
Wrapped up in silence all circuits are dead
Cannot decode my whole life spins into a frenzy

Help, I'm stepping into the twilight zone
Place is a madhouse feels like being cloned
My beacon's been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go now that I've gone too far?

(If you can sing those lyrics with the tune in your head, we are kindred souls--now FedEx me some Dayquil, or watch the video here)

Raising Butterflies

This post will confront my insanity, and provide some insight into raising monarchs and swallowtails. I hope. Did you all get my thesis statement? I hate thesis statements, and refuse to let my students use them, by the way.

I did not expect a banner year for monarchs (around 80 so far, with peak migration Sept 8-20 in Nebraska)--they are a threatened species in my mind (read my article on them here.) But I also have been bringing in monarch eggs religiously. Monarch eggs are often on the underside of milkweed leaves, though I have seen them on top and within blooming milkweed flowers, as well as on seed pods. They are little sesame seed-sized white / cream things that look like bullets. I've found that raising monarchs from eggs is easy, whereas for black swallowtails it's best to let them get going a bit outside through the first 2-3 instars (swallowtail eggs--on fennel and parsely most often--are yellowish balls of similar size to monarchs).

So a few weeks ago I bought a used 10g aquarium and did this to it:

You can see there are a FEW monarchs and swallowtails in there (30-40). Bottom is lined with paper towel. Picked up a fitted screen for the top at a pet store that I can easily lift off.  Gathered twigs from beneath my elm. Went CrAzY.

A monarch just went, you can see his twisting, long chrysalis in the middle above. Monarchs tend to cluster near one another as they form their chrysalis--if your friend pupated off a cliff, would you?

This weekend 11 monarchs got their chrysalis on, and today 4 did within 15 minutes of one another, and 3 more will soon go. (Also notice the brown swallowtail chryslides on the top right.) It's easy to tell when monarchs are about to shed their skin (not so easy with the slower swallowtails), look at this guy:

See his shriveled skin and antennae? The line on his side? (or her) I love seeing that skin slide up and off:

This monarch (below) attached to the side, and has a flat dent. Rumor has it things will work out. We will see:

And here's a closeup of a swallowtail. They secure their bums, too, like the monarchs, but also make a sling for their upper body to recline in:

And here is my assembly line:

Container 1 has monarch eggs on leaves. Container 2 very very tiny monarch cats (they will eat the eggs if you don't move them out). Container 3 and 4 are 2nd to 3rd instar cats. Container 5 holds small swallowtails. And then the 2g aquarium with a few more monarchs about to go.

It's overwhelming, and I've bitten off more than I can chew (the cats eat so much food I head outside 3-4 times day, and the poop, my god the poop cleaned out every day or two!). But, I have to do something. I feel like I'm doing something more proactive than recycling or gardening.

Tachnid flies lay eggs in monarch larvae with a vengeance, and often the monarch "J"s up early, dies, and hangs limp as the tachnid fly larvae slides out on a slime thread. Swallowtails get carted off by wasps and used as incubation chambers. Maybe I just see a lot of my life in this whole process (take that any way you want).

The Last Act

I've been working on syllabi for the upcoming fall term. It's strange to be planning out December when it's August, warm, and the dewpoint has finally plunged from 80 to 54 today. Perhaps the dewpoint is setting the mood. Even the 'Nekan' sage began blooming today (a sage first found just a few miles away here in Lincoln, NE--beautiful sky blue blooms).

I'm thinking about migrations and transience, especially as my 70-80 monarchs go from egg to butterfly. I'm thinking about the goals I had set out for myself way back in May, full of hope and faith. I was to have finished drafting my memoir Morning Glory by mid June, then work on research for the Oklahoma / Mennonite memoir. It took me until mid July to feel happy with Morning Glory, and I have only read a few dozen pages on the ecology of the Great Plains or the history of Oklahoma Territory. And I know as school begins, research focus can either totally vanish or--in desperation--become intensely manifested in a few free hours here and there.

But I know, too, the narratives and stories and interviews I need for the next book are deteriorating, seeping into the Ogallala Aquifer as people age, as family become distant to history, and history to family and all of us alive today. But I am not ready to follow those stories, to know the context and ask the deeper questions and search out the sponged away places.

And yet the monarchs seem to never change, year to year the same regal four wings, orange and yellow and black. They appear the same, though they're generations upon generations removed. My college students look the same, except they seem to get younger and younger and I get older and older (I was never that young! Or, that young is very different than my young). And still, look at photos of college students 50 years ago and they aren't that disimilar. In another 50 won't they have the same desires and fears, joys and triumphs? How impossibly deep we are, how shallow, how transient and permanent. How little everything matters when it matters so much.

A Short Drive to a Mid Mid Life Crisis

I just printed and mailed the most recent version of my memoir to an agent who, last spring, said she'd look at it again if I reworked it substantially. I have done so. It's better, it's closer. I lost enthusiasm when the box slid down the mail slot at the post office. I'm tired of trying. I don't even want to send things out anymore, to tell you the truth. It just isn't worth the time of finding places, preparing envelopes, and mailing. Not for 1-2 acceptances per year.

Today a rejection came for my poetry manuscript. I'm used to these, but I felt good about this press. Two chapbooks have been printed from the contents of this book, and yet no one takes the book. There's a lot of crap out there, and I know I'm at least as good as all of it.

Which makes me think about poetry book contests. So many are, if you look from year to year, clearly slated toward a few people and their particular mode or style. Those 6 people might as well be the only ones entering each year. What a club.

I'm unhappy with my job to boot. Not the teaching, not the time with students, not that, but the pay, the stuck in Low Pay Ville, the use-you-and-lose-you beast that has become higher ed. I feel chewed up. Roto-tilled. I'm wasting my life.

In two months the garden will be nearly done blooming, leaves turning, weather cooling, the school year in full swing. And the only thing that can fulfill me and keep my head above water is to chip away, bit by bit this fall, at the research for the next memoir. I think. I hope.

As I was driving to the post office and back, I passed people on the downtown Lincoln sidewalks. A man walking, leaning back to counterbalance his belly, swinging a lunch pale. A woman in high heels and pressed black pants with those large "can you see me" sunglasses women wear these days. A city worker watering a young tree. Another young woman in very high shorts wearing white tennis shoes and black socks. Two GQ men walking side by side and into a coffee shop. Two plum middle-aged women who seemed to have lived a hard life, judging from their scowls and leathered skin, leaning back in folding chairs behind tables of colorful clothes, plastic, and what not arranged on a short driveway.

We are all so similar and so different. We have no idea how each person lives inside their house, in that row of houses there in the middle of what was once a corn field. But we know they want similar things, to be healthy, happy, loved, and full. And yet it is so hard to live. I know I don't even have a clue, privileged as I am.

I suppose I feel like an emo kid today, and I wonder if they don't live richer lives in their solipsistic turmoil, because at least they feel deeply, even if those emotions are completely inward, dark, and draining. The older I get the less I feel deeply, the harder I have to try to do so. All I have left are these words, and they pale in comparison to what's out there, right now, living, failing, falling, celebrating, changing. All I know is I feel quite stagnate. Like some bronze statue of a bison in the middle of a park celebrating a dead culture, more for its nostalgiac value than the intrinsic longing and realization to be something better than we are right now.

After | Life

I stayed in the shower as long as I could,
then posed before the steam-shot mirror,
trying to remember what Frost said
about ghosts: if the dead are souls,
surely they don't have them? I've read
arguments about whether ghosts exist,
but none that tell if you are one.
I know a dozen times I could have died--
the fever that spiked in my sleep, a crash
two lanes away, the alley I avoided.
The people I see in the grocery store and the park
don't seem dead. I might be haunting them,
though they look frightened only by their lives'
ordinary burdens. I feel different than I did
last night--lonelier and less afraid.
If that was life, this morning must be after.

-- Carrie Shipers, from Ordinary Mourning

Blogger Made Me Do It

Please excuse the current template state of affairs. Blogger did not warn me that while experimenting with new designs, one has to copy and save one's html code in order to revert back to the original blog template. Therefore, The Deep Middle will be in template flux for a while having lost its blogger virginity.

In the meantime, please go buy some milkweed for monarch butterflies.

Sincerely,
Grrrrrr

Let's Talk About Oil and America

I'm not seeing many bloggers I know touch on the subject of the Gulf oil spill. It is a sensitive issue, so realizing that, I'll just jump in blind and irrate and full of emotion, and anyone stopping by can feel how you want--but for God's sake, FEEL SOMETHING.

I see a great lack of feeling from the government--a "this too shall pass" anitpathy. Some are tossing around the idea Obama is Bush 2, in relation to the latter president's treatment of a certain hurricane a short while back. But, this is nothing new. A president--a politician--must constantly straddle as many lines as possible, that's what the job entails. To a degree. I might even say a congressperson or senator should straddle even fewer lines, since, theoretically, they directly represent local / state interests at the larger federal level.

It's clear there is a massive sense of anguish, pain, sorrow, and frustration right now. I only pray, that this event, coupled with the economy, may do something to change America's course. I honestly see alternative energy development--along with the needed refined infrastructure to make it happen--as a key development in our economic recovery and future political / social / cultural stability and evolution. I'd like to see some of that post world war swagger come back when it comes to technological innovation, national pride, and international cooperation.

Here's what it comes down to for me. Ready? I want to see as many dead fish and birds wash up along the Gulf coast as possible. I want to see fisherman and other dependent industries go belly up. I want to see the everglades and other coastal marshes destroyed. I want to see another hurricane wash up past those vanished defenses of marshes and do their worst. Maybe then we will end our complacency and denial and isolationism, but it must be a total and complete reckoning.

I want to see every elected official in this country serve no more than one term UNLESS they do something about our country's lack of identity and potential. No one should vote for an incumbant, no matter party affiliation. Heck, at this point, aren't we almost beyond party affiliation? I vote "democrat" on some issues, "republican" on others, and "green" on yet more. Yes, this is rage, and it also hopelessness--a potentially deadly combination that has historicaly lead to the end of cultures.

The point is, no one should stay in office if they aren't cooperating with other elected officials while listening to, and performing the will of, those who directly elected them. Accountability. I lose my job if I underperform to my employer's expectations. Simple. So freaking simple.

I don't really want to see families starve, businesses wiped out, a massive eosystem destroyed--and likely none of this will stay in the gulf if we have to wait for a relief well to be dug in a month.

I know some will find this post naive and simplistic, but irrational anger often is. Such an emotion is also a beginning. Our dependence on oil, foreign and domestic, is destroying our emotional, psychological, and physical well being. This dependence is also eroding, if not pounding one of the last nails into the coffin, of our American spirit and identity. We can't truly be a free and democratic society until we balance our pursuit of life and liberty with that of all the other life on this planet--life which we depend upon in countless tangible and intangible ways. This balance can be done.

Maybe anger and pain and sorrow are the first signs of some greater hope we have yet to realize. Can they be?

I Know Nutting!

Not much going on here. Wouldn't waste your time reading this post. Nope. Just same ole same ole. Trying to get along, trying to keep the grey-haired head above water. Running the rat race, for nothing.

Still not much happening. Someone mowed their lawn this morning. Annoying. Loud. Someone left their dog out all night. Ditto. Ditto.

Ho hum. Lots to do professionally, don't want to do it = career suicide. Would like a nap. Watch A-Team over and over or some other dumb 80s show.

Not much going on here. Still reading? This is my most cerebral post in years. End of semester brain-dead-ness alive and well (which means, I think, that I become a better teacher as I become more entertaining in class, i.e. chaotic, whimsical).

Oh. Anyone have any luck planting trees at an angle, on purpose? Or, anyone have luck pruning trees to grow in just one or two directions? Talking small, understory trees of 15-20' in height.

The Geese, The 50, The Iris, The Waiting

This morning I opened the sliding door to scare away two squirrels at the bird feeders. I was angry. I'd put out a nutty squirrel log to disctract them, but they aren't distracted yet. Didn't matter. Nothing else in the world matters when, after 40" of snow (average is 20") and three months of a very cold winter, a person opens a door at 10am and, and.... Spring. My god it's spring. Standing in shorts and a t-shirt in bright sun and a light wind, it's spring. I wanted to shout it. I wanted to call back to the massive hords of geese honking back and forth to one another like a game of marco polo. I want in. I am in.

50 degrees never felt so real. It was a full immersion, a blessing, a baptism that slides right through your skin, muscle, veins, and blood. By the thuja, iris reticulata pokes up out of the ground like fresh bamboo shoots. In the garden the snow is melting fast now, water pools in the bottoms unable to penetrate the frozen clay soil. The grasses, the sedges, the asters--these are all now emerging from the snow flattened like bed hair. The only winter interest the garden has this year was a continuous one foot of wet, heavy snow ripping off large branches of itea and viburnum that will take years to regrow.

Maybe it's spring. Maybe it's not. I've been tricked before, I've let myself fall in love with moments and thoughts too often not to be a little realistic, a little jaded. Morning. It sounds too much like mourning. And yet I've also discovered that the opposite of a thing is often that thing--that what is, isn't, and so more truthfully is. Mourning is morning, the beginning of a recovery.

Spring. A coil tightly wound, compressed flat to the earth, all that stored and hidden energy, all that promise and hope, all that electric, faster-than-light, in-the-blink-of-an-eye potential and change just waiting. A trap. A rabbit hole. A rock at the top of a hill.

Hundreds of geese this morning ride the wind northwest. Iris reticulata spikes the air. Fifty degrees echoes back to December first and the fall garden. My bare legs on the back steps are like roots, tree leaves, taking in the morning again as if seasons never existed and I am the first one to know this world.

The Birds, The Sun

Outside it is 22. This morning it was 0, and will be again tonight. But something has shifted. Standing in my socks and sweater on the steps out back (pants too), it didn't feel cold. I could see my breath, but I could not feel the dry cold in my throat. I've not felt real sun in days, maybe a week (what a busy week), and though I am not really a sun person, feeling it meant something today. I was cold, yet I was warm, and it wasn't just the sunlight.

Dozens upon dozens of robins and chickadees, sparrows and blue jays, dart from ceder to elm to gutter's edge, their feet on the metal echoing down into the house. I hear a woodpecker from somewhere in the stand of trees. Chickadees chase and call each other, meticulously tracing each other's path like a snake's body. There are more geese at dusk, larger flocks pacing west toward the open cornfields and farm ponds.

It's not spring, we are 20 degree below average, and this is fine. The 6" of snow in the garden is lovely, keeping my fall transplants safe. Along the house's south wall, where the snow is gone, the preserved green of tansy and penstemon and agastache nearly fool me into believing it is April. It's not spring, and this is fine.

Inside I'm laying on the couch, sunlight warming my feet only, not reaching in to the living room as far as it did just one month ago. I'm reading a book. I'm thinking about both of my memoirs--one ready, one in the research stages. I'm wondering what I'll find in Kansas. I'm daydreaming about planting yellow twig dogwood and carex and liatris. Will I find any trace of my family? Of myself? Two robins scrape the tree line and settle on the roof--I hear them chasing each other across the asphalt shingles. It is a spring rain. The rejection letters in the mail are almost always positive now. We are in transition. The lines are blurred. It is winter. And so it must be spring.

Am I Stupid?

I'm gonna ramble about my garden design. It might not be elegant, but since I have to be smart next week as a teacher again, I'm feeling a bit, oh, je ne sais quoi. Grrrr.

1) Next time I start planting a garden, shrubs are the first priority. This is made obvious by the fact that for 4 months in the spring and summer my garden looks more like a field of dandelions. I'm talking height here. Even texture. It's most disconcerting. Blah blah blah. No structure or interest. (I do have around 20 shrubs out there, mind you.)

2) As a play off of one, I want to add a yellow twig dogwood in a position now occupied by the most slowly-growing 'Isanti' red twig dogwood I've ever seen. It's sibling 20' away gets less sun and is easily three times as big--both were planted on the same day. Deal is, any yellow twig dogwood, even some of these smaller varieties, are just too big. At least, too big in the summer. Come winter, the garden--being overly perennial--looks like a desert of brown vomit. So, in the winter, it'll work. But perennials are neater in the late summer and fall--my fall garden is heaven. The 'Isanti' began to get crowded out this year by wild bergamot, iron weed, eupatorium....

A person just can't go plugging shrubs back into a nearly established perennial garden. It's like putting a baby back into its mother.

3) Trees. More trees. Charming, different, butterfly and bird attracting small trees that grow. See, I got this 'Coralburst' crabapple I rescued for half off from Home Depot. Deal is, it grows slower than the 'Isanti' dogwood. It's even refusing to root well. So I made the mistake of planting a ninebark by it. Already I am envisioning what 2010 will look like in this corner of the garden--crabapple in a ninebark. Maybe it will be a new design fad. Did I mention a 'Snowbank' boltonia is on the other side, and that I hate to cut it back because I like those puppies tall? Crabapple sandwich.

Tall perennials are like a strong narcotic. Low perennials are like sugar in a stick.

4) A higher fence. Much higher. Say, 30'. Neighbor's dog toys shall not bombard my garden like meteors. Better, yet, a moat. A 5 acre moat.

Machine guns that sense movement, zero in, and blast tennis balls out of the air seem appropriate. I've seen these on Ebay.

5) The garden is too small. Not really. But it is. To have shrubs I need fewer perennials. This won't happen. I had so many more insects this year as my perennials matured. Butterflies galore, honeybees en masse. I am becoming entangled in the web of my perennials.

I need more shrubbery to detox me. Ni!

6) Machine guns that also target rabbits. However, I am getting some winter trimming done on my willow 'Nana' don't you know. However, the trimming is becoming most over the top--as in, where did that half of the willow go that was there yesterday?

Ratta tatta tatta rabbit shrapnel.

7) A divine number. What I feel most stupid about is basically a design quandary. Most designers say that in a smaller space like mine (is 1500 feet small?), you should go for repetition, use swaths of the same plants, or at least similar textures and colors. Whatever. I don't think my garden--or most prairies I've seen--look like cottage gardens, so what do I have to fear? But, I do have repetition in plants around the garden, just not together. Is it cohesive enough, or too chaotic to the eye? I'll find out for certain this year, barring a hail storm.

A private backyard garden cannot be a prairie. I'm learning this painfully slow. Native plants or not, I have a manicured garden like those English uptight snobs who have poisoned this country's sense of its natural and ecological self. You can check me on this if you want, because I'll agree with you tomorrow. Hate mail from England in 3, 2....

But I worry too much. I think about my garden late at night when I can't sleep, thus making me stay awake longer doing calculations and line drawings and doodles of shrubs in my head. Let it go. If you love something, just let it grow.

A Delicious Thanksgiving Stuffing

This technique has been passed down in my family for generations, and it's tried and true.


















Of course, this year we'll be enjoying our Nueske's ham. You've not had ham until you've had this expensive smoked hog. It's like eating pig Godiva. (If you are vegetarian I apologize, somewhat.)

Embalming--Early 1900s Style

If you're ever in Weatherford, OK, check out this undertaker's diorama at the Heartland of America Museum (get it? Die-o-rama?). It's a phenomenal small town museum which is HUGE and VERY detailed. I enjoyed pondering the use of the medical instruments. No. I did not. And I now want a coffin with a window, just like I want an office on campus with one.

I'll Take a Nobel, Too, Since They Are Just Handing Them Out

I'm glad the whole wide Earth prefers Obama to Bush, what with double digit gains in global polls. But who elected him? Everybody? I swore it was just the U.S. International approval polls make a Nobel Peace Prize winner? There was no one else more worthy?

Look, he's not achieved anything substantial--yet. No nuclear arms reductions, no pollution reductions, no peace initiatives (and nothing much locally, either).

This simply lets every one of my half-assed students know that if you try, that is a goal in and of itself. If you hope to succeed, well shoot, that's good enough. If you simply seem to exude hope or any positive attribute, that's also good enough. Great. "A"s for everybody because you put on your sweatpants and showed up to class smelling of Corn Flakes and eggs, which implied you at least had a decent breakfast and have some level of public decorum.

(On the other hand, it teaches students the value of rhetoric and good presentations, but they won't get that.)

Feel free to disagree, but you're wrong.