Benjamin Vogt's Blog, page 35

Picture Picture

I've been posting some recent macro photos to my personal Facebook page, but I should also post them here--if anything, it's another way to keep track of the seasons. In case you haven't noticed, it's summer. I'd say, like most everyone, here in Nebraska we're 3-4 weeks ahead. Yesterday, there were reports of over 100 tornadoes in the central Plains (the cats and I were in the basement at 11:30 last night due to some supposed funnel clouds), but all we really saw was 4" of rain. That's our pr...

The New Veggie Bed

This year, for reasons I still can't quite discern, I'm trying my hand at vegetables. For the first time. Ever.



Folks say, "Oh yeah, veggies are easy." But then I start reading about companion plants, the many pests, vine borers, cabbage beetles, hail, fire and brimstone--and I think to myself, "Geeze, 1,500 feet of prairie plants are WAAAAY easier than this. I don't have to touch them but once a year."



Still, making a new bed got me some exercise. An early tan. Bruises, cuts, gangrene, a n...

It's Not a Memoir

Months ago I promised myself and this blog's mercurial audience that I'd post about my progress writing my next memoir. Well, I'm not writing it.



Not that I won't, I'm just not doing it right now. Even though it's the thing I want to do and accomplish more than anything in the world. And it's the perfect time to be doing it. And I really do have to be doing it to "further my career" -- I need fresh fish in the pan.



I've spent nearly three years researching Turkey Red, digging and crawling m...

UNL Campus Springing Sculptures

While I had two classes doing a creative writing exercise outside, I took advantage of the time and weather to stroll around the Sheldon Art Gallery's sculpture garden. I really wanted a donut, but I refrained. Art and nature, a winning combination without saturated fats.





Crabapple






The previous sculpture from the front.


Pasque flower.






Redbud and dogwood being horizontal.







A moving piece tucked behind a hedge.


Redbud




I like the color and textures.

A New Essay, & Tulip Bee

For every essay I'm able to publish, roughly 20-30 publications reject my work. More and more often with compliments. But here's a piece that finally found a home after a few close calls, titled Across the Flats--which ends my unpublished memoir Morning Glory. It's about plant shopping with my mom after losing my childhood home, solitude, creativity, depression, and marriage. The essay refers to Ambergate Gardens in Minnesota, link here for pics.



And yesterday I ran across this bee rubbing h...

Prairie Garden Coaching Right Here

I'm looking to help you plant natives. No job is too big or too small, too messy or too clean of a slate. Give me your tired lawns and overgrown hedges, your wildlife yearning for sanctuary in a chem-free environment. Give me your new build, your deck pots, your cRaZy landscape, your right of ways and school grounds. Link on over.

Healing the Garden & Ourselves

As I ready the landscape for spring, I'm reminded of Linda Hogan's words, which we've just read in my English classes. Her book is Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World, and highly recommended. 



"The word rake means to gather or heap up, to smooth the broken ground. That's what this work is, all of it, the smoothing over of broken ground, the healing of the severed trust we humans hold with earth. We gather it back together again with great care, take the broken pieces and frag...

L.A.W.N. -- Lusty Advocate for Wayward Nihilism

It has begun weeks early. As I type my walls are vibrating, and my neighbor is dripping sweat about to fall over, pushing his slave-driving mechanism back and forth over a chemically-dependent lawn, green unnaturally early. He must love it, because the instant the lawn turned this week he's out there.



The guy across the street mowed last weekend before his lawn was 50% green. Now that it's 75% he made sure to get up at 9 this morning and let everyone know 6 months of sheer hell was upon us l...

Sandhill Cranes in Flight

We went and saw the cranes again last Sunday, but unlike 2011, it was hard to find them. They seemed more scattered and skittish, maybe because the wind was coming out of the south at 40mph. Last year the weather was foggy and 45, this year sunny and 80.



The photos from last year have the cranes at a distance and mostly standing, but this year I got many in flight. Hence the post title. If you want to HEAR the haunting call of this ten million year old bird, migrating 500,000 at a time in th...

Talking Plants, Live

As part of Finke Garden's 2012 opening, I'll be giving a talk on some local prairie plants that work for me, and maybe doing a little reading / signing of my garden memoir Sleep, Creep, Leap . There will be art and poetry, too, as well as plants to buy and a NE guide to wildflowers book. For the full list of events, click on the link below.



Our Lives With Nebraska Wildflowers

Finke Gardens

500 N. 66th St. 

Lincoln, NE

Thursday, March 22

5-7pm



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