Benjamin Vogt's Blog, page 40

I'm on Twitter's Garden Chat & a Giveaway

Every Monday night from 8-9pm cst gardeners from everywhere log on to Twitter and blab like crazy about, well, uh, gardening. Each week there's a different host and topic, but folks often careen away then back again into that topic. It gets a bit nuts. Monday night I'm hosting Garden Chat after hours, from 9-10pm cst--I'll be guesting and the topic will be fall gardening--move it or lose it. My advice, ideas, demands, pleas, and complaints, for what they're worth.



I'll be giving away two cop...

Picture This, You Nerf Herder

My entry for Gardening Gone Wild's monthly Picture This Photo Contest:



 

In other news, I saw Doug Tallamy last night. If you've not read his Bringing Nature Home you are silly. His presentation was funny and charming, and it had to be, considering how many non native plants the gardening biz pushes (nurseries, landscapers) on unsuspecting buyers, who plant them and quickly kill off local animal and insect species, and eventually will kill us off. For example, a sterile lawn was partly...

Book Giveaway on Da Rant

Time's running out to win a copy of my little book of garden essays / memoir Sleep, Creep, Leap: The First Three Years of a Nebraska Garden. Head on over to GardenRant, leave a comment to enter, and read the extended Q&A with the chicken lady, I mean, Amy Stewart.



I've been very, very humbled by the flattering comments. I'm blushing. Like a liatris.[image error]

Something Wrong is Happening

I've spent countless nights falling asleep not to sheep jumping over a fence, but fixating on garden design--where should plant x go, what if I move plant y here to where plant b is, and then texture it in this way.... I've spent hours on my knees looking at the undersides of leaves, down at ground level between their stems to witness a whole different world invisible to my 5'10" vantage point. I've burned my back, I've cut my skin open, I've been stung, I've been angry, I've been perfectly b...

All About Me

I hope you'll forgive this pimping of myself--that's what we call it here in corn country. Or is it beef country. And it's been so cold here, in the low to mid 50s, so darkly overcast, I've not seen one butterfly or moth in the garden from the safety of my slightly warmer house (I refuse to turn the heat on). The only things stirring outside are some bumblebees and hordes of blue jays, brown thrashers, chickadees, house finches, and mourning doves at the feeders. The sun may break through tom...

A Study in Sunflowers

These pics should warm me up--forecast is for 35 tomorrow night with potential frost... a good 2 weeks ahead of schedule. I had a nightmare a week ago that the asters were covered in snow. If it comes true I'll just have to put space heaters in the garden. And I bet you think I'm kidding.



As always clicking on the pics and expanding them may be a treat. Look for Waldo while you're at it.





Afterglow






































Bee's Knees








































Centrifuge




























td

Kiowa and Bison Story

Somehow, this Kiowa story seems the most appropriate for today.





When a Kiowa woman named Old Lady Horse looked back on the past, she recalled the not so distant time when all the necessities of life had been provided to her people by the bison. Hides for shelter and clothing, bones for tools, blood and meat for food. "The buffalo were the life of the Kiowas," she said.

When Europeans came to the Plains to build railroads and raise cattle, the bison did their best to protect the Kiowa...

Mind the Gap

Is this mantis fooling anyone?

Poem for the End of Summer

I posted this 3 years ago and have been getting lots of Google hits for it lately. When I read the poem again it haunted me for days--as I suppose the end of summer will do in the echo of dry stalks and frozen aster blooms in a month or so.



Embers



Poor summer, it doesn't know it's dying.

A few days are all it has. Still, the lake

is with me, its strokes of blue-violet

and the fiery sun replacing loneliness.

I feel like an animal that has found a place.

This is my burrow, my nest, my attempt...

Monarch Tower, Sunflower of Doom, and Other Blooms

Along with the pics I'm interspersing quotes from my grandmother's grade school autograph book, about the time she was 13 or 14 in 1935-ish (it's been part of my memoir research to go through the two books I have of hers). I think some kids made up the rhymes since they are sort of nonsensical--all in the spirit of remembrances and best wishes--while others just use standard rhymes of the day. Some were quite dirty, especially for my conservative, Mennonite German grandmother. So let's get to...