Benjamin Vogt's Blog, page 43

Garden Coaching (Got Advice?) Apres the Tour

On Sunday I had 500 folks come through the garden in five hours. Even though I was sweating like a rain forest--man it was steamy--I so very much enjoyed talking with people, and even seeing strangers in my garden. If you know me, THIS IS NOT LIKE ME AT ALL. But I also like vegetables now. I wish I could remember who I talked with, what we talked about--so many interesting folks who were willing to learn about native plants, who asked tough questions, and who were genuinely interesting (and r...

Tour My Garden -- Pics & Video

Tomorrow is the big tour. Upwards of 1,000 folks in 5 hours. If your private jet or transporter aren't working and you can't make it to Nebraska, you're in luck. Sorta.



The garden has a few lines from my poems on the fence, sculptures by local artist Shannon Hansen, monarch caterpillars, lists of my favorite native plants, books for sale, and two dozen plants I'm giving away. Let's go.



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It's Native Plant Time

If you enjoyed the recent posts on my Oklahoma trip, you'll enjoy my piece that appears in the regional newspaper Prairie Fire. Won't you? Well, I think so.



"Native Plants + One Suburban Lot = Wildlife Preserve." The essay (or article) lists my favorite plants as well as places / resources to research and buy natives. The paper gave the below image a full color page!









































And a shot of some 8' eupatoriums! Viva tall stuff

that birds enjoy perching upon.






























So,...

Oklahoma -- Part 3 -- Corn, Custer, Cheyenne

For most of my life, when people asked me where I was from, I said without a doubt that I was a Minnesotan. I'd lived in the state from ages 10 to 24, and came into my own in the woods, lakes, and depths of lush nature in that place. I've always believed that without Minnesota, I'd have lived a much more insular life--one devoid of the awareness of cultural, spiritual, and physical diversity in this world (not that I'm exactly still that aware). I am a Minnesotan.



I worked hard to deny the f...

Oklahoma -- Part 2 -- Wichita Mtns

As a boy growing up an hour north of the Wichita Mountains, and later during visits, I remember that on a clear day you could see the mountains off in the distance. To be fair, they may be more like large hills, though the two highest peaks reach over 2,400 feet. This portion of our 8 day voyage was probably the highlight (or tied for it)--I've never felt so at home in Oklahoma as I did here. The place was incredible, and we saw only a small fraction of it, made evident by the fact we only sa...

Oklahoma Trip -- Part 1

This is the first of two posts, maybe three, on an 8 day trip my wife and I just took to Oklahoma. My next memoir will be based on the state--where I was born and spent 10 years of my life, where my great great grandparents homesteaded, where so much of what America is can be seen in a supercharged microcosm of greed, ignorance, violence, hope, faith, and denial. Somehow, I have to navigate the collision of Native Americans, immigration, homesteading, farming, prairie, oil, and religion--and ...

An Evocation, Part III

On Summer afternoons I went swimming in the Washita River [western Oklahoma]. The current was slow, and the warm, brown water seemed to be standing still. It was a secret place. There in the deep shade, enclosed in the dense, overhanging growth of the banks, my mind fixed on the wings of a dragonfly or the flitting motion of a water strider, the great open land beyond was all but impossible to imagine. But it was there, a stone's throw away. Once, from the limb of a tree, I saw myself in the ...

An Evocation, Part II

The hardest weather in the world is there [Rainy Mountain, in southwestern Oklahoma]. Winter brings blizzards, hot tornadic winds arise in spring, and in summer the prairie is an anvil's edge. The grass turns brittle and brown, and it cracks beneath your feet. There are green belts along the rivers and creeks, linear groves of hickory and pecan, willow and witch hazel. At a distance in July or August the steaming foliage seems almost to writhe in fire. Great green and yellow grasshoppers are ...

An Evocation, Part I

In one sense, then, the way to Rainy Mountain [in Oklahoma, a Kiowa sacred site] is preeminently the history of an idea, man's idea of himself, and it has old and essential being in language. The verbal tradition by which it has been preserved has suffered a deterioration in time. What remains is fragmentary: mythology, legend, lore, and hearsay—and of course the idea itself, as crucial and complete as it ever was. That is the miracle.



The journey herein recalled continues to be made anew ea...

Around the Garden

From 95 to 45 in a few days. That's temperature, not angles of view. But it could be either one, I suppose. Shall we?





Prairie Smoke










































Baptisia










































'Tiger Eyes' Sumac






























Shooting Star










































'Globemaster' Allium




Nice View?




























Peony Sweat










































Variegated Red Twig Dogwood




View From Under Arbor






























Black Chokeberry








































Purple...