Benjamin Vogt's Blog, page 45

Me + Orion Magazine = Bam!

I'm going to have a picture and a short block of words in the July / August issue of Orion. It's one of my favorite publications, and now I've got my foot in the door. It's just so cool, you know?



The image is of my wife on a gravel country road trying to get close to some of the 500,000 sandhill cranes that come through here every spring. Link to this post to find the image.

Catius Birthdayus

When I was a kid in Minnesota my grandmother would visit from Oklahoma, where she grew up and began raising her kids on a farm. As she'd sit on the end of the living room couch--as far against the edge as possible to protect half of herself--one of our cats would be closing in on her from the other end. "Oh gum!" she'd explain. "Phooey! I can't believe you allow dirty animals in your house." And then the cat would lay down, the arcing back pressed into her side, perhaps purring, and my grandm...

What Are We Here For?

" 'What is the world?' [my son asked] What the world is and who we are meant to be within it and how we are to conserve what is good and beautiful and true in the world, and in ourselves; and how we are to forgive and, if we can, redeem what is bad and ugly and false in ourselves and, because of us, in the world--this may be what we're here for."



-- Mark Tredinnick

This Guy is an Idiot

Did you all read the native v. non native article in the New York Times, "Mother Nature's Melting Pot?" Hugh Raffles makes me want to girdle him with some roots. I can't belive he wrote Insectopedia, the 2011 Orion Book Award winner. Maybe he was on drugs when he wrote some of the things below:



"The anti-immigrant sentiment sweeping the country, from draconian laws in Arizona to armed militias along the Mexican border, has taken many Americans by surprise. It shouldn't — nativism runs deep i...

UPS. FedEx. USPS

For a homebody like me simple pleasures are gifts, more meaningful because I tend to stay put physically and psychologically. Cookies in the oven. A hummingbird at the sage. A monarch coming out of a chrysalis. An afternoon reading poems on a chair that was once my preferred spot as a child.



When I wrote a memoir I did copious amounts of research, often buying cheap, used copies of books online so I could reread them at my own speed, write in them, dog ear, and enjoy each on the bookshelf l...

Thujas for Twins

Did you know that Piet Oudolf and John Dixon Hunt are big baseball fans? In fact, Minnesota Twins fans? So are certain plants in my garden. I came home today, a day before the Twins open the season, and noticed two plants having a private pep rally.





Thuja occidentalis 'Emerald Green'










































Malus 'Coralburst' with a 2010 Homer Hanky.

I look forward to being swept by the Yanks again. Sigh.

Iris, Crocus, Pasque, Brrrrrr

Spring break is over. I actually got everything done on my checklist--which I never thought I would. Some prose chapbooks put together and sent out, a query for a memoir sent out, email requests, rec letter written for student, article on native plants written, jobs applied for, last 5 weeks of classes planned out (if that last book gets reprinted and delivered to students on time). I even got 50% of the garden cut down while it was 60 / 81 / 50 / 40. Now it's in the 30s and 20 degrees below ...

The Sandhill Cranes in Nebraska

My wife and I visited some of the 500,000 migrating cranes near Grand Island, NE, and along the Platte River. They winter in Mexico and Texas, then funnel through a roughly 50 mile stretch of sandbars and corn fields between Grand Island and Kearney. Something like 70% of the world's sandhill cranes are here, and they are one of the few stable crane populations globally (and also can live to be 20). They end up nesting all over Canada, up to the Arctic Circle, then over to Alaska and across t...

Mr. Mows All the Time is Mowing Brown Grass

I can't believe it. Got home and he's mowing his lawn. Keep in mind, grass doesn't turn green or start growing for another month. Maybe dormant lawn is like ghost lawn, and it fades in and out of some other dimension or time continuum. Beam me up, Toro.



I just wish the amount of time he spent grooming his lawn, fertilizing it with chemicals, watering on a windy August afternoon, and blowing the clippings back on to the lawn (air pollution galore anyone?)... I just wish all that energy was p...

I Am Afraid of Spring

This will be the fourth full year of the garden. In the second year anything that grew, or luckily bloomed, anything that did anything blew me away. But I've come to expect more. The surprises must be more, and in turn, the heartbreaks will certainly be more. And this is right.



In 2009 the sweet autumn clematis was huge, but for some reason last year it was small, as it was in 2008. What will it do this year? Will I have to start over?



Swamp milkweed seems to be a two year plant; will the ...