Benjamin Vogt's Blog, page 47

Happiness, A Poem

I have been taught never to brag but now I cannot help it: I keep

a beautiful garden, all abundance,

indiscriminate, pulling itself

from the stubborn earth. Does it offend you

to watch me working in it,

touching my hands to the greening tips or

tearing the yellow stalks back, so wild

the living and the dead both

snap off in my hands?

The neighbor with his stuttering

fingers, the neighbor with his broken

love: each comes up my drive

to receive his pitying,

accustomed consolations,...

Phallic Winter Garden Art

After a string of "serious" posts from my new garden memoir manuscript, it's time to let it all hang out, hang loose, etc with the shallow puns. 50s are forecast for the next week, and what little snow we have left will soon be gone. The winter has been dry as a bone. Spring has nearly sprung.





The snow is moderately happy, even as it melts away






























Miscanthus snow cone










































Corn with landscape (looks like the Nebraska capitol, yes?)




Frozen fog on...

The Nursery Circuit

Rows and rows of plants lay on tables waste high, their leaves still speckled with the morning watering. The air is rich, sweet, musky, a breeze nudges you and the bees toward blooms several rows over—something you hadn't noticed at first in the cacophony of flesh. For a moment it's almost as if you can see those ultraviolet runway lights that guide in pollinators, you too are part of the process. You woke this morning for a singular purpose, and this exhaustion is a subtle joy.



Once or twic...

Much Mulch

You say you don't want another section from the new manuscript? Too bad. Here's one anyway.





Much Mulch



It's late morning already, and we've finally made it to the new house. In two weeks we'll move in, married, but until then—and before the sod gets laid—my fiancee and I are here to spread mulch. Twenty yards.



The sun feels as if it's being reflected off of a series of mirrors, each mirror focusing the heat and light. The air is thick and it's windy, carrying the musky smell of a nearby f...

Sexy Table of Contents

An official unveiling (finally) of the chapters to my recent gardening memoir-esque book Sleep, Creep, Leap: The First Three Years of a Garden. Rate your brutally honest interest on a scale of -5 (tonight's forecasted low temp) to 10.2735 (tomorrow's forecasted high temp). Let us not speak of the -30 wind chills.



CONTENTS



2007-2008

6 – First Garden First

9 – Mulching

11 – A Rock. A Stone. A Mountain

13 – Four!

15 – The Garden Circuit

20 – Cassia Hebecarpa – Wild Senna

21 – Skin

23 – Diggin...

First Garden First

Here's the first chapter to my new manuscript Sleep, Creep, Leap . Think I finally have the order set.





First Garden First





To be fair, this isn't my first garden. Technically. And if I really get anal about it, perhaps my first garden was a green bean plant in a Styrofoam cup growing on the window ledge of my first grade classroom. I still remember the smell of that particular soil—very sweet, like sugary cigar smoke mixed with rose petals. Something like that. I remember sticking my finger...

Rapture

The juncos have been feasting at the feeders this winter, dozens at a time, stopping first in shrubs to make sure the coast is clear, then leapfrogging like checkers toward the open yard. Sometimes the entire flock will jolt into the air and run for cover, and for five minutes the space is empty and silent. Eventually, one junco will venture out, land on the ground, peck at the seed-covered snow. Then another. Then thirty—until they get spooked again.



I'm sitting on the couch, flipping betwe...

2011 Model Year

Gardens are like cars. Go with me on this. You've got your Cadillac gardens, massive beds, large scale parterres and fountains, prim and proper. There's the Japanese or Zen style gardens, er, I mean Toyota Prius—never assuming, but quiet, peaceful, socially connected to the larger world and landscape around it. You've got you Fords and GMs, you know, foundation plantings from a bix box nursery, whatever came with the house. Then there's those exotic plants you shouldn't have, that have no bus...

Pasque Flower and Liatris -- More From The Book

Along with narrative chapters in my new mini garden memoir, I'm also incorporating prose poemy type entries on a few garden plants that stand out to me. They all stand out, so it's hard to pick and choose, but here are two:



Pulsatilla Vulgaris – Pasque Flower



In April fingered leaves reach up like praying hands, and from their centers an oval of dark magenta rises covered in peach fuzz. The stem too, thick and short, seems to be covered in a white halo, as if emerging from a bed of frost. T...

Four! -- More From the New Book

Another section, this one on our strange golfing neighbor, from the manuscript-in-progress Sleep, Creep, Leap: The Frist Three Years of a Garden . Keep in mind, hot off the press and very raw, but your thoughts are most welcome. I have nearly 20 rough draft pieces, so half done.





Four!



We've just come back from picking up sandwiches from our favorite local shop. There's nothing I enjoy more than eating dinner on the covered deck in summer, looking out over the garden and birdfeeders. My wife...