Benjamin Vogt's Blog, page 48

Hatchback Trees -- My New Book Project

I'm writing a new gardening book by Feb 1st. 40 short snapshot-esque chapters on the first years of my garden. Target length is 100 pages (a nice pocket book I hope). Below is one section of 15 I've written so far, and I'll likely post more over the coming weeks. I'd love your base, first, gut reaction on these pieces as they come along.



The book is tentatively titled Sleep, Creep, Leap: The First Three Years of a Newbie's Garden, and will be a mix of styles--humorous, lyrical, descriptive, ...

On Lorrie Moore's Birds of America

I give you an oh yes moment, then some hearty laughs from Moore's short story collection (which is marvelous--beautiful and real life prose with lovely doses of subtle / clever / smart humor the likes of which I've never seen before).



"Staring out through the windshield, off into the horizon, Abby began to think that all the beauty and ugliness and turbulence one found scattered through nature, one could also find in people themselves, all collected there, all together in a single place. No ...

Where I Write, How I Write

I might as well post a nude photo of myself. Showing my space is really an act of total exposure. And you know you feel voyeuristic about it, too; I do when others let me look in on their creative spaces.



Spurred on by Dee's post on writing tips at Red Dirt Ramblings, I give you my small 10x10' writing space that is far too warm any time of the year with the door shut (and shut it must be).







[The book shelf in the corner behind the red chair (the red chair I sat on as a kid in the living r...

Mr. Renegade, You Make My Heart Sing

January perks up every year with the Renegade Gardener--a man who also installed the landscaping / gardens around my mom's new home in Minnesota. I'm still getting over losing my childhood home, but the new house sure is nice, too. I guess.



Anywho, check out Don's High Spot / Black Spot awards. If you like sarcasm and brutal ecological truth, you'll like Don. By extension, you may like me, too. There are always many literary gems with Don's awards, but I chose this more subtle one:



"Much o...

2010 -- Don't Let The Door Hit You On the Way Out

I'm not too sad to see 2010 go. It was a very frustrating year for me outside the garden, in the writing world. Maybe it wasn't frustrating, maybe it was organizing / storing up / mobilizing and I can't see it yet. But in this profession--and in the hopes of attaining a teaching job, fellowships, publishers, etc--there are no points for second place or nice thoughts, just feelings of "what might have been." Looking back teaches us how to look forward, and it is always something that motivates...

Facebook My Garden & See it From Day 1

Do so by going to my TDM Facebook page, "like" TDM, and you can see pics from the last 3.5 years, a video, and enjoy the plant orgy. That's right. Shimmy up to the plants as they sleep, skip creep, and go straight on into leap, leap, leap. Herbaceous perennial gardens blow me away--from nothing to 6, 10, and 14 feet high in one season. And native herbaceous perennial gardens, at that.



Link here, or down on the side bar to the right on this here blog.

Walken in a Winter Wonderland

It looks EXACTLY like this outside as I gaze through the nearest window:





And how about SNL's "Carol of Intimacy"

"Leave me alone! Please go away!

I'm doing fine! Just get away!"









Love, Absence, and the Thin Line of Existence

I've been reading for my new class next month, planning as much as I can, a class on the short story. I've chosen collections published in the last 20 years, some by first timers. Here are quotes from two debut books I've enjoyed immensely this weekend.



From Once the Shore, by Paul Yoon:



"He considered the possibility that there were many kinds of love and as you experienced one, you felt the absence of all the others. He thought of a city perpetually opening onto the sea."



From The Shell ...

Blooming Winter Foliage

This is a TRUE bloom day, one I've never participated in because everyone just posts flowers. Blah. My love of 6 to 12 foot tall perennials is finally beginning to pay off--and one can only orgasmically fanticize about what things will look like in exactly one year. Wow. Screw summer with its trite petals. This is where it's at. I think the upcoming June garden tour should happen right now.















And then we also had a few birds pass overhead:

The grading is done, the semester is over...

Listening to Neurons

Just cut off a cockroach leg, hook up the SpikerBox, and listen to the insect neurons firing away (don't worry, they say the leg grows back).























Order yours now! I know everyone in my family would love this, and that soon after I'd be covered in vomit and taken out of the will, divorced, et cetera.



But seriously, have you ever heard of such a thing? Would this work on frogs? Cats? Humans who use their lawnmowers too often when I'm trying to enjoy my garden?



Then again, the demented ...