Enjoying Somebody Else’s Garden

I know people who insist on creating original landscapes in their yards. They either begin with a clean palette and scrape their property down to bare earth or they buy homes in brand new subdivisions where all the dirt is recently backhoed and then leveled by earthmoving mega-machines. Once these individuals draw up their plans and plant accordingly, they have designer yards that draw the eye to appealing areas throughout their lot. This is one way to create beauty around a home. Another is to enjoy what previous occupants have planted and work around the property’s history.

Since I was a little girl, I’ve enjoyed investigating other people’s gardening talents. My great grandmother lived near Buckner Creek in Southwest Kansas where she cultivated irises, peonies, and black berry canes someone had tucked around her house before she moved in. As a toddler, I examined her bearded irises and thorny berry plants from a nose to petal point of view. Somehow, I understood these mature plants had lived in this place longer than Grandma had. I also got the idea that they connected her and me as well to whoever optimistically planted them in a land of little rain.

Because of those early experiences, I’ve always loved moving into homes with already established plantings. Lovely wild rose bushes with once a year yellow blooms, peonies, poppies, purple and bronze iris, naked ladies, and lilac borders graced our first bungalow built in the early 1900s. Their cycles of scented blossoms brightened that yard for decades and continue to do so two owners later.

We were only the second residents of our next home, but the couple who built that house transplanted iris tubers and lilac starts from their family’s original homestead into their new yard. In addition, they’d added rose bushes, purple phlox, and blue flax to enhance the native prairie flowers that surrounded them.

One of the attractions of our most recent real estate purchase was the pretty yard surrounding the house. That owner landscaped with new plantings to increase the curb of appeal of her property, but she also incorporated old-fashioned poppies, peonies, daisies, butter and eggs, day lilies, and violets that add a nostalgic touch to the yard. While I love the roses and shrubbery this gifted gardener chose to border the house, I most enjoy the plants she transferred from her farm and other people’s flowerbeds.

What I like best about plantings passed down from the generations who first turned these prairies into homes is that they connect us to real people who longed for reminders of where they came from. They were dead tired from just surviving, yet they made time to turn up flowerbeds around their homes. Even more telling, they shared precious water with rootstock or seeds they either ordered or carried from more settled regions of America and Europe.

Drive by any dying community or abandoned farmstead and you’ll see remnants of lilac borders, iris or peony beds, and poppies that now escape confinement. The humans who planted them are long gone. Equipment they left behind rusts in weedy yards that come to life each spring with improbable lavender, pink, and bright orange blooms that fleetingly tell stories of those who came before.

Prairie Art Renaissance

Making art is a lonely business. Just as very few high school athletes grow up to sign professional sport contracts, limited numbers of painters, sculptors, photographers, poets,  actors, singers, and song writers achieve fame or financial success as a result of their efforts. Such individuals work in the privacy of homes and garages without anyone but family or close friends knowing they painted a luminous prairie sunrise or captured a reenactment of buffalo soldiers crossing the South Solomon River. Fortunately, for inspired spirits who call the prairie home, more communities are collaborating to share their efforts-- a deal that benefits both parties.

In addition to annual shows in Norton, Hill City, Nicodemus and Phillipsburg sponsored by area art supporters, Stockton business owners have teamed up to host an art walk on Sunday November 22^nd from 2 – 5 p.m. At this time, six downtown stores have invited regional painters and photographers to display work and chat with visitors. Anyone interested is welcome to meet these creators, grab a snack, and appreciate locally produced paintings, mosaics, and photographs.

Cheryl Calvin, owner of Sand Creek Mercantile, shares that this innovative group plans four such events throughout the upcoming year, exposing even more talent to the public. This approach keeps energy and interest high and offers supporters more occasions to appreciate varied styles and techniques.

Personally, I’m thrilled to see grass root support of regional art expanding. Few true creatives have the business acumen or training to promote their own work. As a result, you’ll find it sitting on dusty shelves or hanging on walls that no one sees. When individuals who have such proven ability get involved, it means local artists receive exposure and potential income.

 In addition, well-advertised campaigns attract visitors from surrounding areas, which expands a supporting business’s client base. Such opportunities open doors to consignment fees for gallery space. Even better, the public learns they can afford to hang hometown artists’ works on their walls.

Nature understands the advantage of symbiotic relationships where one creature or plant benefits another. Think of yuccas and the moths that fertilize their blossoms or cattle and the birds that pick irritating insects off these ruminating bovines. Our Great Plains landscape affords many examples of creatures whose lives benefit one another. Local businesses and artists working together provide a perfect pairing to help one another thrive while making the rest of our lives richer through their efforts.

Our region of the sunflower state pulses with the energy of accomplished artists. However, few of us have seen their work. Trade people who understand the benefit of inviting the public into their businesses not only to purchase a product or service but also to appreciate landscapes, still lifes,  portraits, sculpture, photographs and more  function like that all important yucca moth. They germinate  community spirit so our descendants can live the good life on the prairie in another hundred years.

Four Letter Words

Most of us have heard about four letter words. The minute you mention them, many immediately think naughty words. But this time of year, hope is a four-letter word. As is soil, seed, rain, bird, root, stem and grow. Four letter words-- every one. As I roamed about my yard planting hollyhocks, bachelor buttons, sweet William, zinnias, and other butterfly attractors, I kept thinking, I hope for moisture and that the hard little hulls I tucked in the earth would sprout roots and stems to unfurl skyward under warm, spring sun.

With the advent of t-shirt and shorts weather, I see people walking about area towns with a spring in their steps. All of us are tired of winter’s leafless silhouettes. We’re weary of seeing only sere grass and stick-like bushes. Our senses ache for hues of green and brilliant blossoms.

Even birds agree. Those not yet on the nest warble noisy courting songs, perform antic dances, and ruffle feathers, hoping to attract mates. Who can help but smile while watching such crazy expenditures of energy, knowing it’s one of those four letter words—hope-- that drives each of us to do all we can to make the most of these few perfect days of spring.

During a painting class I recently attended, students explained to our waterlogged Wyoming teacher that we need rain. Unlike us, she’s seen an excess of moisture recently, so she struggled to relate to our craving for wet stuff. While we enjoyed the mild temperatures and balmy days with her, she treasured 24-hour sequences that didn’t require use of snow shovels. She  wasn’t looking forward to the predicted rains and snow on her homeward journey. Despite her dismay at the weather reports, we were giddy, hoping precipitation might move our way.  

Without moisture, we look forward to more blowing dust, bare fields, dirty cars, as well as stunted vegetables and blossoms if we can garden in our communities. Rain brings optimism for green yards, wheat, and a harvest. Those clouds building on the horizon have no idea when they pass us by and sprinkle on another town what they do to those thirsting for water-laden droplets.

We’re so dry here that folks normally indignant when rain ruins their plans behave gleefully when they have to move track practice or outdoor picnics inside. Those of us wearing spectacles relish coming indoors from the sprinkles to wipe our glasses dry.

Not only have the few little dribbles we’ve received perked up spirits, they’ve also jolted dormant perennials into production. Bushes that were tawny canes days earlier have sprouted hordes of pale green buds. A wheat field behind my house turned lush blue-green and grew at least two inches in nothing flat. I should have set up a stop action camera on it. I’d have captured amazing footage of high-speed growth.

Yep, this time of year, four letter words rule. Dirt, bird, seed, rain, and hope are important elements of spring. I’m all for saying as many of those words as I can in mixed and unmixed company.

Heroes of the Pasture: Dung Beetles

            Somewhere I saw this quote, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” I agree  and add you’ll meet interesting creatures along the way. Sometimes those new acquaintances look like something from an intergalactic space bar.

            Several years ago, Big Yellow Dog and I began our morning with a ramble. These journeys not only began our day right, but sometimes we also enjoyed the strangest sights. What I saw that day exceeded every other unusual observation ever experienced during jaunts down that sandy road.

            We’d noted the usual: a killdeer racing ahead of us, a sparrow hawk proclaiming territorial rights, and neighboring cows wondering why Big Yellow Dog bounced up and down as a mouse ran under his paws. A ribbon of blue horizon contrasting against green pastures and nearly ripe wheat fields backdropped these familiar scenarios. 

            A bit into our walk, we crossed the section road into what I consider the “wilderness.” The only reason humans come this way is to go somewhere else. No one lives on this route.

This is the area where I once spotted a bobcat leaping playfully above waving big blue stem and brome grasses that border walk-in-hunting acreage.  This is where on damp mornings I spy prints of a doe and her fawn crossing from the WIHA to the creek for a morning drink. This is where I see trails of   wriggling snakes as they maneuver from one grassy ditch to the other before a big redtail flying overhead dives for dinner.

I look forward to the surprises I find in the “wilderness.” The unexpected keeps me walking that direction day after day. That morning provided another “stop to put this in your memory bank” moment. 

Tucker ran through the ditches, analyzing scents of everything that had happened since he last sampled the air. I trailed him, admiring morning clouds, relishing cool air rippling over skin, sensing the roll of gravel under walking shoes, and letting my eyes sweep the road close--then far, close--then far.

Suddenly, I thought I’d ended up at the space bar mentioned earlier. Two semi-gloss black bugs were rolling a shooter marble-sized ball of brown gunk from the north side of the road to the south. 

My first thought was “dung beetle.” I recalled watching such bugs on Discovery Channel, but these weren’t large enough to compare to those I saw on TV.  Of course, I’d watched African dung beetles that dealt with elephant-sized poo piles, but keep in mind I hadn’t analyzed that far yet. 

I looked around for the nearest pile of … dung.  It lay far away in relation to the size and stride of these beetles.  Could it be?  Were they ambitious enough to march on short legs to collect and form a rollable ball of cow caca several hundred feet to the south?

Stopping to observe these diligent creatures, I noted their system enabled them to simultaneously push and roll that poop globe. One stood on top of the orb as one envisions lumbermen who roll logs down a river might. The other rose on hind legs and used upper legs to lever the sphere forward.

After returning home, I cruised the Internet. Dung beetles do live in Kansas.  In fact, they live everywhere except the Antarctic. If we didn’t have them, we’d be up to our eyeballs in, well…use your imagination. Several varieties of these necessary but unappreciated creatures exist, and I happened to witness the “roller” type.

Ancient Egyptians knew the importance of these insects and deified them. That may be extreme, but consider that one expert said dung beetles keep “land livable by reducing flies, foul odors, and the ruination of pastureland.” Another proponent claimed more efficient use of them “could save farmers $2 billion a year by restoring grazing land.” One agriculturist explained, “Once the cattle have vacated the paddock, within 48 hours, there is no manure left.” Maybe Hays Research Station needs additional dung beetles to address odors that waft through Hays when south winds blow.

My newly discovered neighbors are good partners in life’s journey. I look forward to seeing them again.

The Great Plains and Small Town Hearts

Over a decade ago, I lucked into a National Endowment for the Humanities Seminar titled  The Great Plains: Texas to Saskatchewan.  For five weeks, Tom Isern  led 19 other teachers and I to read and analyze literary and historical texts, discuss conclusions, and visit iconic sites to better understand what it means to live on the plains.

One identifying characteristic of this land is its vast horizon paired with  few vertical disturbances like trees or skyscrapers.   That distinction made it into plenty of diaries and journals as pioneers left locales where coves and hollows or great groves of trees cupped around them, making them feel secure as a babe in its mother’s arms. When my mom worked at the Meade County Courthouse back in the 60s, she discovered records of early immigrants institutionalized when they were unable to cope with the open t space and frequent wind.

Fellow seminarians from other regions shared that the immensity of our vistas disquieted them as well.  That reminded me of a Japanese exchange student I took on a visit to Oklahoma City.  She exclaimed over and over , “Why don’t you build cities in this land?  Why don’t people live here? You should use this space.”

For those of us accustomed to so much sky and so few upright interferences, outsiders’ viewpoints challenge us to think about where we live and what it means to be a plains person.  Recently, I’ve traveled the more isolated highways of western Kansas, stopping to explore almost-ghost towns like Densmore, Ogallah, and Edson that were once thriving communities.

 I love isolated miles of asphalt stretching infinitely over hills and valleys.  I smile  to think how these trails must confuse anyone who thinks all of Kansas is flat.  High spots abound that permit  travelers to see across counties.  Imagine Indians and other early explorers standing on these ascents to view scores of buffalo, deer, elk, turkey, and antelope.  In all directions, they saw a rich land that could feed many.

Seeing  crumbling remains of once well-built churches, multi-story brick or stone schools, plaster and lathe homes that housed growing families, and the always peaceful hilltop cemeteries reminds me that hopeful hearts once acted on the thought that this is an abundant land. These little hamlets about every 15 to 20 miles across the prairie remind us of Jeffersonian Democracy in action.  Here families worked the soil, tended their businesses, worshipped their God, and educated their children into a better life.

As folks gravitated away from these self-sufficient little villages to cities, they lost something.  These small towns tied to the land, these schools that required all students to participate in declamations, plays, music, and sports; these churches that took care of not only spirits but also physical needs of residents created well-rounded citizens who dealt together with whatever difficulties arose. 

In forested regions, close-growing trees hold one another upright when the wind blows, and in mountainous landscapes one rock supports another. Nature offers no protection in the  open plains, so humans must sustain one another.  Neighbors become one another’s rock, cove, hollow, and grove.

When I think back to that seminar and this place I call home, I acknowledge that lifestyles  change.  We can’t all live in self-sufficient villages, but we can celebrate open space that reminds us this is a rich land that feeds many and a place that teaches us to look out for one another.

Prairie Tree Cycles

First photographs  of Ellis reveal a railroad track accompanied by  hastily assembled buildings set in the middle of dusty prairie.  Even though the picture is black and white, it is clear sunshine and open space are plentiful.  What is missing is a tree.  Any shade to be found had to be man-made.

A decade later, photographic records reveal cottages with newly planted trees struggling to take root in an inhospitable environment.  The local newspaper editor petitioned residents to plant more trees throughout town and on farmsteads.

Look at a picture taken in the 1880s in the locale of the current stone house by Big Creek on West 11^th Street to see a thriving orchard.  Shade trees tower in the background, indicating how Ellis had changed from desolate prairie to an oasis in fewer than thirty years.

In another photographic series, rows of  trees grow near what is now Playworld Park.  In surrounding neighborhoods, healthy shade trees shelter houses and yards, providing respite from the sun and homes for birds and squirrels.

By the 1920s, Ellis looked like an Eastern community with its tree-lined  brick streets.  It is easy to imagine an autumn stroll through town and seeing hordes of neighborhood children breaking the prairie plane as they raked fallen leaves into golden mountains.

After the Dust Bowl’s dry years,  snapshots of Ellis reveal fewer shade trees and none of the optimistic orchards that grew at the end of the 19^th century.  Aerial pictures tell the tale of waterless months and the toll those took on lovely greenery that once adorned yards, parks, and streets. The oasis had diminished.

Since that dry decade, residents have replanted and nurtured  trees and bushes in Ellis and the surrounding countryside.  Mother Nature has done her own seeding along waterways, creating a ribbon of green as far as the eye can see.  Once again, families can hang a tire swing on a big old branch or set their lawn chairs under an accommodating cottonwood.  All that is changing with this current dry spell.

Watching this drought take its toll on western Kansas prairie plantings reminds us to value surviving flora.  Without significant moisture soon, many locals will lose plantings that have taken generations to grow.

Perhaps we ought to perform memorial services for the dead  since these plantings have been around longer than many of our family members have.  A thirty-year-old lilac in my backyard succumbed a month ago. Two more-brown than green yews outside our bedroom inhale last bits of carbon dioxide and expel final gasps of restorative oxygen.

Along Big Creek, decades old cottonwoods and ash trees suffer  heat stress.  Heart-shaped cottonwood leaves yellow long before Mother Nature signals the fall leaf drop. Some leaves just fall, skipping the colorful part of their existence.

What will future generations see when they look at pictures of our yards, parks, and streets?   Will they see this as another cycle that came and went, or will it be a permanent part of their  prairie existence. 

Spring Showers Mean Get the Mower Ready

Facebook has been a great way to reconnect with high school and college friends who live in other regions of the country.  Frequently, they post updates regarding their weather and how that affects their lives.  One friend who lives in the Pacific Northwest recently commented about how much rain they had and how she longed for extended rainless, sunny days.  After months of no rain and plenty of sun, I offered to split the difference with her to see if we could both be happy.  After these days of spring rain during Spring Break, it looks like Mother Nature gave me a peek at what my Seattle based friend experiences regularly.

Though eager to see the sun again, I love watching every drop fall. Taking my glasses off and walking out in the drizzle to check the rain gauge highlights each day, especially as I see that collection line rise with each visit.  When those drops totaled a half inch, I did a goofy little stomp my feet dance. 

When they added up to an inch, I sang off-tune nursery songs about rain.  When I woke up to more than a two inch total, my fifty-something carcass performed ballet jetés in front of that plastic container attached to a fence post. 

Rain-starved folks tend to be grateful for hints of moisture, which would describe most of us in this area last week.  The weather channel had predicted significant rain last week, and we got enough to wet the very bottom of the rain gauge.  Instead of complaining, most of us gave thanks that rain/dust freckles punctuated bug gut scribbles on our windshields.  While I was grateful for those reminders of heavenly blessing, I hoped to see more generous splotches or even a true mud splash looking like race car flames on the side panels of my Toyota.  Today, those prayers came true.

While my Seattle friend has to work mowing in around the daily rain showers, we rarely mowed last summer.  With a buffalo grass prairie yard, we mow when it rains.  Other than a few weeks last year, our mower collected dust rather than grass cuttings.  However, after looking at the green shooting through sere tendrils of dormant buffalo grass, we will mow at least a few times due to recent moisture.

Time to sharpen the blade, adjust belts and tires, do whatever my husband does to the fluid mixtures, and gear up for several hours of crisscrossing the prairie on the riding mower.  During the heat of summer, it is hard to get excited about mowing, but after months of no moisture and little hope for growing grass, I may volunteer to trade cooking duty for mowing duty and enjoy every sneeze and cough grass-induced allergies provoke.