An Iowa Garden

Blogs anymore are like grains of sand; almost infinite in number, mostly indistinguishable, washed up by the great internet sea today, and gone tomorrow, not even to be forgotten, as they were seldom noticed in the first place... but then there was Anne. Right after I started my modest blog, like any new tenant, I decided to check out the neighbors. I soon stumbled on a tiny gardening blog from near Des Moines in central Iowa, called Tender Dirt. It only contained about twenty short entries, and covered only three months at the end of 2004. It's author, Anne, was a young woman with a husband and child, and she was pregnant with their second child. She was a writer, and in the past had taught, and it was apparent that at present the family was financially hurting. From comments in her blog, and just from her perspective on her environment, it was clear that she was raised in the prairie states, in this case in the Flint Hill country of eastern Kansas... and how that girl could write! I've always been a sucker for female vulnerability, which she unconsciously radiated, and her writing style both captivated me and made me jealous of her talent as she threw off striking phrases and images as casually as I might rustle a newspaper... and now she's gone. Her first postings were more or less garden related, but soon focussed more and more on her troubled pregnancy. Her last post stated that she had lost her baby, but hoped to get back to gardening and writing in her blog as an antidote to the sadness that she felt about everything, but she never posted again, though her blog remains online; a small, alarming snippet of life. The great plains and prairies here in the middle part of our country possess their own unique beauty, but there is no more forlorn place to be blue... the empty spaces are too great, and the climate is too unforgiving. One's feelings, and even one's life can easily end up like so much tattered laundry blowing on a rusty clothesline. Wherever Anne is now, I hope she is happy and well, utilizing her unquestioned talent... and I wish her Godspeed.