Friday, June 05, 2009
A Good End
Every story has a beginning; in the case of this modest garden blog it was in February of 2005, with the bloom of the first snowdrop of the new garden year. Every story must also have an ending, and for An Iowa Garden, that day has arrived; it is a happy ending, though... I am not stopping because of ill health or a lack of stories or new plants to write about (I would say in the four years I've been writing this blog I've probably shown about a fourth of the plants in our garden). Rather, it is because of a lack of time; there are just not quite enough hours in the day, which I confess seems odd, since I retired from medicine six years ago, wondering how I would ever fill all my unaccustomed spare time.
I've made a lot of new friends through blogging, and have very much enjoyed meandering through other peoples' garden blogs too, and I hope a few folks have enjoyed following me about here in our garden, tucked in a small valley beside a pond, in a woods in eastern Iowa. This week the newest fawn is being paraded about by its proud mom, the young raccoons are discovering the challenge of shinnying up the birdfeeder pole in the dark of night, and the barred owls are hooting up and down the valley in the cool spring evenings. Seasons and years continue to unfold around and before me, and I feel deeply connected to all the wild creatures that share our land; and to the woods and to our garden in that woods. Living with (and in) nature can be occasionally exasperating, it can be funny or it can be very sad; but above all, it is a privilege. I have come to realize that the mark of a person can be measured by how they treat the least and most vulnerable of God's creatures.
Good gardening and Godspeed to all of you...
Don
Monday, June 01, 2009
You Could Do Worse...
I always wonder about gardeners who completely devote their garden to one type of plant; they have one great fanfare of flowering, then a long, quiet summer; I've always thought that wouldn't be for me, but today I started thinking you could do a lot worse than having a whole garden of Siberian irises. Here is Iris Spinning Song, a striking reddish violet.
