The Dew Point and Purple Coneflowers
This country was mostly wild pasture and as naked as the back of your hand . . . So the country and I had it out together and by the end of the first autumn, that shaggy grass country had gripped me with a passion I have never been able to shake. It has been the happiness and the curse of my life. — Willa Cather
I discovered I'm just a thirty minute drive from the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie before we started digging garden beds and before I learned the dew point is a thing to check. My brother sketched the designs for the garden beds. More formal in the back yard, an informal cottage garden in front of the house. It was terribly exciting when I arrived here to see the beds mapped out with stakes and twine. My brother already gathered plants from Wichita, Salina, Beloit, Hastings, Concordia, the local nursery on a country dirt road the gps struggled to find. Potted plants lined our backyard deck.
The plants were there, the layout was there, as was the enthusiasm. It was time to dig. In spite of hot, muggy summer weather, it was time to dig. I went to dig that first shovel full and a sinking feeling almost overwhelmed me when my shovel barely went into this dense, clay soil about two inches, not even a full shovel's depth. And vigorous work with the shovel was yielding very limited soil turnover. The soil clinging to the shovel, my shoes, my gloves.
All I could think was how were we going to get these plants planted before the first frost? How can we get it done and not miss an entire growing season?
I very nearly wanted to quit right there. The dew point was almost suffocating and the sweat dripped off of my arms. But we looked the plans over in terms of sections of eight to ten feet of garden bed. We kept going shovel full by shovel full. I developed a digging action I can't quite explain, a combination of stepping down on the shovel hard followed by pulling back and down on the shovel handle repeatedly. I discovered it is possible to get a nice chunk of soil by using my arms more.
Passing all the crops it is plain this is farm country. Wheat, corn, milo, soy. Sorghum, which honestly I don't even know what it is. I listen to the crop reports about pricing on the radio and I don't even know what sorghum is. I'll learn, but I don't recognize it yet. But this rich country that yields so much crop, that dark, rich, heavy clay soil, must be a productive soil. So it's just a matter of tenacity.
My brother and I tackled it with sheer willpower and sweat. The amazing thing is we would dig and plant each section and immediately see a surprising vibrancy in the plants put in the ground just the day before.
This wonderful revelation of being only thirty minutes away from Willa Cather country pushed me back into these books I hadn't read in over twenty years. I adore reading Cather's work and recognizing trees and plants we are now starting ourselves and reading about characters who, for instance, talk about established orchards grown by the carrying of buckets of water to start them out. We are carrying pails of water to an oak and three plane trees beyond the hose's reach. I love that connection. It's like Willa Cather and her stories are in the dirt under my fingernails.
It's feeding a whole new interest in her works and the prairie ecosystem. It brings it home. Now I get it, that quote from Cather about wrestling with the landscape only to be overtaken by a passion for the prairie. I have a new depth of connection with the sentiment because I absolutely feel it--the being initially overwhelmed by the difficulty of the ground and limited growing seasons, the time pressures of it, the heavy, hard soil, that turns into respect and appreciation for this dirt that sticks to everything but grows the most beautiful purple coneflowers.
For Further Exploration
Reporting on faith from North Central Kansas.
