I've lost track of how many properties in Nebraska my mother has planted and tended. When I say planted, I mean this: In the beginning, they were without form. And mom said, “Let there be a garden.” And when she’s done, though she’s never really done, there are windbreaks that go on for miles, hundreds of shrubs, flowers, rock walls, fences, cover for wildlife, nesting and food for birds and pollen for pollinators.
To the flocks of migrating birds that do a flyover, it’s hard not to make a stopover.
And she gardens against great odds: high, endless winds; drought; floods; tornadoes; hail. It's guerilla gardening, and you had better gird your loins before taking on this rugged prairie.
A few years ago, in a rash of April tornadoes, my parent’s acreage was flooded. Nine inches of rain moved all the corn husks from a nearby, upper feedlot and deposited them on their property. Every square inch of ground was covered in corn husks. She and my dad set about cleaning everything up right after the last corn husk settled. They have the perseverance of pioneers – living not too far from Red Cloud, Nebraska, in Willa Cather country.
Her gardens start with the other love of her life: Earl May (the garden nursery, not the man), although she's had many a fling at Wilke’s Nursery, too. It’s one of the last family-owned nurseries in the state. There’s always a nursery along the way to one of her properties, but she’s been known to drive out of her way for a plant sale. By the way, out of the way in Nebraska is a couple of hundred miles.
And then there’s the rock hunting expeditions to Kansas. She likes to travel back to the seas that once covered Kansas. There’s sandstone, but mostly she and my dad bring home limestone (a mere 70-80 million years old), formed in the deepest portions of that old sea bed. And every rock is full of fossils and shells. The same rock that gave earlier pioneers great building materials, and the post rocks that still mark the property lines. Talk about sturdy posts with character.
While my mom may be the brains, my dad brings brawn to the operation. I’ve never seen anyone dig a fence post hole so quickly or expertly. He unloads pickups full of rock. This hard work accounts for the good shape he’s in. He’s rock pressed tons of stone. He helps with the watering. And in drought years, you have to carry a lot of buckets of water to new plantings at the outer reaches of four acres. Oh, and did I mention he’s also in charge of the tree trimming and mowing?
Mom has been crisscrossing Nebraska for years, tending their properties and planting gardens. And for a decade, she managed three properties in Nebraska and commuted to their home in Iowa. She planted a garden in Iowa, too.
If you lived on one of the routes to their many properties, you’d see a lot of trees and shrubbery cruising by.
Imagine sitting on your front porch and seeing a 10-foot tree and a few viburnums tethered to the back of her truck. Every week, whether in a truck or car, plants are always in tow. When she travelled between Nebraska and Iowa, I guess that qualified her as an interstate and intrastate gardener. Her garden stretched for 1,000 miles.
I called her on Arbor Day, and you’ll never guess what she was doing. Yup, she was planting trees… about 50 of them. “Happy Arbor Day,” she said. Fitting words and work right where Arbor Day started. Out there you need windbreaks. The wind rarely stops. Remember in My Ántonia, the young narrator, Jim, described some of the new immigrants nearly losing their minds from the relentless winds. Trust me; I’ve never had a good hair day out there. But boy, clothes on my mom’s clotheslines dry fast. One day her sheets were blowing straight out from the clotheslines.
And on the seventh day, instead of resting, she hit the road, tree in tow, to plant another garden.
And behold, it was good.