Mid-Summer Gardens

Our backyard gardens are in full mid-summer bloom:

When we moved into our house some 16 years ago, the backyard was, like most Iowa City or American backyards, 90% lawn – mown grass. We soon decided that we wanted to, for aesthetic and mistaken practical reasons, to replace the lawn with a combination of mostly native prairie plants, a vegetable garden, an herb garden, a pond, and a deck. The aesthetic reasons have been born out. It’s pleasant to sit out on the deck in the evening, eating dinner, often with vegetables and herbs from the gardens, listening to the small fountain in the pond and the array of songbirds in the trees and bushes. The practical reasons which proved to be mistaken primarily involved the assumption that once we laid out a free-form web of native prairie plants with gravel paths, it would be low maintenance, self-sufficient, requiring some attention early in the season, but minimal during the summer months. But it has in fact turned out to be much more high maintenance than caring for a traditional lawn. We (and by “We” I mean mostly my wife) have to spend hours each week in the spring, clearing the previous year’s debris; pruning trees and bushes; clearing, turning, and planting the vegetable garden; draining, cleaning, and re-filling and planting the pond. And then throughout the summer we (and by “We” I mean . . .) have to regularly combat the weeds that weren’t supposed to be able to compete with the prairie plants, perennial herbs, or gravel paths. They do compete. And often win. Still, in the evening, as the sun sets, eating dinner on the deck, overlooking the result of our (and by “our” I mean . . .) labor, all seems well worth it.