Cemetery Iris

Isaac's stone in Neelands

The day that I first found Isaac Werner's grave in Neeland's Cemetery there were iris planted at the base of the stone.  Sometime later the iris tubers were removed.  (See "Finding Isaac's Grave," 1-13-2012 in the blog archives.)  We had a monument company correct the sinking and aligning of the stone and its separate levels, so the tubers may have been removed in that process.  Also, the cemetery board did a wonderful job of installing new fencing and grooming the grounds, and the old tubers may have been removed during that renovation.  I do wish I had been present when the tubers were removed, for I would have rescued the old iris roots and planted them at the farm as a remembrance of Isaac.

Photo by Lyn Fenwick

Iris were a popular flower to plant around grave stones in old cemeteries, primarily because they survive without watering and send up their delicate blooms each spring without any gardener's attention.  The primary threat to the continued blooming of iris is blowing dirt, which gradually covers the tubers.  Blowing sandy loam soil is an ever-present condition in the area where Isaac claimed his homestead!  The tubers are not killed, however, and removing the soil or digging up the tuber and replanting it with the roots and bottom half of the tuber placed in the soil and the top of the tuber exposed will nearly always bring the iris back to bloom.

Photo by Lyn Fenwick

I am a lazy gardener, so these undemanding flowers suit my personality perfectly.  Parts of the country, where winter arrives later and spring arrives earlier, allow re-blooming iris to produce flowers in both spring and fall.  That is when I fell in love with iris.  My mother loved her iris, but their short blooming period did not satisfy me.  Enjoying their flowers in both spring and fall won me over, and I began my collection.  Unfortunately, the tubers I dug from my collection to plant at the farm bloom only in the spring, although they are re-blooming varieties and have thrived with only the opportunity to bloom once a year.  I love them anyway.  Perhaps spring seems to arrive move quickly the older I get.  I am sharing photographs of some of my iris currently in bloom.

Photo by Lyn Fenwick

I wonder what color the iris on Isaac's grave were.  Most of all, I wonder who planted the iris around the base of his stone.  My great grandparents, George and Theresa Hall, were friends, and they were caregivers of him in their home for a short period during his final illness.  Perhaps Theresa and her daughters planted the iris.  Or, perhaps it was his neighbor, Isabel Ross, whom he always called Mrs. Ross, a divorced lady who claimed her homestead as a single woman.  His journal gave no hint of a romance, but his many kindnesses to her and her children may have caused her to feel a fondness for her bachelor neighbor.  Maybe the ladies who were members of the Farmers' Alliance, in which Isaac played such an active role, planted the iris, or mothers of the school children who appreciated Isaac's constant efforts to keep the school house in good repair.  Whoever planted the iris, it makes me feel glad that someone cared enough to decorate Isaac's grave.

Earthen Prairie Homes

Isaac described the sandy loam soil of his claims as "light blow-sand," a description that would seem to indicate soil incapable of holding together in the rectangles of sod used to build homes or of supporting cave-like dugout walls and roof, yet these structures are well documented in his community.  It was obviously the mat of prairie grasses with their strong, dense roots that held the soil together for use in construction of the rude homes built by settlers.  The sod having been stripped from the soil long ago, we find it hard today to imagine the sturdy earthen structures of our ancestors.

 

 

When Isaac resumed writing in his diary in 1884, he had lived on the Kansas prairie for six years.  By then he had built a wooden house of two stories with a basement room and a cellar for storing his potatoes, grains, and garden produce like melons, turnips, and peanuts.  However, in his early years on the prairie he lived in dugouts.  His journal mentions two different dugouts, abandoned by 1884.

 

 

His wooden house was atypical among his nearest neighbors.  Brothers Will and Felix Goodwin living just to the south of him across the Stafford-Pratt County line lived in a dugout.  Will had a small dugout, and when Felix joined him in 1884, Isaac "staked off Will Goodwin's new residence" and commenced fitting on Will Goodwin's side boards...hanging door, making table..." and finally "set roof on Will Goodwin's new dugout," completing the larger dugout to accomodate both brothers.  In 1885 when Jesse Green's family moved to the claim just to the east of Isaac, they built a soddy, and Isaac went to Larned with Jesse to buy the Iron Board Roofing Paper to finish the soddy's roof.  That same year Isabel Ross staked her claim just east of Isaac's timber claim.  Isaac met with her to discuss building her soddy, but "so much advising and different architecture about, I glad to escape the job."  Tousley became her contractor, but Isaac worked on building her soddy, from top to bottom--staking the dimensions, making the door and window frames, shingling the roof, and digging her well.  George and Nancy Henn lived in a soddy just to the north of Isaac's timber claim, and Persis Vosburgh, another single woman whose homestead was just to the west of Isaac's claim, lived in a dugout. 

There were wooden houses in the community, but Isaac's closest neighbors, as well as many other early homesteaders who arrived on the treeless prairie, took advantage of the materials at hand to build their earthen homes. 

The images used in this post are from the collection of Old Stafford County Pictures at the Stafford County Historical and Genealogy Society, available on CD at the museum.

The Santa Fe Trail Center near Larned, Kansas, has recreated both a dugout and a sod house for visitors to experience what living in these prairie homes was like.  Visit the Santa Fe Trail Center on facebook or see http://www.santafetrailcenter.org/. 

Remember to click on the images for larger viewing.

  

Isaac By My Side

Most writers will tell you that their characters, fictional or real, will begin to inhabit their waking lives, even when they are not writing.  Sometimes the characters will invade their dreams.  For the past few days, Isaac has joined me in the Kansas summer heat as I dig goat head stickers!

 

From 1878 when Isaac arrived on the Kansas plains to claim his homestead until 1886 Isaac was without a horse.  His journal is filled with references to his ongoing battle with sun flowers and sand burrs, and most of the time his only weapon was a hoe.  To get the benefit of better tools, he had to trade his own labor to borrow a neighbor's horse and plow.  In August of 1885 he wrote, "...up to Stimatze about getting final 1 horse plowing in 6 acre timber's [timber claim's] sandburrs in exchange for work."  Apparently Isaac was not able to barter his labor with Stimatze, for the next day he wrote, "...about done with tall sun flowers and sand burrs...(each tree is hoed).

I'm not certain whether Isaac was battling what local people call Mexican sand burrs--a small round burr covered with countless stickers--or what we call goat head stickers--a hard seed shaped vaguely like a goat's head with a single, long sharp sticker.  What I am currently battling are the goat head stickers.  That is work enough, so I am presently ignoring the grassy clumps of burrs growing in the same area. 

The challenge for me is digging the entire plant and carefully lifting it into the trash can without knocking any of the stickers off to hide in the dirt and repopulate the area I just dug.  When the trash can is filled, I take the contents to be safely burned.  Otherwise, the plants will dry up but the tough sticker seeds will drop off and germinate wherever they were dumped.

It's hot, dry and windy in Kansas right now, so I was outside this morning before sunrise, an empty trash can beside me and a garden fork in my hands.  The birds were serenading me, and the flies were biting as if I were the morning smorgasbord.  Sandy loam soil can look like a child's sand box, but in dry weather it can also take on the hardness of plaster of Paris, so the previous evening my husband had watered the area where I planned to dig, and it was just right for jabbing the garden fork underneath the central portion of the plant and lifting the root section.

The objective is to reach down below the stems to the actual root and pull the entire plant out of the soil, leaving nothing left to regrow.  Sometimes I find an old mother plant, nothing much left of her but the dry skeleton of her branches radiating like spokes of a wheel in a 3' or 4' span.  Her dry carcass must still be dug and lifted with special care to avoid dropping the dried seeds clinging to the stems.  My spiteful pleasure comes in digging all of her progeny clustered around the span of her reach, destroying everything she spent her life creating.  The truth remains that dig as I will, I know that the soil contains more seeds waiting to germinate as soon as my back is turned.

The plants are actually rather pretty, with delicate, almost fern-like leaves and tiny yellow flowers.  The circular pattern of the stems is highlighted with a peachy-orange color, the plant spreading discretely close to the ground where the mower blade will pass over without harm.  Trying to rid yourself of them by plowing, as Isaac seems to have done, only turns the seeds into the soil, unless the plowing is done before the seeds set.

As the sun climbs on the horizon and the temperature rises, I am glad to take Isaac with me to my computer as I write this post.  Tomorrow morning I will be back outside doing battle with the goat head stickers, and for many mornings to come, I fear.  I know I can defeat them, for our lawn is finally free of them--although I must be vigilant for those that we have planted by tracking the stickers into the grass on the bottoms of our shoes.  The work I am facing now is the result of my own negligence for having ignored that area of the farmyard the past two years while I researched and wrote about Isaac.  It's only fair that I take him with me outside every morning to face the digging and bending and pricks of my fingers and sweat and bites of the flies.  The monotony of the chore is abated by Isaac's company as I reflect on his life on the prairie and all the work he too did by hand.  He used a hoe for his digging, but I think he would have had better success with a garden fork!