Baker's heartbeat

            Dad's gravestone at National Cemetery at the Rock Island Arsenal, Rock Island, Ill. When my father, a veteran of World War II, passed away unexpectedly in 1989 he failed to give his five children any idea of where he'd like to be buried.
 My husband, Steve, suggested National Cemetery at the Rock Island Arsenal. It was the perfect choice for Dad, who was proud of his service in the U.S. Navy. He retired as a lieutenant commander, having had served in the Navy's intelligence services during the actual war years. On a recent Sunday my brother and his family came to visit us, and we all decided to visit Dad's grave. I was at the cemetery in May, but that was part of an organized bus trip. In May, we were told to have our driver's licenses ready in case the guards would need identification, but it turned out no one checked the bus riders. That was not the case when I had my brother, sister-in-law and nephew in the car. They are from St. L...

Bulletin boards in a second-grade classroom; there is black fabric on the walls outlined in colorful borders. This is typical of many classrooms in Iowa. School starts in just a few days in most of Iowa's public schools, and a few tips could help parents get the school year off to a strong start. According to scholastic.com, the publisher of books for school-age children, regular bedtime and wake-up routines are to be established ahead of the actual first day, which in this area is Thursday, Aug. 23. This includes reading to the children on a regular basis, perhaps, just before bedtime. Reading aloud is a proven way to raise readers, perhaps the greatest indicator of academic success. In the mornings, it's most important to provide the child breakfast, or to direct the student to free breakfast at school if it is offered. Hungry children do not make ideal students, and there should be no hungry children in a state like Iowa. Other suggestions from Scholastic: * Wa...

                             This is an example of a bulletin board that took two days to build. While most children in Iowa will be starting school next week there's a very good chance that their teachers started preparing for the youngsters almost a month earlier. 
 This is particularly true in the primary grades, where our state's youngest students are learning to read, write, do math and science projects for the first time. 
 In Ankeny, Iowa, second-grade teachers got a jump on the season, where classes are to start Aug. 23. In one elementary school in this fast-growing district, the four teachers all changed classrooms, which meant they had to build new billboards in each room. This would be a dozen billboards or more. Tasks like this preparation take more than 65 hours of time ahead of the school year, and cost each teacher more than $300 out-of-pocket in costs. 
 Each of the four teachers brought...

Japanese beetles loved this part of the yard which includes day lilies and a sunflower grown from seeds acquired free at a highway welcome center in Kansas. It might have been the fourth time I found a Japenese beetle in my thick hair, screamed, grabbed it by my fingers and threw it as far away as I could. Or maybe it was when I was walking down the driveway, holding a dish of hot soapy water, and a Japenese beetle fell from the Linden tree above ... right into it. Score! At a point I decided to blog about several benefits to fighting the Japanese beetles, one at a time. Humor helps when you do a chore you hate. With regrets to David Letterman, I offer ... FUN benefits re: A  beetle fight 9. Tree leaves: When the Japanese beetles make the leaves of your trees look like a spider web, the leaves will fall off your trees, and tidy tree owners will have at lease a month's edge on neighbors who also need, eventually, to rake up leaves. Bonus: The trees will look like they do...

These three Linden trees are packed full of Japanese beetles; they are the favorite "food" of the beetles. The bad news: There is very little a local gardener can safely do about controlling Japanese Beetles, called  "JBs" by three experts I consulted. The good news: The beetles have basically exited a yard in Ames, Iowa, and might be gone from Scott County, Iowa, as early as Aug. 15-16. Experts consulted were the state's entomologist, Dr. Donald Lewis, of Iowa State University, Ames, and his colleague, Dr. Mark Shour, also an entomology professor and with the university's Pesticide and Education Safety Program, part of ISU Extension & Outreach. Richard Jauron, a noted horticulturist and ISU professor of horticulture, also weighed in. According to Lewis, contacted while he was traveling, the JBs were spotty in his yard in Ames, and have already disappeared. Typically the JB season starts in late June in Iowa and ends in mid-August, he added, al...

Okay, I've had it: The worst moment in the war against Japanese beetles was when I found two of them in my hair. That came after aggressively cleaning out landscape areas along our driveway. Or, possibly, when I was knocking the beetles out of our tall sunflowers. Gross! After washing the bugs out and killing them, I'm almost out of patience in this "war." Lately, the beetles have increased their eating range; having started with the hibiscus tree and shrub on the Baker property, they now have attacked the new red Canna plant, the first-time-planted sunflowers, and the day lilies, especially yellow ones. I've taken to stomping on the beetles in the driveway, thereby staving off back pain. Earlier methods were to repeatedly bend over to capture each beetle one-by-one, or to sweep the beetles into a plastic bag, close it tightly and bake it in the hot summer sun. (It appears I'm acting like a dictator when killing off the hated bugs: Think heartless Idi...

Top: My work gloves, a container of hot water with dish soap in it, and one of the hibiscus bushes I'm trying to protect from Japanese beetles. Above: Three buckets of water, with fruit cocktail in them, to help manage the Japanese beetles in the huge American Linden trees that line the driveway. There's a war going on in our front yard. Three American Linden trees line our concrete driveway. Many months of the year, they are majestic, gorgeous trees with a background in the U.S. that dates to the 1750s. American Lindens, alas, are also the preferred food of Japanese beetles. Introduced in the United States in 1916, the beetles  arrived in my yard about 17 years ago. I chose the linden trees on the advice of a local garden expert, never dreaming they would have an enemy like this beetle. Unfortunately the trees are now about 25-30 feet tall, so most chemical prevention applications are not feasible. Plus, I prefer to address this issue in a way that does not affect ...