In Iowa: Of gardens and coloring books

I've been spending a lot of time in gardens lately.

Some of this is for work, and some is for my garden at home, which is something of a jungle. I bought the house earlier this year, and the former owner apparently just let the substantial amount of vegetation in the yard grow as it pleased.

With a lot of help, the rampant volunteer mulberry trees have been brought under control, and I'm slowly reining in the towering patches of ornamental grass that obscured my garage. This has involved many evenings spent pulling grass up by the roots and being covered from head to toe in a fine layer of dirt.

For all its overgrowth and hassle, however, the garden has benefits. Pulling weeds offers a certain amount of catharsis, and early in the spring I harvested some surprise strawberries and asparagus.

The many beds of perennial flowers are beautiful, even if most are growing in random areas in the middle of the grass.

My office desk is just a bit less stressful with bouquets from my garden next to my computer.

I admit, for the most part, I'm lucky in the work-stress department. My co-workers who cover cops, courts and politics deal with a lot more unpleasantness than I do as a features reporter. The features team generally writes about food and music and interesting people rather than shots fired or political debates.

Still, deadlines and other work pressures have a way of raising blood pressure. So lately, whenever I have a chance, I've found a garden to write about. One of those stories, on the Colonies in Bloom program in Amana, is in today's paper in the Home section.

Last week's Home section featured Gaia's Peace Garden in Iowa City. Gardner Blair Frank told me the space he and his wife Mary Kirkpatrick transformed from a vacant lot into a public oasis is meant to be a place of healing.

Sitting and talking with him among the bee balm and creeping thyme, I could see what he meant.

There were plenty of weighty topics I could have written about in this column. I originally planned to talk about my post-Women's World Cup dismay when I read about pay disparities between men and women in the sport. Maybe I'll tackle that another month.

Honestly, after reading news this week about yet another mass shooting, Ku Klux Klan marches in South Carolina and other such cheerful topics, I just wanted to take a break from the seriousness and the angst and the think pieces.

So this month's column is in celebration of gardens, and the hope that we all have time to sit in one now and then. If gardens aren't your thing, I hope you can find an emotional equivalent.

Earlier this week, I interviewed participants in a coloring book club, for a story for next month. Intricately designed coloring books for adults, in case you hadn't heard, are all the rage right now.

During our interview, club members sat together around a table and chatted while coloring away. It was peaceful, they said. I took a book home to give it a try and found they were right. Now I think I'll head back out to the garden.