The West Chicago Garden Club

By Keith Letsche

Keith Letsche takes a break on his newly complete log-and-plank bench.

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” Robert Frost once wrote about winter. And not much else in a garden either, he could have added. And so, when Mother Nature finally let the West Chicago Garden Club crew into the Kruse House garden in mid-April after two successive weeks of snow and cold weather, the place had all of the marks of winter’s ravages—a litter of fallen branches, topple trellises, and, of course, the beginnings of a hearty crop of new weeds under last year’s debris.

The crew went to work immediately. Billie, Barb Darrah, and Jan spent the day cutting last year’s growth and pulling weeds. Keith reconstructed one of the log-and-plank benches that had rotted away. And Kerry removed all of the dirt from the rustic planter box next to the garage so that the rotted-out bottom boards could be replaced. All of the crew’s energies were focused on knocking the garden into basic shape early this year for the opening on May 12th of the city-wide Year of the Butterfly celebration, for which the Kruse House Garden is one of the sites where artist-designed butterflies will be displayed. .

Mark Luther, Dick Darrah, and Kerry Perry putting up stakes for artists’ butterflies to be displayed in the Kruse House Garden for the Year of the Butterfly celebration.

On April 29th a crew of Mark Luther, Dick Darrah, and Kerry Perry began putting up the stakes for the butterfly exhibit. With one more work day and warmer weather, the garden will finally be ready for the butterflies–both the natural kind and the artist-created ones.  Come out to the garden and enjoy both!

Photos taken at Kruse Garden by Billie Childress

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