There is an old Chewa proverb in my country that inspires me every day: “Tikufuna kupatsira ana athu zinthu ziwiri. Choyamba ndi mizu, inayo ndi mapiko.” Translated, it means, “We desire to give two things to our children. The first one is roots, the other is wings.” My name is Dillan Patel, […]

Hello again! For this blog post, I’d like to talk about my leadership project. This summer, I have been working on creating trellising systems for tomatoes, watermelons/pumpkins, and kale/mums. The overall goals for these trellises is to make harvesting easier on both us and the plants, require less human labor […]

One of the most stunning butterflies of all is the Common Blue Morpho (Morpho peleides). It’s popular at the Christina Reiman Butterfly Wing not just because it’s blue, but because it’s a shimmering, iridescent blue that subtly changes depending on the viewing angle. This amazing color isn’t created with pigment–as […]

The middle of the summer in the vegetable garden has a lot of harvesting, weeding, and watering. Gardeners can also do planting! Some of the cool-season crops like lettuce, peas, and broccoli can be planted in mid-summer for a fall harvest to fill the holes left in the garden by […]

The Postman butterfly (Heliconius melpomene) is a species that you can almost always see flitting about in the Christina Reiman Butterfly Wing. Some butterflies live only a week or two but this Central and South American species lives a fairly long time—two to three months. While most butterflies come in […]

Hi everyone, this is Heather with your last installment of the 2015 intern blog. All of a sudden, the summer is almost over! Soon all of the college students will return to Ames, and priorities will shift from summer jobs and bonfires to schoolwork and football games. Sadly, the end […]

Being a musician, it has been fun for me to recruit and enjoy musicians at the Gardens and even perform myself. Building relationships and appreciation with other musicians this summer has shown me the importance of venues like Reiman Gardens. I love performing and can see that love in many […]

I’m back for my third blog post. I’m going to be talking about my future and how Reiman Gardens relates to my major. I started my college career out at DMACC with a business major, then transferred to Iowa State majoring in agricultural studies. It wasn’t till the end of […]

Hi again from Sam the Education Intern. One thing I’ve really enjoyed this summer is the art around Reiman Gardens and the art classes we offer here. I enjoy photography, especially in nature, so this is a great area for myself to practice in! We also have a wide variety […]

Hi, this is Jessica again. No one knows what their future will be like. We have the general route in mind but, like any road trip, we don’t take into consideration all of the pit stops and detours that seem to suddenly spring. This is the same for my future. […]