Lynda Robison pictured in the front yard of her home located at 601 Estelle Street on the far north side of Dysart last Thursday afternoon. Robison’s urban acreage flowers were recently designated ‘blue ribbon flowers of the month’ for August by the local garden club. PHOTO BY RUBY F. MCALLISTER

Sun Courier note: This story is being printed in the Sun Courier as a courtesy to our readers. It was first published in the North Tama Telegraph.

DYSART – The Dysart Garden Club recently named Lynda Robison’s charming urban acreage on Estelle Street as the club’s ‘Blue Ribbon Flowers of the Month’ for August – a designation Robison both welcomes and finds bittersweet as this is the first growing season in more than four decades she’s been without the love of her life, her late husband Dean.

“Dean loved the flowers,” Robison, a member of the Traer-Clutier Class of 1964, said last week Thursday as she led the newspaper on a tour of her winsome, two-acre yard located on Dysart’s far north side. “But he got dementia and what do you do? He just passed away in May.”

For the last 20 years and until his passing this spring, Robison and her husband have lived on what was once the farm of Charlie Helm and later his son Melvin Helm. The stately 1916 white farmhouse with its beautiful, expansive front porch and more than century-old cement siding is situated on the north side of Estelle Street across from Tama-Benton Cooperative. The old farm’s deep lot ends where the agricultural fields – which frame the entire north side of town – begin, giving Robison “the best of both worlds,” she said, “a farm in town.”

Being a former farmstead, the acreage not only boasts a more than century-old farmhouse, it also features several outbuildings including a smokehouse, brooder house, chicken house, and several sheds; the barns lost long ago to time and the elements.

Lynda Robison’s back acreage including her ‘she shed’ – which she mostly uses as a potting shed – photographed on Aug. 15. “This is my favorite view every morning,” Robison said of her picturesque backyard. PHOTO BY RUBY F. MCALLISTER

But one thing the farm did not have when Robison moved in was flowers.

“There were no gardens when we moved here.”

A fact which Robison, who grew up on a farm, quickly began to change.

Today, the space is brimming with beds from the front to the back featuring everything from perennials to annuals – many of which Robison started from seed in her ‘she shed’ which is located directly behind the house.

In addition to flowers, Robison is also an avid vegetable gardener, preserving in some way almost everything she does not quickly consume. But this year, in light of her husband’s passing and having a fairly full basement of canned preserves already, she chose to plant only a few things including one hill of butternut squash, a tomato plant, a seedless watermelon, and some cantaloupe.

A pretty planting of zinnias reach for the sun along the side of Lynda Robison’s 601 Estelle Street home last Thursday afternoon in Dysart. PHOTO BY RUBY F. MCALLISTER

“That one hill went nuts,” Robison said with a chuckle while leaning over the garden fence last Thursday to peer at what looked like the healthiest butternut squash crop to ever come out of Tama County. “The butternut took over. The rain and weather made it explode [with growth]. I picked one that weighed seven pounds.”

Elsewhere in the yard, some flowers were clearly past their bloom being mid August, but most including blue salvia, zinnias, cosmos, celosia, sedum, daisies, goldenrod, and a truly brilliant bush of Russian sage were all in high bloom, attracting countless bees and other pollinators to the yard as part of summer’s coda.

Robison, who is in her late 70s, said she developed her exceptionally green thumb thanks to her mother, the late Orleene Mason who, along with Robison’s father James, raised 11 kids in rural Traer.

“I got my gardening from my mother. Growing up, we were always outside.”

Robison continues to spend much of her days now working outside in various parts of her yard.

One of Lynda Robison’s cats, Daisy Mae, pictured on Thursday, Aug. 15. Miss Daisy Mae was shy, but still interested in the newspaper’s camera work that day. PHOTO BY RUBY F. MCALLISTER

“I like to pull out a five gallon bucket and pull a bucket’s worth [of weeds].”

She also spends time sitting on her front porch enjoying the view – something her late husband also enjoyed – while giving love to one of several farm kitties who call her acreage home.

“[Dean and I] spent hours out here on this porch,” Robison said as she took a seat on said porch last Thursday following the tour.

“I’ve just been loving it here.”

Lynda Robison walks past her home located at 601 Estelle Street on the north side of Dysart on Thursday, Aug. 15. Robison’s flowers were recently designated ‘blue ribbon flowers of the month’ for August by the Dysart Garden Club. PHOTO BY RUBY F. MCALLISTER

A brilliant bush of Russian sage spills out of a bed at Lynda Robison’s urban acreage in Dysart. “I just love the color,” Robison said of the flower’s blooms. PHOTO BY RUBY F. MCALLISTER

PHOTO BY RUBY F. MCALLISTER