By JESSICA DAMIANO, Associated Press

When I was a kid, my aunt and uncle grew tomatoes in plastic buckets lined up like soldiers on the cement patio in their tiny Queens, New York, backyard.

They also grew dozens of vegetables in their 10-by-10 foot patch of soil and installed a pergola they made from green metal fence posts above a picnic table. While it provided much-needed shade, it more importantly supported grapevines that produced enough fruit for their annual homemade vintage.

Space — or the lack of it — doesn’t have to stand between you and a fruitful garden. You just have to be creative.

Start by looking up

Vertical space is a horizontally challenged gardener’s best friend.

This June 21, 2024, image provided by Jessica Damiano shows squash, beans and tomatoes growing vertically in a space-saving Long Island, N.Y. garden. (Jessica Damiano via AP)

String up a trellis, hang baskets or attach planters to a fence or wall. You might be surprised at how much you can grow when you consider the third dimension. Vines, herbs and even strawberries are content climbers or danglers.

Create visual interest by strategically grouping containers in clusters of odd numbers rather than lining them up in straight rows or placing them all separately. Try staggering their heights by perching them on decorative pedestals, overturned crates or stone slabs to draw the eye up and out.

This July 29, 2024, image provided by Jessica Damiano shows a squash plant growing vertically on a trellis on Long Island, N.Y. (Jessica Damiano via AP)

Compact and colorful crops

Of course, size matters. If your space is limited, seek out compact or dwarf varieties of your favorite plants. They’ve been bred to thrive in tight spaces, and many are prolific producers of flowers, fruits or vegetables. These days, it’s easy to grow roses, blueberries, tomatoes, peppers — even apple and fig trees — in containers.

Tall garlic provides a lush backdrop for this small Long Island, N.Y., flower bed on June 19, 2025. Growing herbs, fruit and vegetables in flower beds is a great way to utilize limited space in the garden. (Jessica Damiano via AP)

And don’t sleep on plants that multitask as both beautiful ornamentals and nutritious crops. I’ve grown amaranth, cherry tomatoes and rainbow chard in my perennial beds. Other edibles with attractive foliage or flowers like chives, fancy lettuces and sage would be equally at home among my coneflowers, zinnias and roses. And sweet potatoes make a nice ground cover or trailing vine in a mixed container.

Make the most of a single vegetable bed

If you have a small, designated bed for vegetables, you can maximize your yield by planting a succession of crops throughout the season. Start by planting early-maturing plants like peas, beets, kale and lettuces. Then, after harvesting, replace them with warm-season crops, such as tomatoes, peppers, summer squash and beans. As they fade and fall approaches, use the space for another round of cool-season plants.

This July 3, 2024, image provided by Jessica Damiano shows squash, beans and tomatoes growing vertically in a space-saving Long Island, N.Y. garden. (Jessica Damiano via AP)

Even a narrow strip or window box can feel lush if you plant it in layers. Place tall, upright plants in the back, midsized growers in the middle, and low bloomers in front to create visual depth that can help transform even a balcony or front stoop into your own personal nature retreat.

Jessica Damiano writes weekly gardening columns for the AP and publishes the award-winning Weekly Dirt Newsletter. You can sign up here for weekly gardening tips and advice.

As if ice cream could get any better, the addition of fresh, ripe cherries and chewy, gooey almond paste turns a summer classic into a gourmet delight.

The cherries are simply coarsely mashed, rather than cooked first like most cherry ice creams, preserving their fresh tartness that complements the nutty sweetness of the almond paste chunks sprinkled throughout.

Serve as is, or as a sundae with a dollop of fresh whipped cream, chocolate drizzle, toasted almonds, and, of course, a cherry on top.

Take advantage of ripe cherries at the farmers’ markets right now or, if you miss the window, thaw frozen cherries. If cherries aren’t your thing, raspberries or peaches would also be lovely with the almond flavor. For compressor ice cream makers, simply throw the mixture in right after whisking it together, since it is not heated to dissolve the sugar. But for a frozen canister model, be sure to chill it for at least 2 hours for best results.

Cherry Almond Ice Cream

Serves 6

INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 cup (8 ounces) fresh pitted cherries

2/3 cup + 1 tablespoon granulated sugar, divided

1 cup whole milk

1 pinch salt

3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon almond extract

1 1/2 cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 cup (2.5 oz) chopped almond paste, chilled

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DIRECTIONS

Combine the cherries and 1 tablespoon sugar in a small bowl and mash them with a pastry cutter, potato masher, or scissors until they’re coarsely broken up into small pieces. Chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.
Meanwhile, whisk together milk, salt and 2/3 cup sugar in a medium bowl for 2-3 minutes until the sugar completely dissolves. Stir in the vanilla, almond extract and heavy cream and chill for at least 2 hours or overnight.
Pour the cream mixture into your ice cream maker and run according to the manufacturer’s directions, usually about 25-30 minutes, adding in the chilled cherries and almond paste at the 15-20 minute mark when the ice cream just starts to thicken (so that they don’t sink to the bottom). Serve immediately for a soft-serve consistency, or empty into a chilled container to firm up in the freezer for a couple of hours before serving.

Registered dietitian and food writer Laura McLively is the author of “The Berkeley Bowl Cookbook.” Follow her at @myberkeleybowl and www.lauramclively.com.

Two books that explore the deep flaws in our health care system are top of the pile today, along with fiction set from St. Paul’s Seventh Street to Vietnam. The authors are Minnesotans or have regional connections.

“Because We Must”: by Tracy Youngblom (University of Massachusetts Press, $24.95)

Entering his room, I also entered a new world, one that was shrouded in the unfamiliar: medical specialists and surgeons, sedatives and transfusions, trach and feeding tubes, changes in medications, therapies and difficult diagnoses, long-term care facilities and rehab centers, and Lord knows what else…after that first night, though a stranger there, I made that new world my home. I live there now, in the land of recovery. — from “Because We Must”

(Courtesy of the University of Massachusetts Press)

Tracy Youngblom’s heartbreaking but ultimately hopeful memoir of life after her son Elias’ car crash in 2015 is riveting reading as this Minnesota poet takes us into her family’s life. First, seeing her son lying so broken in the hospital, she wonders whether he will survive. He does, but head injuries lead to the young man’s blindness and a new way of navigating the world. Through medical crises and recovery, Youngblom was there for her son.

On the day of the crash Youngblom, was rushing to finish preparing for a class she was going to teach when she met a uniformed officer at her door, telling her Elias had been in an accident while driving home to Coon Rapids from Fargo. His car had been hit head-on by a drunk driver.

Youngblom thought she was prepared for seeing her son in the hospital, but she wasn’t: “His head was swollen to an unrecognizable size, a small watermelon. Both of his eyes were swollen shut: his eyelids bulged, red and purple with bruising. Dark lines of stitches, along with bruises, crisscrossed his arms and his face, including one crooked, deep gash on his left cheek that met his mustachioed upper lip, twisting it upward…”

Through years of Elias’s rehab, learning Braille and finally living on his own, Youngblom was the one on whom Elias relied with resilience, grace and humor. His mother faced her own challenges about her marriage and religious faith as she fought for her son’s care and coordinated with other family members. Always she tried to strike a balance between wanting to protect Elias while also letting him lead his own life as he became an adult. Now he is married and lives in Fargo where he continues his passion for drum corps music.

Youngblom will read in celebration of winning the University of Massachusetts Press Juniper Prize at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls., in conversation with Lindsay Steffes, winner of the Juniper Prize for her novel “Gichigami.” The prize recognizes outstanding works of literary fiction.

“Who Cares?: The real patient experience”: by Melisssa Winger (Independently published, $29.99)

Melissa Winger has been a patient care advocate since 1997, undertaking the Herculean task of changing the nation’s health care system to one in which the patient is treated as a human being. Her memoir could be a companion to Youngblom’s because they had many of the same experiences under different circumstances.

Winger was an 18-year-old single mother when she gave birth to Evan, who has a rare genetic disorder. He is nonverbal and has endured countless surgeries because of more than 30 medical issues. From the beginning, Winger tried to advocate for her child, but nobody took seriously a young mother who needed help. For instance, when Evan was hospitalized as a baby, trained professionals took care of complicated procedures such as dealing with a feeding tube. But when he was released, Winger was expected to do these procedures herself with no help.

Along with her personal experiences, Winger references studies from reputable organizations that show the twisted mass of regulations and paperwork that knot the vast world of health care, discussing patient safety, medical devices and prescriptions, testing, home care, medical records, emergency care, funding, patient and family-centered care, and vulnerable-adult abuse. Evan now has been diagnosed with acute kidney problems and Winger must continue her often-exhausting fights for the best care available for her son. This book is so fact-filled and clear-eyed that it should have been published by a major publishing house. It should be in the hands of all of us who are potential patients as well as medical professionals.

“Backwashed”: by Pete Gallagher (Beaver’s Pond Press, $21.95)

(Courtesy of Beaver’s Pond Press)

There’s some kinkiness and lots of colorful characters in this novel set in and around St. Paul’s Seventh Street. The twisty plot is so complicated that it’s hard to know who is “playing” whom and why. The main characters are Dion Drury and his bisexual sister, who never learned why their father was killed and why their mother disappeared 20 years earlier. Dion works as a civilian employee of the St. Paul police impound lot at night, and his sister is a bartender at one of two restaurants that are important meeting places in the story. What happened to the siblings’ parents is being investigated by Kady L’Orient, a young cop drawn to Dion while trying to make a name for herself, as well as a police lieutenant with a damaged eye who’s the right-hand man and fixer for “the walrus,” a ward politician who talks like the encyclopedia and is not exactly ethical in his dealings. Add a corpse in the St. Paul sewer system, the sultry owner of one of the restaurants who’s married to the councilman, a big young tow truck driver whose dad was a house painter, and the piano-playing uncle with whom the siblings lived after their parents were gone, and you’ve got a juicy story of corruption, deal-making and secrets  set in familiar places St. Paul readers will enjoy visiting:

” ‘What can I say?’ Evan told her. ‘This is West Seventh Street. The truth takes a little while sometimes.’ ”

“Escaping Limbo”: by Mike E. Elliott (Beaver’s Pond Press, $17.95)

(Courtesy of Beaver’s Pond Press)

Growing up Catholic in St. Paul is almost a literary subgenre, and former St. Paulite Elliott does it right in a coming-of-age story about Francis Paulson and his wild friend Izzy, set in 1968. While never belittling those who take their faith seriously, the author offers humor. For instance, the title comes from a confusing conversation his grieving mother has with the priest after she delivers a stillborn baby. The priest assures her the baby’s soul is “safe in limbo” but when he tries to explain this place, using a Thanksgiving feast as a metaphor, it ends up being about pumpkin pie. Francis, who tells the story looking back on what happened in one year, is an altar boy in the limbo of adolescence. He wants to help Izzy get over the death of his older brother, which has sent Izzy’s father into violent behavior. Meanwhile, Francis is saving money for a canoe trip to northern Minnesota with Izzy while defending his girlfriend Susan from Izzy’s insults. He’s also dealing with his little sister’s fascination with fire and missing his beloved grandmother, founder of the family’s candy factory. This tender story is a tribute to friendship and a young man questioning everything he was taught by his school’s nuns and priest. The author divides his time between Minnesota and Arizona.

“Devil’s Thumb”: by Dan Jorgensen (Speaking Volumes LLC, $19.95)

(Courtesy of Speaking Volumes LLC)

Devil’s Thumb is a rock outcropping in the Black Hills in this third novel by Jorgensen, set in 1925 in and around the mining town of Keystone where Gutzon Borglum is poised to begin carving four presidents’ faces on Mount Rushmore. This isn’t the Wild West anymore, but there’s crime. U.S. Marshal Al Twocrow, the only Native American lawman in the service, investigates two murders and a bootleg operation reported to be linked to gangster Al Capone. The plot is a tribute to women working in the area at the time, including a pilot who helps Twocrow when he needs swift transportation in her biplane, and a reporter who wants to get both sides of the controversy about Borglum’s huge project. She’s a tough woman, not too fazed by being kidnapped in a plot to stop the carving. The story starts slowly but picks up speed as a gang of bank robbers arrive after pulling a heist in Denver. There’s lots of excitement as the marshal and the bad guys meet in an abandoned mine.

The author based this story on his experiences working at two newspapers in the Black Hills area. He was director of public relations at St. Olaf College and Augsburg University before retiring to Colorado in 2013.

“Call Me Speed”: by Dan Faveau (Independently published, $20.99)

Dan Faveau’s second novel set during the Vietnam war (after “Thumbs Up”) is not easy to read, but war isn’t easy. The author, a combat-wounded veteran who served with the 1st Air Cavalry, follows a group of young soldiers as they fight in Vietnam’s jungles and highlands, go on leave and always think about home.

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Speed was a classroom troublemaker and outstanding athlete lauded for his running ability. Although his name is in the novel’s title, his friends are just as important to the plot, including one who stood up to high school bullies and another who escapes farming to become a crack sniper. Horrific scenes of killing enemy soldiers face to face and young bodies thrown out of foxholes by grenades are vividly drawn, as well as the terrible living conditions the men endure as they slog up hills in endless rain with no shelter except their ponchos. Even the conclusion is sad as we see the veterans in old age. This war seems far away now, but Faveau helps us remember the real-life men who suffered and watched their comrades die as soldiers always do in our seemingly endless wars.

BEMIDJI, Minn. — Erik Flowers has frequented Bemidji a time or two.

One of Brainerd’s paid on-call firefighters routinely finds himself in Beltrami County each spring for his day job. So when Flowers volunteered for a day-long firefighting shift in Bemidji in the wake of the severe storm on June 21, he was taken aback by the aftermath as he traveled up Highway 371.

“I was up in Bemidji this spring for a work conference; we go up every year. I’m familiar with the area,” Flowers said. “We got to Walker and the power was still out. I kind of thought, ‘This is a lot bigger than we imagined.’”

A fallen tree and powerline block traffic on Birchmont Beach Road N.E. following an early morning storm on June 21, 2025, in Northern Township, near Bemidji, Minn. Nineteen fire departments and roughly 100 traveling firefighters answered Bemidji’s call for help when Fire Chief Justin Sherwood sought a lifeline in the form of mutual aid. (TJ Rhodes / Forum News Service)

Flowers and the rest of the four-person crew didn’t know what was waiting for them 40 miles north of the halfway point between Bemidji and Brainerd.

“You get into Bemidji and you start seeing the damage from roofs being torn off on so many buildings and the amount of trees on the side of the road,” he said. “You’re just in awe of how much damage there is.”

Flowers’ shock matched that of roughly 100 traveling firefighters who answered Bemidji’s call for help. At about 8 a.m. on June 21, six hours after Category 3 hurricane winds tore the First City on the Mississippi apart, Bemidji Fire Chief Justin Sherwood sought a lifeline in the form of mutual aid.

“We have 10 mutual aid partners around us — Solway, Blackduck, etc.,” he said. “If they have a structure fire, they can request resources from Bemidji. For this event, we opened up intrastate requests so we could receive aid from everywhere. We had 19 departments come to assist us, all the way down to Bloomington and Little Canada.”

In a matter of hours after the storm dissipated, before any power was reestablished or emergency resource centers were posted, firefighters from Bemidji, the surrounding area and Greater Minnesota got their hands dirty in the early phase of a relief effort that will take weeks, if not months or years, to complete.

From gas leaks to structure fires, from the sense of helplessness to faith restoration, the preparation from statewide departments readied firefighters for the unpreparable.

Acting fast

Sherwood went to bed on Friday, June 20, anticipating being woken up with calls.

“You just get that feeling sometimes,” he said. “When you have a major storm, there’s often a structure fire. At minimum, you’re getting alarms. You just know it’s coming.”

Around 2 a.m. on Saturday, as Sherwood began his trek inside Bemidji’s city limits, he quickly learned that it wasn’t an average storm.

All available firefighters in the existing crew of 57 were paged in. Sherwood also said the department’s communications were down.

“I was really proud of my staff, because they had already coordinated dispatch logs,” he said. “They had all of the calls written down on pieces of paper because the dispatchers were so inundated with calls. They were prioritizing those logs on paper, and Chad Hokuf was dispatching rigs over the radio.”

Nineteen fire departments and roughly 100 traveling firefighters answered Bemidji’s call for help on June 21, 2025, hours after the city was damaged by severe storms. (Courtesy of the Bemidji Fire Department)

In the immediate eight hours following the storm, Bemidji firefighters responded to roughly 80 emergency calls. Each rig in the station was deployed to various areas of Bemidji, attending to gas leaks, dangerously fallen power lines and other time-sensitive fixes.

Sherwood was forced to delegate.

On his drive into Bemidji from his home in rural Beltrami County, he called in each city department lead for an emergency meeting at 3 a.m. Sherwood, also the city’s emergency manager, passed off the immediate recovery duties at the fire department to Hokuf.

“It was at that point when we identified the streets that needed to be opened and the injuries and casualties we had,” Sherwood said. “We didn’t have any, thank God. But it was dark, and there wasn’t power, so we didn’t even know what we had to work with.

“When you look at it from an administrator’s point of view, like myself, I was thinking more long term. I knew we couldn’t sustain this pace, and what if the ‘what ifs’ happen?”

At 8 a.m., one of them happened.

Bat signal

Due to a building explosion on the north side of Bemidji near Sanford, the fire department was suddenly strapped for bodies.

In times of desperation, local fire departments can reach out to their mutual aid partners for help. In extreme cases, like Bemidji’s, requests through the Minnesota Intrastate Mutual Aid Plan are formed.

Chiefs from around the state assess their departments to see if they can send a crew where it’s needed on short notice.

Sherwood also reached out to the Minnesota State Fire Chiefs Association for assistance. Hibbing Chief Erika Jankila; Cross Lake Chief Chip Lohmiller; Pequot Lakes Chief Mike Schwankl; Cross Lake Deputy Chief Jory Danielson; Plymouth Chief Rodger Coppa; Brooklyn Park Chief Tim Walsh; Bloomington Deputy Chief Jay Forster; Little Canada Chief Don Smiley; and Brooklyn Center Chief Todd Berg all provided aid to Bemidji in the days following the storm.

Due to the scale of the destruction, several department authority figures were needed.

“I knew our resources were going to be tapped,” Sherwood said. “We couldn’t sustain what we were doing. We pulled the pin in the mutual aid grenade, if you will, and called Blackduck, Solway and Cass Lake. But I also had to be mindful of what their communities had going on. This became a state event.”

Sherwood came away impressed with how quickly they responded to the call to service in northern Minnesota.

Solway Fire Department workers wait for barbecue during during a meal event on June 24, 2025, at the Beltrami County Administration Building. (Sarah Suchoski / Forum News Service)

“I made one phone call to a supervisor at the state fire marshal’s office,” he said. “I told him what I needed, and he said, ‘I got you.’ He told me they had six fire departments signed up for three days each, and if I needed anything else, they’d get it for me. That was done within hours.

“It just blows my mind how fast it all came together. How did they get here that fast? How were they even able to pack that fast? It’s hard to understand, but it makes you so proud of what you do. We’re the state of community.”

While stations from around Minnesota boarded their trucks, a crew in Detroit Lakes was short on bodies.

Mike Hansen, the Detroit Lakes fire chief, didn’t have four people to send to Bemidji. He teamed up with Fergus Falls to provide aid.

“When I called their chief, Ryan Muckow, he said they had the manpower but they were down an engine,” Hansen said. “I told him that we had the engine but we didn’t have the manpower. He sent us two guys and we put them on our engine.”

Hansen is familiar with mutual aid and intrastate requests. He understands that rural towns in Greater Minnesota don’t have the infrastructure to survive the aftermath of the June 21 storm alone.

“I don’t even know if there was a reaction,” Hansen said. “All of us are trained. We know when to call for help, and we know when not to call for help. When one of the other chiefs calls for help, you don’t ask questions. You just do it because you know it’s needed, and you might need it, too, at some point.”

Gas leaks

With an influx of emergency calls rolling through the dispatchers — calls that were being documented on pen and paper, as the town was without power — Bemidji firefighters leaned on their mission statement.

“It’s to protect life, then property, then the environment,” Sherwood said. “Life safety is No. 1. That’s how we prioritize calls. In everything that was done, that was the priority. It wasn’t until the daylight came that we started shifting. … For us, a lot of the life safety things were gas leaks, lines down and collapses.”

In a standard June week, gas leak calls are few and far between. In the 10 days following the storm, Sherwood guessed that Bemidji received 50 to 60 calls about gas leaks.

“We work our way out from the hot zone through our monitoring systems,” Sherwood said. “You have to identify the type of gas — natural gas or propane gas — which have different kinds of gravities. Natural gas is lighter than air and will dissipate, whereas propane gas sinks low. We identify those things and act accordingly.”

Gas leaks can arise from virtually all areas in a community. In the restoration process, more leaks than the original source can be found.

“You think about the amount of wind we had, it moves and shakes things,” Sherwood said. “We had gas leaks on top of Lueken’s and Walmart. That’s where their appliances are. Trees had fallen on power lines, so we took care of those. Then we turn the gas back on and identify more leaks.”

New normal

Since pushing through the immediate recovery phase, Sherwood is turning his department’s attention toward regaining a semblance of regularity.

He is a believer in leading by example. He understands that while some community members will endure an ongoing struggle in the coming months, reestablishing structure in his department is paramount.

“It’s important to say that there are so many community members who weren’t thriving before the storm,” Sherwood said. “They were struggling, whether it be financially or otherwise. At the very least, we need to get people back to a place of familiarity. It’s going to take patience, grace, resiliency, love — a lot of outward stuff.

“From the fire department’s point of view, we’re of the mindset that, right now, we’re in the recovery stage. The recovery items that happen right now don’t involve us unless there’s an injury or something like that. We’re working on recognizing what our new normal is now. … We’re going to continue to support our service organizations here in Bemidji.”

Sherwood has also had time to reflect. In a time where it feels like Bemidji drew the short end of the weather stick, he understands how lucky Bemidjians got with the lack of casualties.

“I think a big part of that is because of the time the storm came,” Sherwood said. “People were at home in their beds or found shelter. The sirens went off and gave people enough of a heads up to retreat somewhere safe. But when you wake up and see the damage the next morning, you expect multiple casualties, whether that’s injury or death.”

As for the visiting firefighters who volunteered their efforts in the days following the storm, Flowers leaned on the unspoken code among first responders.

Firefighters from all over the state came to Bemidji to provide assistance after storms devastated the area in the early morning hours of June 21, 2025. (Courtesy of the Bemidji Fire Department)

“Most firefighters have that deep level of service and a commitment to helping others,” he said. “It’s not constrained to a boundary or a state, or any of that kind of thing. For me, I feel like I was born to serve others.

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“Every time I try to branch out in my career that isn’t paid-on-call firefighting, it always leads back to serving others. I believe stuff like this goes so far beyond the boundaries of our own town in Brainerd.”

It isn’t lost on Sherwood that the town-shaping disaster could take an emotional toll on his crew. He called himself “passionate” in his leadership style, and the response of his counterparts in a time of need reaffirmed his enthusiasm for what he does.

“For them to leave their lives and families, to leave what they had damaged and lost from this storm, all to help other people, I couldn’t ask for anything more out of them,” Sherwood said. “We didn’t just see this with emergency staff; we saw it throughout the community. People came out and assisted their neighbors before they helped themselves. That’s why you can drive down these streets today.”