I don’t know about you but I am not sorry to say farewell to August this year.

We’ve had day after day of triple-digit temperatures (hitting 107 at one point) and only one inch of rain this month. By this point in an Oklahoma summer, I’ve usually given up on the idea that I’m going to accomplish much out in the garden.

August is typically when I stop trying to bend the garden to my will. I water what absolutely needs me, keep the container plants alive, harvest what’s still producing (if anything), and otherwise let Mother Nature do what she will.

And yet, when I look back over the past few months, this has been a memorable summer garden with lots of wins.

The Plant I Didn’t Know I Was Going To Fall in Love With

If there has been one star of my garden this summer, it has been blue vervain (Verbena hastata).

The seeds came to me from a gardening student in our Online Gardening Academy™ community that I help facilitate for my job with joegardener®. Thank you, Jennifer G!

After about 15 years of growing all kinds of plants, I didn’t think it was possible for a new plant to completely charm me the way this one has. But blue vervain did.

Its tall, branching flower spikes that bloom all summer are covered in tiny purple flowers that open gradually from the bottom up, giving the plant this airy, almost candelabra-like look.

But one of my favorite things about it is when those tiny petals fall, the long, lance-shaped leaves catch them. I kept finding little purple petals cupped in the leaves beneath the flowers, like the plant was collecting its own confetti.

And then there was everything that found the vervain.

Bees and wasps were constantly working the flowers. And bees slept in groups grasping the flower spikes at night. I find them nearly every morning just like this.

Green lynx spiders hunted among the leaves too. One day I found three of those spiders at once! Look at this gal lying in wait. <Shiver>

I also found wavy-lined emerald moths with bits of purple floral camouflage. Wavy-lined emerald moth caterpillars (Synchlora aerata) are tiny masters of disguise. They snip off bits of flowers, petals, and other plant material and attach them to their bodies as camouflage, essentially dressing themselves in whatever plant they're feeding on. As the plant material wilts, they may replace it with fresh pieces. They really are one of the garden's most delightful little visitors.

Butterflies of all sizes came for nectar. And finally, a common buckeye showed up. That was especially satisfying because buckeyes were one of the reasons I planted blue vervain in the first place.

It’s a host plant for their caterpillars. I haven’t found any eggs or caterpillars yet, but I’ll take the adult buckeye stopping by for nectar as a very good start.

My Pipevine Butterfly Story Comes Full Circle

This summer brought the return of the pipevine swallowtails!

I started wooly dutch pipevine from seed specifically for pipevine swallowtail caterpillars and this summer I found several groups of eggs on it. I brought a few caterpillars into my butterfly habitat to raise because I noticed that all the caterpillars that were hatching were disappearing fast. Their chance of survival turns out to be pretty slim.

Most of the caterpillars that hatched outdoors were presumably becoming meals for the many predators that share the garden. That’s ecology, too, even when it’s not the outcome I’m rooting for

But one of the caterpillars I brought inside has now emerged as a beautiful adult butterfly and released back into the wild.

Growing the plant, finding the eggs, watching the caterpillars develop and finally seeing the butterfly emerge is exactly the kind of experience that keeps me planting host plants year after year.

Speaking of Butterfly Raising - My Trip to Euchee Butterfly Farm

But one of my biggest highlights happened away from my own backyard when I finally got out from behind my desk and visited Euchee Butterfly Farm in Leonard, Oklahoma.

The farm raises both native Oklahoma butterflies and tropical species, and getting to walk among so many butterflies at once was a nature photographer’s dream. In addition to all the native Oklahoma butterflies, I encountered Great Mormons, rice paper butterflies, owl butterflies and Great Eggflies, among others in the tropical house. I got an up-close look at butterfly species I’d never encounter simply wandering around my Oklahoma garden.

What interested me just as much as the butterflies was the work happening behind the scenes. The farm is home to the Learning Center at the Euchee Butterfly Farm, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the lives of Native people, plants and pollinators. Its work has included Tribal Environmental Action for Monarchs (TEAM), which brought seven Oklahoma tribes together to restore monarch habitat on tribal lands, and the Tribal Alliance for Pollinators (TAP), a Native-led effort helping tribes restore native grasslands and the culturally important plants and pollinator habitat they support.

The Learning Center also runs Natives Raising Natives, which provides tribal members with training, supplies and support to raise butterflies as a source of sustainable economic development while creating hands-on opportunities for Native youth to learn about science, agriculture and conservation.

I went expecting to be delighted by butterflies, and I certainly was. But I left just as interested in the much bigger story of native plants, habitat restoration, education and Native-led conservation happening right here in Oklahoma.

Founder Jane Breckinridge has built something that connects butterfly conservation, native plants, education and economic opportunities in a way I hadn’t encountered before.

And this isn’t the last you’ll hear about Jane and her team at the farm. I’m excited that she’ll be joining us on the joe gardener® Show podcast sometime this fall, where we’ll get to dig much deeper into her work.

Bunnies Stole the Show

There was plenty of other wildlife around this summer, including a bunny regular. One little cottontail in particular has been hanging around since spring, and a Substack Note I shared about it unexpectedly took off. Apparently I’m not the only one who enjoys seeing what the garden bunnies are up to.

Tomatoes, Pickles and the Edible Side of Summer

The vegetable garden had its moments, too.

My tomatoes did especially well early in the season, before Oklahoma turned the heat all the way up. I grew some absolutely enormous Cherokee Purple tomatoes this year, the kind that require a photo before you’re willing to slice into them.

I saved lots of seeds from this monster so I can grow out more next year. It made some incredible tomato and mayo sandwiches!

And all the cucumbers I grew from seed eventually became garlic dill pickles.

This summer I shared a garlic dill pickle recipe over on the CanningCrafts website showing that pickles don’t have to be green. In fact, I mostly canned white or cream colored cukes this year and wrote about it.

Trust me, non-green cucumbers are much easier to find in that jungle of green foliage when summer growth really takes off.

While Summer Winds Down, Fall Is Already Starting

Even though the garden outside looks tired, there’s a whole new season beginning under my grow lights.

I’ve started Salanova lettuce, giant purple mustard, onions, broccoli and Swiss chard. My fall garlic is ordered and waiting for planting time. I’m also restarting nasturtiums, sweet alyssum and marigolds, three flowers I love having around once the worst heat finally breaks.

Tending to those tiny seedlings makes looking out at a sun-scorched August garden almost bearable.

But the project I’m most excited about isn’t really about vegetables at all.

I’m Growing a Dreaming Garden

This fall, I’m beginning what I’ve started thinking of as my Dreaming Garden.

I’ve become fascinated by plants with long histories and folklore surrounding sleep, dreams and altered states of consciousness, and I’m curious about what it would look like to gather some of those plants together into a dedicated container garden for sleep support and dream enhancement.

So I’ve started seeds for valerian, lemon balm, wild lettuce, wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) and European vervain (Verbena officinalis), along with another round of passion vine.

European vervain became especially intriguing after my experience with blue vervain this summer. I started reading about its long association with folklore, ritual and dreams and thought, well, apparently I’m growing vervains now.

I already have plenty of mugwort growing here, along with yarrow and chamomile, so those will join the collection too. And although lavender and I have a long and rather unsuccessful history together in this climate, I may be foolish enough to try it one more time.

By August, the garden has shown you what worked, what didn’t, what lived, what got eaten, and what completely surprised you. And while everything outside looks a little exhausted, I’m already surrounded by seed packets and seedlings and excited about what I want to grow next.

Including a garden just for dreaming. I’ll keep you posted on that one.

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Hi there! If you enjoy putting back home grown produce at all, I have a special treat for you this month.

I’ve been collaborating with my friend Alison at CanningCrafts for several years now, and our shared projects are always such a fun mix of gardening and preserving.

Over the years, Alison has sent me quite a few of her hand-drawn label designs to pair with things I’ve made from the garden, which I then photograph and contribute to her blog. I’ve also written gardening articles and contributed nature photography over there, much like the things I share here on Substack and over on my website, Toad & Sage.

Our latest canning collaboration is Blueberry Basil Infused Vinegar, inspired by a Ball canning recipe.

For this one, Alison sent me the recipe and her labels, and I made the vinegar in my own kitchen so I could photograph the whole process. It’s very tasty, I also came up with some delicious ways to actually use it, because once you have a beautiful jar of blueberry basil vinegar sitting on your counter, naturally the next question is: now what do I do with it?

You’ll find all of that in the article over on the CanningCrafts blog here.

And Alison made this ridiculously cute printable recipe card that you can download and tuck into your own recipe collection.

DOWNLOAD THE PRINTABLE RECIPE CARD

Then hop over to the full article for photos, instructions and ideas for putting your blueberry basil vinegar to good use:

If you enjoy canning or preserving at all, her site is worth exploring. In fact, it may be one of the cutest preserving blogs on the internet. She has so many recipes and absolutely lovely hand-designed labels for jams, jellies, pickles, sauces, infused vinegars, honeys, spice rubs, and all sorts of other homemade things. I even use some of her designs for my dried herb and spice blends.

When the garden doesn’t grow everything you need…

I don’t actually grow blueberries. Blackberries, yes. Lots of them. Blueberries, not so much. Maybe I will give them a try someday.

And while I love making things from what I grow myself, I’m also a big believer in supporting local growers. When I want fruit or produce that isn’t coming out of my own backyard, I look for local farms and U-pick orchards instead.

But when the blackberries are coming out of my own garden, low-sugar jam is still one of my favorite things to make with them:

MY LOW-SUGAR BLACKBERRY JAM RECIPE

There’s something very satisfying about seeing jars lined up on the shelf filled with things you grew, picked locally, or made yourself. And you have to admit, an adorable little hand-drawn label from an artist makes them even better.

Go visit CanningCrafts and take a look around. Just be warned: you may suddenly feel compelled to put these cute labels on every jar and bottle in your house. 😊

Did you can or preserve anything this year from your garden or a local grower? Share in the comments!

Coming Soon - Garlic Dill Pickles!

June is National Pollinator Month in the United States. For gardeners, Pollinator Month is essentially a month-long reminder that the work we do in our gardens matters.

And while I’ve spent years growing food in my backyard, that’s not what first comes to mind when I think about my garden today.

When I started gardening, my focus was entirely on vegetables. I loved the idea of growing my own food, stepping outside to gather ingredients for dinner. I still do. There is something deeply satisfying about growing food for yourself and your family.

But somewhere along the way, my passion changed a bit.

As I spent more time in the garden, and grew more plants, I began noticing the insect visitors. Yes, that meant lots of tiny critters doing damage to my plants but as I researched these “pests” as I called them back them, I actually fell in love with them and now consider them partners.

Over time, the garden became more than a place to grow food. It became a place to observe life.

Today, while I still grow vegetables and herbs, much of my gardening is done with wildlife in mind. The plants I choose aren’t just for me. They’re for the countless insects, birds, amphibians, and other creatures that share this space.

Over the years I’ve written about many of the simple ways gardeners can support pollinators and other beneficial insects:

🐝 Leave nesting habitat for native bees by preserving patches of bare soil, hollow stems, and brush piles.

🦋 Grow host plants for butterflies and moths, not just nectar plants. Adult butterflies need flowers, but their caterpillars need specific plants to survive.

💧 Provide shallow water sources where insects can safely drink.

🚫 Reduce or eliminate pesticide use whenever possible.

🍂 Leave stems, seed heads, and leaf litter standing through winter to provide shelter for overwintering insects.

These practices may not always produce the tidiest garden, but they create something far more valuable and that’s habitat.

If you’re looking for ways to support pollinators this season, here are a few articles from my archives that might inspire you.

Host Plants: Feeding the Butterflies

When it comes to pollination, butterflies may not be as efficient bees, but they are certainly among the most beloved visitors to the garden. One of the best ways to support them is by planting the host plants their caterpillars require.

If you’d like to learn more, you might enjoy these articles I shared based off my experiences in my backyard garden.

» Growing pipevine from seed for pipevine swallowtail caterpillars

» Growing Passionflower vine for the Gulf fritillary butterfly

These are just a few examples. Host plants provide something nectar alone cannot: a place for butterflies to complete their life cycle.

Milkweed: More Than Monarchs

When people think of milkweed, they usually think of monarch butterflies.

Monarchs certainly deserve the attention, but milkweed supports far more than a single species. Over the years I’ve photographed milkweed bugs, milkweed beetles, tussock moth caterpillars, native bees, wasps, hoverflies, and countless other insects visiting, eating, or utilizing these plants in some way.

That’s what inspired me to write about milkweed’s super power as a biodiversity plant. It serves as a reminder that when we plant for one species, we often end up supporting dozens more.

» Milkweed’s Super Power | More Than Monarchs Rely On this Plant

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A Different Way to Think About Wasps

Few insects are as misunderstood as wasps.

Many gardeners are surprised to learn that numerous wasp species are pollinators, predators of garden pests, or both. While writing for my friend Alisons’ gardening blog over at CanningCrafts, I shared some of the reasons I have learned over the years that wasps deserve a second look and why they play an important role in healthy ecosystems.

The more closely I observe insects, the more I find that many of our fears come from not understanding what we’re seeing.

» Wasps: the Unsung Heroes of the Garden

Taking Habitat One Step Further

Eventually, my interest in pollinators led me beyond individual plants and insects and toward a larger question: How can an entire yard function as habitat?

That journey led me to create a Certified Wildlife Habitat through the National Wildlife Federation. The certification process encouraged me to think about food, water, cover, places to raise young, and sustainable gardening practices as interconnected pieces of a larger ecosystem.

What began as a vegetable garden gradually became a place where wildlife could find refuge. And that’s what Pollinator Month means to me now.

» Here are the steps I took to certify my garden and property as a wildlife habitat.

And finally, before I sign off, I want to acknowledge that June is also Pride Month.

One of the things I love most about nature is that it’s full of diversity, in color, form, behavior, and life itself. Every flower, insect, bird, and creature has its own role to play in the ecosystem, and together they create something far more beautiful than any one of them could alone.

I made the flower rainbow pictured below using blooms gathered from my garden. It felt like a beautiful way to honor the spirit of what Pride stands for.

Happy Pride Month, friends. 🌈💐

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**A quick note: all of these photos are mine, taken in my garden, and some are artistically edited by me with PhotoShop. They were not created or altered in any way with AI. Just sayin…

There was a time when people used flowers to carry coded messages. In the Victorian Language of Flowers, each bloom meant something different, and households kept guidebooks for deciphering floral code. A rose meant love just as it still does today, which is why every February for Valentine’s Day we reach for roses.

But I think there are other flowers that are even more romantic. For example, Love-in-a-Mist (Nigella damascena) might be even more romantic and a better way to convey the complexities of love.

So you probably won’t find Love-in-a-mist at your local flower shop. But you can grow it yourself, and (depending on where you are) right now may be exactly the time to sprinkle nigella seeds into cool soil.

It’s extremely unusual looking. The flower hovers inside a halo of thread-like, finely divided bracts — which is where it gets its name — because the bloom looks as though it’s suspended in mist.

Its classic color is cornflower blue, though you can also find it in white, pale pink, lavender, and deep indigo. The petals have an almost watercolor quality to them.

Love-in-a-mist has also gone by other names like Love-in-a-puzzle, Devil in the Bush, Jack in Prison, and Love-tangle.

It’s an old soul in the world of flowers. It’s been cultivated since at least the 16th century and was a staple of cottage gardens.

In the Victorian Language of Flowers, it symbolized delicacy, embarrassment, and perplexity. When included in bouquets, it was often translated as “kiss me” or “you puzzle me.”

It’s not bold like a rose, I think it’s more complex and has an ethereal quality to it. Maybe the Victorians understood that love isn’t always simple. Sometimes it is confusing and beautiful and fleeting all at once.

I love that this is one of those flowers that gets going while all the other flowers in the garden are still just working on their leaves. You can direct sow it as soon as the soil can be worked since it doesn’t appreciate transplanting because of its taproot. It prefers full sun and tolerates frost but fades once the heat sets in. Love-in-a- mist self-seeds readily, returning year after year with very little effort from you.

And once the blooms are spent it doesn’t just fade and drop petals like a rose. It goes to seed in the most fabulous way, which makes me think about the natural arc of love and how it changes over time. Not growing less beautiful. Maybe less dramatic and flashy, but more interesting.

The seed pods of this flower are so weird! In fact, I think I might love them nearly as much as the flowers themselves.

I started growing Love-in-a-Mist a few years ago for one simple reason: I wanted to photograph it up close. I was drawn to that strange, alien-looking bloom and I thought it would make for some interesting photos. It’s a flower that practically begs to be turned into art.

One of my hobbies is using my photos to create art pieces. I would love to be able to paint IRL, but alas, I was just not gifted with that talent. So instead I use my photos and a few digital editing skills I’ve picked up over the years to create what I would paint if I could. Below are some images of Love-in-a-mist where I’ve layered texture and painterly effects over my original photographs to create images that I wanted to look more like a painting.

This Valentine’s Day, I find myself less drawn to roses and their symbology for traditional romantic love and more to this unique bloom. Love-in-a-mist is a flower that reminds us to celebrate love in all of its forms.

Notes & Sources:

1. The Complete Language of Flowers: A Definitive and Illustrated History by Theresa S. Dietz

2. The Old Farmers Almanac: Flower Meanings: The Language of Flowers

3. The Old Farmers Almanac: Love-in-a-Mist (Nigella) Flower: How to Grow & Care for This Romantic Annual

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I’ve spent the past two months hibernating and catching up on my reading. I finished 11 books in December and then 11 more in January, which is insane, I know. But out of all of those, there is one that still occupies my heart and mind completely, and that’s Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague by Maggie O’Farrell.

I finished the book a few weeks ago and then went and saw the Oscar-nominated movie in the theater with my husband and a few of my closest friends. The five of us have formed a small book club. Some of us read the book, others didn’t, but what matters is it’s a great excuse to get together, whether that’s to actually discuss the book, to see the movie, or just go get margaritas!

I was captivated the entire way through the book. But Hamnet the movie absolutely wrecked me.

The story is an exploration of romantic intimacy and how a relationship is altered by grief and time. It also explores the notion that sometimes art and creativity are the only ways through a great loss.

Twice I was brought to tears in the book, but in the film I lost count. My friend sitting to my right was just as touched by it, and for much of it, there were tears streaming down our faces, as we both tried not to break down into actual sobs.

When the credits rolled, we all just kind of sat there in silence for a minute, emotionally destroyed. But I also felt devastated that it was over and that I had to step out of that world.

While Hamnet is speculative fiction inspired by the death of William Shakespeare’s young son and the way that grief may have shaped his writing of Hamlet, for me, the story was really about his wife Agnes.

I was especially drawn to her connection to the natural world and the way she moves through liminal spaces, especially those between life and death.

Both the book and the film are heartbreaking and beautiful, and don’t ask me to decide which I thought was better. I loved them both equally but in different ways.

Inevitably, in the film some things were lost in adaptation. We don’t get as much of Agnes’s role as a medicine woman in her community. And the absolutely brilliant section of the book detailing the spread of the plague is compressed and handled differently.

But what is preserved is Agnes’ gift as a clairvoyant and a healer fluent in the language of herbs, her deep intuition, and how she is viewed by some in her village as a forest witch. Oh, and she has a hawk, and I was so delighted to see that bit of storyline make it into the movie.

In contrast to her playwright husband, who masters words on the page, Agnes’ language is that of the forest, of spirit and memory, and of plant medicine.

The Plants of Hamnet

Throughout the story, there are many plants that Agnes uses, and I recognized many that I grow and work with myself - comfrey, rosemary, chamomile, valerian, feverfew, rue, hyssop, and yarrow. She also turns to chickweed, borage, bindweed, rhubarb, St. John’s wort, and rose hips for many medicinal uses. Plants show up in the story as remedies and protection, but also as the keepers of the memories she holds on to of her deceased mother who was also a healer.

But I didn’t walk away from Hamnet just thinking about medicinal plant use. What stayed with me was something I picked up on in the book as well as the movie: her recitation of herbal charms while crafting her medicine.

For example, Agnes uses mugwort as part of a healing poultice, and as she does she recites a charm her mother taught her. It was one I recognized immediately as an incantation drawn from The Nine Herbs Charm or the Nigon Wyrta Galdor. It’s a part of the Lacnunga, a 10th century manuscript of medical recipes, charms, and prayers written in Old English, Latin, and other languages.

In one scene, Agnes chants it with her brother as a way to remember their mother. In another, she repeats it with her children. The charm is this:

Remember, Mugwort, 
what you brought to pass, 
what you readied, 
at Regenmeld. 
You’re called Una, 
that most ancient plant. 
You defeat three, you defeat 30, 
you defeat venom, you defeat air-illness; 
you defeat the horror who stalks the land.

The horror who stalked the land at this time was the Bubonic Plague, and it had found its way to Agnes’ home and her children.

Historically, charms like this were meant to protect against pestilence, plague included. But what struck me wasn’t the medicinal function. It was the way these charms were spoken directly to the plant asking it to remember when it once showed its power and begging it to do so again, as if the plant had agency.

In addition to healing, mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), has also long been associated with lucid dreaming, visions, and altered states of consciousness. I grow it in my garden, and that’s the part of its personality that I have always connected with.

Its name traces back to Artemis, the goddess of the moon, the wilderness, fertility, and wild things and also a protector of women and a helper to midwives. It seems to be no accident that the underside of mugwort’s leaves are a cool, silvery color reminiscent of the moon. And that those leaves shimmer as they catch the light of the moon at night!

Walking the Liminal

After seeing the film, I had vivid dreams that night of walking through the forest and herb garden as it’s laid out in the film, wearing the red madder-dyed dress Agnes wears onscreen. It was very vivid and deepened my current longing for spring and for the return of the herbs in my own garden. I miss them like old friends I haven’t seen in a long while.

My friend who sat next to me in the movie —just as emotionally undone as I—told me he also had a vivid dream that night that mirrored themes from the film. The way he described his experience felt to me like it was a lucid dream.

Agnes herself exists in that same dreamlike liminality. And Jessie Buckley, who magnificently plays the character, has said that part of her process in preparing for the role involved accessing her own subconscious, especially through dreamwork.

What Are Herbal Charms?

Which brings me back to the plant charms.

Herbal or plant spirit charms like the one recited over mugwort in the Hamnet story were historically poetic, praise-based spoken mantras to a specific plant.

They were structured verses, often with rhythm and meter, passed down orally. These charms named the plant, admired it, spoke of what it endured and what it was known to help with. Like this one dedicated to nettle.

I will go into the field,
neither naked nor wholly clad,
I will pluck the nettle
without harm, without injury.

Nettle, I take you
not to hurt but to heal,
not in anger, not in haste,
but with blessing upon you.

Sometimes they asked for nothing at all and were offered simply as praise or thanks. And when a charm did ask for healing or protection, it was almost as though that help was earned through reverence, through knowing the plant deeply enough to speak its truth aloud.

Sometimes these charms were spoken over medicine as it was made: over teas, salves, tinctures, balms, or poultices. They could also serve as a way to connect with the deities or spirits associated with a plant, an animistic worldview where plants are approached as conscious beings.

Plants as Spirit

But what I discovered in my research that feels especially important is that the plant didn’t always have to be physically present. In its absence, it was the spirit of the plant itself that was being invoked.

Could that be why such vivid dreams appeared that night for some of us? Not just because the story left an emotional mark, but maybe because something ancient was stirred? Perhaps we carried home with us a bit of the plant spirit of Artemisia!

This has deepened my curiosity about plant spirit charms as a practice that recognizes plants not just as resources, but as conscious beings with personalities and stories, and a presence that can be called across space and time.

A Charm for Comfrey

Using the inspiration of ancient herbal charms, I have crafted my own to honor a favorite herb I grow and work with often - comfrey. I infuse comfrey leaves with yarrow flower in oil to make a joint salve that we massage into sore muscles and joints often.

I haven’t written any poetry since college but here goes.

Comfrey, knitbone, you are called.
I delight in seeing your leaves burst forth in spring,

your hanging purple flowers follow close behind,
feeding the season’s early emerging bees
and sheltering the first toads that unearth and hide in your shade.

I harvest you with my right hand and gather you with my left,
preserving you to ease the aches and pains we collect.

You are called Symphytum, known for stitching back what is broken.
Your leaves soft, yet bristly, all at once.
Bring healing and relief to the aches our bodies remember.

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Every year my little backyard garden is graced by the presence of a tiny butterfly that at first glance you might mistake for a moth. A few show up in spring and summer but then as fall arrives, they show up in droves.

It’s the skipper - a small and charming butterfly in the Hesperiidae family. And right now, the garden is full of them! A few days ago, my husband called me over to a patch of golden crown beard flowers and asked what all those moths were. As he brushed the flowers with his hands, clouds of them floated up into the air. I told him those aren’t moths at all, but rather skipper butterflies.

It’s an easy mistake to make. Skippers sit somewhere between butterflies and moths in looks and behavior. They’re technically butterflies, but they have a stockier build, big eyes, and hooked, clubbed antennae that make them look a little different from the butterflies we’re used to seeing.

Once you notice them and look close, they’re pretty charming with adorable, expressive faces.

And there’s a huge variety of them to discover. Some are checkered like the Burnsius communis, some are bright yellow and orangey red like the fiery skipper (Hylephila phyleus). Others are gray and not very flashy but still equally cute. And the silver-spotted skipper! This one (Epargyreus clarus) is easy to spot because of what looks like a splash of white paint on it’s lower wings.

I even found one recently called Common Sootywing with tiny little white dots on smoky black wings and the cutest little black and white face.

They are pretty easy to photograph because they’re surprisingly tolerant of people. You can often get close enough to really see their eyes and fuzzy bodies without them flying off.

Last year I wrote a full piece and shared photos of many of the varieties I have observed in my garden over the years. Check it out if you want to dive a little deeper into what makes skippers unique, the similarities they share with moths, and why they deserve a closer look:
👉 Skippers: A Charming Moth-Like Butterfly

They may not be as flashy as the bigger monarchs or swallowtails, but they definitely make the garden more magical and whimsical. So if you see what looks like a “bunch of moths” bouncing from flower to flower this fall, take a closer look. Chances are, you’ve got skippers too.

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Thanks for reading and letting me gush about this adorable little butterfly this week. They’re an annual fall favorite in the garden for my family.

If you’re curious about what all tiny overlooked creatures can thrive in a little suburban backyard garden, I share my photos and the stories behind all the wildlife that lives there over on my website - toadandsage.com

Oh, and I also have built up quite the observation catalog of local flora and fauna over on iNaturalist here.

Have a great weekend!

The fall equinox is here! The weather is shifting and it’s starting to look and feel like spooky season, or at least just on the cusp. It’s that time when I try to savor the last bits of summer while turning my attention to the changing colors and textures that come with fall.

Autumn just has a different vibe. Do you feel it too? It invokes a feeling that stirs up nostalgia and the urge to remember old forgotten folklore. The fall equinox has long been honored as a liminal time. A sacred pause right as the seasons transition. It’s a time to celebrate and thank the land for the harvest. For just one day the light and the darkness are equal.

Persephone will soon begin her descent into the Underworld. If you’re a gardener you may know about "Persephone Days.” That’s when when daily daylight falls below 10 hours, causing most plant growth to slow or stop entirely - when Persephone has descended to Hades and taken the light with her.

For my coordinates, that’s around November 25th. It’s important to know because below 10 hours of daylight, plants perceive the onset of winter and enter a dormant state to conserve energy. They don't die during this period, they simply stop growing until daylight hours increase again. This knowledge informs how I time my seed starting for all of my fall crops.

You can determine the exact Persephone Period for your location by plugging in some information in the U.S. Naval Observatory's website and downloading their “Duration of Daylight/Darkness Table.”

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It’s Starting to Get Spooky!

It’s also that time of the season when every morning trip out to the garden will be filled with spider webs sparkling with dew and whimsical mushrooms appearing in all sorts of locations.

Halloween will be here before we know it. Samhain has always been my favorite holiday. You can keep the chaos of Christmas and Thanksgiving. Give me pumpkins and that shift to golden light and the strangeness of the transition to autumn.

For the food garden, I’ve officially made the shift to cool season crops. The fall garden is planted. Well, almost. Spinach seedlings are waiting in trays, holding out for cooler temps because spinach bolts so easily. Onion seed is started in flats and garlic cloves just arrived. Both of those will go in the raised beds in mid-October. I’ve planted the brassicas though, so cue the cabbage moths!

Looking Back on the Season

For now, I’m looking back on this year’s garden. And I think I’ll call this one The Year of the Butterfly.

We had the most butterflies I’ve ever seen, and I owe it all to the flowers.

Late last year, I remember talking with my boss Joe Lamp’l on his podcast about how frustrating it has been to grow food with the climate being so erratic. Half-joking, we both said maybe next year we’d just plant flowers instead.

Well, I pretty much did that. Not completely. I did grow a few tomato plants in fabric grow bags and managed to freeze two gallon sized bags of tomato chunks.

I grew enough cucumbers to make about 12 jars of pickles. And of course the blackberry bushes kept us in berries so I was able to make a few jars of jam.

Mostly, though, I filled my raised beds with flowers and even created a new mini-meadow of native plants in a corner of the yard next to a shed. I had so much fun planting several native flowers from seed.

And they did not disappoint! The raised beds were overflowing. Rudbeckia triloba, those scrappy brown-eyed Susans. Gaillardia, the bright, fiery Indian blanket flower which is my state’s official wildflower.

Sweet Joe-Pye Weed that I started from seed back in winter using this winter sowing method. Salvia azurea, a native flowering sage whose cool blue flowers are so peaceful against the yellows and oranges of late summer and early fall. And milkweed, of course. I always have plenty of that.

This year so many zinnias and Mexican sunflowers (Tithonia diversifolia) either volunteered from last year or came up from seed I scattered in spring, that it was visual feast of pinks and peaches and bright orange all through spring and summer.

Then the wild sunflowers, the ones that started ten years ago when I picked up seeds on a walk around the neighborhood. They pop up everywhere now, like they own the place.

And with all that came the butterflies. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them. More than I’ve ever had in one season. Even species I don’t usually see at home, like the eastern tiger swallowtail.

Normally I catch that variety while hiking or kayaking, not flitting through my backyard. Friends would sit on the porch with me and just stare, amazed at how many were flying around.

I had all the other swallowtails too - pipevine, spicebush, giant, and eastern black. Loads of skippers, painted ladies, hairstreaks, monarchs, and of course the fritillaries. I also spotted a hackberry butterfly. Just way too many to list out. The garden has become a butterfly haven.

Last Call for Butterflies

This time of year, I always notice a surge in butterflies near the end of September and into October. Monarchs are funneling south through the Central Flyway on their way to Mexico, so their numbers peak in Oklahoma right about now.

But it’s not just monarchs. Many butterflies here have laid eggs earlier in the summer, and now those late-season caterpillars are maturing into adults. That means my garden fills with a mix of old, tattered wings that have been around for months, alongside a fresh flush of perfect new butterflies that are bright and pristine.

I’m also finding the last chrysalises that will be made this year. I love finding these hanging around the garden.

Late-blooming flowers make all the difference. Goldenrod, asters, sunflowers, and even the stubborn zinnias still hanging on become essential fueling stations. They’re pouring out nectar just when butterflies need it most.

Cooler nights and shorter days also trigger movement and mating. Butterflies are finely tuned to these seasonal cues, and since many either migrate or overwinter as eggs, pupae, or adults, September and October are a kind of “last call.” It’s time to mate, fuel up, or move on before frost arrives. Maybe that urgency is why they suddenly seem so much more visible.

When Flowers Become Ambush Sites

Flowers feed pollinators, yes. But they also attract hunters. I’ve learned all about this spooky little fact by through observation in my garden over the years.

Spiders are especially good at this. Like the green lynx spiders that perch motionless until they strike.

Or the crab spiders that wedge into zinnia petals and wait for butterflies to land. I even found a swallowtail paralyzed in the grip of a crab spider. So sad to see, but part of the story of my backyard’s ecology.

And it isn’t just spiders. I found this wheel bug hiding out among the flowers.

So yes, the flowers were beautiful. They fed pollinators. But they also served as a backdrop for drama. Pollinators and predators and masters of disguise sharing the same stage.

Now the blooms are fading, and I’m enjoying the last few weeks of butterflies.

I’m also saving seeds from a lot of the flowers I grew. For me, that’s the natural next step in creating this little backyard preserve for wildlife. I love the rhythm of it. Tucking seeds away now, pulling them back out in January, starting the whole cycle again. Or just collecting them from one part of the garden and scattering them somewhere else to let Mother Nature do the rest.

Soon I’ll sadly have to pull some of these last flowers to make space for garlic and onions. I keep hesitating, like I don’t want to say goodbye to them. But I’ll carry their seeds forward, and that’s enough. Plus the asters will be blooming about that time and the wild sunflowers will still be going strong.

The wheel turns. The cycle continues. Happy fall equinox!

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P.S. I used to be so terrified of spiders, but observing them in the backyard and garden has given me much more appreciation for them. If you want to see some of the amazing spiders that live in my garden, head over to my website and check out this new spooky piece I published…if you dare.

Every time I step out my back door, it feels less like a suburban backyard and more like going on a nature walk. For over a decade, I’ve been on a mission to turn my garden into a tiny nature preserve filled with a diverse collection of flora and fauna. This process has taught me that you don’t have to drive to a trailhead or a park to “get out in nature” or go on a nature walk if you’ve put in the steps to create an ecologically diverse backyard and garden. The wildlife will come to you.

And even though I’m surrounded by large patches of manicured turf grass lawns, my little garden is an island that hosts an array of fascinating insects, plants, and animals.

One of the most read pieces I’ve written was about how I completed the National Wildlife Federation’s Garden for Wildlife certification program which officially marked my property as a certified wildlife habitat.

Completing those steps is a process that will push you to think differently about your space, to plan for shelter, water, food, and nesting sites just as much as for vegetables and fruits. That certification sign now sits proudly in my yard as a reminder: this garden isn’t just for me.

So come along with me on a nature walk. Here’s just a small glimpse of a few things I spotted on a recent morning walk with my camera right outside my back door.

Cicadas

All summer I’ve listened to the songs of the cicadas in the trees and shrubs in my garden. They’re one of our most amazing insect musicians. This time of year, their buzzing is the soundtrack of late summer. I finally had the chance to photograph one.

Growing up in rural Oklahoma, we called them “locusts.” It wasn’t until I was older that I learned they’re really cicadas, not locusts at all. I’ve heard other people, including my husband call them locusts too.

I did some reading and it appears as thought that’s mostly a historical mix-up. Early European colonists in North America heard the mass emergences of cicadas and thought of the locust plagues (which are actually grasshoppers). The name stuck in rural areas and has been passed down through generations. So even though cicadas and locusts are totally different insects, “locust” became the common nickname in the U.S. countryside.

Praying Mantis

I am always amazed by these insects and so excited to see one. Every year I find them hunting in the garden. They are so good at finding niches among the herbs, flowers, and vegetables. Or they may just be found hanging out on the kitchen window or back door.

Without plants to attract prey insects, mantises wouldn’t linger here. But because I’ve shaped this garden as a habitat, they do. They’re so acrobatic the way they move from plant to plant. I love watching them do their little dance before they jump or pounce on their prey.

Monarch Caterpillars

Monarchs have long been my garden companions both as adult butterflies and their caterpillars on the milkweed plants I grow just for them. On this walk, I found two: one was alive and feeding, and I hope it makes it to adulthood to continue the journey south.

But I also came across another, in the grips of an anchor stink bug in the act of predation. It wasn’t easy to see. I just hate to see monarchs not make it since there are so few of them left. But it’s all part of the balance that makes an ecological garden a true ecosystem. Predators and prey, pollinators and parasites. The whole cycle is here, just a few steps from my back door.

Frogs

Almost every nature walk around the garden includes a frog or toad sighting. Earlier in the year it was the toads. Right now it’s tree frogs and leopard frogs. We have two small water sources or tiny “frog ponds” we’ve tucked into the garden to offer water and cover for amphibians.

Frogs are an indicator species meaning an organism whose presence, absence, or abundance reflects the overall health of the environment. Because indicator species are especially sensitive to changes in water, air, or habitat quality, scientists (and observant gardeners) use them as a kind of biological “check engine light” for the ecosystem.

I wrote more about this as well as how to set your garden up as a haven for frogs and toads here.

Flowerpot Parasol Mushrooms

A lot of mushrooms come up in various places around the yard and garden. Right now in some of my fabric flower pots, a cluster of bright yellow mushrooms keeps popping up every day. At first, they look like little knobs pushing through the soil, then they fan open into delicate umbrellas, some coming out of the pot edges.

They’re just doing their thing, recycling organic matter. I looked them up and they’re called Flowerpot Parasols: very fitting! Fungi are a big part of this little nature preserve too, breaking things down so other life can thrive.

Nature Walks Every Day

Maybe this is the truest definition of an ecological garden: a place where you don’t have to go anywhere special for a nature walk. You just step outside, and the surprises come to you. My little suburban backyard has become a small nature preserve alive with insects, fungi, birds, amphibians, and mammals because I’ve chosen to make space for them.

But you don’t have to have a big lot, a backyard, or a lot of land to experience this. A patio or balcony with a few pots of plants and some water can also be your little nature preserve. Or maybe you tend a small plot in a community garden or allotment. That’s wonderful too.

If you’re curious, I’ve shared the steps I took and how I got my garden certified by the National Wildlife Federation here.

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It’s that time of year again when my inbox fills with notes from conservation groups about the monarch migration and the importance of planting milkweed. I’ve also been seeing plenty of chatter about whether it really helps to collect and raise monarch caterpillars or if it does more harm than good. I love how much attention these butterflies and their caterpillars inspire. The migration is definitely passing through my neck of the woods. Monarchs are stopping by my own garden, laying eggs on the milkweed I planted years ago following my mantra, if you plant it they will come.

I planted a lot of it and they noticed. I’ve hosted them for over a decade. But what I’ve also learned since about milkweed is that far more than monarchs rely on it. Over the years I’ve photographed tussock moth caterpillars, milkweed bugs, insects that eat just the seeds, and lots of other winged creatures and insects I never expected to find, all using this plant as food, shelter, nectar, or hunting grounds. It turns out that planting milkweed for monarchs supports entire webs of life, not just one butterfly.

I pulled together my observations and photos, as well as tips on what native milkweeds I grow, into a new article on my website. If you’re curious about the many creatures you might see on your own milkweed plants, you can read it here:

Milkweed’s Super Power: More Than Monarchs Rely on This Plant.

Seed Saving: Collecting Seeds from My Garden

Lately I’ve been saving lots of seeds: flowers, tomatoes, and even a surprise pepper variety that showed up in the garden that I never planted. It might be some kind of cross-pollinated hybrid, and I’m tempted to experiment with it.

My boss, Joe Lamp’l, and I are also putting together a seed-saving webinar presentation for later in September, so I’ve been saving seeds and taking plenty of photos to use in that talk. We’re really excited about this one. If you’re interested, just leave me a comment here and I’ll send you a DM when registration opens.

In the meantime, if you’d like to dive deeper into the topic, I wrote an article on seed saving that you can find here:

Seed Saving: Preserving Your Garden’s Legacy

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In Other News, The Gulf Fritillaries Have Also Arrived AND My Passion Vine Bloomed!

Fall also brings another burst of color to my garden: the bright orange wings of the gulf fritillary butterfly. They almost glow as they move across the garden stopping by the tithonia flowers.

This year their arrival felt extra special because the passion flower vine (the host plant for gulf fritillary) I started from seed just last year not only took off and covered half my cedar arbor, but it surprised me by blooming much sooner than expected. I had read it can take many years for passion flower to bloom, but here it was in its second year, with a few of those otherworldly blossoms. And even better, I’m finding gulf fritillary caterpillars all over it, which is exactly why I planted it in the first place.

I wrote about my experience growing passion flower from seed (not easy to do. It took me several tries), along with tips for starting your own. You can find that story here:

How to Start Passion Flower Vine From Seed

Saying Goodbye to Scarecrow, Our Beloved Companion

While this has been a beautiful year in the garden, it’s also been marked by deep sadness. On August 11th, we said goodbye to our beloved dog, Scarecrow. She was very old for a Lab, and her quality of life had diminished to the point that it wasn’t fair to let her continue. But knowing that didn’t make it any easier.

She was with us for 13 and a half years, raised alongside our daughter like a second child, and she was my constant companion in the garden, my little shadow. We are heartbroken and miss her terribly, though we’re grateful for the memories she gave us.

A couple of weeks ago I shared a note here on Substack, and I want to thank everyone who reached out with kindness, especially those of you who have been through the same loss. It feels like our hearts are mourning her as though she were human. She was family, and to be honest, being in the garden without her feels so lonely right now. I’ve put together a small memorial for her on my website if you’d like to visit. It hardly does justice to what she gave us, but it’s one way to honor her place in our lives.

Remembering Scarecrow

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Rolling Out the Red Carpet for Caterpillars

As an ecological gardener, there’s something deeply satisfying about growing plants that support the local wildlife. And when it comes to supporting butterflies and their larvae, my gardening mantra for years has been “if you plant it, they will come.”

One of my favorite gardening hobbies is growing specific host plants for my local native butterflies. It’s been a joy to observe and photograph many species of butterfly in the garden over the past 13 years. Many returning visitors turn out to be swallowtails of one kind or another, one of the biggest and most vibrant group of butterflies there is.

A host plant is a plant species that provides food and shelter for the larvae (caterpillars) of specific insects, such as butterflies and moths. Many caterpillars can only eat certain plants, like Monarchs, which can only survive on milkweed.

Recently, on my main website, I shared my experience with the pipevine swallowtail in an article about growing Wooly Dutchman’s Pipevine from seed to attract pipevine swallowtail butterflies. I also shared how my husband and I got introduced to this caterpillar. It’s the cutest little spiky caterpillar you’ve ever seen.

It’s not just about adding another plant to the garden; it’s about growing exactly what butterflies and other pollinators need to survive.

The Year of the Butterfly

In addition to my pipevine success story, my garden has been bustling with other butterfly activity this year. I spotted monarchs on the milkweed in July which is much earlier than usual, since they usually arrive in late August or early September. Or maybe they’re just part of the first wave and showed up a bit later than expected, as I typically see a few monarchs in spring.

We also have a rue plant that’s covered in eastern black swallowtail caterpillars, and for the first time, an eastern tiger swallowtail has been visiting my flowers for nectar.

When I mentioned in my winter sowing post that I was focusing more on flowers this year instead of food, I really wasn’t kidding. The garden is absolutely packed with the native flowers I sowed in winter, along with other non-native favorites like tithonia and zinnias.

Growing a combination of nectar plants and caterpillar host plants completes the circle of support for pollinators. Right now my garden is full of butterflies—swallowtails, monarchs, skippers, fritillaries, and more with even more activity coming in fall.

It feels like this might be the "year of the butterfly."

If you’re curious about how to grow pipevine (if it’s native to your region) to attract pipevine swallowtails, you can read my full article here. Let’s keep inviting nature in, one plant at a time!

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It always happens too fast. One day I’m poking cucumber seeds in the soil and watching the pollinators work on the blackberry blossoms. The next, I’m standing in the kitchen with a colander full of ripe fruit and vegetables and the familiar voice that’s been in my head as a gardener for over a decade - save this like your Grandmas would have done. Not just to eat later, but to remember the season by and to honor the practices of your ancestors.

The ancient harvest festival of Lughnasadh is in just a few days. It marks the midpoint between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox and is considered the first of the three harvest festivals in the Celtic Wheel of the Year. For me it coincides with preserving the harvest from my little back yard garden. It’s a time for gathering, for gratitude to Mother Earth for what the land has given us this year, and for rituals of preserving the harvest to carry it forward into the oncoming darker months.

This time of year, when the garden is bursting and the counter tops are filling up with ripe produce, I turn to the same simple rituals that help me stretch the season just a little longer. Some things I can or freeze, following in the footsteps of both of my grandmothers who did the same each year and showed me how. Some plants, produce, and seeds I dry to preserve in jars to bring that homegrown flavor and medicine into the fall and winter.

The latter (drying and dehydrating herbs and seeds for spices and medicine ) is a method of preserving the harvest that my grandmothers didn’t practice. But I know deep down that further back in my ancestry, there were those who did - I feel that in my bones.

So, here are a few of my favorite ways to preserve the harvest. These are all low-fuss, small-batch, and doable even in a busy week.

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Cold Smoked Chili Peppers

If you’ve never tried cold smoking your homegrown peppers before drying or grinding them—oh wow. It adds a depth of smoky flavor that changes everything. You can then use the peppers whole or as a powder to infuse smoky flavor and heat into recipes and foods all through winter. I shared the full process over on the CanningCrafts blog as well as how I use cold-smoked chili powder in the kitchen.
👉 How to Smoke Chili Peppers for Preserving & Spice Blends

Low-Sugar Blackberry Jam

I’ve been making small batches of jam from the thornless blackberry patch we grow in our back yard. Several years ago when I first started making jellies and jams, I was kind of horrified at how much sugar was called for in traditional canning recipes. I really wanted to find a way to make my jam healthier without so much added sugar.

I discovered Pomona’s Universal Pectin, and it completely changed the way I make jam. No more cups and cups of sugar. I just use the fruit, a little lemon juice, and whatever sweetener I prefer. I use sugar, but a lot less of it. The trick is that each box of Pomona’s comes with a powder to make a calcium water that activates their 100% pure citrus pectin. The result tastes like blackberries, not syrup.

I’ll be sharing more soon about our blackberry patch and our DIY trellis. And if you’re wondering where I score the cute labels I use to dress up my jars, these are designed and sold by my friend Alison over at CanningCrafts. The watercolor labels are my favorite.

Freezing Tomatoes | The Lazy Way to Preserve Produce

I don’t always have the time have or energy to fill up the water batch canner and wait for it to boil. And it’s not always fun to stand over boiling pots especially on a 95-degree day. Tomatoes lend themselves to preserving by freezing instead. I usually harvest an armful at a time and it’s just easier to freeze them as they ripen.

My favorite method to do this is to just chop them into chunks, spread the chunks on a parchment-lined baking sheet, freeze until solid, then transfer to freezer bags. I use these all winter in sauces, soups, and stews. The flavor holds up beautifully. And when they are frozen separately like that, you can just take out however many you want to thaw out at once to make a sauce or add to a recipe.

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Canning Garlic Dill Pickles

This year, our cucumber patch has been more than generous, especially thanks to a new variety I tried called Excelsior from Territorial Seed. That’s an F1 hybrid that’s turned out to be a real star in the garden. These cucumbers are perfectly sized for pickling, and even here in the hot, humid tail end of July, they’re still producing steadily.

Pest pressure has been light, and while I’m seeing some disease issues pop up, I’ve had plenty of cukes to work with. Plus, my husband built a whimsical trellis to grow the cucumbers on that’s made growing and harvesting them even more fun.

I use a simple garlic dill pickle recipe from Can It and Ferment It by Stephanie Thurow. It’s basically a one-to-one ratio of water to vinegar, with a tablespoon of canning salt for every cup of vinegar. Into each jar goes a clove of garlic from my garden and a sprinkle of dill seed I saved from past herb patches. I water bath can these for 10 minutes. These are crisp, briny, and loaded with homegrown flavor and a favorite of friends and family.

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Drying Herbs for My Italian Seasoning Blend

This is also the time of year that I bring in herbs to dry or dehydrate before the heat causes them to bolt or burn up. One of my favorites that I’ve been making forever is my Italian seasoning blend. I snip and hang (or dehydrate in my dehydrator) bunches of basil, oregano, thyme, and rosemary to dry. Once fully crisp, I crumble them into my favorite homemade Italian seasoning blend. It’s one of those little kitchen spice blends that tastes so much better when you grow it yourself. And it’s not exact. So you can add in any herbs you like and have on hand. I always start with basil and oregano and go from there.
👉 My Homegrown Italian Seasoning Recipe

Seasonal Food Preservation as a Ritual

These small preserving rituals—jams, pickles, dried herbs—feel like a way of honoring what the garden gave each year. As we near Lughnasadh and the wheel turns toward fall, I’m thankful for the work of growing and preserving the food that comes from this small backyard garden in spring and summer.

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Summer is passing quickly! That means the garden will soon be winding down, or at the very least, it’ll be way too hot and humid to care much. This time of year, gardeners tend to fall into one of two camps: overwhelmed and ready for a break or
let’s go, I’m ready for round two!

If you're in the second group, you’re in good company. Fall gardening has become my favorite. Cooler days are ahead (eventually), pest pressure lessens, and those cool-season crops we loved in spring get to come back for round two. But having a fall garden means planting in the heat of summer to give crops time to mature for harvest.

What I’m Starting Now From Seed

I’m in USDA Hardiness Zone 7b (recently reclassified from 7a to reflect the increased average minimum temperature of winter). For my climate and area, there are several crops that need to be started from seed now to give them time to mature before the arrival of freezing temperatures, snow and ice, and shorter days with less sunshine.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac’s planting calendar is a great resource that I use every season for plant timing. I just plug in my zip code here and look for the list of fall crops. I try to start within a day or two of their suggested timeframe. Their planting calendar tool provides planting dates based on your first frost as well as dates to plant by the moon. It also tells you average days to crop maturity and whether or not the crop is frost-hardy or frost-tolerant . Many cool-season crops fall into one of these two categories and even taste better after a frost. Some fall edibles like peas and green beans, however, can be tender to the frost, and The Almanac gives you that information too.

Armed with this information, yesterday I started broccoli and cauliflower - a few days later than I had planned - from seed, along with a few flowers. I also sowed some pansies, and I’m giving marigolds another try. My spring marigolds got chewed down by rabbits before they could bloom, but last fall I had some of the best marigolds I’ve ever grown and I started them from seed in August, so I’m giving them even more of a head start this year.

Nasturtiums are going in again in a week or so too. The ones I planted in spring have continued to spill beautifully out of beds, whisky barrels, and pots, but the summer heat and humidity takes its toll on them. I am ready to start with a fresh new batch because they perform so well in the cool of fall. I love how not only their blooms are gorgeous but their foliage is stunning too.

Soon, I’ll be priming spinach seed, sowing flats of onions to plant out in fall, starting giant red mustard seed (which gives the garden that amazing purple glow), and direct sowing turnips, by special request from my husband. Some years I also grow cabbage and kale but I think this year I am too tired to fight off the cabbage worms.

Need ideas for what to grow?

I’ve got a handy article on cool-season crops that are easy to start from seed. In that guide I also talk about how I prepare the soil for fall plantings and at least try to protect the young seedlings from heat and pests like cabbage loopers and cabbage worms.
Read more here: Fall Crops You Can Start from Seed

And to help gardeners get ahead of the game, over at joegardener® we have an online Fall Vegetable Gardening Masterclass. It’s packed with information on growing vegetables after the summer season dies down and how to get started now.

It’s Time to Order Garlic

Garlic planting happens in October around here, so now’s the time to order seed garlic before the best varieties sell out. The companies will let you pre-order and then ship it to you when it’s time to plant in your region. I always try to save some of my biggest, healthiest cloves from the previous harvest, but I also like to try something new each season.

There are two main types of garlic to choose from:

• Hardneck varieties usually do better in colder climates and produce a flower stalk called a scape, which is edible and delicious. They tend to have a richer flavor but a shorter storage life.

• Softneck garlic grows well here in Oklahoma and stores longer—perfect if you’re growing to keep it on hand through winter. These are the ones you often see braided.

If you're growing garlic for the first time, start small. Just a few bulbs can yield a satisfying harvest by next June. I’ll be planting mine in a sunny raised bed with a fresh top dressing of my homemade compost and some a natural mulch cover like straw or fall leaves to insulate over winter.

My favorite sources to order garlic for planting are Keene Garlic and Filaree Farm.

Fall Butterflies Are Coming

Right now, only a few butterflies have shown up. I’ve been seeing a lot of pipevine swallowtails this summer, which is great because if they are females ready to lay eggs, I planted wooly dutch pipevine for them.

Mostly, they’ve just been interested in the zinnias and the tithonia. Once the sedum and asters start blooming in full force, we’ll see clouds of butterflies all over the garden.

One of my favorites in fall is the skipper—a tiny, charming butterfly that’s often mistaken for a moth. I’ve seen a few this summer but there will be so many more in all varieties in a few months. They’re not very skittish, which means I can get lots of photos of them. I wrote about skippers and shared a bunch of photos here:
Skippers: A Charming Moth-Like Butterfly

Another fall favorite: the Gulf fritillary. I started passionflower vine from seed last fall, and it’s now thriving in the garden. That vine is the host plant for Gulf fritillary caterpillars and I check every day to see if there’s eggs or young cats. Those butterflies seem to show up closer to fall though. The adults love to get nectar from the fall blooms and then they lay their eggs on the passion vine. If you want to grow passionflower vine yourself, I put together a guide on how to start it from seed (with tips from my own experience):
How to Grow Passionflower from Seed

And of course, there’s the Monarch butterfly. The early waves of migration usually arrive here in late August or early September. If you’re in the migration path and you’ve got milkweed in your garden and a few flower blooms still going, you may get to witness the magic of nectaring adults and plenty of caterpillars in the milkweed patch.

A Different Kind of Garden Magic

Last fall’s garden was one of my favorites ever and motivated me to hit reset every July and start seeds again. After saying goodbye to the warm-weather crops like tomatoes and cucumbers, the garden took on a whole new rhythm from September through November and even into December for some crops.

Cool-season vegetables like mustard greens, spinach, and turnips settle in and matured more slowly as the days grow shorter. The cold didn't harm them. In fact, it made them better and we were still eating from the garden well into winter when we had to actually bundle up to go out and harvest.

I also love how the light softens and the color palette changes. Pollinators that I haven’t seen in a year return to late blooms; it’s one of my favorite times to get my camera out. Growing food in fall also just feels more manageable and more enjoyable. There’s a vibe that only the fall garden brings. Right now I am still harvesting and freezing tomatoes, making pickles with home grown cucumbers - still in the height of the summer madness but I’m already looking forward to watching the fall garden come to life again.

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I just had to share this fun little garden art project I did over the weekend.

I’m not sure what to call this exactly. Maybe a woven garden suncatcher? A floral wand? An herbal tapestry? I just know that making it was very meditative and I love how it turned out.

To make this, I wandered through the garden with by bonsai scissors, harvesting what caught my eye: zinnias, blanket flower, flowering Thai basil, bee balm, and even the delicate fronds of asparagus gone to seed.

I wrapped jute twine around a forked stick that I found in a bunch of branches my husband had pruned from a crepe myrtle back in spring. I wove the stems through the strands and let the plants guide the shape.

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There’s no right way to make something like this. Your version will look completely different, and that’s the magic of it. Each flower weaving captures the personality of your garden at that moment in time. No two will ever be alike.

It’s slow work. It made me notice things I would’ve missed otherwise like all the bees buzzing on the flowering herbs. I also noticed just how much the spearmint had gone to flower and how unhinged the asparagus has gotten.

It’s also a demonstration of impermanence. I stuck it in a pot on the back patio and once the sun came out, it all wilted. That’s ok because I got some photos to remember it by and I can make a brand new one any time. Making art from the plants you grow is a mindful way to celebrate what’s growing each season. This little practice felt like capturing a garden spell in physical form.

It’s similar to the flower weaving I do a little later in the summer when the blooms are spent. But for this one I’ll take the flowers that are on their way out and weave them through garden trellises as a natural bird feeder. Birds such as finches and cardinals love to land on the trellis and snack on the flower seeds.

When you think about it, having a backyard garden serves many purposes: you can grow food and medicine or cut flowers. A garden offers habitat for insects and wildlife within urban and suburban spaces, and it becomes a vital way station for migrating butterflies and birds. All of that matters deeply. But a garden can also be a source of joy and artistic inspiration and expression for the person tending it.

For more garden-inspired creativity, take a look at this post I shared back in January—it’s a collection of all the ways I’ve used the garden and nature as inspiration and material for making art.

And over on my blog, I have a small but growing collection of herb-crafting guides for more ideas to keep you busy this summer.

My Herb-Crafting Collection

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Every June, we pull garlic from the earth, and onions too. The alliums that we planted in the soil last October will fill our kitchen with flavor and health for the rest of summer and into winter. It’s one of my favorite harvests of the year.

Around that same time, wasps start showing up in bigger numbers in the garden. Most people flinch or run screaming, but I pause to watch. I know which ones will sting if I get too close. They’re hunting caterpillars, inadvertently pollinating flowers, and doing good work in a world that rarely gives them credit.

And then just when I least expect it, my amaryllis bulb—forgotten since winter—sends up a bloom decorated with streaks of bright pink.

June is a month that always serves as a reminder to celebrate life, love, diversity, nuance, complexity, and spectrums. It’s filled with lessons on how we can show up as allies for our loved ones that don’t fit the neat societal molds and where to look for our own allies in nature.

I cherish all of these June garden moments as I say farewell to my favorite summer month, prepare for the excessive heat ahead, and start planning out my fall garden.

Wasps: The Allies We Overlook

I recently wrote a blog post for and lent my photogprahy to the CanningCrafts garden blog declaring my love and appreciation for wasps. Yep, wasps. That may sound crazy, but hear me out. If there’s one life lesson that the garden has taught me over and over, it’s how every life form from soil microbes to weeds to even maligned and misunderstood insects plays an important role in ecological balance.

Wasps get a bad rap, and I was once deathly afraid of them. But after watching them work in my garden and then listening to a podcast episode we did with a wasp expert, Heather Holm, I’ve gained quite an affinity for them as a powerful ally.

So they don’t have the flashy, aesthetic beauty of butterflies and aren’t as well known as our favorite chubby pollinators, the bees. However, as a predatory insect, they play such an important role in maintaining and supporting a stable ecosystem - a true ally in their own right.

That translates to chemical-free pest control for all you gardeners when you let wasps coexist with you in your space. They’re out there hunting beetles that may damage our crops, they’re parasitizing caterpillars that snack on our tomatoes, and they’re visiting our flowers as they work, moving some pollen around in the process.

Plus, when you look really close, you discover they truly are beautiful too. Don’t want to get too close? I do that for you with my camera and macro lens. Check out this wasp gallery from my garden.

Are you more intrigued by wasps now or still terrified? Either way, humor me and check out the different types of wasps that hunt and nest in my garden, their beneficial and fascinating roles, and how to support them in your garden. Head over to the full blog article here.

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The Annual Garlic Harvest

This week on the podcast, Joe interviewed the iconic Rosemary Gladstar. I was beyond excited to set this episode up with the woman who is considered the godmother of modern herbalism. In that conversation about plants that heal, she touched on garlic, which is one of my top favorite health allies to grow and a crop I have planted for over a decade now.

Garlic is one of those plants that pulls double duty. It’s an essential staple in the kitchen and a powerful medicine in the home apothecary. As Rosemary Gladstar says, “Kitchens would be boring without it,” and I think my garden would be too.

Garlic is a strong ally for the immune system, supports heart health, and helps keep colds and flus at bay. It’s also incredibly easy to grow. It just takes time for the bulbs to get big, so you have to plant it in the fall in many climates. We plant ours in October and harvest in June alongside onions, another kitchen staple. Then they are hung to cure for several weeks so they will store long term. We put together a full garlic grow guide on the joegardener® blog that walks you through it.

Growing your own garlic is also a way to support American farmers who grow “planting garlic” specifically for home gardeners. When you harvest what you need for the season, you’re not just stocking your pantry, you’re cutting down on food miles by not buying garlic that’s shipped to grocery stores from China, reducing your carbon footprint one bulb at a time. My favorite sources are Keene Garlic and Filaree Garlic Farm.

The Surprising Return of Amaryllis

Back in 2022, we did a podcast episode on planting flowering bulbs right into your lawn to grow what they call “stinzen gardens” in the Netherlands. Our guest was horticulturist Peggy Anne Montgomery, an expert in cultivating bulbs and naturalizing bulbs lawns.

She kindly sent me an amaryllis bulb for Christmas that I planted in a fabric pot in my indoor grow tent. For three years it would return in winter and bloom these huge beautiful pink streaked flowers and then go back into dormancy until the following winter.

This past winter, that pot is where I also started some Oklahoma Salmon zinnia seeds to have growing indoors in winter. They bloomed right alongside the amaryllis. By the time spring arrived, amaryllis was dormant again but the zinnias were really taking off indoors. To keep them going I took the pot outside to the porch, totally forgetting about the bulb under the soil.

But a few days ago, I walked outside and was blown away that the amaryllis had not only come out of dormancy and bloomed but she looked bigger and healthier than I’ve ever seen her! Obviously she has enjoyed all the rain we got this spring and the warm sunny days outside. It was her first experience outside of the indoor grow tent.

I’ve only ever seen this amaryllis bloom indoors in the heart of winter. Why the incredible return now? After months of rest in its grow bag, the warmth, light, and longer days provided a cue to wake up and thrive.

It goes to show that life can persist under all sorts of conditions, but when we’re given what we truly need, we don’t just survive. We flourish. This bloom was an unexpected gift this month, and one I’m grateful for.

Farewell to June

Once again, June brings life lessons from the garden that echo our human experience. It’s easy to label and categorize, to decide who and what fits where or what role someone should play or how something should be. But in nature, those lines blur and so do we, because we are part of nature, not separate from it. Love and support often come in unexpected forms.

Not everyone shows up how we imagined. Not everyone fits into the neat little boxes defined and handed down by those who came before. So too, allies are complex and rarely perfect. But when we make space for the expression of all of life, the whole system becomes more resilient, more beautiful, more whole.

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🌞 Happy Summer Solstice from the Garden

Tonight, the Wheel turns again. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s Litha—the Summer Solstice—when the sun lingers longest in the sky.

It’s officially summer - a time when we get out and travel a lot for vacations or weekend trips which takes us away from the garden. Exploring your garden in summer after spending time away from it is always an adventure. You have this idea of what it looked like two weeks before and you return and it’s like stepping into a different place. When you’re home tending it every day, you don’t notice the gradual changes as much. But leave in spring or summer for even a few days and you return to a myriad of changes that Mother Nature has been enacting in your absence.

Add to the usual progression that while we were away, we got lots of rain. According to the RainDrop app, my yard and garden has gotten almost 9 inches of rain total in June so far! My compost-filled soil is sponging it up and the plants are loving it.

Here’s a quick roundup of what’s happening in the garden, a few timely pieces I’ve written that feel especially relevant right now, and the nature-inspired book and podcast I’ve been immersed in.

After a couple of weeks away…

The cucumber plants shot up the new trellis my husband built. It won’t be long before I’ll be making pickles out of these!

Onions and garlic are ready for harvest. It’s time to cure and store these alliums so we can enjoy them into fall and winter. By the way, if you are a gardener in the States and want to grow garlic effectively, now is the time to place your order for bulbs. They’ll ship them to you when the planting time is right, but they sell out quickly in summer. For us, planting time is October. Garlic needs about eight months to overwinter and make those big bulbs. I write about growing garlic, onions, and other cool season fall crops in this guide. I include where I order my garlic bulbs, the difference in soft neck and hard neck, and how I prep my soil for fall planting.

Blackberry bushes are now heavy with ripe fruit. We have an early producing variety called Natchez that we got some berries from but now a second variety we grow (I believe it’s called Osage Thornless) is producing tons of berries. Jam making season is here, if I can keep my husband from eating them all right off the vines.

Our very first cherry tomatoes have ripened. Every year we grow a variety called Sun Gold that ripens to a dark golden color and packs a huge flavor that rivals any large slicing tomato. And we picked a small Cherokee Purple (or maybe it’s a Black Krim. I am the worst at labeling seedlings after I plant them out.) The point is, we harvested it at what’s called The Breaker Stage and it’s now ripe on the counter. There was a time I struggled to get my first big ripe tomato by Fourth of July (a vegetable gardener’s ultimate goal), but now it seems like every season we have fresh tomatoes earlier and earlier.

The garden is in full bloom, especially the Indian Blanket flowers (Gaillardia pulchella) I started from seed indoors in winter. What a show they are putting on! Indian Blanket is the state wildflower of Oklahoma and adored by pollinators.

The nasturtiums are gorgeous too but starting to show the wear and tear of the heat and humidity. Did you know these flowers are edible? They taste a lot like radishes.

And check out this beauty: the passionvine grown from seed last year is now climbing the cedar arbor and soon will host fritillary butterflies! I was so glad to see it emerge from the soil in spring.

New on My Blog

The Box Turtles are Here!

Box turtles are really active right now! Sadly, many are having to cross roads and highways to get to their egg laying spots so they’re in a lot of danger.

We saw so many on the highway as we traveled to and from Eureka Springs, AR last week. If you see one on the road and want to help it out, be sure to move it safely off the road in the direction it was going. As much as we may want to take them home or relocate them to a place we think is safer, box turtles have home ranges and moving them too far can cause them to get disoriented.

In Eastern Oklahoma we have Eastern box turtles and within that species is a subspecies called the three-toed box turtle named for the three toes on its back feet. I have so many memories of box turtles from childhood.

I write about my love for them and growing up with them in the country in this new article as well as sightings in the front and backyard gardens. There’s a lot of wildlife in our garden, but when turtles started showing up just a couple of years ago, we were particularly excited to see these childhood friends take up residence in suburbia with us. Learn more about them and how we create a safe haven for them in our garden here.

Love Butterflies? Then It’s Time to Champion Caterpillars

If you love butterflies, (and who doesn’t?) you’ve got to start caring about caterpillars!

They’re the unsung heroes of every pollinator garden and they can’t survive without the right host plants. One of the most rewarding projects I have taken part in is learning about the butterflies in my area, what their caterpillars need to eat, and then planting that. I’m talking about more than just Monarchs and their relationship with milkweed.

Of course, many gardeners have planted milkweed and that is wonderful. I have lots of it. But there are so many other colorful, furry, spiky, and sassy caterpillars who will come if you plant the right plants and I guarantee you they will capture your heart. And beyond that, if you look closely or collect a few and feed them in an enclosure, you will get to watch them transform and create the most interesting chrysalids. Then if you pay attention, you can even watch them emerge as butterflies and release them back into your garden. This is an indescribable magic that you have to see to believe.

In this guide on my blog I share photos and ID tips for 7 common caterpillars you might already have in your garden (or could be supporting with just a few intentional plantings). Some are familiar, some might surprise you. These are the stories of the caterpillars and butterflies I have hosted over the years in my garden. Meet the caterpillars here.

What I’m Reading

Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature By Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian
In celebration of Pride Month—and after celebrating our anniversary while also enjoying a vibrant Pride Festival in Eureka Springs, AR —I’ve been captivated by this remarkable new book. It opens with a frightening childhood moment: the author’s mother discovering a rattlesnake in her nursery. From there, Kaishian invites us into a world full of glass eels, fungi with thousands of mating types, and slugs shooting calcium carbonate “love darts.”

This book is an exploration of nature’s queerness and what’s best described (by the publisher, and better than I ever could) as:

“A thrilling book about the abounding queerness of the natural world that challenges our expectations of what is normal, beautiful, and possible.”

What I’m Listening To

In my day job I co-produce a gardening and nature podcast that now has 420 plus episodes and has risen to the top 3 ranked shows in the categories of gardening and nature. So of course, I listen to that (The joe gardener® Show) every week, but recently we had Dr. Doug Tallamy back on the podcast to talk about a few of the concepts in his new book How Can I Help?: Saving Nature with Your Yard.

Tallamy is a renowned expert on native gardening and has authored several books on the subject of supporting nature and wildlife right in your backyard. For this new book, he rounded up many of the questions he’s gotten over the years from his readers and talked to Joe about many of them on the episode.

This conversation stands out as one of my favorites on the show. It’s a reminder to me that even in a time when it can feel like the world is working against Mother Nature, the choices we make in our own backyards still matter. This conversation left me feeling hopeful and I think it will for you, too. Enjoy that on Apple Podcast and Spotify (it’s Episode 421) or right here on my boss’s website.

Solstice Rituals

Wherever you are on this Solstice day, I hope you find a quiet moment to mark the turning. Light a candle, sip some herbal tea, tuck a sprig of mugwort under your pillow, harvest and dry some rosemary for a winter soup later this year. Say hello to a turtle, whisper your secrets to a bee, walk barefoot on the soil, touch some moss. These small rituals keep us connected to the land, the season, and to ourselves and help make the world feel a little less chaotic.

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Summer is just around the corner and so much is happening in the garden right now. I love this time of year because we are still getting rain showers so I don’t have to water every day, and it’s not miserably hot yet, but it’s warm enough that the plants are exploding and the critters are creeping about. I’ve been out in the garden daily tending to the plants, photographing the explosion of wildlife, and beginning my annual summer herbal rituals.

I’ve talked about herbal rituals here before - how I work with herbs and other plants seasonally in spring, fall, and now going into summer. Right now I’m harvesting various herbs and making medicine as well as herbal blends and infusions for the kitchen.

Making Plant Medicine

My husband has a little garden that he tends at the front of the house. It’s this wild little flower bed that is the epitome of a chaos garden with all kinds of herbs, flowers, shrubs, native plants, and even food interplanted throughout. No straight, tidy rows here, and I adore it. And since it’s right below my home office window, I and the cats get to enjoy it all day. I absolutely love the way it looks right now with yarrow and two types of sages in bloom. His oak leaf hydrangea is flowering, and the goldenrod (salidago) is growing tall, gearing up to strut its stuff in autumn.

Right now his little front yard garden has the most beautiful, fragrant yarrow flowers which I harvested a few of this morning to make medicine. I submerged some flower and leaf in vodka for a tincture and combined more yarrow with comfrey leaves for a yarrow venous salve. Both recipes came from Rosemary Gladstar’s book Medicinal Herbs: A Beginner’s Guide. Rosemary and her books and videos are my go-to guides for all things medicinal herb crafting.

Yarrow tincture is great to have on hand for stomach cramps, indigestion and also to stanch bleeding and help bruises heal faster. The salve can be used for firming blood vessels, clearing blood congestion, and easing distended veins and capillaries. Yarrow is one of the most widely used medicinal plants in the world and loaded with folk lore. I wrote about it extensively on my website last year when it was named the 2024 Herb of the Year.

A couple of years ago while planning a trip to Scotland I was researching ancient herbs used there. I learned that part of Gaelic tradition was using charms and incantations while harvesting herbs. Here’s an ancient charm connected with yarrow that you can recite the next time you’re harvesting this herb.

Herbal Teas

I’m also harvesting herbs for tea blends. Herbal teas, infusions, and decoctions are an easy and effective way to incorporate plants as medicine. Right now, I’m obsessed with mugwort for dream work and Tulsi (Holy Basil) for…well, for everything! She’s the queen of herbs after all. In some spiritual traditions Tulsi is considered to be the embodiment of an actual goddess. I have grown Tulsi every year in my garden for over a decade and add it to smoothies and teas almost daily.

I’m in love with mugwort right now too. I started it from seed years ago and it comes back each year in one corner of my herb garden near the frog pond. Its botanical name is Artemisia vulgaris, and in addition to being known for its connection to visions and dreams, it is also closely connected with Artemis, the Greek goddess of the moon. The silvery undersides of its leaves are reminiscent of moonlight.

It even shows up in the Nine Herbs Charm, also known as Nigon Wyrta Galdor or the Nine Wort Spell, an Old English charm recorded in the 10th century CE.

The herbal blend I am loving right now is mugwort, lemon balm, mint, and Tulsi.

If you’re interested in learning more about tea gardening, I did a collaboration with my friend Alison over on her CanningCrafts garden blog and wrote about it there.

Harvesting and Saving Seeds

Saving seeds is a task I’ll do all summer long into fall. I save seeds from flowers, herbs, and even vegetables like tomatoes and cucumbers. It helps me grow out my favorite varieties year after year without having to buy those seeds again.

I’ve fallen madly in love with strawflowers this year, and right now, many of the blooms are going to seed. I’ve been collecting them and sealing them in seed envelopes to replant or give to other gardeners who want to grow them.

Now you might be asking how my strawflowers have already gone to seed. It’s too soon. I must confess I started growing them indoors in winter, cultivating them in my cannabis grow tent which has a very powerful LED grow light. My husband got me the tent for Christmas a few years ago, and I’ve only grown cannabis in it once. That one grow of two plants produced enough to last me for years, so since then, it’s been used for winter seed starting and early flower cultivation.

In the dead of winter, I had zinnias and strawflowers thriving in that tent and ready to go out as soon as the risk of frost had passed. So now I have a head start on flowers in the garden.

Garden Critters Abound

Don’t Step on the Toads

Insects, lizards, toads - they all start to move around in the garden in spring. But summer is when they become daily fixtures. Each year we look forward to the first toads hopping about on the porch in the early hours when we are having our morning coffee. And then it’s not long before I start finding them in the garden beds.

Here’s one that has been hanging out in an herb bed. She’s got herself a spot near a soaker hose under a canopy of feverfew and comfrey and chives. Before long, there will be so many we’ll have to watch where we step. We often trip on them as they are half submerged in the soft soil of the garden pathways. Now is when we also start checking all the tall grass before mowing and weed eating so we don’t accidentally hurt one.

Here’s how I attract and support toads and frogs in the garden.

The Aphids Are Here but so are the Lady Beetles

Many plants in the garden get infested with aphids, but none more so than the milkweed I have planted for the Monarch butterflies. But I don’t sweat it when I see this. I used to spray them off with a stiff stream of water, but they just came back. Then when local lady beetles caught on that I have a literal buffet for them in the garden, they swept in and took care of it. Now as soon as I see aphids getting out of hand, I’ll also see an adult lady bug. I know she’s laying her eggs there so that when her nymphs hatch, they’ll have food ready for them.

We all know what a lady beetle or “lady bug” looks like, but keep an eye out for the larvae. Immature ladybugs look nothing like they do as adults. I have heard some people say they remind them of tiny alligators. All I know is they eat a ton of aphids. Even more than the adults, devouring hundreds of aphids before they pupate.

You can read about the entire life cycle with lots more photos I took of all of the lady beetle life stages in my garden on the joegardener® blog in this article.

They Grow Up So Fast

Remember my post from a few weeks ago when I was super excited about the return of the spicebush swallowtails caterpillars? Well, look how much they have changed! This is when their false eyes really start to show and they start to get that big green snake look to them.

At this point, many will succumb to predation while others will go on to pupate and turn into beautiful butterflies. I’ve seen a few of the leaf rolls with holes in the sides and I can tell something (perhaps a spider) has chewed its way in and gotten a caterpillar. I’m rooting for them and looking forward to seeing the butterflies emerge.

Ready for the Summer Heat

There’s so much more happening right outside my back door (and front door), but those are the highlights for now.

Summer in the garden is a mix of heat, humidity, rapid growth, and a flurry of insect and wildlife activity. The days are long, the colors are bold, and the harvests are abundant.

We are bracing for the pest outbreaks and the inevitable dry spells. For the latter, we've taken proactive steps to ensure our garden thrives. We've just installed two new 55-gallon rain barrels, and they're already full with collected rainwater. With these in place, we're prepared for whatever challenges Mother Nature presents this season.

Happy summer!

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Exactly one year ago, in the first week of May, I was photographing Spicebush Swallowtail caterpillars in my garden. This year? They showed up right on schedule around May 7th again. Well, that’s when I noticed them anyway. They hatched from their eggs days ago and it wasn’t that long ago that I spotted the momma butterfly laying those eggs on the leaves.

But here they are, back in the garden like they have been every year since we planted two native spicebush (Lindera benzoin) plants several years ago. We added these plants specifically because they are a native plant that serves as the host for this amazing caterpillar.

They have a fascinating lifecycle and unique forms of mimicry where they’ve adapted false eyes that make them look like a small snake. They remind me of the Pokemon Caterpie, which is technically based on the Eastern tiger swallowtail caterpillar, but still. It’s close.

The tell-tale sign that the caterpillars are here is seeing the leaves curled over like in the photo below. Their leaf rolling mechanism is one of those amazing feats of natural engineering that’s also so simple. The caterpillar attaches threads of silk to the leaf on either side mid-vein and as the silk dries it pulls the leaf around the caterpillar.

You can unfurl the leaf with your fingers to peak in at the caterpillar and the leaf folds right back.

Why This Matters

The presence of Spicebush Swallowtails in the garden is just one example of native plants doing what they’ve done for thousands of years: offering food, shelter, and a place for wildlife to grow.

Spicebush (Lindera benzoin) and the swallowtails that rely on it evolved together. Much like the relationship of milkweed and the Monarch butterfly.

Without this host plant, these caterpillars have nowhere to go in my garden. So when we plant native species in our own yards, we’re not just gardening, we’re facilitating relationships between plants and pollinators that have been disrupted by turf grass, pesticides, and non-native ornamentals.

One of the most rewarding ways I have found to support all kinds of life in the garden is by adding host plants.

I’ve written more in-depth about the spicebush caterpillars and their relationship with the spicebush plant over on my website here, including how to support them in your own garden and photos of the various stages including pupation.

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It’s been about 11 years now since I started photographing my garden and the wildlife that calls it home. After learning digital photography (this was before cell phone cameras got really good) I gravitated toward a more macro photography style.

Once I started using a macro lens to get in really close, the detail that was staring right back at me was awe inspiring. Especially when it came to the eyes of my subjects.

Before taking a closer look through my camera, I never realized how much detail was in the eyes of even the smallest creature. Once I saw this, I began to take all my photos with the focus right on the eye of the subject.

Eyes are one of many things we have in common with wildlife, but often with different structures. It really makes you wonder how they see the world compared to how we see it.

Human sensationalism claims that we are the most special creature in Mother Nature’s palette. The more I pay attention to the natural world, the more I realize how short sighted that is.

So today, this post is light on words and instead is meant to give you a peek into what I see through my camera lens when I look into the eyes of the tiny creatures in my garden. I’ve also included links to where I’ve written more about some of these insects and animals on my website with additional photos I’ve captured over the years.

Toads & Frogs

The eyes of toads and frogs are truly captivating. When I first zoomed in on a close up shot of a toad’s eye, I felt like I was looking into a miniature galaxy with all of its intricate patterns.

They possess horizontal slit-shaped pupils, which are particularly effective for scanning wide, terrestrial landscapes to help them detect both predators and prey.

And thanks to the placement of their eyes (high on the head and angled to the sides) frogs can see nearly all the way around them. This wide field of view is a big advantage for an animal that can’t turn its head.

One fact I found interesting is that frogs don’t just use their eyes to see. They also use them to swallow. After catching prey, a frog’s eyeballs actually sink down into its head, helping to push the food deeper into its throat.

I’ve gotten pretty good at creating a garden that attracts and welcomes toads and frogs. You can read more about how I do it and see more photos of some of my favorite backyard visitors here on my website.

Dragonflies

Dragonflies have two compound eyes each comprised of several thousand lenses. They’re one of the first insects I really began photographing and honing my macro skills on when I first got my digital camera. The backyard garden and surrounding greenbelt and nearby pond provide plenty of opportunities. I wrote at length about “stalking” dragonflies, how I photograph them, some cool facts, and even some folklore here on my website.

Mantids

Praying mantises are total badasses of the insect kingdom. I’m always thrilled to find them in my garden and watch them hunt. They are voracious predators that, like us, rely on both eyes to see in three dimensions. But each of their large, compound eyes is made up of specialized regions: some tuned for sharp focus, others better at detecting light and motion. As they subtly shift their heads or adjust their eyes, their brains piece together enough detail to spot even the most camouflaged prey hiding in plain sight.

Each eye seems to have a dark, centered dot, like a pupil. But what you’re seeing is actually a pseudopupil, an optical illusion created by the way light reflects off its eye structures. This gives the mantis the appearance of watching your every move, tracking your motion with its eyes. At first glance, you might think it's making direct eye contact. Maybe it is.

Snakes

I’ve photographed a lot of non-venomous snakes in my garden over the years. But this little Eastern Yellow-bellied Racer is still my favorite. Its eyes were so expressive as it watched me from its hiding place in my rue plant. Snakes see differently than we do. They generally don't see sharp images. Instead, many detect motion well but may struggle with still objects. Their color vision, if present at all, is limited—and their visual world is likely much more about contrast and movement. This one was really interested in me and my dog.

If you find snakes beautiful and mystical like I do, I share a lot more images and stories of the variety of snakes I’ve encountered in the garden through the years here.

Bees

Bee vision is pretty remarkable. Unlike us, they can see ultraviolet (UV) light, which helps them spot patterns on flowers that are completely invisible to the human eye. These patterns, called nectar guides or “landing strips,” point the way to the flower’s nectar and reproductive parts. It’s a clever system how flowers evolved to advertise their pollen and nectar, and bees evolved to read the signs.

Spicebush Caterpillars

Sometimes, what looks like an eye staring back at you isn’t an eye at all. Take the caterpillar of the spicebush swallowtail butterfly. Unlike most caterpillars that mimic leaves or twigs to avoid detection, this one takes a bolder approach—it mimics a snake. At the front of its body are false eyespots that give the impression of a serpent’s head. It’s an example of mimicry that’s designed not to blend in, but to deceive and detour would-be predators. Several years ago we added two spicebush plants (Lindera benzoin) to the garden just to provide the spicebush swallowtail it’s primary host plant. I wrote all about it with photos of this caterpillar at different phases including a chrysalis on my website here.

There’s something intimate about looking into the eyes of a wild creature. The swirling galaxy of a toad’s iris, the mirrors that make up the eyes of a dragonfly, or the false snake eyes of a spicebush caterpillar, each one offers a glimpse into an entirely different way of being.

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It’s Earth Day, and I spent part of the day so far in my garden doing what I’ve come to think of as a kind of ritual - scattering seeds and seeing what comes up. Today it was German chamomile, the 2025 herb of the year, sprinkled on bare patches of soil with no formal plan. I can’t ever have too much chamomile. I harvest and dry it for herbal tea and to add to my bone stock in the fall and winter.

I’ve also been scattering about zinnia seeds I collected from last year’s spent flowers and tossing around seeds from old seed packets. There’s no telling what will come up where. But that’s the fun part.

I also planted a few things with intention - pickling cucumber seeds under the new teepee trellis my husband built, sweet alyssum in the borders of my raised beds, and brown eyed Susan seedlings in any sunny spot I can find.

Early this morning, before the sun had fully risen, I gathered mugwort by moonlight and paired it with sage to craft a cleansing wand for a friend of a friend—someone looking to clear the lingering energy from a home after the end of a relationship. Over the years, I’ve come to see how herbs can hold space for all kinds of transitions.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of chaos gardening—partly because I wrote about it here recently for the CanningCrafts garden blog, and partly because it’s how I garden more and more these days. The philosophy behind it is simple: let go of rigid rows and rules and let the wild back in.

This year, chaos gardening feels especially aligned with Earth Day. In a world unraveling with political madness, economic uncertainty, and a shifting climate, chaos gardening feels like a quiet act of resistance. Tending to what we can, where we are, embracing wildness, and growing something resilient in the face of it all.

What better way to honor the earth than by letting it speak for itself a little more in our spaces? That means resisting the urge to pull every weed, and instead observing what shows up. What plants volunteer themselves? What are the wild herbs and so-called weeds trying to tell you about your soil and the balance in your garden?

Chaos gardening is also an invitation to release perfectionism, not just in the garden, but maybe in ourselves too. The stray sunflower that comes up where you didn’t plant it. The patch of wild violets in the corner of the yard. The creeping purslane that slips into the edge of your path. The wood sorrel that comes up freely and spills out of the corners of garden beds. These are reminders that Mother Nature doesn’t always follow our plans. Sometimes the most ecological thing we can do is to stop micromanaging Her and start partnering with Her instead.

I’m also deep into helping my boss, Joe Lamp’l, organize this year’s Ecological Gardening Summit, and I’m so excited about who we’ve invited to speak. We’ve got the UK’s Dave Goulson talking about gardening for insects, Nancy Lawson on learning to coexist with our wildlife neighbors through creative planting strategies, and Benjamin Vogt with a powerful call to “unlawn” our yards.

This summit is another way we’re helping gardeners shift their mindset from control to collaboration. From tidy perfection to ecological participation. From domination to stewardship.

So today, I’m celebrating the earth by getting dirty and planting seeds I might forget about until they surprise me. By weaving intention into the plants I grow. And by leaning into the beautiful mess of a garden that evolves with the land, not in spite of it.

Happy Earth Day, friends. May your garden be wild and welcoming.

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This past Saturday was one of my favorite days of the year. It’s that day in spring, always around April 15th, when I finally feel confident enough with the weather to plant my tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and other warm season plants and flowers that I stared from seed over winter. I prepped my garden the way I always do—by sifting homemade compost and amending all of my beds and containers.

I’m nearly positive we are past the danger of a late frost. Fingers crossed, though. I’ve been wrong before. In 2021 I planted everything by April 13th because I was going in for a surgery a few days later and knew I wouldn’t be able to work in the garden for 6 weeks. Well, wouldn’t you know it, not even a week later, a late season frost had my husband covering everything up with frost blanket and hauling containers to the garage. But this year, I’m hopeful. According to AccuWeather, It doesn’t look like we’ll be getting any colder than 46F for night time temps through the end of the month.

It was also a full moon this weekend, April’s Pink Moon to be exact, and I love following the rituals of my grandfather and other ancestors and planting by the moon phases.

But before I plant out those crops in my raised beds and the myriad of grow bags and whisky barrels and other containers I have all around the garden, I always give the soil a boost with some compost from my compost bin. I do this in spring before planting and again in late summer before planting my fall garden.

This adds organic matter to feed the soil microbes and provides the existing soil a boost of nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium. After working hard all fall to grow brassicas and other fall crops, I know that soil would appreciate a hit of nitrogen to get things up and going.

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Sifting Compost

It’s a spring ritual of mine to collect the compost from my bins that’s been breaking down for about 6 months and use it to amend the soil all around the garden. But not all of the materials have broken down completely. The larger pieces - corn cobs, citrus peels, autumn’s plan debris, egg shells, etc. - haven’t completely turned to garden gold yet. That’s where compost sifting comes in handy.

It’s a trick I learned years ago from my mentor and my boss at my day job, Joe Lamp’l - Mr. Joe Gardener himself. Sifting compost is kind of like sifting flour or straining food in the kitchen. When I sift compost, I’m just separating the fine, finished material from the chunks that need more time. Compost doesn’t all break down at once, and I’m not about to wait until every last twig and eggshell is ready before putting it to use. And I sure don’t want a corn cob sticking up out of a pot. That’s just an open invitation for squirrels to go rummaging around in the soil.

So I use a simple homemade sifter which is just a wooden frame with hardware cloth stapled to the bottom. You can make one in minutes with scrap materials you have on hand. Joe has a video and written instructions here if you want to make one for your garden.

I set mine on top of a wheelbarrow or garden cart and rub handfuls of compost across the mesh. I also grab the edges and shake it from side to side. What falls through is soft, uniform compost, perfect for top-dressing raised beds and grow bags. It still has a few recognizable bits. Some leaves here and there, some tiny twigs, or a bit of straw. But I can live with that.

I was so happy with the result. It was dark and rich and best of all, it was so alive! Earth worms and small bugs were abundant. As I add it to the garden, it brings along all that good stuff—worms, microbes, and nutrients. As soon as I spread across the soil in my beds and pots the worms begin to make their way down into the soil working the compost and microbes down with them where they will live on and keep adding their castings to the soil.

And those bigger bits that don’t make it through? They head right back to the pile to finish cooking. Nothing is wasted. It all cycles back into the garden eventually. My family has been composting for years and in a way, it’s almost addictive. Watching what would be trash destined for a landfill instead get turned back into earth by Mother Nature and her creatures is a process I never grow tired of witnessing.