“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”

- Roald Dahl

This week, Floret Farms presented their first documentary, which tells the story of Alla Olkhovska as she supports her family selling flower seeds while living through the war in Ukraine. I encourage you to share this important film with others, to buy seeds from Alla to support her family, and to share in her joy of seed saving. You can purchase Alla’s e-book, Clematis, on the Floret Flower Farm website here.

“But just to keep alive is not enough. To live, you must have sunshine and freedom, and a little flower to love.”

-Hans Christian Andersen

As we near the winter solstice, the days are getting shorter. There is both a pull to gather our people and hold them close and a yearning for quiet reflection and introspection.

With the promise of a new year, there is the possibility of wild unknowns that await. I’ve been thinking about the year coming to a close while sipping tea in the early mornings, walking with our dog in the cool air and basking in the mid-day winter sun as she naps on the couch on our porch, and even ruminating about the coming year with soapy hands while washing dishes. (This is also what I would call my informal pre-writing process!)

This week, after noticing all the articles on re-inventing yourself for the new year, I found myself thinking about what a successful year really means. I was nominated as “Most Likely to Succeed” in my senior year of high school, which seems to be a laughable superlative at any age. What does that award really even mean, especially as a simultaneously angsty and wide-eyed teenager with so little life experience?

I’ve come to learn in my 40s that curiosity, creativity, resiliency, and contentment are my metrics for success in this life. When I have something (or many things) that I’m passionate about (gardening, nature, caring for people and wildlife, photography, reading, cooking, travel, making tea, saving seeds), I have people I love who are supportive in and of my life, and I am able to find beauty in daily life, I feel as though I am thriving despite society’s typical constraints and often short-lived definitions of success.

I invite you to enjoy a short respite from the holiday business to watch the video I took this week of my garden and home. I hope you feel a sense of peace with the beauty and complexity of daily life and the permission to wind down after a year of abundance and resilience as nature turns quiet and rests for the winter season.

Books can bring us comfort and energize our minds, especially in the winter months. I’ve always loved the idea of a book flood, or Jólabókaflóðið in Icelandic, on Christmas Eve, and I thought, why not flood the whole winter season with books?

I’m sharing a few booklists I created on Bookshop.org this year in hopes you’ll find a good book to curl up with in the colder months.

In 2023, I read 54 books (see my booklist for 2023 below), so I’m compiling a list of 50 titles for 2024. My TBR list for 2024 will include several books and audiobooks I already own and haven’t read or listened to, with room for a few extras to add throughout the year.

My 2024 TBR (To Be Read List) - This is a work in progress, so let me know your recommendations in the comments below this post.

Need a last-minute gift? Support independent bookstores and celebrate reading with a Libro.fm audiobook gift credit bundle or Bookshop.org gift card.

Why Libro.fm and not Audible? Read more about why Libro.fm is my choice for audiobooks.

I will be taking a longer break than usual this holiday season but will return to writing on February 15. If you have a paid subscription, you will not be billed for the month of January.

I’m beginning the year by giving myself ample time to plan our garden, take inventory of seeds for spring planting, learn a few new skills, and practice others (knitting, creative writing, practicing Spanish and learning a few words in Portuguese, and photography), organize my digital photo library (the most time-consuming task of all!), consider what I’ll be writing about this year, and thoughtfully prepare for the upcoming year by deciding what parts of my life to prioritize.

What do you want to see here on 52 Seasons in 2024? Let me know in the comments below!

Until we meet again in the new year, I encourage you to celebrate winter’s offerings with this post from Victoria Harrison. I hope the holiday season gives you ample time for activities you love, spending time with people who fill your heart, spreading kindness, and letting nature lead the way. Say yes to lingering this season when the opportunity arises rather than rushing. Let nature set the pace. Stay warm, or if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, stay cool, and I hope to see you all in the new year.

Last weekend, we spent a beautiful Sunday morning at Yule in the Garden at Zilker Botanical Garden. Austin Camerata created a stellar soundtrack for picnickers sipping hot chocolate, watching energetic little ones dancing around, and creating holiday crafts like the little paper tree you’ll see in this week’s video at the end of this post.

Color change is at its peak in our city, and we had a chance to admire the gorgeous trees at Zilker Botanical Garden and all of the deciduous trees putting on a show along our street all week. With the mild temperatures, rain, and no hard freeze yet, everything remains green and lush in our garden. We’re still harvesting peppers, cherry tomatoes, herbs, and, of course, our greens like kale, Swiss chard, and tatsoi are growing like crazy!

As I enjoy this time in the garden, I’m dreaming up a few gift ideas from our garden for family and friends. I’m gathering catmint, chrysanthemums, and rose petals to dry for making tisane, using propagated aloe vera plants from our abundant supply, tying up herb bundles, cutting the last of our summer flowers, harvesting veggies for soup, and sourcing amaryllis or paperwhite bulbs for winter holiday gifts.

We’ve been lucky to get by without a freeze, but I know we’re due for one soon. Once I see that a freeze is on its way, I’ll do a major harvest to enjoy everything we can before a freeze sets in. I usually let our native plants die back as they provide wildlife food and shelter during the winter, and then I’ll do a major prune/cut back of native plants in February.

What’s left on my winter garden prep list?

I consulted The Natural Gardener website (read this month’s tips from TNG - December in the garden) to see what I might need to do in the garden this month. I hope these tips (with a few specific to my own garden) are helpful for winter garden preparation as your garden begins to slumber.

• plant pansies and violas to use as edible flowers for a pop of color in the colder months

• thin sprouts for kale and other greens

• prune back chrysanthemums almost to the ground after blooming & protect them from freezes so they will bloom in springtime

• mulch any remaining beds

• collect seeds and cut all heat-loving plants down to the roots so they can decompose into the soil

• add seaweed to the soil to provide nutrients in the colder months (I’ve used this brand and this brand with success)

• read up on seeds that need to be cold-stratified before spring

• prune roses

• move some of our more tender plants inside & create an indoor herb planter

• put our pop-up greenhouse in the yard for our aloe vera pots and citrus trees

• line up garden bed covers in the yard in case of a frost or freeze so they are easy to access

• “Water holds heat better than dry soil,” so water the garden BEFORE any freeze

In January and February, I will begin planning our spring garden and organizing our current seed collection. I read recently that our gardening zone has changed to 9A, which might need to be considered as I make our garden plan.

Keep an eye out for this upcoming documentary from Floret Farms. Alla’s story will captivate and inspire you and break your heart. Her flowers, seed cultivation, and photography are beautiful. You can support her family by buying seeds, her e-book, or making a donation by going to PAYPAL and entering standwithkharkiv@gmail.com and listing “humanitarian aid” in the payment field description

I hope you have some time in your garden with a little sunshine to brighten your day or some lovely snow to enjoy a winter wonderland this weekend.

Enjoy this week’s video! See you next week!

After several activities with family and friends and finishing up some house projects last week, my little family took a whole weekend just to rest. It wasn’t that the week was particularly stressful. I even managed to add some calming elements into the week with time in nature, reading breaks, short naps, cooking with herbs from our garden, and adding natural elements to our dining table decor. Still, I found myself depleted by the end of the week. I also knew I wasn’t the only one in our house who could use a break. We all agreed that hitting the pause button on life for the weekend might be essential and therapeutic, considering we have a full couple of weeks ahead.

Cozying up in our house, we finished our fall puzzle, took long walks, did our best to sleep in (our teenager is highly skilled in this area), cooked up extra leftovers in creative ways, and even visited a local cafe and coffee shop to do our part to support local businesses near our home. There was also plenty of time for individual downtime, which we spent reading and watching shows. I made countless mugs of milk tea, matcha, and chai, and enjoyed the slowness of the weekend.

Comforting recipes from my favorite winter cookbook. Winter by Louise Franc

Most everyone I’m hearing from in the Northern Hemisphere who has transitioned into winter is feeling its effects. A stifled yawn, a little sniffle, or a full-on cold or virus has everyone scrambling to lower their expectations for productivity this winter season. A yearning for slowness digs deep into our soul when life around us feels frantic with the upcoming holidays. We feel forced to ramp up our limited energy when our bodies desperately want to slow down.

So, this week, I’m sharing advice and encouragement from some of my favorite sources to help everyone embrace a slower pace.

Reading for Relaxation and Escape

Right now, I'm finishing up the page-turner Divine Rivals (Bookshop.org & BookPeople), a Young Adult (YA) novel by Rebecca Ross, which begins with a melancholy mood that reminds me of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Bookshop.org & BookPeople). The story transforms into an action-packed enemies-to-lovers journey rooted in enchantment amid a grueling war between gods. This book is the beginning of the Letters of Enchantment series, and book #2, Ruthless Vows (Bookshop.org & BookPeople), releases on December 26, 2023.

I’m also reading The Berry Pickers (Bookshop.org & BookPeople), which reminded me of a thread in The Secret Book of Flora Lea (Bookshop.org & BookPeople) by author Patti Callahan Henry.

Music for Puzzling and Writing

Winter Naps

Let your nervous system enjoy a nap with Ally Boothroyd’s Yoga Nidra and Sound Bath sessions. Listen to them relaxing reclined on your bed or make a pallet on the floor and cover up with a blanket and an eye pillow. (My favorite is her Forest Bath Guided Yoga Nidra session)

If you need a laugh over the idea of holiday “simplicity” before you head into the weekend, you might enjoy this Substack post from Erin Boyle at Tea Notes.

“The truth is that holiday magic doesn’t exist apart from holiday realism.”

-Erin Boyle at Tea Notes

Take care of yourselves, my friends. See you next week.

“I wish I were a grizzly bear and could eat all the cake and sandwiches in the picnic baskets of Yellowstone National Park, build up a pleasing layer of blubber, dig a large but snug hole, and go to sleep until the warmer weather draws me out. However, as a human being, it might be better to devise rather more sociable ways of embracing the colder months.”

-Emma Mitchell from Making Winter: A Hygge-Inspired Guide to Surviving the Winter Months

I’m beginning to enjoy this cozy part of the year as I’ve learned over the last few years how to embrace the colder months. When November rolls around, I spend more time reading, learning to knit, piecing together a puzzle in the evenings with my husband, and taking walks in the cool mornings among crunching leaves and busy squirrels. To stay warm, I pull on my wool socks, work on perfecting the art of layering, and cover up in blankets or fall asleep by the fire (an ongoing family joke is that I can never stay awake when a fire is in the fireplace, but luckily my husband stays awake to make sure it’s turned off before bedtime).

This week, my life is full of friends and family, cooking and baking, and making time to get outside. Whether you enjoy time with family or friends, contemplative alone time, shopping small and supporting your local bookstore or shops, or cold yet sunny afternoons outside for fresh air and calm, I hope you are recharging for the season ahead.

Book & Gift Ideas for the Winter Season

Find ideas for bringing warmth inside your home with my Hygge booklist on Bookshop.org.

If winter or the holiday season ahead can be a difficult season for you or someone you love, giving a gift that encourages wellness might be a caring way to offer support. Browse my Winter Wellness booklist on Bookshop.org and then pair a book with a comforting gift of tea from a local maker, a homemade blanket, a nature journal (like this one or this one or this one for kids), watercolor or drawing set, a knitting class or a great knitting bag, or even a pair of binoculars and a bird feeder or roosting box for birdwatching this winter season.

Kids get grumpy this time of year, too. If you have little ones overwhelmed by all the holiday activity, they might enjoy the book Grumpy Badger’s Christmas by Paul Bright and Jane Chapman. While it doesn’t seem to be available in bookstores any longer, you might find a copy at your local library or watch the read-aloud video below.

One of the most exciting parts of winter (at least in this part of the world) is the (albeit slim!) chance of snow. Make the transition to winter even more fun by learning about how nature prepares for winter and how it often parallels what we are doing in our lives during this season. Enjoy a book from my Seasons, Winter Holidays, and Celebrating Winter Solstice booklists on Bookshop.org with a warm mug of hot chocolate or tea.

Time in the kitchen becomes even more cozy during the colder months. Gathering around a table, big or small, feels comforting and nourishing. Check out my Family Meals - My Cookbook Library booklist on Bookshop.org to inspire you or the home chef in your life!

First Light Books in Austin, Texas

Supporting Indie Bookstores & Shop Small

We love our charming little independent bookstores and small family-owned shops, but they won’t stay in business if we only shop at big box stores and Amazon. For small businesses to thrive, we have to actually shop there. Sometimes, that means paying a little more and being patient for items to arrive if they need to be ordered.

What you receive in return for shopping small is a more enjoyable (and usually less stressful) experience in a well-curated (often smaller) and cozy environment, the heartwarming feeling of supporting local makers and people in your community who help make your town unique, and an opportunity to see creativity in action with all of the beautiful displays and items made with care. Most small businesses also stock products made by other small business owners, so everyone wins! Personal touches and helpful advice are some of the best parts of shopping small.

You can support local businesses and independent bookstores year-round with memberships or subscriptions like the ones below. You receive some great perks, and they know that they have the financial support of their community even in the months when business is slow.

First Light Books membership program in Austin, TX

Lark & Owl membership program in Georgetown, Texas

When you shop small, you support members of your community. What to do if you can’t find what you are looking for locally? You can support makers and small business owners worldwide on Etsy and even filter the search results by state, country, shipping time, and whether or not the item is handmade. I’ve compiled a list of some of my favorite Etsy finds for winter!

• Book Lovers Valet

• Ceramic Ornaments

• Maple Sugar

• Linen Home Goods

• Hand Knit Oversize Sweater (and this Little Man’s Rolled Neck Sweater!)

• Beautiful Handmade Ornaments and Gifts for Kids

• Nordic-Inspired Fabric Christmas Advent Calendar

Can’t make it to your local bookstore or can’t find the book you need? You can still shop from home AND support independent bookstores on Bookshop.org and Libro.fm for audiobooks.

In time for the winter gift-giving season, Bookshop is giving this community a code to save 15% on anything from their gift guide. Just use the code HOLIDAY23when you check out (code expires December 18, 2023). Can’t find what you’re looking for? What about giving a Bookshop.org gift card instead?

Bookshop.org works to connect readers with independent booksellers all over the world. We believe local bookstores are essential community hubs that foster culture, curiosity, and a love of reading, and we're committed to helping them thrive. Every purchase on the site financially supports independent bookstores. Our platform gives independent bookstores tools to compete online and financial support to help them maintain their presence in local communities.

Libro.fm is an employee-owned Social Purpose Corporation that shares profits from your audiobook purchases with your chosen bookshop, giving you the power to keep money within your local economy.

What are your favorite indie bookstores in your area? Share your favorite indie bookstores and what books you’ll be giving this season in the comments below this post.

Fall color beginning in Central Texas

I’ll see you next week with a new Life’s Seasons post!

Several years ago, we walked into a small shop in Whitefish, Montana, where items from local makers were thoughtfully spread out on tables. As I sipped local ginger beer from one of the vendors, I stumbled across beautiful little jars of rose and lavender face lotion. My skin, as is usually the case in the drier parts of the country, was parched, so I brought some of that homemade and wildcrafted lotion back to our AirBnB. I loved it so much that I have ordered face lotion and oil from, Moji Herbals, ever since.

The owner, Petra, always includes a little note, a sprig of pine or lavender, and a seasonal ribbon in each shipment. In her blog post last month, she talked about the many medicinal and culinary uses for sage (which just happens to be flourishing in our garden right now!). I plan to try some of her suggestions for using fresh and dried sage and soaking up sage’s medicinal properties while enjoying tea and even her salad dressing recipe on some of the fresh lettuce growing in our garden soon. Petra also wrote about the magic of this season and how we often feel more connected to our ancestors, our roots, this time of year.

Earlier this week, I attended the unveiling of The Truth is I Love You, a permanent public outdoor sculpture by Hank Willis Thomas at the Austin Central Library. After the event, the artist shared his process with a small group of Library Foundation supporters and Austin Central Library staff members who gathered to celebrate his work. He told us about how the foundation of a tree is its roots and that his sculpture has the feeling of a tree with roots we don’t see (which could represent the stories of our ancestors). He feels that we all embody our ancestors and discussed a common saying in Black communities: “We are our ancestors’ wildest dreams,” along with art historian Cherise Smith, Executive Director of the Art Galleries at Black Studies and Professor, African and African Diaspora Studies, at the University of Texas.

The branches of Hank Willis Thomas’ public art installation extend into speech bubbles that represent the fruit of a tree, which may represent the lives and stories of the next generations and their truths. Having ways to respect each other through words and language was a central theme of the piece. The artist, Hank Willis Thomas, encourages us to learn one word in each language to bridge the gap between cultures so that we can connect and share our truths, which is why the sculpture includes words in both English and Spanish.

As I consider the many gardeners, nature lovers, and farmers in our family ancestry, I’m reminded that those roots are present in me as I prepare the garden for winter. Plants are also creating sturdy roots for the winter, albeit unseen above ground, to withstand colder temperatures and gusty winds. In last week’s post, I wrote about how we added spent mushroom blocks to our garden and landscape. These mushrooms use their mycelium to help plants and trees obtain more nutrients from the soil, while the mushrooms benefit from sugars from the plants and trees. There is so much magic happening beneath the soil.

Learn more about mycorrhizal fungi networks in Listen to the Language of the Trees by Tera Kelley and Marie Harmanson (also available at BookPeople)

“The hyphae explore the soil or any other substrate where fungi are growing and secrete digestive enzymes onto their food source, often dead organic materials and sometimes living organisms.

These enzymes break down the matter into smaller parts that feed not only the fungi, but also their plant partners and many other organisms. They can also ferment foods, increasing palatability.”

-Source: Kew Gardens

I’ve noticed little nibbles on the oyster mushrooms that popped up throughout the garden after the recent rain. Squirrels, foxes, deer, raccoons, and armadillos have been known to dine on these gourmet offerings. On our wildlife camera, I often notice the raccoons washing their paws in our birdbath and wonder what they are doing. Maybe they just enjoy clean paws? They seem to love playing with the water wiggler, but maybe they appreciate the moving water for washing their hands! You’ll notice we have a large, sturdy base for our birdbath. We learned quickly that a pedestal base wasn’t made for raccoons stopping by for a drink.

“Basically, raccoons wash their food to make it “wet” before eating. Interestingly, the raccoon’s scientific name, “Procyon lotor”, means “washing bear.”  Basically, they don’t wash the food but make it moistened with water. Raccoons have an incredibly sensitive sense of touch. This creature’s brain focuses mainly on touch, using over two-thirds of its sensory power for it. Its small hands have over ten times more nerve endings than a human hand, making them incredibly sensitive. Basically, they wet the food to excite the nerve cells present in their paws.”

AND

“Yes, raccoons are clean animals in the animal kingdom. Usually, they groom themselves and wash their food before eating in their natural habitat.”

-Source: All About Raccoons

If raccoons decide to eat a mushroom, they might wash it off, take a little bite, and see if it makes them sick. Once they’ve found a safe source of mushrooms, they will teach their little ones which mushrooms are safe to eat. Most mushrooms safe for humans to eat are also safe for raccoons.

This year has been a mast year for trees and berries here in Central Texas. Branches are heavy with fruit, and acorns are sprawled across fields and driveways. Folklore would say this is because we have a particularly cold winter ahead, but in truth, it may have more to do with the seasonal conditions of a spring that allowed for more fruit to set and the timing of rain that allowed these berries and fruits to flourish.

On that same trip to Whitefish, Montana, several years ago, we made our way to a local natural food store up the street from the shop with artisanal goods and overheard some of the locals saying they were having trouble sleeping because of the wildfire smoke. Wildfires were raging in many of the western states that summer. To get to Whitefish, we traveled by ferry and then car from the San Juan Islands in Washington, through Idaho, and on to Montana, with wildfire smoke and even some fire visible in the forests along the roads. The smoke cleared enough for only one day to explore Glacier National Park as we made our way up the Going-to-the-Sun Road.

I highly recommend listening to the “Yosemite National Park” and “Glacier National Park” episodes on The Washington Post podcast, Field Trip, to learn more about how the caretakers for National Parks are changing their approach to wildfires.

We need wild places where wildlife can thrive without much interference from humans. Sometimes, we need to let nature engage in something destructive and rejuvenating for the soil and trees, especially trees like sequoias that depend on wildfires (just not the intense heat and scale of the ones caused by mismanagement of forests and climate change) so that swaths of wildflowers can grow. Listening to indigenous voices who took care of these forests long before National Parks were created and learning from their wisdom will benefit nature for many years to come.

This wild native beehive in a black walnut tree on our land reminds me that we can be in awe of nature’s beauty and complexity without needing to monetize or “improve” it. We need to learn how to be good caretakers so that wild ecosystems are a part of our future.

Part of being a good caretaker of nature is spending time being an observer. This week, I began listening to The Wild Remedy: How Nature Mends Us by Emma Mitchell (also available at BookPeople). The author begins to take walks near her home as a way to manage her crippling depression and finds it a therapeutic and helpful addition to medication and therapy. She uses observation, field guides, journaling, photography, meeting up with other naturalists, and sketching her discoveries to focus on nature’s abundance and wisdom rather than the “gray slug” of depression (a term she coined).

“During the winter months, we tend to spend more time indoors, which can lead to feeling rather Eeyore-ish. One way to fend off the dark forces is to gather as much light into the eyes - and serotonin into the neurons - as possible by venturing out on walks.”

-Emma Mitchell from Making Winter (also available at BookPeople)

Ensure your pets are also getting plenty of sunlight in their daily routine this time of year by taking them on walks during the daylight hours, giving them time to lounge outside on a sunny afternoon, or situating their bed near an open window to soak up sunlight at some point during the day.

“If you go to a place on anything but your own feet, you are taken there too fast and miss a thousand delicate joys that were waiting for you by the wayside.

-Elizabeth Von Arnon, author of The Enchanted April (also available at BookPeople) (quotation was mentioned in The Wild Remedy by Emma Mitchell)

I hope that wherever you are in the world, you are taking time to nourish yourself and feel grounded and rejuvenated through your interactions with nature.

I’ll see you next week with recommendations for winter reading, a few gift ideas for the readers in your life, and how to support indie bookstores in the next edition of Reading Seasons!

When I step out into my garden, I feel my body unwind. My mind jumps off the hamster wheel, and I feel my senses come to life. I draw in the scent of delicate flower petals, listen to the wren sing his heart out atop the wooden fence, collect the tiny golden cherry tomato orbs, and brush my fingers against the fuzzy leaves of oregano and sage plants. The sensations take me away from whatever was on my mind as I’m fully immersed in the natural world.

I know firsthand why stepping out into nature and putting my hands in the dirt is healing, but I wanted to know more about the science behind my personal experience and observations. I’ve spent the last few weeks listening to The Nature Fix and reflecting on why exploring gardens and natural spaces is tremendously healing. In our busy modern lives, we have fewer opportunities to be in awe of nature. We lose connection with the core of who we are and our role in the greater ecosystem when we forget that we are part of nature and are moved and changed by our relationship with the natural world.

Designing and enjoying healing landscapes in cities, hospitals, schools, and at home are ways to surround ourselves with nature in environments that can otherwise feel sterile. The Nature Fix by Florence Williams (on Bookshop.org and Libro.fm) is a collection of research and anecdotes exploring why access to nature is vital to our health and well-being. Having a small garden or access to a public garden encourages people to pay attention, observe, and experience the seasons as they change.

Garden Therapy booklist on Bookshop.org

In the winter months, the garden slows down just as the shorter days call on us to dial down our own productivity. Bringing a small garden indoors by forcing paperwhite bulbs in pots, installing a greenhouse, propagating plants in water, growing an avocado tree (I’m giving this a try!), growing houseplants in small pots, or even just sitting down with some gardening books or seed catalogs to plan a spring garden can help us all get through dreary weather. The Winter Garden by Emma Hardy, in my Garden Therapy booklist on Bookshop.org looks like a helpful resource for gathering ideas to create an uplifting winter garden.

Lessalyn Ramapriya Koehler of Priya Herbals

Your garden can be your kitchen and your apothecary if you plant wisely. I had the opportunity to attend a class called Kitchen Witchery at The Natural Gardener,taught by Lessalyn Ramapriya Koehler of Priya Herbals.

In the class, I learned about how plants in the garden, such as garlic, sage, ginger, and turmeric, can be helpful for pain relief, reducing inflammation, providing antioxidants, and soothing common colds and allergies. Each plant has unique medicinal properties. I picked up some garlic honey and elderberry syrup at the event to get a head start on wellness this season. (As with all natural remedies, be sure to do your research and consult a medical professional.)

Interested in learning more?

50 Plants That Heal: Discover Medicinal Plants - A Card Deck by François Couplan and Pierre And Délia Vignes

Wild Apothecary: Reclaiming Medicine for All by Claudia Manchanda and Amaia Dadachanji

The Backyard Herbal Apothecary: Effective Medicinal Remedies Using Commonly Found Herbs & Plants by Devon Young

100 Plants That Heal: The Illustrated Herbarium of Medicinal Plants by François Couplan, Gérard Debuigne, and Pierre And Délia Vignes

Lone Star Nursery near Austin, Texas, is a wonderful resource for sourcing healing plants if you live in Central Texas.

Garden Therapy booklist on Bookshop.org

I loved this video on creating a healing garden. I had no idea that we could grow chia in Central Texas until watching this video, but I’m doing my research to see if that might be an addition to our garden in March. Seeing the mushrooms at work in the garden in this video inspired me to pick up a few spent mushroom blocks at The Natural Gardener from the Central Texas Mycological Society. I crumbled up the mushroom blocks and incorporated them into the hardwood mulch, adding a cozy blanket of mulch and soil remediation powerhouses ahead of winter.

“Fungal hyphae and plant roots working together are called mycorrhizae.

It adds up to a fundamental mutualistic relationship between fungi and green plants, one that has been evolving for millions of years.

Mycorrhizal fungi are not fertilizers, although a fungal inoculation of roots can improve a plant’s growth rate and tolerance to drought and disease.”

-Source: Susie Dunham, Oregon State Extension Website

In early November, our garden is still green, the tomatoes and peppers are continuing to ripen daily, the flowers are still blooming, and the bees are still buzzing. Gulf fritillaries are still fluttering around our yard, leaving eggs that transform into lumbering caterpillars on our passion vine plants. The fall winds and rain have kept the temperatures cooler but not cold, and everything is thriving. However, change is visible in the telltale colors of gold and crimson leaves appearing on the trees in our neighborhood. Once we receive our first bite of winter temperatures, the tender perennials will take their bow for their season to appear again in the spring, and our fall veggies will take center stage.

During the last cold snap, we found our resident wren using the roost hanging in our magnolia tree, where I had placed a small tuft of alpaca fur inside for warmth. We can see the roost from our bedroom window, and it warmed my heart to know that they had a warm place to wait out the storm. (I’m adding these colorful roosts to my wishlist!)

Enjoy this week’s video! If you have any questions about the plants featured in the video, please let me know in the comments.

See you next week for Nature’s Seasons!

As we move into November, the season of shorter days, darkness wraps around us like a glittering cloak of stars in the Northern Hemisphere. After a sweltering summer and a fall brimming with activity, I’m looking forward to more time for gathering with family and friends and introspection with slower, quieter days. The transition feels like a welcome balm for my soul.

Like a squirrel collecting their cache of acorns in preparation for the change of seasons, I’ve spent the last month collecting tea, candles, warm sweaters, cozy fall and winter activity materials, and, of course, more books. Spending more time inside also means the interior of our home can sometimes feel more cluttered. I need a somewhat tidy space for my brain to feel calm, so preparing for the upcoming cozy season means organizing spaces like our pantry, the entry closet for welcoming guests, the cabinet of dishes for entertaining, and my office closet where I store my crafts and gifts for upcoming holidays. Throughout the process, I’m letting go of items that are no longer useful. When everything has a place in our home, it helps me to put things away quickly and feel calmer, allowing me to spend the time doing something I enjoy rather than cleaning and decluttering.

Transitioning into a new season can also mean a shift in energy and emotions. Add a little holiday stress to the equation, and we can easily feel overwhelmed. Establishing practices to both ground ourselves and feel lightness when needed is vital to a healthy lifestyle in every season, but especially this time of year. When it’s windy or chilly outside, I do my best to feel grounded by drinking or eating something warm, walking out in nature and engaging all my senses, and staying close to the ground with some yoga nidra. When the heavy cabin-fever-inducing months of late winter roll around, I find myself needing less grounding and more lightness. Seeking warmth, connection, comfort, or movement helps me through each part of the season. Getting outside and soaking up the sun, letting the cold air invigorate the body and mind, and noticing nature in the fall and winter are equally important as staying cozy indoors.

Children might also experience the effects of the change of seasons. Whether they feel dysregulated due to less sleep or the hurried nature of the holidays, parents and caregivers can help children through this time by assisting them in creating their own hygge list, learning to express these feelings with emotional literacy cards, finding ways to rest and recharge, and daily check-ins to see how they are feeling.

Winter weather, where I live in Central Texas, can be a rollercoaster of cold and warm days. Drawing inspiration from people living in colder climates, I hope to bring warmth into our home and hearts by drawing from the wisdom of nature and the Danish concept of hygge. What is hygge? Hygge might look different each season, even if the feeling of hygge is the same.

Check out my collection of books on Bookshop.org for embracing hygge this season.

After reading this article on the Highly Sensitive Refuge website about the elements of hygge, I thought I’d share a few ways I plan to incorporate hygge into my home and life this season in hopes that it might spark a few ideas for this community. Meik Wiking, the author of The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living and My Hygge Home: How to Make Home Your Happy Place, shares that hygge can be found in ten different ways.

Atmosphere

When creating an atmosphere in our home, I layer elements of coziness, the way a bird builds a nest with different materials. I begin by considering the five senses using a light scent from a candle, the warm glow of a lamp or fireplace, a soft blanket, soothing music in the background, and a cup of something warm or a sweet or savory treat. Fall and winter activities can create a cozy atmosphere as well. Baking your favorite fall treat or dish might evoke a memory. Walking in nature and catching a hint of pine in the air or watching a fluttering leaf might help you feel grounded as the seasons change. Nature knows how to put on a show this time of year!

Presence

When working with my hands and focusing on the next step of a creative process, I’m fully engaged in the moment at hand. I’m keeping my hands busy this fall, determined to learn how to knit. I’m beginning with this Athens blanket kit and this Cuzco Sweater kit from We Are Knitters. Perfection is not my goal with this project, but listening to an audiobook while knitting feels like a comforting way to spend my autumn and winter evenings. Puzzling also requires presence by focusing on one thing at a time when searching for the correct puzzle piece!

Looking for a few seasonal puzzle ideas?

Pumpkin Soup puzzle

Autumn Trail puzzle

Fall Puzzle Collection from Eeboo

Winter Puzzle Collection from New York Puzzle Company

Pleasure

The element of pleasure in hygge is highly individual, but whatever brings you true joy should be a part of your hygge experience. There are moments of joy in our days if we pay attention. If steaming coffee or tea and a slice of cake brings you joy, make time for that. If slowly building furniture in your workshop makes you feel good, do that. The process is what is important.

One of the things that brings me joy is learning something that I never knew existed before that moment. Have you heard of musical streets? I hadn’t before reading about them in The Joyletter, and I love creative community projects!

Musical Roads 5 Places Where Streets Sing

Equality

When we feel sleepy and have extra tasks on our list this time of year, sharing the load with others can be helpful. Could you combine two elements of hygge and gather a few friends to make holiday gifts, wrap gifts, prepare pies or cookies, or indulge in an emotional release with plenty of laughter with friends? Sharing what we have, both our talents and our resources, with our community will help others enjoy a little hygge this season.

Gratitude

One of the most stressful parts of the holidays for me is always the retail effect. I don’t love shopping to begin with (garden nurseries, Etsy, and independent bookstores being the exception!), so when the holidays roll around, the added crowds, holiday music on repeat, and pressure to spend are overwhelming to my nervous system.

I’ve decided to treat November as a mostly no-spend month. You might think this is the worst time to take a break from spending. Sure, I’ll miss out on all the sales for Black Friday (which has pretty much turned into the whole month of November of sales), but it can be easy to think everything is a needed expense or such a good deal that we must get it right away. We aren’t as resourceful or creative when we automatically add something to a cart to make our lives easier.

This year, I plan to make gifts from our garden, pot up bulbs, and make soup or treats for busy families. Working with my hands is grounding and will allow me to keep things slow and give to others simultaneously.

If you’re already feeling overwhelmed in your inbox or your actual mailbox, unsubscribe to all the holiday sale emails and opt out of catalogs (you can do this through Paper Karma, an app I use and love).

If you appreciate a slightly minimal home, you might enjoy watching the One In One Out Video on Sketchy Advice. In the video, Ben also talks about the book Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman which is getting added to my TBR list. If you’ve followed me for a while, you’ll know I love the YNAB videos with Ben and Hannah from Heard it From Hannah.

Harmony

Harmonious time for me feels like all the pieces of my life are working together, and I feel a flow of creativity. The truth is that for most of us, modern life feels like the opposite of harmony. However, we can notice moments of harmony during the day and call on our five senses to help ground us when life is turbulent.

Comfort

This is one element that I feel confident in incorporating every day. Fall makes me feel surrounded by comfort. I take breaks more often to rest and fuel myself with nourishing soup, slow-cooked meals, and lots and lots of tea. I also take yoga nidra “naps” as needed.

Truce

Stress can bring out the worst in all of us. Making a concerted effort to let divisive topics rest, find common ground, and listen to each other by being more present can help make peace with our friends and loved ones. Calling a truce does not mean that those matters are not important to us or that we should not continue to advocate for the topics we are passionate about, it just means that we are finding small moments, holidays, seasons, or events to pause for the sake of peace. If we don’t take opportunities to experience peace and reverence for people who think differently than we do, we won’t be able to see why peace is such a valuable experience and practice in humanity.

I found the most recent podcast episode for the Tortoise helpful in describing what many of us are feeling during this tumultuous time in the world. (Among other topics in the episode, they reference an Australian referendum called “The Voice.” Here is more information on that historic referendum.)

Togetherness

Building stronger relationships with family, friends, and our community means gathering, checking in, and supporting each other despite the hard times and dark nights. Last month, we had the opportunity to enjoy two outdoor music festivals, and it reminded me why some events in life are better enjoyed in shared company, especially outside. An energy builds when people dance, sing, and clap along to music under the bright blue sky or the moon's glow. When the nights are cool, huddled up listening to artists share their life stories through song under the stars makes you feel connected in a meaningful way. Songwriting is just embodied poetry.

I’ve linked each musician to their Spotify page if you want to check them out.

Austin City Limits Festival

My favorites: The Tesky Brothers, Lil Simz, Alanis Morissette, Maggie Rogersand, of course, the Austin Silent Disco!

I saw my first Alanis Morissette show in Austin in 1996, so needless to say it was a pretty amazing experience to see her again all these years later! She has such a powerful voice and message for her fans!

Dripping Springs Songwriters Festival

My favorites: Whitney Monge, Ray Prim (an Austinite!), Ben Gage, Robby Hecht, Zach Berkman, and Abigayle Kompst

With cooler weather arriving, I hope that my family will be taking more hikes, bike rides, and hunkering down at least one evening a week to watch a show together (America Outdoors with Baratunde Thurston is a family favorite). We also have several community events to attend this season, where we’ll be able to celebrate the art created in books, public spaces, farms, and gardens.

Shelter

Shelter is where you can find comfort, nourishment, a break from the storm of life, the stress of the holidays, and a harsh environment. My shelter and refuge can be found in my home, my relationships with family and friends, my garden, and my little office filled with books.

Thinking of a hygge addition to your home or life this season? In the comments section, share your plans to integrate hygge using any of the elements below. I look forward to hearing all the ways this community plans to get cozy at home and out in nature.

Enjoy your weekend, and don’t forget to share your fall and winter hygge list with us! See you next week for a post on healing and wellness gardens for Gardening Seasons.

“The whole world was brimming with wonder, if you looked closely enough.”

-Greenwild by Pari Thomson

Maybe it’s the gentle light this time of year that makes everything look moody and nostalgic or the way the wind rustles the trees and nudges them to let go of their leaves, but nature feels even more magical right now. I notice myself getting sleepier earlier and earlier as the darkness starts to creep into our evenings more each day.

Books with a touch of magic seem to making their way to the top of my TBR (To-Be-Read) list. When Paola from the YouTube Channel The Cottage Fairy recommended the book Greenwild, it sounded like just the literary medicine I needed after learning about the devastating events happening around the world and in my own country over the last few weeks. Stories can sometimes help us to see a broader worldview, perspective, and act as a balm when we are feeling hopeless or overwhelmed by experiencing the world through the eyes of the characters in the stories. Most villains and heroes in the stories we read are no different from the ones we see in our own world and just as complex.

Eager to curl up with quiet time and a whimsical book, Greenwild ended up being perfect choice to welcome in this magical season while also giving some thought to the global issues that unite us all. This fast-paced adventure follows Daisy and her mom, Leila Thistledown, as they travel the world in search of stories. Daisy is placed in a boarding school while her mother travels to Peru for a story too dangerous for Daisy follow along. When Daisy learns that her mother is suddenly missing, she escapes from the boarding school hoping to find her mother and accidentally arrives in the magical world of Greenwild.

“She liked to imagine Ma waving a butterfly net through the air and scooping up flighty headlines and unruly articles. . .”

--Greenwild by Pari Thomson

Daisy felt like an outsider before she arrived in Greenwild, but soon her days are filled with adventure accompanied by a ragtag group of young Botanists in the Five O’Clock Club: Indigo, Professor, and Acorn. While botanists in the Grayside (the non-magical part of the world…our world!) study plants, Botanists in Greenwild use green magic or plant magic. They are the “custodians of a world of botanical wonders” and are constantly asking themselves what they can do for nature. Botanists in the story are similar to environmentalists today who face many challenges as they struggle (and often experience harmful or deadly consequences) when facing governments, individuals, large companies, and organizations causing harm to the environment. The Grim Reapers in the story represent the individuals, organizations, and large businesses that push for more destruction of habitat, fueled by greed and power.

“Ma bought potted orchids and geraniums wherever they stayed, and they always flowered extravagantly, miraculously, as if she was their own personal sun. Daisy knew how they felt. Here is someone who makes us feel alive.”

-Greenwild by Pari Thomson

There are so many magical parts of this book that I loved as an adult, but would have especially loved as a child. In the story, sunflowers are grown in the story to bring warmth to a room. A larder tree offers fresh fruit in the kitchen, but only if you ask nicely. Plants use lunarsynthesis to “turn moonlight into energy and use it to generate magic”. The description of the Moonmarket in the story was an enchanting adventure in culinary and magical delights and full of suspense. The magic of The Heart Oak was enchanting and beautiful and a thoughtful addition by the author. There were a few predictable plot lines, but that is to be expected in a middle-grade novel.

”Who says what’s magic and what isn’t? There’s only what is. You wouldn’t call it magic when a sunflower turns its head to follow the sun through the sky, because there’s an explanation for it. In a way, everything is magic. The magic is in the sunflowers and the tree and the grass, in the dandelions and the parakeets and the earthworms.”

-Hal from Greenwild by Pari Thomson

In the book, green parakeets are part of the parapost delivery service which delivers messages back and forth from Grayside to Greenwild. After reading this book, I’ll never look at our wild green parakeet population in Austin the same way again. Maybe they are delivering messages to a magical location?

There really is so much to love about this book from the eyes of someone who is curious, imaginative, and loves the natural world. I think the small parts about the book that I didn’t love probably wouldn’t have even bothered me if I was part of the target audience, middle grade, but as an adult, I did notice a few things. There were a few references that might not land with a middle-grade reader such as “like an espresso shot of pure joy”. If you are a sensitive person or you are sharing this book with a sensitive reader, it might be helpful to know that there are a few descriptions of people being murdered and a mildly graphic description of an animal being killed. Grief is also a central theme to this book. Sometimes it can be good have time to process these experiences or be prepared to talk about them before or while reading.

The Greenwild 2 book release is coming in the Summer of 2024.

Green magic is at work in our garden this week after the rain. I wish this photo was scratch and sniff so that you could smell this Alnwick rose from David Austin Roses.

I followed up Greenwild by reading another book about green magic, although it was focused on the darker (and more poisonous) side of plant magic. This Wicked Fate by Kalynn Bayron is the sequel to This Poison Heart. I read the first book this year and loved it (you can check out my review here). This Wicked Fate picks right up where This Poison Heart left off. The transition between books felt seamless. Just like in the first book, the dialogue and pacing make this story hard to put down. I absolutely love the dynamic female characters in this story!

More literary *magic* for fall and winter

Adult Fiction

Black Candle Women by Diane Marie Brown - A family drama with a twist that involves a magical book? I can’t wait to read this one!

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi - After reading in the Bookshop.org description that this fairy tale had notes of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, which I enjoyed, I’m looking forward to picking this one up.

Venco by Cherie Dimaline - I’ve heard this one has some Practical Magic elements, and the description reminded me of the way witches in The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches learned to hide in regular life for their safety. This book is set in New Orleans which feels like a city steeped in magic.

The Last Cuentista by Donna Barber Higuera - This multi-award winning book piqued my interest even though science fiction and dystopian books are not usually something I’m drawn to. . .but with a magical realism element, maybe it’s worth a try?

The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner - This NPR book review for this edgy made me want to pick up a copy.

While I have heard mixed reviews on Nettle & Bone and A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking wasn’t a big hit with me, I have heard wonderful things about T. Kingfisher’s other books like Thorn Hedge and A House with Good Bones. I plan to give Nettle & Bone a try to see what I think!

Lighter Reads

Small Town, Big Magic: A Witchy Rom-Com by Hazel Beck - This looked like the perfect light read for this magical season. Who wouldn’t love a protagonist who owns an indie bookstore?

The Unfortunate Side Effects of Heartbreak and Magic by Breanne Randall - A new release that promises a mix of Gilmore Girls and Practical Magic set in a small town would be a cozy way to embrace the season.

At The Coffee Shop of Curiosities by Heather Webber - I read Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe by this author and enjoyed the small-town charm.

Young Adult (YA)

At Midnight: 15 Beloved Fairy Tales Reimagined by Dahlia Adler - A magical collection of fairy tales

A Magic Steeped in Poison by Judy I. Lin - This is the debut novel (a New York Times bestseller!) is the first book in a duology which centers around the magic of tea-making. A book with magic, tea, folktales, and an atmospheric promises to create a magical reading experience!

Middle Grade

Rooftoppers by Katherine Randell - A whimsical tale about a child searching for her mother with the help of the children living in the hidden places above Paris.

The October Witches by Jennifer Claessen - Anticipation and magic collide (with a few nervous jitters) as thirteen-year-old Clementine receives her October magic for the first time bringing a family feud to light that must be solved with the help of her estranged cousin.

The Lost Library by Rebecca Stead - When I read this was about a Little Free Library guarded by a large orange cat, named Mortimer, I knew I would be picking up a copy!

“It's about owning your truth, choosing the life you want, and the power of a good book (and, of course, the librarian who gave it to you).”

- Bookshop description for The Lost Library

For the magic of everyday life. . .

The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year by Margaret Renkl was just released this week. What’s more magical than the everyday? Organized into fifty-two chapters, author Margaret Renal chronicles the changes in her garden, her life, and the natural world and pairs each chapter with art created by her brother. I look forward to savoring this book throughout the seasons.

Shorter days and longer nights means more time for reading and puzzling in the evenings. We’ve set up our puzzle table in our dining room to enjoy some relaxing music and downtime. With a cold front coming in the next few days, we’ll have even more reason to gather around the table with something warm to drink while we piece together our National Parks puzzle.

Here are a few puzzles with a touch of magic for this cozy season.

Something Familiar

Ancient Apothecary Puzzle

The Alchemists’s Library

See you next week for a cozy list full of fall comfort in November’s Life’s Seasons post! Enjoy your weekend!

Did you know that a group of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope? As I listened to the audiobook Bicycling with Butterflies: My 10,201-Mile Journey Following the Monarch Migration by Sara Dykman, the description brought a smile to my face. What an accurate and whimsical way to describe the colorful, fluttering magic that is a group of butterflies!

I heard about this incredible book (and promptly purchased a signed copy) when I visited Zilker Botanical Gardens before the Roots & Wings Festival last year. I was intrigued by the dedication it would take to embark on a 10,201-mile journey just to follow the monarch migration.

While I read this book, I found myself traveling along on the “butterbike” with the monarchs leading the way, beginning in the oyamel fir tree forest in Mexico all the way through the United States and Canada and back again. While pedaling along the Ruta de la Mariposa Monarca, the author spotted a speed limit sign encouraging drivers to drop their speeds when monarchs are present. As I see butterflies fluttering around this time of year, I think we could stand to do the same here in the United States!

“To travel is to live alongside uncontrollable timing.”

-Sara Dykman, author of Bicycling with Butterflies

Multigenerational Monarch Migration

When monarchs overwinter in Mexico, they do so in masses huddled in the oyamel fir trees. The area where monarchs roost in Michoacán, Mexico, is now protected as the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve (a UNESCO site), but the surrounding areas went through a tumultuous time when the land was taken for conservation without communication with the landowners. The landowners reacted by cutting down the trees for lumber, as that was their livelihood. The area of trees cut down was essentially the buffer for the oyamel firs, which is why the monarchs are more vulnerable now to cold, especially when rain and cold temperatures collide. The trees also prevent landslides in the area. The Monarch Butterfly Fundhelps to ensure the landowners (ejidatarios and indigenous communities) are paid for the use of their land, even when their land is used for conservation.

“Recognizing that conservation efforts in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve were better served by a united effort, the MBSF and MRF decided to merge organizations, establishing a new entity - the Monarch Butterfly Fund (MBF). Like its predecessors, MBFs mission continued to foster conservation of North American monarch butterflies and their migration through habitat conservation, research, monitoring, education and support for sustainable community development in and near monarch habitats in Mexico.”

-Monarch Butterfly Fund website

From the book, I learned that monarchs are ectothermic and can only crawl if the temperatures are above 41 degrees Fahrenheit and can only fly if the temperatures are above 55 degrees Fahrenheit, which makes their migration timing crucial. Cold temperatures mixed with rain along the migration route and even during the time they overwinter in Mexico can be catastrophic to the monarch populations.

When monarchs leave the oyamel fir forest in the spring, the overwintering generation of monarchs will have one final flight to find milkweed in Texas to lay their eggs (300-500 eggs at a time!) before the next generation continues the journey. After spending the late spring and summer in their northern habitat, monarchs use the angle of the sun as their indicator to head south, 57 degrees to be exact, according to the book. Monarchs use UV polarization patterns to navigate their journey if the sky is overcast and there isn’t a blue sky to guide them, but light pollution can pose a problem for migrating monarchs.

Like hungry bears preparing for hibernation, monarchs leave their northern homes in early fall to travel to their winter home in Mexico, all the while searching for nectar-rich flowers to fatten themselves up before winter creeps in. Some monarchs begin the journey too early in midsummer and arrive without the necessary fat reserves to survive the winter.

Curious about the monarch's life cycle? Check out this helpful Monarch Migration Annual Cycle Wheel!

Learn more about Sara Dykman’s journey with the monarchs on this Central Texas Gardener episode.

Monarch Migration Resources

The intersection of Dia de Los Muertos and the arrival of monarch butterflies is breathtaking. Learn more by watching Dia de Los Muertos - Wonders of Mexico on PBS.

I watched the Flight of the Butterflies documentary many years ago at the IMAX here in Austin and was in awe of the roosting butterflies as the 3D versions of the butterflies fluttered around the theater.

How can you tell the gender of a monarch butterfly?

Did you know that milkweed seeds were used to make life jackets in World War II? (A fun fact I learned from Bicycling with Butterflies: My 10,201-Mile Journey Following the Monarch Migration by Sara Dykman)

Watch the monarch migration in real-time by visiting the Journey North website. Click on “View Maps” to view the monarch peak migration data, and then press play on the peak migration map to see the progression from north to south. The most recent updates on the website show that the leading edge of the monarchs arrived on October 11, 2023. Be a citizen scientist and submit your sightings in the fall and spring, as well as locations of milkweed in the spring!

Screenshot from Journey North website in mid-October 2023

“Like tucking children into beds, monarchs choose the milkweed plants that will become the best possible nurseries and buffets.”

“As long as there (is) milkweed, the monarchs (stand) a chance,”

-Sara Dykman, author of Bicycling with Butterflies

Creating an Oasis for Pollinators - My curated booklist on Bookshop.org celebrates pollinators and includes guidebooks for creating an oasis for them in your yard or community space.

What can you do to help?

If you have native milkweed in your yard, park, farm, or ranch, leave it there for butterflies migrating through in the spring, and do not apply pesticides or insecticides. Milkweed is the only plant that monarch caterpillars can use for food once they’ve hatched from their eggs. Certain types of milkweed are best for certain regions, but any milkweed is better than no milkweed, except for tropical milkweed. In warm areas, tropical milkweed should avoided or cut back in the fall due to OE load. What is the OE (ophryocystis elekroscirrha) parasite in monarchs?

If you live nearby in Central Texas (hello, neighbor!), the best types of milkweed are Antelope Horn (Asclepius asperula), Zizotes (Asclepius oenotheroides), and Green Milkweed (Asclepius viridis) milkweed. However, finding pesticide-free native milkweed at your local garden nursery can be tricky in some areas, and starting your own gives you a head start on the season. Starting milkweed seeds can be tricky, but if you follow the correct steps, you’ll have a better chance of success.

The seeds you collect or buy will most likely be covered in natural chemicals that inhibit germination. While this is helpful in nature so that they don’t sprout too early, it means that you’ll need to trick the seeds into thinking that winter has passed. Milkweed seeds need to be cold-stratified. Soaking and rinsing the seeds and storing them in the fridge for a few months before planting in the spring helps them to break their dormancy. To get a head start, I recently ordered the Sustain the Migration kit from Native American Seed to prepare for the spring migration season. This kit includes the instructions and supplies you’ll need to have a successful milkweed seed-starting project. Remember to use gloves when handling milkweed plants, sap, and seeds, wash your hands, and use eye protection if you think there is any chance the sap could get into your eyes.

Create an oasis for butterflies and other pollinators in your yard, urban or rural community space (like planting a pocket prairie!), park, or on your farm or ranch. Ensuring that pollinators have ample nectar sources and native host plants for caterpillars as they emerge from their eggs is essential to future migratory seasons.

Celebrate Native Plant Week by adding a few new plants to your garden, and don’t forget to create a place for butterflies to “puddle” by creating a butterfly puddling station. Soaking sand with water, adding a sprinkle of natural salt and compost in a shallow dish, and placing it somewhere in your landscape will give butterflies a place to hydrate and get the minerals they need to thrive.

Large swaths of color (as they would occur in nature) are best to attract butterflies, and ideally, there should be flowers blooming in fall and spring for both north and south migrations. Flower Power All Year!

Native American Seed is an excellent source of native plants if you live in Texas. No matter where you live, you can check with your local garden nursery (if they don’t carry pesticide-free native plants, encourage them to do so!), gardening club, or even a local master naturalist or gardener organization for plants and native plant guides. Learn more about your ecoregion! Find plants for your ecoregion in Texas.

What is the difference between planting a native host plant and planting nectar-filled flowers for pollinators? A native host plant creates an immediate food source specific to species of butterfly and moth caterpillars as they emerge from the egg stage. Nectar-filled flowers are important for fueling migrating pollinators for their journey and sustaining local pollinators year-round!

Frostweed and Goldenrod are magnets for pollinators!

Speak up! Encourage farmers, golf course owners, landowners, schools, and even cities or towns with large parks to plant milkweed or to let it remain as part of their landscape. Ask how you can help them take the first step towards welcoming pollinators. Donate to the Monarch Butterfly Fund to support conservation efforts and read their Monarch Action List. Join the local chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas or find one in your area!

White Mistflower

(Native plant and milkweed planting information sources: The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and Native American Seed)

Caterpillars and Butterflies Spotted in Our Garden

Giant Swallowtail - Did you know Giant Swallowtail caterpillars look like bird droppings to deter birds? Host plants include rue and citrus, as well as wafer ash and torchwood

Eastern Black Swallowtail - Host plants include rue as well as fennel, dill, and parsley

Variegated Fritillary - They fly with “shallow wingbeats”! Host plants include passion vines as well as flax and purslane

Gulf Fritillary - Host plants include passion vines - The Life Cycle of a Gulf Fritillary

I haven’t seen any Pipeline Swallowtails yet, but I planted their host plant, Dutchman’s Pipevine (you’ll want to use gloves when planting this native plant), this fall in hopes that I will!

(There are also many tiny butterflies that I’m always trying to identify with my pocket guide!)

“The state (of Texas), located in the south-central region of the US, is home to about 450 butterfly species, and it tops the list of US states in terms of butterfly diversity. According to a survey, three counties in Texas, Lower Rio Grande Valley, Cameron, Hidalgo, and Starr, support approximately three hundred species. The butterflies are so popular here that festivals are organized in South Texas during the autumn (September – November) every year. The Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus) has been designated as the state butterfly of Texas since 1995.”

-Butterfly Identification Website

Butterflies of Texas

Native Host Plants for Texas Moths

Native Host Plants for Texas Butterflies

Butterflies of the United States Identification Website

Identification of Milkweeds in Texas

Don’t forget the little guys. Wasps, bees, and other pollinators are equally as important as their more alluring counterparts!

Do you have a favorite pollinator resource or fact about pollinators? Share with us in the comments below this post.

If you happened to be in the path of the annular solar eclipse last weekend, maybe you noticed some interesting crescent moon shapes in the dappled shade beneath the trees. I captured this photo on our walk. Isn’t nature breathtaking?

Annular Solar Eclipse on October 14, 2023 in Austin, Texas

See you next week with a list of cozy books for fall! Enjoy your weekend!

After an extremely hot summer with little rain, our gardens here in Central Texas are bouncing back with occasional rainfall and cooler temperatures. Rain lilies are blanketing the open spaces around our city. In our area, we experience a short second spring in the fall, with flowers blooming again before we experience our first average frost date in mid-to-late November.

I read recently that the quality of light in fall right now is similar to that of early April, which means we shouldn’t expect huge amounts of growth at this time of year, but flowers may bloom, roots will grow, and a few new leaves might emerge before winter sets in. Our fall and spring growing seasons are short here in Central Texas, and our winters can be tricky as we bounce between temperatures in the 30s one day to the 70s the following day.

Fall is when I begin planting native plants to establish healthy root systems during winter to prepare for spring growth (and summer heat!). Our growing zone is 8b, which means our last frost date is March 18, and we begin experiencing severe heat by June. All but the most tropical and heat-tolerant plants often stop growing or struggle during the hottest summer months. Native plants need water and care as they establish. Still, many are maintenance-free other than supplemental water in the hottest months and a good pruning in January or February to encourage spring growth.

Always one to experiment, this month I planted two lilac plants in our garden. Usually, lilacs don’t grow well in our area, but I found two varieties (Scentara Puraand Baby Kim from Proven Winners) that are able to grow in zone 8. I’m also trying out a new variety of Japanese anemones in our birdbath garden bed called ‘Dreaming Swan’ and planted a Pomegranate ‘Wonderful’ tree outside our bedroom window.

This week, the fall asters, Texas betony, and mistflower started blooming, ready to welcome the Monarchs and other butterflies making their way through Central Texas. I visited the Austin Organic Gardening Association’s fundraiser sale at Zilker Botanical Gardens and the Fall Native Plant Sale at The Wildflower Center to pick up a few native and adapted plants to add to our collection. (Watch What are Native, Adapted, and Hybrid Plants? to learn the difference)

I hope you enjoy this tour of our October garden.

Plants featured in this season’s video:

‘Grandpa Ott’s’ Morning Glories, ‘Autumn Touch’ Amaranth, Echinacea, Texas Betony, Frostweed, Turk’s Cap, Calamondin Tree, Gregg’s Mistflower, Shrubby Boneset, Blue Daze, Coral Nymph Tropical Sage, Blackfoot Daisy, Rudbeckia, Marigold, Flame Acanthus, ‘Sparky’ Sunflower, Catmint, Salmon Nasturtium, ‘Texas Plume Vintage Rose’ Celosia, Texas Bluebonnet, Fall Aster, ‘Queen Lime Blush’ Zinnia, Yarrow, Maximillian Sunflower, Thai Jicama, Uptick Gold & Bronze Coreopsis, Wright’s Ground Cherries, and White Milkweed.

A few other native plants (not featured in the video) that we added to our garden this fall: Weeping Cherry Barbados, ‘Maypop’ Passionvine, Apache Plume, Pigeonberry, Senna, Texas Persimmon, ‘Antelope Horn’ Milkweed, and Fall Obedient Plant

The Wildflower Center Plant Database

Zilker Botanical Gardens

October Gardening Ideas

• Scatter wildflower seeds. I love the mixes from Native American Seed. We purchase the Shade Friendly Wildflower Mix at The Natural Gardener or Barton Springs Nursery.

• Plant poppy seeds. We’re trying a few new varieties this year, including: ‘Sherbert Mix’ Iceland Poppy, ‘Breadseed Rattle’ Poppy, ‘Thai Silk Appleblossom Chiffon’ California Poppy, ‘Champagne Bubbles White’ Iceland Poppy, ‘Pastel Meadows’ Iceland Poppy, and ‘Supreme’ Shirley Poppy (all from Floret Farms). Why plant poppy seeds in the fall? Poppy seeds need to experience cold temperatures to germinate.

• Start seeds for a winter harvest. Direct seed veggies like carrots and beets and start them in an area you can protect from harsh weather until they are established. Check out the video below from Central Texas Gardener to get you started.

• Plant a few herb and winter veggie transplants to get a jump on the season. Once your veggies are ready to harvest, it’s best to harvest them in the morning for optimal sweetness. Many veggies taste best after a frost, so it can be helpful to do a little research on the variety you’re planting.

• Leave flower heads on late summer flowers so that birds like finches can enjoy the seeds (or collect a few to store and use next year), and let the zinnias and other flowering plants have center stage for a few more weeks while the butterflies stop by to enjoy them as they migrate through.

• Plant strawberries to overwinter.

• Ensure rue plants are healthy or plant new rue plants. We’ve had many swallowtail butterfly visitors and caterpillars crawling all over our rue plants this year. I’ve also seen quite a few butterflies laying eggs on our passion fruit vine. If you don’t already have passion fruit vine planted, give it a try this year. There are so many beautiful varieties.

• Take down hummingbird feeders to encourage hummingbirds to visit blooming flowers in your garden, and if you live in a warm climate, take out or cut down tropical milkweed (more on tropical milkweed here).

• Clean out any birdbaths, fill them with fresh water, and refill any bird feeders you might have in the garden.

• Fertilize citrus trees and any fruiting or flowering plants for the fall or top-dress with compost where needed in beds that have been depleted during the summer growing season. I’m trying the Lone Star Nursery Fruit/Flower/Flourish Fertilizer this fall.

• Take care of any tree trimming. It is the beginning of the approved time to prune oak trees (October-late January) to prevent oak wilt.

• Create fall planters for your home. I’m working on a few ideas for front porch planters after some inspiration from Laura in the Garden Answer video below.

• https://youtu.be/cORrlyrCzs4

• Use the Seek app to identify what native plants are growing in your area on your next walk or hike, and then pick them up at a local nursery or native plant sale.

• Order seeds for spring. I ordered my flower seeds from Floret Farms (they had an early seed sale this year, and they are often gone within hours or days after going on sale). After seeing the celosia swaying in the window outside our breakfast table window, I decided to order more for next year. The celosia looks beautiful right now, adding movement and fall color to the garden as the autumn breezes roll in.

• Find a few garlic (softneck varieties are best for Central Texas - Hardneck vs. Softneck) and onion varieties to plant. I’m trying shallots this year and getting those into the ground as soon as I’m able to locate them at our local garden nurseries.

• Decide on and purchase any bulbs that need to be stored in the fridge for spring or planted in the garden before winter. I have a few anemone corms like this Fullstar Red-White variety that need to be soaked and planted now so that they have time to establish before spring.

• Check out more October gardening tips from The Natural Gardener

What is blooming and growing in your garden? What is on your gardening to-do list? Share with us in the comments below.

Have you seen Thomas Danbo’s sculptures? I think they’re magical! I’ve heard that a local park here in Austin is considering commissioning his work. My fingers are crossed!

My pre-order for Something, Someday by Amanda Gorman and Christian Robinson showed up in our mailbox this month. The book’s message shares the same sentiment as a quotation that I have always loved. We can make a difference even when it seems small. Small actions create momentum. I like to compare this idea to the adage about planting a tree. We may never enjoy the shade of the tree we plant, but future generations will.

“Do your little bit of good where you are. It’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” -Desmond Tutu

Christian Robinson’s collage art has always warmed my heart, and when his charming illustrations are paired with Amanda Gorman’s writing, the collaboration inspires readers to create a better world.

See you next week with a post all about pollinators for Nature’s Seasons. Enjoy your weekend!

The light outside is beginning to soften. Light rays are peeking through the trees in the early morning hours as the sun’s angle has started to shift. As soon as I turn the calendar to October, I start craving soup, but despite fall settling in, the temperatures are still in the 80s and 90s in our area of the world and are not quite cool enough for enjoying soup without sweat beads appearing. I did appreciate the kind waitress who told me, as I ordered my caldo de pollo when the rain dropped the temperature a few degrees, that soup is good anytime!

This week I also indulged in some delicious soup from Minimalist (through Farmhouse Delivery) despite the weather. The jar-sized portion was perfect for lunch, and I paired it with a grilled cheese sandwich made with homemade gluten-free bread and a little Swiss chard and basil from our garden. I’m hoping the coziness of this week’s lunch will hold me over until the temperatures cool down. We still have cherry tomatoes that need to ripen on the vine in our garden, so I don’t want to rush things too much!

We picked up a few soup cozies for our soup bowls when we went camping a few years ago, and we’ve found them to be useful for wrapping around hot bowls of soup throughout the fall and winter seasons. I’m sure we’ll be bringing them out again as we start making more soups on cool nights, curl up on the couch to watch a movie, go camping, or make our first batch of chili. You can sometimes find them at quilting shops, but here are a few on Etsy with fall themes: mushrooms and flowers, mustard yellow flowers, and bicycles with pumpkins. You can also find videos on YouTube to learn how to make your own (which I will not be doing because my sewing skills are limited to sewing in a straight line).

As I wait for soup weather, I’m drinking warm tea in the air conditioning and starting to comb through my recipes for a season of chopping vegetables, simmering broth, and nourishing my family and friends. Do you have any soup recipes that you love? Please share a link or where to find your favorite recipes in the comments below this post. I’ll compile a list of a few of my favorites, along with those shared by the community, in a Substack note in the next few weeks.

As fall makes its entrance, I plan to add a few fall touches (mostly natural elements) around the house. We’re pretty minimal when it comes to decorating for Halloween. I keep the outside decorations not too scary for the little ones who live nearby, and I celebrate the butterfly migration and change of seasons with our decorations instead.

One of the ways I create a seasonal shift in my environment that reflects the changes happening outdoors is by changing out the art in my office seasonally. Switching out my office artwork is a gentle way to usher in the new season. I hope you enjoy this little art tour, and I’d love to hear if you have any artists that you’ve discovered recently.

This week has been a whirlwind as we prepare our house for a kitchen update, head out on a short camping trip, and try to keep our bearings amidst a flurry of household and parenting tasks that ask for our time, attention, and energy every week.

A much-anticipated thunderstorm with abundant rainfall rolled in early yesterday morning, and I took the opportunity to calm my mind at the end of a full week by treating myself to some downtime and a page of wildflowers to color (a Patreon bonus) from artist Nancy Chalmers. You can pre-order her coloring book, Wildflower Dreams, on her website.

I can’t wait to share what’s been happening in the garden and the beautiful butterflies that have been visiting in the Gardening Seasons and Nature’s Seasons posts over the next two weeks. Enjoy your weekend!

Just for fun, I decided to pair the books I read this month with a few others on my shelves that I’ve read previously (and one I found at my public library). We had a full month of activities, and I needed books that were page-turners or would allow me to set a book down and come back to it without losing the plot. Although many of the books dealt with difficult subjects, all of these books kept a more optimistic tone.

THIS MONTH I READ:

What You Are Looking For Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama (audiobook)

This little novel (in both size and length) is a great one for your nightstand to read one character’s story a night. As the characters work through the transition periods in their lives, the local librarian recommends books that become a part of their journey. The stories intertwine in unexpected ways.

“Everybody is connected. And any one of their connections could be the start of a network that branches in many directions.”

-What You Are Looking For Is in the Library

I do, however, want to bring up something that caused me to cringe while reading this book. The librarian’s physical appearance is described in unkind ways by all of the characters. I had the thought that maybe the characters are supposed to see her as someone different so that they can be surprised that she offers wisdom for their situation, but this just seems like a cruel way to set up the interaction between the characters. This uncaring physical description didn’t seem to add anything to the story or development of the librarian character and mostly just made me wonder at the author’s intent, especially since she talks about belonging in the book.

One character in the book states that “belonging is an ambiguous state.” He explains that just like peering through a window when you “remove the partition. . .instantly you become part of the same world even though it is all one to begin with.”

-What You Are Looking for Is in the Library

Overall, the book was a quick and easy read and had me thinking about life’s seasons and the transitions we make throughout life. While I appreciated the book’s simplicity, the description of the librarian was off-putting enough that I will probably be passing this book along to someone who might enjoy it more.

BOOK PAIRING:

The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams (audiobook - on sale through 10/2/2023)

THIS MONTH I READ:

The Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry (audiobook)

Based on the historical events of Operation Pied Piper in 1939, this fiction book follows the unexpectedly magical and harrowing journey of two sisters as they leave their home when World War II arrives at their doorstep. The characters and settings of this book keep the story grounded when so much about what is happening in the characters’ lives is unsettled and heart-wrenching. As the reader is transported between wartime and the 1960s, the story unfolds and comes together again.

“Don’t let others take away good stories so that they can feel better about themselves.”

-Bridie from The Secret Book of Flora Lea

The author wrote descriptive little gems like “. . .as the moon rolled up and the stars pierced a dark sky one by one,” which I adored. This book is going on my permanent shelf next to one of the author’s other books, which happens to be the pick for my book pairing.

BOOK PAIRING:

Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan Henry (this book would make an excellent transition into winter reading) (audiobook)

THIS WEEKEND I’M FINISHING UP:

Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (audiobook)

I’m not a gamer (although I did appreciate the references to old Nintendo games I played in middle school!), so I wasn’t sure if this book would appeal to me. To be honest, it took me at least a quarter of the way into the book before it pulled me into the story, but the themes in this book are very relatable.

“(Sadie’s) kind of laugh was an invitation: I cordially invite you to join in this matter than I find amusing.”

-Sam in Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

This book explores the world-building involved in video game design and how it mimics life while exploring the evolution of friendships, finding belonging in a complicated world, and feeling understood. Life-long friendship is often complex, and I think this book shows us how we can support each other in our friendships by just showing up.

“It isn’t about you. Just show up every day to check in with her. Let her know you’re there. And if you can manage it, bring her a cookie, a book, a movie to watch.”

-Marx to Sam when he asks for advice about Sadie in Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

BOOK PAIRING:

I paired this book with one I found at my public library this month: How to Walk Away by Katherine Center (audiobook)

Although this book isn’t what I would have picked up normally, it had the perfect light rom-com type of mood and fit what I needed at the time. I did appreciate the author bringing to light the very real challenges for those faced with disabilities, lifelong injuries, and grappling with mourning their old life. Maggie’s rooftop “escape” was a highlight of the book for me.

Cooler days and rainy afternoons will be here soon if we are lucky, and I’ll be ready to cozy up in my reading chair with some tea, a soft blanket, and a good book. My fall TBR shelf is lined with books to get me into a fall reading mood. I’m sure I’ll find my way to a bookstore or two this fall and shop my Bookshop TBR list as well.

Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber

Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher

This Wicked Fate by Kalynn Bayron

Greenwild: The World Behind the Door by Pari Thomson

The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

Forty Autumns by Nina Willner

The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone by Jaclyn Moriarty

Kenny and the Dragon and Kenny and The Book of Beasts by Tony DiTerlizzi - (grab the boxed set)

I’d love to hear what books you’d pair with the books you read in September. What are you looking forward to reading in October as the cozy reading season approaches? Share in the comments below.

Enjoy your weekend!

As the rain and cooler temperatures moved through the country last week, birds were on the move for the beginning of fall migration. Here in Central Texas, we’re part of the Central Flyway (a map and a site where you can enter your county in the United States for real-time stats) for migrating birds. We were lucky enough to have some very colorful, albeit temporary, visitors last week. At first, my husband spotted just one little black and orange bird hiding in the greenbelt. A few days later, the bird was on the feeder, but this elusive little guy would tuck back into the greenbelt as soon as he noticed movement at the back window or when we stepped outside.

Determined to figure out what type of bird it was, I did a little research. Sure enough, his coloration matched that of a Baltimore oriole. After learning that Baltimore orioles eat oranges and bananas while wintering in Costa Rica and other Central American countries, I set orange halves on the fence posts in our backyard for them to eat before traveling further south. It’s pretty amazing to think that the same birds that are flying through this area eating our oranges will be welcomed with citrus in Costa Rican communities. This phenomenon always reminds me that birds and butterflies see this part of the world as one continuous landmass without the borders created by humans.

While the weather was still hot, we also spotted a few wasp-eating Summer Tanagers with their orangish-red mottled feathers, a young woodpecker, as well as our regulars which included the titmice (with constant bedhead), chickadees, goldfinches, Carolina wrens, cardinals, white wing dove, blue jays, and hawks.

Join Lights Out Texas - Two billion birds are on the move! If you are in the path of migration birds this fall, Audubon encourages us to “turn off non-essential indoor and outdoor lights from 11 p.m. – 6 a.m. until November 30 to protect traveling birds”.

Find out more about your local birds and those migrating through by checking out The Cornell Lab of Ornithology-All About Birds website, BirdNote podcast, Merlin BirdID app, Audubon Texas, and Audubon.

What birds are you seeing in your area right now? Share with us in the comments below this post.

Recommended Reading

I’m looking forward to picking up Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World by Christian Cooper so that I can learn more about his experience and the joy of birding.

If you’d like to learn more about Christian Cooper, be sure to read Q&A: Catching Up With Christian Cooper, Author & Host Of Extraordinary Birder, and check out his new television show Extraordinary Birder on National Geographic.

This week I began listening to The Power of Trees: How Ancient Forests Can Save Us if We Let Them by Peter Wohlleben (audiobook link). If you love learning about trees, this audiobook guides you through the hidden secrets of ancient forests in Europe. Filled with scientific information about forests and how they adapt, it’s a dense read and one you’ll most likely want to savor a little at a time.

The idea for 52 Seasons came from a book called Wabi Sabi: Japanese Wisdom for a Perfectly Imperfect Life by Beth Kempton. In her book, she introduced the idea of micro-seasons, and I was intrigued. In the classical Japanese calendar, there are 72 micro-seasons, each lasting around 5 days.

I thought about the many micro-seasons that happen for all of us, not only in nature but in the ways we make changes over time in all the seasons of our lives. I modeled my blog around writing 52 posts a year based on the changes happening outside and in my life.

Last week, I came across this beautiful 72 Seasons calendar app. The app shares seasonal fish, veggie, and fruit suggestions for the season, a haiku, and seasonal activities. After reading more on their website, I realized that the app will be discontinued soon, but thought I would share its beauty before then. This week on the app, the season was “The Swallows Leave” and the next season is called “Thunder Lowers its Voice.” Isn’t that lovely?

If you haven’t stumbled across Ann Collins and her writing on Microseasons, may I introduce you? I’ve found her writing to be a lovely way to notice and reflect on the changing of seasons.

Microseasons

A Creative Field Guide to Savoring 72 Seasons of the Year

By Ann Collins

In next week’s Reading Seasons post, I’m sharing the books I read in September if you’re looking for a few ideas to add to your fall bookshelf. Enjoy your weekend!

The superheroes in our summer garden wore mesh. Seriously, the mesh coop covers we ordered from Gardeners saved our garden this summer. When the sun was intense, they kept the plants alive so that birds and pollinators would have food in the early fall. Using these covers to give the beds a break from the heat also allowed me a chance to directly seed a few more flowers and early fall veggies in the garden beds without having them immediately wilt.

In the fall, squirrels sometimes create their own gardens by buying acorns and nuts in the fresh soil in our garden beds, destroying new seedlings in the process, but luckily these covers deter their gardening plans. In the winter, I’ll bring out a set of canvas covers made for the structures that keep plants protected in case of frost or ice.

Chicken Wire Crop Coop Covers Kit

Chicken Wire Crop Coops

Chicken Wire Crop Coop Extensions

Chicken Wire Crop Coop Extension Covers (only includes bottom portion)

While the garden is a place where we grow herbs and veggies for our family, the garden is also a place for quiet reflection and connection to nature. Whether we are inside admiring the birds (our back windows are basically one big bird blind), outside letting our dog run around, or just walking around the garden to see what is flowering or changing as the seasons pass, the garden is a place to pause and soak in nature’s complexity and beauty.

Our garden is also where I do my part to give back and support wildlife. Creating a garden with nature in mind compared to a garden only for human consumption means that everything will not look picture-perfect. For me, that’s okay.

We received a much-needed cool front this week that brought rain and temperatures in the 90s compared to the 104 to 108-degree temperatures we’ve had all summer. Luckily my fall mums and several other flowering plants from last year made it through the hot summer by planting them in an in-ground bed with part shade.

I’m patiently anticipating the flowers that will bloom after the rain we had over the last few days, but in the meantime, I have a thriving forest of ground cherry plants with blooms that have been pollinated, and little ground cherries are now growing inside their paper lantern-like cocoons. When they ripen, they will turn orange inside their papery brown husks and fall to the ground.

Wondering what to do with ground cherries? Here are 9 Tempting Ground Cherry Recipes and recipes for Ground Cherry Salsa (and this recipe made with serranos), Ground Cherry Coffee Cake, Ground Cherry Upside Down Cake, and Ground Cherry Lemon Jelly.

Make sure you wait to eat ground cherries once they’ve fallen to the ground. The leaves, stems, and green (unripe) ground cherries are toxic. Once they have turned orange and fallen to the ground, they are safe to eat. Don’t forget to save the seeds from a few ground cherries to plant the following year!

For the past 6 months, I’ve been using an app called Notion to manage my plant library. Keeping a library of the plants in our garden helps me to stay organized and plan ahead with notes on planting information, photos of each variety, tags for each garden bed, a tag for plants out of season or plants growing in the greenhouse in winter, and even create a wishlist of plants that I’d like to play with in the garden. I love that keeping track of what I’ve planted reminds me of what to plant again the next year and what didn’t grow well that season. I recently counted over 150 different varieties of plants in our garden so far, with most of those plants making it through this very hot summer with a little extra water and care.

“…but when I look at a record I keep of things as they occur in the garden I see that I always think the leaves are late turning.”

-Jamaica Kincaid, author of Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya

I see gardening as a way to experiment and adapt to the seasons as they change, but I also enjoy observing patterns. I find keeping notes in a garden journal helps me notice these patterns and save time in recognizing what chores need to be completed in the garden and when and where plants seem to grow well. I finally found a gardening journal that allows me to look at three years of journal entries all at once. I can’t wait to see the patterns that emerge over a three-year period.

Be sure to check out Tilth Alliance’s shop for this garden journal, gardening books, and great gardening gift ideas!

When it’s too rainy to be in the garden, I find a comfy chair (preferably with a view of the garden or trees), wrap my hands around something comforting to drink, and watch gardening videos or read gardening books and articles that I’ve saved for a rainy day.

During my lunch break this week, I’ve been reading Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya by Jamaica Kincaid. I love Jamaica Kincaid’s anecdotes as a gardener and her self-described cautiously adventurous spirit. Her writing voice is honest, frank, and witty and reminds me so much of my grandmother’s writing in the letters she would send me in college. Jamaica Kincaid takes you along with her in this travel memoir as she joins a group of seed collectors on a trek through the Himalayas.

If the summer heat didn’t wipe out your late summer/early fall flowers, consider yourself very lucky! I’m sharing a few resources to take those beauties and use them to make something to enjoy all season long. I’m so jealous of all the wonderful flowers Laura from Garden Answer had available in her garden to make the wreath in her YouTube video!

I also came across this helpful video from Blossom and Branch Regenerative Gardening on YouTube to learn new ways to utilize even the buggy flowers from your garden. Be sure to leave plenty of flowers in the garden for fall migration season when pollinators are looking for a little snack on their journey south.

Wreaths: Fresh, Foraged, and Dried Floral Arrangements by Terri Chandler and Katie Smyth

Foraged Flora: A Year of Gathering and Arranging Wild Plants and Flowers by Louesa Roebuck

Floret Flower Farm Library

Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin - Plant Database

In next week’s Nature’s Seasons post, I’m sharing videos and photos of some very special visitors to our garden. Get outside and put your hands in the dirt this weekend, and I’ll see you here next week!

In the You 2.0 series, the host of the Hidden Brain podcast, Shankar Vedantam, interviewed psychologist Fred Bryant for two episodes called Slow Down! and Make the Good Times Last.

In the first episode, Slow Down! Fred Bryant shares advice to the effect of, “We are not camels. We can’t store joy. Joy must be replenished.” As I listened to the podcast while preparing dinner, I laughed out loud at this statement because it is so true.

If we are to feel more enjoyment in life, he says, we should spend more time lingering, savoring, and “extracting wonder from the ordinary.” Finding delight in the way the morning light rays peek through the slats in a backyard fence and create walls of water droplets when we water our gardens or noticing a hummingbird visit a new flower in the garden can be a source of wonder in the day that could otherwise be considered a daily chore.

Finding time amid family life to observe, linger, savor, and appreciate can feel like an uphill battle. Most of us expect savoring to happen in large swaths of time and only if we enjoy an elaborate dinner, a once-in-a-lifetime vacation, or some epic adventure. However, savoring can happen in small moments in otherwise ordinary days.

Personal growth can happen in small moments as well. When we enjoy small bites and linger for a day with the knowledge or the experience to absorb or process what we’ve taken in before beginning the process again the following day can also have its benefits.

After following Brooke McAlary’s monthly updates on her 1% Project, I started paying attention to my daily 1% progress in a few aspects of my life. The process feels like planting seeds. I plant the tiny seed of something I want to keep in my life or grow in some way, and I commit to consistently caring for my growth.

The hardest part about scaling back and tempering my expectations to only give 1% a day to these tasks is to not fall to the pressure of feeling like I need to rush to keep up with society’s pace, which seems to shout “Do everything all at once and finish it all immediately!”

My energy level and time constraints keep these pockets to 15-30 minutes daily. For the past month, I’ve planted seeds to work on my Spanish language learning, create a refuge for birds and pollinators in our garden, take time to read books that I find intriguing, write down my observations and thoughts (that eventually seed the ideas for what I post on 52 Seasons), chip away at house projects, keep the house tidy, and improve my nature photography (which also includes organizing the overwhelming amount of digital clutter I’ve accumulated.)

Consistency becomes a habit if I water these seeds by repeating them daily. James Clear calls this concept mental toughness.

“Mental toughness is built through small wins. It’s the individual choices that we make on a daily basis that build our “mental toughness muscle.” We all want mental strength, but you can’t think your way to it. It’s your physical actions that prove your mental fortitude."

Mental toughness is about your habits, not your motivation.

Motivation is fickle. Willpower comes and goes.

Mental toughness isn’t about getting an incredible dose of inspiration or courage. It’s about building the daily habits that allow you to stick to a schedule and overcome challenges and distractions over and over and over again.

Mentally tough people don’t have to be more courageous, more talented, or more intelligent — just more consistent.”

-from James Clear’s 3-2-1 Thursday Newsletter

James Clear is the author of Atomic Habits

I’m tucking these projects into family life in small ways to seed personal growth. Sometimes, my small progress needs to pause for a week, and my focus must temporarily go elsewhere. Life’s seasons are cycles and not linear paths.

Time for silence and wonder can be a way to enhance the soil where the seeds grow, like a good quality compost or fertilizer that strengthens the roots and encourages the blooms of a newly seeded plant. This might look like slowing down, lingering, listening, doing nothing, walking in the garden, noticing cloud shapes, or enjoying a public art installation.

As much as we like to add to our lives, we must also learn to take some things away, to trim a few branches to allow for growth in other areas. We can let go of perfection, notice places in our lives that feel stagnant, and find places where doing less is the answer.

I once had a yoga teacher who asked his students to neatly put away all the yoga props at the end of class except for the blankets. He told us that the blankets didn’t need to be folded because life needs the contrast of some things being left undone and imperfect.

When we embrace a little bit of wildness, we’re able to see its beauty. I think that may be why I love cottage gardens. They are intentionally wild and free, and there is a story to be told in their beauty and organic arrangement.

Appreciating the messiness of life reminds me of a writing piece I read recently where the author wrote about fridge doors as a metaphor for life. I followed the link to the site from Brooke McAlary’s newsletter Motto for the Mess.

After reading her writing, I could relate. Most fridge doors aren’t magnetic anymore, which means that there are fewer haphazard collections of life on fridges. My husband and I were happily surprised to find out that one unexpected feature of our inexpensive fridge was that our fridge doors are magnetic. Life feels a little like our fridge door these days. Mostly our fridge is filled with school and golf schedules, grocery lists, and home project to-do lists, but there is also a graphic of dogs in headbands and leg warmers and a Napoleon Dynamite magnet.

When I read All the Books I’ll Never Read on Substack, it caught my attention. There was a part where the author, Stacey Langford, writes, “We cannot approach even a twinkle of that brightness as creatives if we are spread too thin.”

Gulp. This one hit home. I know this truth about myself. My desire to try out ideas, research, and learn can cause me to wind up in a flurry of activity only to feel drained and then sapped of just the creative inspiration I need to create. What I related to most in her writing piece was that I feel the pain she describes of wanting to do so much and also needing to come to grips with how much time I actually have. Inserting more into my calendar usually just means I’m exhausted. I am able to notice more, to fully immerse myself, and to absorb the information or experience to a higher degree when I’m taking my time and approaching growth in small steps.

When we push the envelope on what’s possible (even at a snail’s pace!), engage our imaginations, revel in the messy part of life, and search for wonder in our daily lives, we are creating new versions of ourselves as we outgrow who we were just the day before. Seeds take time and nourishment to grow, but their transformation is something to behold.

“My mother would say, 'Yes, yes, I understand. You can do everything, but do it quietly. No need to make a fuss.'

"And I would say, 'Mother, how can you have a revolution without a fuss?'"

— Isabel Allende, author of Violeta, in conversation about feminism with Julia Louis-Dreyfus on the Wiser Than Me podcast

(quotation from School of Joy newsletter)

Violeta by Isabel Allende in English, Spanish, and audiobook formats

What seeds are you planting in this season of your life? When you have a goal in mind, do you work on personal growth slowly or dive in head first to devote hours at a time to learn a new skill? Please share your experiences with us in the comments below this post.

“Well, my dear, just as we don’t know how long a match will last until we light it, we never know how long a life will last until we live it. And often there are factors that we have no control over.”

Admittedly, death may be a heavy subject as we move into the weekend, but the last few years have been especially difficult for so many of us that I feel like it’s on our minds. Getting older means that losses often become an undercurrent in our lives. Maybe one day you notice you’ve been to more funerals than weddings and baby showers.

As I wrapped up my late summer reading this month, I noticed that all of the books I chose this month had major or minor themes of death and loss. The theme wasn’t an intentional choice, but it ended up being a relevant one. Each book is an exploration (heart-wrenching at times) of how people navigate and embody grief in their lives and the way trauma seeps its way through each generation. All four books are debut novels by the authors.

Cultures around the world celebrate and mourn the lives of their loved ones in ways that honor their traditions and ways of life, and these books show how these rituals have meaning to those left behind even when they may be new to the surviving generation. The characters in all of these books offer vulnerable, often messy, and painfully honest descriptions of what life is like after someone you love is no longer in your life. One truth I gleaned from all the books I read is that we need to be talking more about death even if it makes us uncomfortable.

One of my favorite parts of reading The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer (audiobook) is that Clover is a very relatable character whose attempts at romance are sometimes complicated. Her career as a death doula causes people to remain distant, and she struggles with how to find love and connection when so much of her life is about endings.

“. . .it was as if (as a death doula) my mere presence might somehow expedite their mortality.”

-Clover from The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer

The main character, Clover, creates notebooks where she collects ADVICE, REGRETS, and CONFESSIONS as a way of incorporating her client’s dying wishes into her own life hoping that she will learn from their experiences. This book will appeal to those who are sensitive to the world and the subtleties of life that often go unnoticed. I found the whole story enjoyable as a whole and the author offered thought-provoking commentary on death, grieving, and caring for someone who is dying.

I loved Banyan Moon by Thao Thai (audiobook) for the realistic and messy way her characters grieve and move through life. Her writing is poignant and transports you into the lives of three generations of women as the book switches between the points of view of Ann, Huong, and Minh. Throughout the book, I found myself frustrated at how our society treats immigrants and at how women are treated, and encouraged by the way the women in each generation rise up to the challenge and push back on injustice in their own way.

(I realized that I am not able to correctly spell the names of the characters because my keyboard shortcuts don’t include Vietnamese characters. I’m researching how to add that to my keyboard. My apologies for that.)

“There are unbearable things about dying, but sometimes, the things that pull out the most longing are the quiet rituals you never thought you’d miss.

-Minh in Banyan Moon by Thao Thai

Maame by Jessica George (audiobook) is about Maddie, a young woman grappling with her own desire to become an independent woman while taking care of her dad during his decline with Parkinson’s. She’s tired of always being the one expected to hold their family together, and yet, she is finding her own way even when she’s not sure where she’s going. I appreciated the information in the book about Ghanaian rituals and traditions around death so that I could better understand Ghanaian culture.

Perish by Texas author Latoya Watkins (audiobook) was heart-wrenching to read. The characters are so vivid and real, and the pain they feel jumps off the page into your own heart. Generational trauma cuts deep in this book and often feels like a punch to the gut. I highly recommend looking up trigger warnings before reading this book as there are many, but I hope you will consider reading this important story about three generations who struggle to find love and meaning in devastating circumstances.

Latoya Watkins has a second book out now called Holler, Child which is a collection of short stories with the same setting as Perish.

“I’ve never understood Western society’s warped perception of grief as something quantifiable and finite, a problem to be fixed.”

-Clover from The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer

Additional Resources

In The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer, Clover suggests a few items that might be helpful if you are caring for someone who is transitioning from this life. I’ve added a few items to the list as well.

• Bluetooth speaker with playlists of favorite songs or nature sounds

• scented or unscented lotion for hand massage

• stationery for writing letters or postcards from favorite places

• plants or flowers

• candles or familiar and comforting scents, sage or Palo Santo, or electric candles or twinkle/fairy lights if in a hospital

• a special blanket or cardigan/sweater

• an iPad for looking up special photos or places that are memorable

• favorite books for reading passages or poetry

• physical photographs in frames of loved ones

Clover mentions in the book that “. . .helping people visualize a beloved place was a way to calm them to anchor them to something comforting and familiar - especially when their reality was a sterile hospital cubicle.”

Grief is a Journey (my booklist on Bookshop.org) and Stories That Transform Grief Through Warm Drinks and Food Memories (my booklist on Bookshop.org)

Essential Questions: Interview Your Family to Uncover Stories and Bridge Generations by Elizabeth Keating and Let’s Talk About Hard Things by Anna Sale

• What is a Death Cafe? Death cafes were mentioned in The Collected Regrets of Clover, and I realized that I had never heard of them and was interested in researching the concept

• Death Cafe Switzerland - originally developed by Swiss sociologist Bernard Cretaz to normalize conversations around death

• Death Cafe Resource Library

As an empath and HSP, I tend to be an emotional sponge for others’ emotions while processing my own grief. Taking care of myself is vital to recharging the emotional energy I need so that I can support my family, friends, or community. I found this article helpful in understanding why I take in emotions from others, and I thought it might be helpful to others as well. Why Highly Sensitive People Absorb Other People’s Emotions

The Death Issue and Let’s Talk About Death (a guide) YES! Magazine’s guide for teachers (also just a great guide for everyone!)

Wiser Than Me - a podcast with Julia Louis-Dreyfus - Love this podcast! So much great advice!

The leaves are falling, but only because the warm temperatures around Central Texas are making the trees hold up their branches and drop their leaves in surrender to this miserable summer heat. When school begins, and the hint of fall rolls around, I find myself reaching for books infused with mystery, magic, history, storytelling, family, and settings that have me transported to a specific time and place. I have a stack of books that I’ve accumulated this year and never got around to reading, so I’m prioritizing reading those first, but I couldn’t help adding these new books to my list!

New books for my 2023 Fall TBR (find the entire list by visiting the link to my Bookshop store)

• Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo (one of my favorite authors!)

• Black Flower by Young-Ha Kim (a recommendation from Cari Cakes)

• The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera

• House of Cotton by Monica Brashears

• Human Acts by Han Kang (a recommendation from Cari Cakes)

• The Mythmakers by Keziah Weir (recommendation from Thao Thai on Wallflower Chats)

• The Light Between Oceans by M L Stedman (recommendation from Malama Life)

I hope you enjoyed all the book recommendations for this late summer/early fall transition. You can find my favorite book darts and my favorite reading journalon Etsy.

What are you looking forward to reading this season? Share in the comments below.

Like many areas of the world this summer, our city grappled with unprecedented heat and drought. We’ve shattered plenty of records here in Central Texas, including not one but two 11-day stretches of temperatures above 105 degrees Fahrenheit. To help wildlife through the hot days, I created a refuge in our backyard.

The problem with a changing climate is that wildlife has to adapt even when their internal clocks tell them to begin migrating, storing food, and, for butterflies, placing eggs on native plants to jumpstart the next generation. They follow their usual route only to find the pantry bare, and the plant and forest motels for weary travelers have disappeared.

How can we help wildlife with this constantly changing timeline and disappearing habitat? If you have a space where you are able to create a refuge at home or in your community (schools, libraries, community gardens, and community centers are a great place to start!), you can offer a place for wildlife to rest on their journey. This week, I’m sharing a few tips to get you started.

We’ve had great success with the Small High Perch Hummingbird Feeder with Nectar Guard Tips at Wild Birds Unlimited and the Eliminator Bird Feeder from Wild Birds Unlimited (video). We try not to encourage too many squirrels and doves into our yard because they attract rattlesnakes, and we have a dog that likes to run around the backyard. Squirrels do stop by, however, for water or the occasional peanut the chickadees drop from the feeders (as shown in the video below). We try to feed wildlife with native plants, but there are times in the year when the heat keeps native plants from flowering, and berries aren’t as abundant. Audubon has this guide to help you if you are wondering when should you feed wildlife.

Know your local fauna and flora. Many birds, pollinators, and wildlife depend on very specific plants for their diet. Do you have these planted in your yard? I like the Native Host Plants for Texas Butterflies: A Field Guide and Native Host Plants for Texas Moths: A Field Guide for our area, and this collection of guides as well as guides published by Quick Reference Publishing, available in many independent bookstores.

Wildlife needs supplemental water during a drought. The importance of birdbaths (an article from Audubon) is evident after watching the number of animals that visited our birdbath and water buckets over the last month, including a hawk that stopped by every afternoon to dip his feet in the cool water. I added water wigglers to all of our bird baths to attract birds and keep mosquitoes at bay. Changing out water in bird baths and buckets often and offering water at varying heights (small and shallow for butterflies and lizards, ground level for armadillos and non-climbers or smaller climbers like the ringtail, mid-height for birds and the occasional raccoon or fox).

Keeping the garden alive despite the heat means there will be berry-producing native plants, milkweed, and passion vine for Monarchs, rue for swallowtails, and Gulf Fritillaries this fall. Yes, maintaining a pollinator garden means an investment in water and time, but the payoff will be the gorgeous pollinators visiting your garden.

Ensure birds migrate safely this fall by participating in Audubon’s Lights Out Program and Lights Out Texas. Post a sign in your yard or neighborhood to remind neighbors to turn off their lights at night during migration season.

Recommended Reading

Sharing Your Garden with Wildlife (my booklist on Bookshop.org)

Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard by Douglas W. Talllamy

Nature’s Best Hope (Young Readers’ Edition): How You Can Save the World in Your Own Yard by Douglas W. Tallamy and Sarah L. Thomson

While the in-ground plants that receive consistent water will fare the best, the garden containers that receive the most sun will probably be fried to a crisp. I do plan to cut back the dried stems, add the mesh covers, maybe even sprinkle a few more seeds, and hope for a late summer comeback. For me, gardening is less about the end result and more about the experience of getting my hands in the dirt and trying to grow something no matter the weather. I’m hopeful I’ll be able to install drip irrigation for the container portion of the garden this fall to give them a better chance at surviving next year’s summer heat. 

Native perennial plants that have adapted to living through our unbearable summers will usually bounce back after some rain or in the fall or spring when the temperatures are cooler. They are the anchors in the garden, whereas annuals tend to shine and fade. In the Floret Farms blog post last week, Erin Benzakein interviewed gardener Rachel Siegfried, author of The Cut Flower Sourcebook: Exceptional Perennials and Woody Plants for Cutting. I’m adding the book to my wishlist as I continue to experiment with a cottage garden style that includes native perennials.

While I was working out yesterday, my favorite instructor on Glo, Ridge Davis, mentioned at the beginning of the workout to think of a word to focus on throughout the workout. Vitality came to my mind and as the workout became more intense, I brought the word vitality to the front of my mind. It worked! I felt that extra bit of encouragement to keep going. Workouts are one way of giving my body what it needs to thrive. As I age, practicing healthy habits means that I am able to continue enjoying all the activities I love, even if it is at a slower pace than a decade ago.

Wellness is on my mind as I celebrate my birthday this week and find myself planted right between 40 and 50. I’ve noticed that my desire for simplicity has grown with every year of age. While I don’t find myself changed in any significant ways over the years, I notice that I get less wrapped up in overwhelming details of life and care more about the smaller and more simple moments. I’m less concerned about what people think of me. I’m able to say “no” more freely without the accompanying guilt of hurt feelings and by doing so, I place boundaries around my time (including time to rest). My forties have given me a feeling of being firmly rooted in who I am. I’m more confident in knowing what I need, speaking up about those needs, and knowing how to make space in my life for what helps me thrive.

Society tells us our 40s need to include some existential crisis, but I disagree. Instead, maybe our forties are the time we come home to ourselves and peel back some of the layers (most often imposed by societal expectations) that have been holding us back and asking too much of us. 

To celebrate this year, I’m enjoying a picnic with my family, lounging near a lake, having time to read, and most importantly, having a relaxed state of mind. Noticing what makes me feel alive is what I want more of in my life, no matter how simple those moments may be.

If you need a good laugh, I suggest watching the Australian comedy Wellmania on Netflix which dives deeply into living life in your forties and beyond, and the irony of our obsession with wellness in a live-fast do it all culture.

We’ve spent the past month in the mountains at our yearly vacation spot. Escaping to the mountains allows us more time to be active, explore nature, and slow the pace of life down. In this season’s video, I share photos of the beautiful flowers we spotted around town, mountain wildflowers, and wildlife that captured our attention. The snow melt created turquoise blue water that rushed by us on one of our hikes and had us entranced for an entire afternoon. We walked among wild irises in fields by a lake, toured local gardens and plant nurseries, visited my favorite bookshop and all our favorite coffee shops, listened to music, rode our bikes, and took our dog on a few hikes.

Mother Nature kept us on our toes this trip with a late spring, a faster-than-normal rushing river through town, and mountain weather that included sleet and 30-degree temperatures. Luckily, she also filled the last part of our trip with bright blue skies, fluttering aspen leaves, birdsong, the sounds of rushing water, and mild temperatures. 

I’m taking a quick break for July, but I’ll be back on with a post called Adventure Season, where I’ll share our travel notes in mid-August after a late summer trip to Switzerland. I hope your gardens are doing better than mine and you’re enjoying your summer (or winter in the Southern Hemisphere). Enjoy this season’s video!

The music featured in the video is Meadow by Sebastian Winskog and Summer Rains by Colton Walls on Epidemic Sound.

WEEKEND READING

While I had planned to do more reading while in the mountains, I ended up spending more time exploring and only finished reading a few books (most of which I placed in the Little Free Library in the neighborhood where we’re staying). Luckily, I’ll have plenty of time to read while escaping the summer heat back home! I thought I’d share a few of the books on my list as inspiration for your summer reading. 

Just finished: Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng (gorgeous writing with powerful metaphors and hits disturbingly close to home in our society right now)

“She (Bird’s mother) was always doing that, telling him (Bird) stories. Prying open cracks for magic to seep in, making the world a place of possibility.”

“But still nearly every shelf is missing one (a book), sometimes more. He (Bird) wonders who decided which books were too dangerous to keep, and who it was that had to hunt down and collect the condemned books. like an executioner, ferrying them to their doom.”

“How can you know, she says, if no one teaches you, and no one ever talks about it, and all the books about it are gone?”

“What he's (Bird’s father) afraid of (is) that one day someone will see Bird’s face and see an enemy.”

“One box in which to collect all their anger; one straw man to wear the hats of everything they feared.”

-a collection of quotations from Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

Currently reading: The Enchanted Hacienda by J.C. Cervantes (a romance and magical realism story rolled into one that makes for a light summer read with magic-infused flowers guarded by the enchanting Estrada family)

“Measuring time by the life of flowers is a really beautiful way to exist.”

-J.C. Cervantes, author of The Enchanted Hacienda

Next up on my TBR: Yellowface by R. F. Kuang , Banyan Moon by Thao Thai , The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer, Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See,  and Go as a River by Shelley Road. 

A few great summer reading suggestions from Modern Mrs. Darcy book club: Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen, Where the Rhythm Takes You by Sarah Dass, and Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell

SUMMER READS FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY

When Summer Comes: Exploring Nature in Our Warmest Season By Aimée M. Bissonette (author) and Erin Hourigan (Illustrator)

Forest Bath Right Down This Path by Lisa Robinson (author) and Khoa Le (illustrator)

What’s on your summer reading list? What does this season or season of life look like or feel like for you? Share in the comments below this post. 

What’s my simple joy this season? Sitting beside a creek and listening to the water trickle (or rush past), traveling in a similar way to how we live daily life, sharing ice cream sandwiches under the shade of a tree in the park with my son, and the scent of honeysuckle flowers bringing back memories of childhood have all brought me joy this season. 

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52 Seasons Bookshop.org Store

52 Seasons Libro.fm Audiobook List

52 Seasons Etsy Favorites

I read once that if there is something that you want to do, but you're not sure how to get there, just begin. Writing blog posts for 52 Seasons is a creative journey into the expressions that come from my heart: writing, photography, tending a garden, immersing myself in nature, reading stories from voices that need to be heard and sharing them with others, keeping a home, being an advocate and supporter of education, nature, basic human rights, and sharing resources with others.

Get involved in your community. VOTE. Speak out. Volunteer. One small action can create momentum for change.

As summer begins in the Northern Hemisphere, the pace of life seems to slow down even as our desire to enjoy all things outdoors ramps up. Sometimes the hot weather and lack of routine can feel as sticky as the juice dripping down your fingers as you attempt to cool yourself down with slice of sweet watermelon. 

Summer feels like a season to savor. The thing is, savoring can sound good in theory, but those of us in the United States, in particular, aren’t so great at stopping to savor il dolce far niente or “the sweetness of doing nothing” (an Italian phrase I came across in the book  Care by Australian author Brooke McAlary). As a society, we tend to feel guilty for not always working hard or continuing to strive to do more. Our lives are filled with distractions that keep us from being able to savor anything other than our to-do list. However, when I make a point to set down my to-do list (both mentally and physically) and focus on savoring, the summer can be rejuvenating rather than yet another season of exhaustion.

“There is no doubt in my mind that we experience diminishing returns on our efforts to optimise, meaning that at some point, the tiny gains we make are outweighed by the stress and effort of trying to achieve them.

But there is a difference between wanting to grow and wanting to optimise ourselves for no other reason than we think we should. One is an internal desire to evolve, the other is in response to external pressures.”

-Brooke McAlary, author of Care

If you find me wandering around a farmers’ market, working quietly in the garden, noticing the early morning light on the porch with my hands wrapped around a mug of tea (or sipping a cold glass of iced tea in the heat of summer), admiring the flowers growing on a neighborhood walk, enjoying a leisurely bike ride, or with my nose in a book somewhere outside in the shade, you’ll probably notice from the lightness in my mood that I am in my element. A curious person by nature, when I am filled with wonder, even on a small scale, my heart is full.

While walking around my dad’s garden a few weeks ago, my dad and I both agreed that watering our garden by hand, as inefficient as it may be, gives us a chance to check on each individual plant to see how they are growing and what new blooms have popped out overnight. I think savoring means spending time wandering, noticing, taking in the wonder of daily life, and not always needing to act. For me, this sometimes means putting my camera away, letting my thoughts have time to breathe before writing, or adding fewer tasks to our calendar to make room for spontaneity.

“Awe has a sister and her name is wonder: She’s the feeling of amazement and admiration you may encounter when experiencing something beautiful, remarkable, or unfamiliar.”

-Brooke McAlary, author of Care

In the book Care, author Brooke McAlary breaks down what she calls “Small Care” into chapters which include: connection, kindness, awe, nature, making, movement, play, rest, and healing.

Over the years, I’ve slowly incorporated many of the ideas she shared in the book (including a daily 20-minute nap that I take in the form of yoga nidra), and her writing reinforced why I feel my best when “Small Care” is present in my life.

“We embrace idle time. . .

. . .we stop seeing quiet moments as empty vessels into which we pour productivity.”

-Brooke McAlary, author of Care

Recently, Brooke McAlary wrote about feeling okay with life being just fine. Years ago, I would have read the words “just fine” or “content” as not enough or mediocre. Now I realize now that being content with my life actually feels like peace and calm as it means what I have and who I am is enough. Contentment ends the cycle of striving.

Life will never be without important and necessary tasks that need to be completed. I just need to constantly check in to make sure they align with our family values and my own personal energy. Even when I choose to savor summer days, there will still be meals to make with my family (and the groceries required for those meals), driving practice sessions with my teenager, our dog that needs multiple walks a day, laundry piles, and the need to plan ahead for upcoming trips and appointments.

Savoring can mean choosing how I move through these tasks. I actively choose to savor my time when I admire the sunrise while I type this blog post, enjoy my daily tea on the porch, walk our dog along a path filled with wildflowers, take a full hour lunch break, try a new restaurant or food that satisfies my need for wonder and feeds my family, and enjoy seeing my child grow into a young adult while gaining his independence to drive on his own.

I can choose to see these daily practices as chores, or I can see them as ways to savor my life and this season, even when challenges arise. When I practice being content and not checking everything off my endless to-do list (and curbing my need to create an unattainable to-do list to begin with), I am nurturing my well-being and reserving my energy for savoring my life.

(With “Small Care” in mind, I don’t have a video to share this week, just a few photos of beautiful peonies on a morning walk and my farmers’ market finds. I think it’s important for me to limit technology when I have the opportunity, and that sometimes means just savoring the moment without my camera in hand.)

On a side note, I share Brooke McAlary’s love of words and especially those words that don’t have an English equivalent, like the new to me words I learned from her book Care.

komorebi - a Japanese word meaning ‘sunlight filtering through trees’

goya - an Urdu word for ‘the suspension of disbelief that occurs while listening to good storytelling’

hiraeth - a Welsh word for ‘the homesickness you feel when you can’t return to your home or for a home that never was’

fiu - a Tahitian word that encompasses the word burnout and is used for letting others know why you need a break from work or other events

Here’s a link to 17 more words without an English equivalent that I found intriguing! Do you have any favorites you’d like to share in the comments below?

WEEKEND READING 

Every year we travel to a location that is close to many Native American reservations here in the southern United States. Each time I visit, I am humbled by the strength of tribes who have suffered great losses in their tribal communities as well as access to their land. Despite these heartbreaking and devastating losses, these communities have found ways to work together to advocate for their rights and ways of life. As a Little Free Library steward myself, I know the power of getting books into the hands of readers. I hope that you will join me in supporting the Little Free Library Indigenous Library Program.

The slow days of summer are a perfect time to dive into a good book. I’m beginning my summer reading with Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng, 100 Days of Sunlight by Abbie Emmons, and Four Treasures of the Sky by Jenny Tinghui Zhang.

What are you reading this season? Share in the comments below. 

What’s my simple joy this week? Gardening brings me joy, so why not bring a little of that feeling on vacation? With the Airbnb host’s permission, we stopped by the farmers’ market and local nursery, where we are vacationing, to pick out plants to fill up the empty garden beds and pots. By planting a vacation garden, we benefit from being able to pick fresh mint for our tea and herbs for our cooking and soak in the beauty of flowers on the porch every morning. Hopefully, the next guests who stay here and the local wildlife will enjoy the garden as well. Never one to have too much time in a garden, I’m also looking forward to attending the literary garden dedication at the local library and the town garden tour.

Thank you to my mom for the link to this article from The New York Times that reminded me that gardening is really just a form of meditation.

Don’t want to miss a blog post?

Subscribe below to receive this season's inspiration delivered to your inbox twice a month.

Purchasing items from the links below helps to support this blog AND some incredibly talented authors, illustrators, small businesses, and makers.

52 Seasons Bookshop.org Store

52 Seasons Libro.fm Audiobook List

52 Seasons Etsy Favorites

I read once that if there is something that you want to do, but you're not sure how to get there, just begin. Writing blog posts for 52 Seasons is a creative journey into the expressions that come from my heart: writing, photography, tending a garden, immersing myself in nature, reading stories from voices that need to be heard and sharing them with others, keeping a home, being an advocate and supporter of education, nature, basic human rights, and sharing resources with others.

Get involved in your community. VOTE. Speak out. Volunteer. One small action can create momentum for change.

-Jade Miles, Futuresteading: Live Like Tomorrow Matters

After watching a Hamimommy YouTube video last week, I was reminded of just how much I use our garden as a sign of the seasons progressing. While the calendar doesn't recognize summer as beginning until June 21, the songs of summer insects like cicadas and katydids in our yard beg to differ. Lightning bugs are lighting up the skies, and mosquitoes are annoyingly abundant.

Luckily, the sweltering heat we usually experience this time of year has held off a little longer than usual. The sunny days, however, have the ‘Pro Cut Plum’ sunflowers growing taller than our fence, reminding us that the days are becoming longer and the summer season has arrived. ‘Chocolate Cherry’ sunflowers, ‘Rubenza’ cosmos, ‘Gloriosa’ rudbeckia, ‘Queen Lime’ zinnias, ‘Queen Orange’ zinnias, and lavender-hued passionflower and hibiscus are filling the garden with colorful vibrancy and inviting butterflies to land on their elaborate petals.

Our magnolia tree is bursting with creamy white petaled cups filled with buzzing bees drawn in by their sweet aroma. Our native elderberry plant is blooming for the first time after we planted it two years ago. The garden feels lively at dawn and dusk and offers sleepy squirrels a place to lounge in the trees or take a cool drink in the mid-day heat. We even have a lizard who tucks herself into the mesh of our raised garden bed cover at night for protection. 

Summer ushers in a slightly new rhythm, even if my daily rituals don’t change very much. The pace is slower, causing me to linger, wander, be curious, and want even more simplicity in my schedule. Just as I was contemplating the change in rhythm this season, I found an invitation to a “Rhythms Retreat” from Brooke McClary, author of Care and Slow Living for a Frantic World, waiting in my inbox. I welcomed the pause to consider what my summer rhythms might feel like this year so that I could focus on slow living and feeling in tune with the seasons. 

When I begin harvesting fresh basil and cherry tomatoes from the garden, it signals the shift in seasons and a more leisurely approach to our meals as we tend to eat lighter meals in summer. Glasses of hibiscus or yaupon tea, iced chai, or coffee bookmark our summer afternoons. Juice from sticky peaches (like my favorite early variety, June Gold) drips down my fingers, and perfectly sweet and crisp fresh corn, okra, and zucchini appear on our plates as summer days slowly unwind. Hot summer days invite us to dip into rivers, streams, pools, and lakes to submerge ourselves fully into the season.

I hope you’re enjoying the beginning of summer and find inspiration and a little sunshine in your day after watching this season’s video.

The music featured in the video is Summer Feelings by Onda Norte on Epidemic Sound.

WEEKEND READING

I’m cozying up for a weekend full of reading. In case they spark a few ideas for your summer TBR list, I’m sharing the list of books I’m thinking about reading this weekend. What are you reading this summer? I’d love for you to share your favorite summer reads or what you’re looking forward to reading this summer in the comments below this post. 

In honor of AANHPI month in May and Pride Month in June, I encourage you to check out the extensive collection of audiobooks by AANHPI authors and narrators and LGBTQIA+ authors and narrators on Libro.fm 

Be sure to check out the Identity Collections page on Libro.fm for more titles to add to your audiobook wishlist! 

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND

American Born Chinese on Disney (NPR article about this outstanding coming-of-age show)

Growing Floret - Season 2 - This season, Erin Benzakein of Floret Flowers ponders what it means to leave a legacy

What’s my simple joy this week? A weekend filled with reading and self-care and shifting into a slower summer rhythm

Purchasing items from the links below helps to support this blog AND some incredibly talented authors, illustrators, small businesses, and makers.

52 Seasons Bookshop.org Store

52 Seasons Libro.fm Audiobook List

52 Seasons Etsy Favorites

I read once that if there is something that you want to do, but you're not sure how to get there, just begin.

Writing blog posts for 52 Seasons is a creative journey into the expressions that come from my heart: writing, photography, tending a garden, immersing myself in nature, reading stories from voices that need to be heard and sharing them with others, keeping a home, being an advocate and supporter of education, nature, basic human rights, and sharing resources with others.

Get involved in your community. VOTE. Speak out. Volunteer. One small action can create momentum for change.