April and May have been a blur of flowers, birds, hard work, and poison ivy.
As mentioned in a previous post, we’ve been doing some pretty extreme work on our property, so here’s a collection of photos from the last two months.
Mom finally brought the poetry magnets back out, so our fridge is currently full of them
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry
Living in New England, I think that March might be the most dramatic month of the whole year.
On the third of March we went “hiking” and ended up clumsily tripping through three feet of snow, but by the end of the month the ground was clear, and flowers were blooming.
You can watch my 60-second March wrap here!
March 3rd, we definitely underestimated how much snow would still be at our local park; watch my spring vlog here!
I can’t believe that January is already over. I know it drags on endlessly for a lot of people (and I’m often one of those people), but it really seems like it was here and gone this year.
And not only did I succeed in making all twelve monthly wraps last year (you can find the whole playlist of them here), I started all over again for 2026. It’s too much fun to watch the changing year through them all!
I’m happy to report that winter has been very wintery here in New England. Multiple winter storms have arrived, and the last storm we got (Storm Fern) dropped a good 16″ inches on top of us. We now have snow-blown paths winding through the yard leading to all of our important destinations (the barn, the wood shed, the compost, the birdfeeders…).
I was preparing for this vacation with more than just a little trepidation, because, if I’m being quite honest, I didn’t enjoy last year’s vacation much at all (you can see some photos from it in this post, but I never went into great detail about any of it).
Which really sucked, because everyone else had a grand ol’ time.
I finally finished sifting through my billions of video clips (it was too much, I know); you can check out my collection of vacation Shorts here!
I decided to single-handedly save the monarch population in a single season; you can now refer to me as Monarch Mommy™
This, of course, is a joke (the saving the species part, not the Monarch Mommy™ part), and since raising monarchs indoors can be quite a hot top on the internet (who knew, right?), I’m going to start this post with a clear disclaimer: apparently it’s not been proven that indoor rearing of monarchs has done much — if anything — to help the general monarch population.
Some studies say that, if done improperly, the indoor raising of monarch butterflies can actually have an adverse effect on the general monarch population.
*steps onto my soapbox*
Let me just say that I completely agree with some reasonings (like it can make spreading disease easier), while other reasonings I completely disagree with. For instance, believing that nature successfully “picks off the weak” and that we’re interfering with that process by protecting them?? Um, here’s my hot take: having a wasp lay eggs in a caterpillar doesn’t mean that a caterpillar is weak, it just means that it was one unlucky little dude who now has to endure a horrific death!
I believe that my butterflies were part of the migratory generation (also known as the “super generation”), and they were much larger than other monarchs that I’ve seen around
the sun peeks over the horizon,
golden beams winding through branches,
dappling the sleeping plants in glory.
dew drops rest on stems,
held captive in the hair of the plant,
shimmering and glinting,
like pearls ‘round a rich woman’s neck,
everyday magic so easily overlooked.
they stretch and reach their arms to the sky,
elegant smiles on their concealed faces,
coaxed back to life by a jubilant sun.
The fam and I returned from our 6 days of seaside vacationing on Tuesday, and ever since then I’ve been sifting through hundreds of videos and compiling them into aesthetic YouTube shorts (these are pretty much purely for my and my family’s entertainment, but there’s a slight chance that somebody else might enjoy them too).
I was originally throwing around the idea of making a longform video about the trip, but after spending the whole first day of the vacation capturing aesthetically-pleasing footage (think: sanderlings running along the surf in front of a pastel-pink sunset), my camera decided to throw a fit, mess with my SD card, and ultimately lose my gorgeous footage.
July has come and gone (if you missed my July wrap, you can watch it here!), and we are well and truly into summer. As in, it’s frickin hot, and I don’t remember the last time we got rain. I’m giving my gardens just enough water to make it through these hot days, but they could really use a good soaker.
The pole beans are finally producing (I always forget how late they start, but once they start, the harvests are plentiful until the first frost), the butternut squashes are climbing to the sky and have quite the collection of babies growing, and the zephyr squashes have been as delectable as ever.
my friend Brandi sent me these marigold seeds (left) a few years ago, and I’ve continued collecting the seeds and growing them every year since!
It’s been a hot minute (literally) since I’ve posted on this blog — you have no idea how many drafts I’ve started in here, only to lose steam halfway through and never publish them!
When I disappear from one place, it usually means that I’m busy elsewhere, and that has definitely been the case this time around.
Although summer has technically just started, it’s been so much fun so far.
releasing my dear Painted Lady butterflies (more on this later in the post)
art by jordan rae 