I have been hiding in my cocoon lately, of motherhood and sorrow, but ever so gently I am venturing out into a world that looks, both literally and figuratively, totally new. In the past 2.5 months I have both lost myself completely and been confronted quite harshly by her too. The juxtaposition is jarring: I am out looking for myself with lanterns, as Emily Dickinson once wrote, and also anywhere I try to hide, there I seem to be. I think I’m experiencing what philosophers call “ego-death,” a shedding, a transmutation, a total surrendering to the will of unexpected change and I’m drop dead in the centre of the discomfort. The world and life I once knew, that I leaned so heavily upon to prop me up and give me worth has crumbled; I’ve lost total control, everything is spinning, and I’m waiting to see where everything newly falls into place. It’s been dark, very, but in the warm spring sunshine I’m finally looking at myself in my most raw form (alongside everyone else) and I don’t hate it, I certainly didn’t choose it, but I’m adjusting to what I see.

My therapist told me recently that I need to start seeing myself as and acting like the main character in my own story. After years and years of spinning narratives of invisibility and sacrifice and pawning off confidence and opportunities to shine, this sentiment hit me so hard. In thinking about this, I realize how rarely, if ever, I have taken centre stage, always pushing others into the spotlight and then waiting, perhaps rather resentfully, for them to bring me in beside them or offer me the next turn. As everything has unfolded in my life recently, I’ve been so struck by the fact that there are people out there for whom this is so casually easy, people who will take every opportunity to steal your moment or your life and pretend like there are no consequences as they deliberately shunt you to the side. I’ve been foolishly surprised to discover that there are women who have no respect for the sanctity of childbirth and motherhood, and who, even in the depths and enormity of another’s life-shattering despair will still try to cast off accountability and claim even your grief and pain as their own. The shamelessness of it, the utter lack of compassion, and my naïveté has me reeling. That someone can knowingly and willingly participate in blowing up someone else’s life and still project victimhood to the world. It gives such—do I dare say it?—main character energy?! Perhaps that is what bothers me most…that I am merely envious of what I seem forever unable to do—to walk into the centre of my own life and live it like I belong.

I am just so exhausted and done with being kind and self-righteous and apologetic and morally noble and a doormat and resentful and meek and forgotten: “And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”

People keep asking me: what do you want, Hannah? What do you want? What do you want? It has made me realize how rarely I have been asked this question in my life and also how rarely I have answered it with a genuine, honest reply. What do I want? I am practicing asking myself this everyday with the simplest of expectations: I want a cookie, a walk, a nap, to lie down in my bed and cry. I buy myself flowers—tulips, an oat milk matcha latte, a new notebook the colour of the sky. I meet up with a friend and I finally, finally let another one who has been disappointing me for years go. Ever so slowly the bigger answers reveal themselves: to go camping, to write poetry, to run a half marathon. To find peace, clarity, joy, ease. To wake up early in the morning, and sit with the birds. To sing.

xx hannah

p.s. thank you so much for all your kind words after my last 2 missives. It means the world to write boldly and from the heart and have it received with such enthusiasm and warmth. please consider becoming a paid subscriber <3

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I have been learning a lot of not so nice things about myself too. I have learned that when I feel pain—and the pain is immense—I become both obsessed with and immersed in it and I want to cast it off immediately like a grating wool coat. I want to remind everyone everywhere that I am hurting because I don’t want to hurt alone, but I won’t accept their kind words or care in return, so in the end I do. I think I’ve learned I do it not to feel better or find relief, I do it because I really just want everyone to hurt with me. I want the world to burn like my insides do.

It’s not quite as bad as it sounds; I’m not walking around slashing tires or setting fires to people’s homes or anything. But every once in a while, when I am overcome with everything, I lash out at the people I love and set small fires to relationships I care a lot about and some I should probably do more to protect. Maybe as a test for them: who will stay with me through this dark? Maybe as a test for me: how unbearable can I make this world for myself and still pick myself up from the ashes and stay? Or even and likely worse, can I ruin everything enough that there’s nothing left to keep me?

As someone who deeply identifies as kind, I am surprised and ashamed of my viciousness, however slight in the grand scheme. And the more mistakes I make, the more I believe I deserved this. Maybe that’s why I can’t stop making them.

I had so many beautiful plans for this year and now I can’t help but feel like, despite the wealth of joy I only just recently felt, I was focused on the wrong things. My nature journal lies untended, I haven’t started a single seed, the camping supplies I began sorting through weeks ago are lying in a neglected pile in the basement. I keep getting reminders on my phone to make summer plans that are now up in the air. Plus I’m due to write another nature article for the local paper, another musing here, and, honestly, I’ve barely been outside.

Something I’ve always prided myself in is my vulnerability, but the willingness and, more realistically, the need, and the inability not to share what you are going through with everyone is also an ineffable curse. Here I am, writing to over a thousand people, mostly strangers, about my strangled inner world. God, do I wish I were more composed, demure, and I could keep it the fuck to myself! And yet, this is also what I believe makes the world a more bearable place to be: honesty, truth, connection… it’s what helps me heal.

I did go for a walk yesterday. I saw so many robins pecking in the dirt, the flash of a bluebird’s wings, a male red-bellied woodpecker on a birch tree, and I nursed my baby right below a tufted titmouse who sang and sang and sang. I heard peepers chirping lightly from the trees, the sun was bright, two swans were looping beside each other in the water, and the smell of skunk cabbages underfoot as I walked through the damp woods was strong and exciting. I felt, very briefly, not completely distended with emotion. I cried—boy do I cry—but I also smiled.

When they say to just put one foot in front of the other, they really mean it, whoever they are. Today I will order snap pea seeds and spinach. I will drink water and nettle tea. I will take a walk and try to nap when the baby does and put my devil phone up on a high shelf for as long as I can. Today is also the due date for the lambs on the farm and I am awaiting their arrival like rainfall in a drought. Eagerly is an understatement. Something joyful, something soft, a sign of the tumble of time.

xx hannah

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This maple is not noticeably special in appearance, it’s not enormous or visually unique, and it is most certainly not in the most convenient location. Many times contractors and construction workers have threatened to cut it down, many a car has sideswiped it or backed into its trunk, and long ago I saw someone drive fully into the ditch it grows out of which we decided a few years ago to finally fill to avoid such an accident again. To say she’s been bumped and bruised and berated is a bit of an understatement, but still she stands.

I can see this maple directly from my bedroom window—in the autumn sun glowing pale gold and holy before scattering the driveway with delicately coral-hinted leaf skeletons, usually after a heavy rain, and on a summer’s moon-drenched night, thick with leaves and night songs and fireflies rising. In the spring I watch the robins build their nests in its branches from my bed, see them flit in and out to feed and raise their young—every year I find remnants of their delicate turquoise egg shells among her roots—and when the sap runs, as it’s doing now, all manner of creatures visit for a drink: squirrels, moths, woodpeckers, migrating songbirds, all scampering in and through her many branches that fan out like veins against the open sky, pulsing with life. She is both a host and a home, a mother tree to many. And of course the pale yet vibrant green blossoms that erupt in April—some of the first flowers of the year—will never cease to remind me of the day I brought my first baby home from the hospital, this maple, the bright yellow bells of forsythia, and the weeping willow beckoning in the wind beside them, her personal welcoming committee to the world. How could I ever let this tree go?

Every year on or around Valentine’s day we tap the maple trees closest to our house to collect their sap to make maple syrup. This is the time of year when the trees start to wake up from winter dormancy, the sap like lifeblood coursing sugars and nutrients to their limbs to reawaken from within—rising, freezing, running, reinvigorating. Stimulated by warm days above freezing and then halted by night’s frosty chill, the rise and fall of the sap seems almost like a grueling process for the trees, and yet the energy and the symbolism of return is joyful.

You can see the marks of this annual tradition in my maple’s bark, a cascade of small circular scars like bullet holes, now healed over. I run my hand along them, counting back all the way to my very first winter living here 8 years ago, always on the south and westerly facing sides so they’re struck directly by that warm, late afternoon setting sun. Small wounds we’ve caused, sure, but they feel more like a love letter to her and to this little plot of land and house: a home built, a family grown, a calendar of our years here together like growth marks on a wall. Measures of how much we, or I guess I, have committed to it, how much I have loved.

Right now I am wading through an immense, sudden, confusing, and crushing grief. It’s why, unexpectedly, I haven’t written as promised and planned in a few weeks. It’s too sharp to name or write about, but even so the world turns, nature and my passions beckon and write I must. Despite all this chaos in my inner world, the spring still arrives, the light shifts, the snow melts, the sun beats warmer in a thrilling way, and the maples do their sap dance nonetheless. Despite the heaviness, I wake in awe and joy for these predictable yet magic return, cycles of a living life.

These days I feel a lot like this maple tree. She running with sap and me giving of milk, 7 month baby in my arms, a different kind of lifeblood. I am mother tree. Host, home, a world carried and held up in my branches, not always seen, not always by choice, not always convenient to others. I think, too, of how maybe she has also been watching me through the window all these years, measuring time in some way by what’s going on inside—one baby and now two, glowing, grieving, the waves and seasons of a profound but simple life, a domestic world that is most often invisible, its importance and dynamism forgotten—or ignored—by most. I wonder what she has witnessed. I wonder how she would describe me and all she has seen within to the world. If she could speak, I wonder what she would tell me to do.

When I look back on the last 8 years, maple season has always been a favourite time of year—the return of the afternoon sun, evenings sitting by the fire writing or reading or talking while sap boils down to syrup over open flame. Ice cold sap drunk from a jar, hot dogs for dinner boiled in it, the thrum of joyful bird song as they return to our woods, the glow of the tree tops above us all, a time of rekindling something lost between us all in winter’s cold darkness. This year I think mostly of motherhood and when I fell so deeply into it that I became forgotten. I think of the way the world—and men especially—thrives on the quiet but profound labour of caregivers and yet how easily we can simply be shut away. I think of all the times I’ve cried out for the hardness of it all, and the beauty, thinking people were listening, but realizing now they were not. I think of how I just can’t keep up, catch up, how far I am already behind.

My beautiful baby is now 7 months old. My first baby will be 5 in a couple of weeks. The sap rises and runs, my body fills with milk again and again, the world turns. I will write more soon.

xx hannah

In the winter my world becomes distinctly small. This winter especially, with all the snow and frigid temps and a baby, home carries more meaning. Here, we cling to the two warmest rooms in the house—living room and kitchen—our paths weaving circles in and out of them, between, returning, back and forth, together and apart, like a strange and winding dance. Were we to be hunted we would be both hard to track and incredibly easy to find.

Everything revolves around the heat (wood stove and oven), the sources of food and entertainment (fridge and book shelf and bird feeder), and the creature comforts of each other’s breath and fur and skin (2 adults, 2 kids, 2 dogs & 2 cats). Here, I am surrounded by evidence of my family’s winter occupations, even when alone: unfinished puzzles we are slowly piecing, library books, yesterday’s tea pot and cups from a visit with a friend, seed catalogs, strewn quilts we bundle under, in-progress art projects, damp snow-clothing drying by the fire. The pile of logs left by the stove is a quiet love letter from my husband. On clear days, when the sun leaks in from every direction, you will find us all basking in it, wherever the patches fall, pulled—even without thought—toward any semblance of the warmer seasons both past and ahead.

In my postpartum state, I am acutely aware of our mammalian nature, our bodies like a map of ancient instinct and ritual if we just learn to read it. I burrow in deeper and await the spring.

In one of my recent newsletters I innocently posed the question, “where do spiders go in winter?” I didn’t intend it as anything more than a musing, but it has inadvertently led me down a real mental—and subsequent research—wormhole. Where do spiders go in winter? Where do a lot of the more unusual critters and crawlers go—beyond just the bears and the birds who we hear about on the regular?

Queen bumblebees in the wild, I know, bury themselves in the ground with pre-fertilized eggs inside them, and wake in spring alone ready to repopulate their colony. The rest died off in the fall. But how exactly do these queens survive underground? Wood frogs, for another, snuggle up under leaf litter and go into a kind of motionless state of self-preservation. But how exactly does that work? And what about the spiders? and the centipedes? the salamanders? the turtles? What about the butterflies?

We have a small frog pond in our yard that we all love immensely. It’s actually just a funny little black plastic tub hidden beneath decorative stone and set under an old springbox to catch the trickle. It wasn’t intended for frogs, but the frogs just happen to love it. My oldest daughter and I found ourselves checking it out the other day while we waited for the school bus, pondering the current whereabouts of the frogs who, in spring and summer, lounge about on the warm flat rocks and croak loudly through the night. She had so many questions and that’s when I decided that, ok, I really need to fully understand what amphibians (and invertebrates and other freaky friends) do to survive in the cold.

So, you’ve probably heard about hibernation—perhaps, like me, in spite of/to spite capitalism you’re trying to do it as best you can right now—but let’s talk about brumation. Brumation is the name for the hibernation-like period of slowed biological processes that both amphibians and reptiles enter during the colder months. Some do this under the leaf litter in the forest, like wood frogs and salamanders. Others do it underwater, like bullfrogs and painted turtles. During this pseudo-dormancy state their metabolism, heart rate, and activity slow down so significantly (they aren’t breathing! Their hearts actually stop beating!) in an effort to conserve energy when food is scarce that, if uncovered, they seem frozen in time Unlike true hibernation, these animals are not fully or extendedly asleep, rather they exist in a kind of suspended animation.

Turtles brumate. Frogs brumate. Salamanders brumate. All triggered by the cold temperatures and lessening light. But again, not hidden away in warm dark insulated burrows, how exactly do they survive?

Many of these amphibians seem frozen in brumation because…they literally are frozen, especially those that brumate in the path of the frostline. By pushing water into extracellular spaces and flooding their cells with massive amounts of glucose and urea, these creatures make a kind of cryoprotectant within their blood stream that serves as a natural anti-freeze, shielding their cells and vital organs from lethal ice formation. Through this process, they actually lower the freezing point of their bodies! Amphibians will, thus, shift into absorbing oxygen through their skin instead of using their lungs, making sure to bury themselves in oxygen-rich locations, whether underwater or in the ground. This is how they survive the long cold months.

Insects, like amphibians, are ectothermic, meaning they too cannot produce their own body heat. Many insects do a similar sort of thing to survive winter, engaging in cryoprotective dehydration by replacing the water in their bodies with glucose and entering a similar state of diapause or frozen animation. These are called freeze-avoidant species, like the queen bumblebee hidden in the ground. Others practice a kind of freeze-thaw method of survival, or freeze-tolerance, in which they actually allow the ice crystals to form but protect themselves from damage to vital organs by producing special proteins in their blood. An example of an insect species that can repeatedly freeze and thaw in this way is the mourning cloak butterfly—one of my favourites and the first butterfly typically seen in early spring. This species spends the winter not in egg or larval state, which is typical, but actually as an adult butterfly, sheltering in hollow cavities, wood piles, and under the loose bark of trees. On warm sunny winter days you might even spot one flying about or basking in the sun.

Of course, many creatures migrate, including certain bugs; most famously, of course, are the Monarch butterflies who travel en masse all the way to the mountains of northern Mexico and back. Others remain somewhat active during the cold months, seeking out protected microhabitats where they can both move about and avoid freezing like the subnivean zone or subnivium—an invisible ecosystem that exists only in the snow, between the surface of the ground and the top of the snowpack, where with just 6 inches of snow it doesn’t get below freezing. One such insect who takes advantage of the subnivium in winter is the long-jawed orb weaver—a spider! Another, more notably, is the wolf spider who you might even see venturing out onto the snow’s surface to hunt for snow fleas. Most species of spiders, however, die off in the fall, leaving behind protected egg sacs or, occasionally, hatched spiderlings.

Here’s a fun article I read about other arthropods who live within the subnivium!

A video of a wood frog thawing out from diapause

And a cute thing I wrote for our local newspaper about snow

xx hannah

And of course, I should also mention: my favourite amphibian moment of the year is approaching—the “big night.” This is when all the frogs and salamanders awaken from their frozen sleep and make their way down from the upland forests to their breeding pools to mate. It’s unpredictable and needs the perfect collision of weather events—actively raining & lows above 40 degrees at night, usually in March here in the HV—one of the most magical times of the year.

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A few things getting me through:

Read: Rage and Rules by Sarah Menkedick—if there’s one thing you should read this week, I recommend this. I also just finished two novels: Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich and Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy. Both apocalyptic, both heart-wrenching, both excellent.

Watch: Did you watch Glitter & Gold on Netflix? I’m very much keeping up with the Olympics, specifically the figure skating & ice dance. It gives me so much peace. But, if you’re keen on nature (which you likely are if you’re reading this), this video about the biodiversity of the Hudson Valley.

Make: Valentines for your friends :)

This year I’ve decided to start a nature journal…and stick with it.

I have been a journal-keeper my whole life. I use one almost everyday and you will rarely see me go anywhere without my current notebook tucked into the pocket of my backpack or purse—it’s like a security blanket: anywhere I end up I know I’ll be able to write. My journals contain everything, from grocery lists to poems to research to the processing emotional quandaries, but something I’ve always wanted is a separate entity for taking out into the natural world, a devoted journal that focuses primarily on my ecological experiences in the field and also includes art.

I’m not a capital A artist by any means, but I do a lot of art-making. I’m a knitter, I love to draw and embroider things, in the last decade I’ve gotten very into printmaking, and long ago in high school I considered myself a painter. I’m crafty, you might say, and very good with my hands. I have, however, never really kept a sketchbook or been very good at more casual art-making—almost everything I create is intended as a “finished piece.” And while this is very fun, it also feels, in a lot of ways, limiting. I think I’m quite attached to a sense of control and perfection, which often stops me from ever getting started on more free-form projects such as this. Part of this pursuit—the starting and keeping with a nature journal for a whole year—is about pushing myself to challenge this.

Join me for a year of nature journaling! Can I do it? You’ll get monthly installments of my reflections and observations and get to see the pages within in an effort to keep me motivated and accountable. Upgrade for more & to peer inside.

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Hey all! This month, as I get things rolling again, all my newsletters are/have been free. Next month (February), we’re shifting to only one free missive and the rest for paid subscribers only. Or so I say… I love sending my newsletters for free! If you read it regularly, become a paid subscriber anyway! It helps me invest more time in it xx

Right now there is 2 feet of snow on the ground and I am dreaming of the garden. The hummingbird who visits the Oswego tea that grows in the back right corner, those wild red blossoms, and the cedar waxwings who I caught stealing twine from my pea trellis this past spring to build their nests. Carolina wren, catbird, tree swallow, phoebe, bluebird, dove…my list runs long, there are always birds aplenty in there.

I am dreaming of my oldest daughter at 2 years old feeding sugar snaps to her stuffed animals—a bite for her, then a bite for them— while nestled in the shade from their vines. And I am dreaming of her this past summer, age 4, asking me to pick every passionflower we’d find blooming. She’d twirl each one between her fingers and say, hushedly, “beautiful”—a young witness to the majesty of the natural world. I realize in these dreams her hands will never be that small again.

I am dreaming of the monarch butterflies, now huddled together in their wintering grounds in Mexico; of the bumblebees sleeping softly on marigold pillows, now asleep somewhere below the ground; of Orb weavers spinning dew-dazzled web beds between brassica plants—where do spiders go in the winter? The crunch of cucumbers, dill salad dressing, garden vegetable everything pizzas, the bright green of fresh chamomile tea…

I am dreaming especially of that feeling—you know the one—of sun on my back (I’m wearing just a scrap of an outfit compared to the snow fits of today, just enough to cover the private parts) sweat on my brow, dirt on my knees and under my nails, an ache in the arms as I heave wheelbarrows of wood chips to cover paths where the weeds have crept in or yank palm-sized potatoes from the damp depths of the soil or whack brambles away with a machete like some kind of gorgeously tanned Amazon. (In reality I eschew the sun exposure and tanning, wear long sleeves almost always, and cover every exposed bit of skin with globs of sunscreen, but hey, this is a dream!)

Gardens past, gardens future, gardens not my own. Bluebirds on the fence line, warm rain, blossoms backlit by sunshine, my children gorging on strawberries, that nutty taste of boiled burdock tea. Plump dahlias, creeping roses, delicate papery poppies. Brick paths, glass greenhouses, mouldering statues, bird baths, sundials, terracotta pots. A sea of dark blue irises.

Alongside my garden dreams, I am dreaming, also, of a different kind of world. A world where people don’t have to fight so hard—or die trying—to find and live in peace and sanctuary. A world where we can raise our babies together in the sunshine and in the snow-drenched dark, where support for families abounds in both our communities and in the political systems that be. A world without borders, a world without war and bigotry and authoritarianism and ICE. A world where neighbors still drop by for a cup of sugar and a chat, where children—and especially children of colour—can roam their neighborhoods freely, where they are safe, and none are afraid to play. Where clean water and clean air are protected and equally shared, but not only that—cherished, revered, holy. God, a world where we don’t have to pay so much to just live decently on the planet we were born on by no choice of our own! Where some people don’t have to have so little so that others can have far too much. Where governments everywhere (if we really have to have them) respect human rights and dignity and civilians aren’t gunned down in the streets advocating for them, killed in cold blood while standing up for one another. A world where everyone has worth.

Ok, call me a dreamer, yes, yes I am! Dreaming, I believe, is a) an important part of the gardening process and the cycle of the year and b) like gardening itself, it’s one of the most anticapitalist, antiauthoritarian, reality-bending things we can do. Dreaming is the springboard for action and change. We have to first dream a garden into being, we have to first dream a revolution.

I believe we must leave room in our busy lives for the quiet inner sanctum of a dream—for rejecting productivity, for visioning and nursing creativity and slow art-making and contemplation and reflection and rest. Start with the garden, I say, and see what other worlds or selves ensue… A garden feeds more than one might think.

Here are my best tips for garden dreaming:

~ write about your garden in your journal—what you love about it, what you’d love for it to become. Don’t consider anything reasonable or rationalize about time/energy/capacity just yet. Just write about what, if everything were possible, you might long for it to be. Mine is very Secret Garden-esque, English cottage style all stuffed to the brim with flowers and layered with trees and hidden completely away. There are definitely kept rabbits and free-roaming ducks.

~ go on Pinterest and just give yourself up to scrolling (you could set a timer so as not to lose yourself forever). Look at a thousand garden photos if you like! Take notes of the things you love. Pin your favourites. Make that garden dream board, baby.

~ pore over seed catalogues (I prefer them to the websites, especially after all that Pinterest scrolling). Circle everything you want, even if it’s not in the budget. Dream now, plan later.

~ in the spring, do the same thing but irl at the nurseries. Last year I took a trip to the Catskill Native Nursery in the pouring rain and wandered between the rows of plants and plots, completely drenched and eyes all misty in that garden dream state, fingers fondling beautiful things like pawpaw blossoms.

~ if you’re an artistic type (or not!) draw it out. Could be the prototype for an official garden map. Just get it out on the paper!

My garden dreams so far this year are plentiful, as usual. More flowers: delphiniums, hollyhocks, snapdragons,, foxgloves, cosmos, zinnias, marigolds, verbena, sweet peas. And I want to make a native plant garden in our yard where my herb garden used to be: blazing star, culver’s root, baptisia, beard’s tongue, turtlehead, milkweed, bee balm, rudbeckia, ironweed. American hazelnuts for my favourite, the luna moth.

My heart is in so many places right now, in Iran, in Gaza, in Minnesota, in Maine. But especially here ^^. What are the gardens, the worlds, the future you are dreaming into reality these cold snowy days?

xx hannah

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Today I am writing to you from the trenches of motherhood in winter. We have been, almost endlessly, sick—norovirus, impetigo, conjunctivitis, head cold fading into head cold. Right now I’m a few days in to a round of antibiotics for strep throat and almost every day last week I took one of my two kids or myself to the doctor. I finally got the Christmas tree down and the decorations (mostly) away, but I’m still surrounded by piles of laundry and this morning the cat took a massive wet shit on the bathroom rug. This was just before one of our dogs barfed up bits of the dead deer they dragged from the woods all over the living room carpet and just after I slipped on frozen oatmeal on our back step while taking out the recycling. I could go on for a long while listing the various unglamorous tasks that fall under my jurisdiction in our house right now as the stay-at-home parent and primary caregiver to our almost 5 month old baby, but I won’t. I think you get the idea.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the invisibility of motherhood. And not just about all the invisible things mothers often do behind the scenes to make a household function or to make a childhood magic. I’m thinking also about the way we, as a society, actively make mothers invisible, the discomfort with and, I would argue, distaste we (generally) have for motherhood, and how that makes it normally quite acceptable to just erase it from our radar and our everyday.

You’ll often more regularly and explicitly hear people say disgruntled things about children—how they suck/are gross and adults without children really shouldn’t have to be inconvenienced by them, not by children being and acting like children nor by the caregivers who can’t seem to get them under control or make them “good.” Not in a restaurant or on the airplane or while grocery shopping or at church or even, in my experience, at places designed specifically for children—daycares, schools, playgrounds, summer camps. When a kid doesn’t do xyz the first time they are asked or in the prescribed, normative way—quickly, cheerfully, with respect, etc.—it’s all “off with their head!” And so, of course, in so expressing all this, I would argue these people also mean they don’t want to be inconvenienced by mothers either. Mothers and their excuses and their sickness and their sacrifices and their endless to-do lists and their end-of-the-line needs and their anxiety or their grief, their loneliness. “Off with your head too, you bad mom! It’s not my problem you chose this.”

Doesn’t matter that we were all children once, many of us neurodivergent or strong-willed or sensitive or not feeling well or just, like, not developmentally capable, nor that children have the same rights to take up space and use their voices as any other person in this country, nor that we were all raised, however imperfectly, by someone who did all these unglamorous things for us, be it mother, father, grandparent, sibling, nanny, nurse, while sick or exhausted or working or alone. Doesn’t matter that breastfeeding is protected in all 50 states and a person and their child can legally do it however and wherever they wish. In this modern world we seem to think, generally, that we can just excuse ourselves from witnessing both childhood and child-rearing, that we can just say “no thank you” to it all, protect our personal peace only, disengage, end the friendship, unfollow and never make space or accommodations in the other direction if we just don’t feel like it.

Oh, yes, I forgot, stories of motherhood are for women and mothers only, of course! My bad.

At the beginning of December I made an announcement that I had to take a little break from this newsletter while I figure out how to get my newborn to nap better. I also shared that I am not really doing my business right now and this space, moving forward, is not so much a business-focused newsletter, but something that comprises my whole self, mother included. I was surprised and disappointed to see how many subscribers I lost. My first reaction was “oh, yes, I forgot, people don’t want to read about the trials and truths of motherhood.” Now, I’m not sure if that’s true, maybe those people genuinely only wanted marketing emails from me or their disinterest had been growing for a while and I just offered them an easy way out, but that totally helpless feeling I remember from when my first daughter was born that there is little to no grace or spaciousness for what I would describe as the Sisyphean-like work of trying to maintain your identity and career while also becoming and being a mom while the world keeps moving forward at what suddenly feels like record pace—that feeling is founded in something very real.

“Oh you can’t keep up? Off with your head!”—why does it feel so easy to be erased?

I am not tuned into much right now beyond mothering, home-keeping, and the ecosystem in and around our house. It’s not that I’m not interested or don’t care (I do! I do!), it’s just that my arms and mind and heart feel already so very full. Most days my partner comes home and says something like “did you hear about [blank]?”—some big world affair or political transgression or great release of wonderful art. Most often my answer is no, I haven’t heard about it or engaged with hardly anything today beyond the baby and the birdfeeder, haven’t listened to the news in days, maybe weeks? and then I am riddled with shame. How can I call myself an activist or an artist or a political person if I am not staying up to date, if I am not out protesting, if I am not engaging with or making content, important stories, mind-altering art? Who even am I if I am just here mopping up dog vomit, changing diapers, and, when I get a brief moment of solace, watching the birds? Does being a mother, especially one without the means to pay others to do many of its associated tasks, simply mean ultimate self and dream collapse? Am I just an inconvenience?

I know that I’m not. I know that because I have friends who are mothers wielding the universe whom I admire very much and I know deeply that mothers make the world turn and have for all of time, even if we don’t see all that they do—it’s part of the magic—and I know that if you are a mother writing stories from the trenches of your home, I am reading them or at least I want to. And while I cannot tell you to a T exactly what’s going down in Venezuela right now, I can tell you what phase the moon is in (waning, third quarter) because she is my companion in the dead of night when I wake to nurse my daughter. And I can tell you what sound a fox makes because I can hear her barking every evening when I put the girls to bed, the one who lives in the bit of woods just across the creek, I’ve seen her too, running through the fields, hell-bent on survival. And I can tell you where the deer bed down when it snowed last, in the copse of trees by the old beaver dam, because I saw their tracks and the indentations of their sleeping bodies in the grass while out on our morning walk. Too often are we told that we must hide motherhood away or that as a mother we are not enough. We must share our stories, our worlds, our experiences anyway. Maybe only women or mothers will read my newsletter now. I write still, for them.

I have also been thinking so much about Renée Nicole Good, really I’ve been crying my eyes out for her for days, a story from the world beyond that has penetrated deeply into mine. Renée was shot last week, 3 times in the face, by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis while alerting her neighbours to their presence. Renée lost her life. Renée was a poet. Renée was a mother. Renee was murdered by ICE.

I’ve been thinking about how she had just dropped her young son at school, 6 years old, the typically exhausting battle of getting a little kid dressed and fed and out the door in the dead of winter, and how, despite probably having a lengthy list of things she had to do to keep her home and family functioning as a mom of 3, despite maybe even having a brief window of time to do something for herself for once, she instead went to help those neighbours, which she did, just before being gunned down.

The world has already begun twisting Renée’s story into one of criminality and terrorism; they’ll say what she did was against the law and insist she tried to run over the ICE agent in her car, that his response was self-defense and she had it coming. We’ve already heard both the president and vice-president smear her name and declare ultimate immunity and protection for her murderer. But we, the mothers, will know the truth: that God’s work, as they say, is not hunting down or executing innocent civilians on the street for their lack of correct paperwork or their noncompliance or their fear, it’s this kind of invisible self-sacrifice, the kind very few will ever see or understand, this kind of deep commitment to raising good, kind-hearted people in a totally horrendous world that likely made her drive there in the first place, because what kind of mom would she be if she didn’t show her children through action that, above all, at risk to everything, you must do the right thing? In my opinion, being a mother wasn’t just a side fact to this moment and her death and why she was there, but the heart of it. Her story is not just for women or mothers; it won’t be erased. Renée Good will be remembered. Renée Good was a mother and her life mattered.

Full statement from Becca Good, Renée’s wife, because I think it’s important to read:

“First, I want to extend my gratitude to all the people who have reached out from across the country and around the world to support our family.

This kindness of strangers is the most fitting tribute because if you ever encountered my wife, Renee Nicole Macklin Good, you know that above all else, she was kind. In fact, kindness radiated out of her.

Renee sparkled. She literally sparkled. I mean, she didn’t wear glitter but I swear she had sparkles coming out of her pores. All the time. You might think it was just my love talking but her family said the same thing. Renee was made of sunshine.

Renee lived by an overarching belief: there is kindness in the world and we need to do everything we can to find it where it resides and nurture it where it needs to grow. Renee was a Christian who knew that all religions teach the same essential truth: we are here to love each other, care for each other, and keep each other safe and whole.

Like people have done across place and time, we moved to make a better life for ourselves. We chose Minnesota to make our home. Our whole extended road trip here, we held hands in the car while our son drew all over the windows to pass the time and the miles.

What we found when we got here was a vibrant and welcoming community, we made friends and spread joy. And while any place we were together was home, there was a strong shared sense here in Minneapolis that we were looking out for each other. Here, I had finally found peace and safe harbor. That has been taken from me forever.

We were raising our son to believe that no matter where you come from or what you look like, all of us deserve compassion and kindness. Renee lived this belief every day. She is pure love. She is pure joy. She is pure sunshine.

On Wednesday, January 7th, we stopped to support our neighbors. We had whistles. They had guns.

Renee leaves behind three extraordinary children; the youngest is just six years old and already lost his father. I am now left to raise our son and to continue teaching him, as Renee believed, that there are people building a better world for him. That the people who did this had fear and anger in their hearts, and we need to show them a better way.

We thank you for the privacy you are granting our family as we grieve. We thank you for ensuring that Renee’s legacy is one of kindness and love. We honor her memory by living her values: rejecting hate and choosing compassion, turning away from fear and pursuing peace, refusing division and knowing we must come together to build a world where we all come home safe to the people we love.”

I did get out to protest this weekend, I brought my two young children with me and, while I don’t think protesting has the same impact it once did, I still believe in it and it felt good to shout with like-minded people on the street. While out there I saw a poster that really struck me, it said: I am Renée. And that’s how I feel, why her death pierced me the way it did—I am Renée. She did exactly what I would do that Wednesday morning, what any one of my mom + activist friends would do, and she was shot 3 times in the face and, right afterward, called a fucking bitch. Like any and all mothers, from Minneapolis to Palestine, she leaves behind a world that likely and invisibly hinges on her. Her story is one of ultimate self-sacrifice and we will never really know it, but it mattered.

My request for you today is to simply think about motherhood a little more than perhaps you usually would. Maybe you take a moment to think about your own mother, the unseen ways she made your life easier, or your partner who is a mother—what’s one thing you could lift to lighten her load? Or perhaps you just write a quick note to that friend who had a baby last spring who you congratulated only once and haven’t reached out to since. Any friends like that but now it’s been years? Maybe their kids are teenagers and it’s a different daily struggle. It’s never too late to take stock and re-connect. Maybe just ask how they are doing? Give a little grace to the mothers and children you encounter as you move through the world despite the pull to judge—there’s always an invisible world that you simply don’t see. And when one of your beloved substack writers perhaps sends out an out-of-character missive about motherhood and you’re disappointed, annoyed maybe, because you only want to read about xyz, read it anyway. You might just learn or feel or play witness to something important.

xx hannah

A few things getting me through the hard moments:

Read: The Punk Rock Good Life by Margaret Killjoy

Watch: John Feehan’s botany YouTube channel (should I start a YouTube channel?)

Do: I am on a seemingly never-ending house organization kick. My new things is that I am determined to create a better recycling system than the single-stream service we have here in which, I’m pretty sure, nothing actually gets recycled. Tell me, what do you do for recycling (especially if you are in Hudson valley)?? I’m excited to use Helpsy moving forward to get rid of old clothes/towels/fabrics!

Make: My next knitting project using Burgundy Cascade 220 yarn :)

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It has been brutally cold here lately. Two days after Christmas we had 8 inches of snow and another 2 accumulating snows since (+ more snow as I write today!)—the outdoor scenery is an endless landscape of barren trees, ice and white. Outdoor enthusiast that I am, even I sometimes falter this time of year at the prospect of going outside, so I’ve been thinking about my favourite ways to engage with winter’s natural world, to pump myself (and you!) up, because when I don’t get out there, when I don’t feel connected to nature, that’s when my mental health falters most. I’ve divided this newsletter into my top 3 winter pastimes: birds, tracks, & trees.

~ Birds ~

To say that my bird feeder becomes my lifeline in the winter is an understatement. I spend hours and hours enthralled by the coming and going of the birds. Making note of our feathered visitors is a highlight of my days.

There’s obviously not much to it—we have a double stand-alone feeder stuck in the ground just outside our big living room windows. We fill the two seed cages almost daily with songbird seed: a mix of sunflowers seeds, millet, and crushed corn and there is never a quiet moment. It’s actually quite an investment because they’ll burn through a bag of feed very fast, but the thing I learned early on about feeding the birds is that it too becomes their lifeline in winter; once you start feeding them, you have to continue because they begin to depend on it. This feels mutual, because I so dearly depend on them. As a result though I’ve noticed that because we have a feeder in our yard, bird activity generally increases around our house, and I like to believe that extends into the spring and summer. From my bedroom window I often spy a pair of woodpeckers on the snag just up the hill or a cardinal, brightest red, bouncing on a branch nearby or the electric wire along the road weighted down with mourning doves. My world becomes their world because they know they can rely on the sanctuary we’ve created here for them with consistent food. And hey, I don’t even have to brace the bitter cold to enjoy it all!

We keep a Peterson Field Guide to Birds leaning against the window pane right by the feeder, so we can look up any birds we don’t recognize, and a pair of kids binoculars for my oldest daughter. I regularly make a list of who comes by. Our most frequent visitors: chickadees, tufted titmice, dark-eyed juncos, house finches, tree sparrows, and nuthatches. There will often be goldfinches too, cardinals, downy woodpeckers, blue jays, doves, and at least one red-bellied sapsucker frequents us. I’ve been trying to challenge myself to take note of male vs. female and track any other notable observations like how the blue jays feed off what’s dropped on the ground with the doves and how nuthatches are so distinct in the way they eat completely upside down and bend their necks, short but swan-like. I think I spied a purple finch the other day, which is less common than the house finch, but it dashed away before I could more closely inspect.

This year I want to keep the feeder filled into the spring, to see what migrators come by as the birds return, but we do have a black bear in our woods—we’ve met before at the bird seed container in the night—so we’ll see…

And by the way, bird feeder watching is a great thing to do with kids. People are often very impressed by my 4 year old’s bird ID skills, which she obtained just from sitting on the couch. This year I also bought her/us a bird song identification CD—Birds of New York by Stan Tekiela— (I actually bought it years ago and then found it gathering dust in a forgotten box in the basement, unopened!) and put it in her stocking from Santa. I find it very soothing actually, having the bird calls explained to me in a gentle voice while I sip coffee and watch them flit about in the snow. We’ll be bird experts before we know it!

~ Tracks ~

About 6 years ago, I got really into animal tracking in the snow—the best time to do it! My tracking endeavors were greatly enhanced when a couple years later Trevor bought me some cross-country skis for Christmas (hands-down the best gift I’ve ever received). I have so many great track photos I could share with you, but I’ll share a few favourites:

Ok, now that you get the idea, I hope you feel enticed. You know how they say golf is a good walk spoiled? Well, tracking is like a winter walk enhanced! The only thing you ought to have is a track guide—they make simple printable ones like this one from the Mountain Top Arboretum. I’ve seen pocket-sized laminated versions sold too—poke a hole for a carabiner to hook onto a winter coat and it’s a great gift for a kid! Or just take pictures and then assess when you get inside, but don’t forget to measure the tracks or use your hand for scale in photos because size is often very important for certain animal distinctions (like coyote and fox, for instance).

The best part is that if there is snow on the ground, you will find animal tracks. On the trail, off the trail, in your yard, around your barn, in the dormant garden. Animals are everywhere and you might even find someone quite unexpected living near you. Sometimes winter is when it’s easiest to see!

~ Trees ~

If you’ve been a student of mine in the past, you’ll know I believe wholeheartedly that winter is the best time to learn to identify your trees. My educator idiom is “the trees don’t die back in winter,” so for those who claim there are no plants to see this time of year, respectfully, you are wrong. The forest might look like a sea of grey, but look closely and a world of beautiful distinction lies hidden in the minute. This year I’m not teaching the winter botany intensive I have led the past two winters, which I’m quite sad about because it’s such a passion of mine to share this skill. I believe everyone should feel confident identifying trees. Trees are steadfast members of our ecological communities and we rely on them for so much in our lives, literally the air that we breathe! Learning their names is a true sign of respect.

Again, a brief foray in photographs:

I often think of the outdoors like an extension of our home, or, at the very least, a broad but close-knit community that I am a part of. My relationship to this place deepens significantly when I get to know it throughout the year, in every season, at every angle and I especially want to emphasize that kind of all-the-time relationship for my children. This year we’re doing the 1000 hours outside challenge where you, yes, spend 1000 hours out of the house over the course of the year. I find that if I don’t push myself, especially in winter and especially especially with little kids, I get a bit complacent about it. But all it takes is some warm long johns and the anticipation of a good bobcat track (plus the promise of hot chocolate by the fire afterwards) and the world is, as they say, your oyster. Find your winter pearl!

xx hannah

Last year I wrote a list of lessons I gleaned from 2024, which was a particularly difficult and lesson-filled year in my life. This year I’ve been crafting a more/less list—what I want more of moving forward and what I want less of as I leave 2025 behind. And while I’ve been on an explicit little newsletter pause (returning in force in January!), I decided it felt like something to share.

More:

knitting, writing, weekends as a family, making art, camping, dinners with friends, meal planning, gratitude, books (especially from the library), asking for what I need, flexibility, slowness, going outdoors with my kids, date nights, gardening, peace

Less:

spending, self doubt, clutter, worrying, business as life/self/worth, rigidity, comparison, eating out, gossiping, phone, picking up the slack, scarcity thinking, wastefulness, hurrying, slouching, stuff

If you feel so inclined, share yours in the comments below—I do so love to hear other people’s resolutions.

Dare I say 2025 was one of my best years? I think I do dare! The year of growing and birthing my second baby, of prioritizing friendship and family and personal peace, of resting, recalibrating, and remembering what I really feel like I’m here to do. I end the year now with 2 beautiful daughters, full of gratitude and excitement for the life I’ve built and all that’s ahead, and, yes, more vim and vigor to keep writing about things that excite me in this space!

What I find myself wanting most as I enter age 35 and my 36th year is truly just a simple, organized, more connected life. I want less stuff, good friends, and a greater sense of inner and outer peace. I want to know where everything is, I want more discernment with what and who I bring into my home and my inner world, I truly want to care less what people think and I want joy! Oh so much joy. I feel like I’m really sloughing off youth this birthday and entering those middle years—still wrapping my head around the fact that I’m a mom of two! Did 35 feel momentous like this to you?

Happy new year and see you on the other side!

x hannah

p.s. I’ve been researching new year’s traditions for my somewhat annual new year’s day good luck party and here are a few that I love:

Hang a bag of onions over the door—a symbol of fertility and abundance.

In Ireland, they would chase away bad spirits by banging bread against the walls and doors of the house.

Sleep with the windows open to let out the old and welcome in the new.

Eat 12 round things—one for every month—to ensure a year of abundance and prosperity (round things symbolize coins! Think donuts, lentils, grapes, oranges, bagels perhaps?)

Take a shower or bath and clean the house on New Year’s eve to wash the old away, but don’t do any washing/sweeping/cleaning on new year’s day—you don’t want to clear out all the luck you’ve collected <3

One thing I do feel certain of, something I’ve been contemplating and hinting at for a while, is that I am untethering myself from Foliage Botanics here and elsewhere. It’s been a long time coming. That’s not to say that Foliage Botanics as a business is done forever per se—though I have decided it is going on a hard indefinite much-needed hiatus after this past year’s gentle simmer—but simply that Foliage Botanics as my whole identity is coming to a close. It means especially and as it relates to you specifically that this space is no longer the “Foliage Botanics newsletter,” but rather something different, something of my own. When I return to regular writing here again, you will not get FB business updates or marketing efforts from me in the same capacity as before (those have been rare lately anyway)—if that’s what you’re here for though, don’t fret! I’m creating a separate business newsletter space that will simply be for sharing biz-only info and offerings in the future should they pick back up. Everyone who is currently subscribed will be migrated there. You are more than welcome to unsubscribe to that one or this one as works for you.

I could probably muse a long while about this shift and it would and could look like a serious self psychoanalysis, but I’ll spare you most of that journey. I’ll just say it has been brewing for a while, maybe even from the beginning. Having my second baby became a portal for me that I was so desperate and ready to enter, a tangible reason to make changes, permission to transition away and lift up other and growing passions. On the other side, I feel certain of the shift. Ultimately, I could never fit everything I really love under the umbrella of Foliage Botanics and because of this so much of myself took the back seat. “Herbalist” became everything and Foliage Botanics like a costume I had to put on everyday, in every moment, in a way I don’t think other jobs and careers require. And yes, I am an herbalist, of course, always, but I’m also a mother, a writer, an artist, a thinker, a knitter, a gardener, a teacher… right now my excitement is especially with my kids, child development, and their nature-based learning! I want to follow the beautiful open-endedness of that thrill.

Ultimately, I really prefer being all of these things, rather than just one and I want to write to you more honestly and more clearly from this place, as this person, my whole self, about the many things that excite and inspire me as they excite and inspire me (including plants!) moving forward.

that’s it for now, see you around the corner!

xx hannah

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In the spring I cracked a fortune cookie that read “Counting your blessings multiplies their abundance.” I found this sentiment massively profound and I pinned it to our refrigerator beside my 20-week ultrasound and the fortune I pulled on Christmas, just a few weeks after I found out I was pregnant, which says “Your dreams will come true in August.” (Never underestimate a fortune cookie! They did!) I’m the kind of person who loves a good mantra, a good horoscope reading, someone with slips of poetry and inspirational quotes pasted in places I’ll see regularly to remind myself of how I want to move about the world. For the longest time, and truly I still live by these questions, my favourite was a piece of paper I pulled from god-knows-where in high school that asked: Are you operating with love? Are you acting with integrity? After so many moves I’ve since lost the original scrap, but I still ask myself these questions on the regular. This fortune, about abundance, is a new favourite—simple, but something I find I need to and will now remind myself of often: both that, despite all the bad in the world, it’s ok to glory in the good in your life—it ripples out to others when we do—and wealth is something beyond material goods, really just a frame of mind.

I often think about Robin Wall Kimmerer’s essay The Serviceberry. It’s so good, it lives rent-free in my brain most of the time. Similarly, the principles she writes about there—the benefits of the gifting economy, the power of gratitude, the value of community—have been meaningful anchors in my life, guideposts for how to live differently, more grounded, more whole than this fractured, frazzled world often tells us to. Gratitude and reciprocity, she writes, “have the remarkable property of multiplying with every exchange.” Not just for yourself, but also for others. And through this mindset of abundance and enough and the act of creating a “climate of sufficiency,” wealth becomes something measured in relationships rather than the accumulation of money or stuff. In a gift economy, the ability and act of sharing—and having the people to share with—is the true standard of satisfaction, substance, and success.

Lately I’ve been feeling awash in riches. This summer more than ever before. I made a hard pivot in my work-life that was crucial to this, dropped my instagram addiction, and my days were filled with cold creek dips, plump berries straight from the bush, afternoons at the park with friends and their kids, walks with my husband, and other such tangible but immeasurable joys. Waiting for my baby’s arrival in July and August was pretty grueling, to say the least, but she came and now she’s here and there’s a real sense of completeness in my days. Arriving a week after her due date, extra large at 9 pounds 9 ounces, her birth was also just the most magical and fulfilling experience, namely because of the incredible support I felt from the birth team and my partner around me and the friends and family helping in both big and small ways at home so that I could be 100% present. Followed by weeks of community dropping meals and distant loved ones sending well-wishes, 8 weeks in I feel incredibly buoyed by love.

What does it mean to be rich? Capitalism teaches us that money is the ultimate prize of living, the only true measure of wealth and that more, more, more is always better. But the more I live, the more I truly understand this to be wrong. Under capitalism, competition and independence are glorified, which breeds tendencies for comparison, loneliness, and scarcity-thinking that in turn make us believe we can shop away our unhappiness. Capitalism says there is never enough and that we, as we are, are also not enough. And yes, while quality of life can certainly at times be gauged by what we have or what we gain, can it not also be equally diminished by what we trade for it? What do we also sacrifice in wealth’s hot pursuit? I think, ultimately, these sought after things—satisfaction, substance, success—truly come down to the questions of not what we want to have or buy or achieve, but what do we not want to miss, what do we value, who do we want to be?

As a mother, now of 2 daughters, how I live my day-to-day life has become even more important to me—it sets an example for how they will live theirs. I’ve been contemplating this so much inside my fuzzy blissful postpartum bubble as I witness again firsthand just how fast a small child grows. I don’t want my daughters to care about money and stuff. I don’t want that to be what they aim for or what makes them feel full. I keep thinking about this thing that I read about how the stuff we accumulate is representative of the money we spent on it which is representative of the time we spent making the money which was ultimately used to create garbage we don’t really want or need and didn’t bring us the happiness or fulfillment we were seeking. That’s all time we never get back.

I believe wealth is really measured in something else. To be rich is to look at the life you built and realize “this is all I really wanted, this is enough.” At almost every crossroads in my life I have made the choice to prioritize joy, friendship, family, mental health, and other such values over making more money. I chose a college that would bring me a sense of belonging over a college with a notable name. I chose a career that would heal my relationship to my body and fill my world with cool friends and beautiful places over something financially sensible. I’m not saying you can’t do both! But for me this seems to be true. My therapist and I joke that I am a self-proclaimed quitter—I rarely stick with something that eats away at me because I “made a commitment” and I never regret it. When people want to quit something they desperately dislike, they often come to me for encouragement! I don’t regret much and this happiness-first tendency has led to a colourful, bountiful, albeit simple life that I treasure. I want to remind myself daily to see it as such.

I want to embody a mindset and showcase a way of living where wealth is also perhaps measured in time, but rather those hours are spent in the apple orchard or the garden, making banana bread or painting with our fingers, having bonfires or going on picnics and the intangible things that kind of time creates—never to be thrown away. A life in which my children know us to be incredibly rich because there are wildflowers on the table and their bellies are full of fresh fruit and their hair smells like the creek or the ocean or the lake; because the things we do are beautiful, we are well-fed, joyful, healthy, at peace, and we are together. In this world of so much horror, it feels like the best thing we can do.

Good things in my life right now that make me feel oh so very rich:

-Walks in the autumnal sunshine, recharging my sun battery and soaking in the last rays of Vitamin D. Made even better when accompanied by a friend!

-Baking banana bread with my daughter from the browned bananas on the counter. She loves cooking and baking together and always says joyfully and proudly “we’re really good cookers!”

-Cups of hot decaf coffee with cream in the morning—I don’t drink full caffeine coffee anymore (a shock to those who have known me a long time!) and I’m so grateful someone thought to decaffeinate it so I can still indulge!

-Parenting podcasts and audiobooks on Libby—my current listen is No-Drama Discipline by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson. Also very in love with this substack about parenting and child development, which I wholeheartedly support with a monthly paid subscription and this instagram account that gives a lot of scenario examples and language to use with kids.

-The bounty of fat orange marigolds in my garden

-Decluttering my closet and selling/donating old stuff that doesn’t bring me joy. I read this newsletter about capsule wardrobes/minimized closets that I found very inspiring (I’m a paid subscriber there too!) and this newsletter about overconsumption as a spiritual problem, which is where I read the thing about trash being money and time we never get back.

-Revisiting old knitting patterns instead of buying new ones and making clothing items that are more meaningful and lasting than purchased items. Currently working a little pink sweater for Gil using this pattern again by Northside Knit Co.

-The amazing apple pie my friend David baked and dropped off at our house that I am eating by myself with a fork, unsliced :)

What makes you feel rich?

xx hannah

Everyday I think to myself—this is the last time! The last swim, the last walk, the last time I vacuum the house, the last time I see someone or other before I give birth. Every night I tell my daughter I might be gone in the morning, just to prepare her for the possibility, and then I wake up to another day, another “have you had your baby yet?” another empty (but also very full and uncomfortable) vessel of many hours to fill as I wait. I am trying to lean in to the mystery and magic of this moment, my body and baby within it still swelling like the moon, still blooming and reaching high like the meadow flowers, all on the cusp of the season’s great senesce.

My days are filled with tiny tasks and small chosen moments close to home. I don’t have much energy and I fear meandering too far away and I feel, mostly, like keeping to myself. I bake muffins or organize a cabinet. I dip my feet in the creek, aching heat-swollen pregnancy toes curling over cold pebbles beneath. I’ve almost entirely given up on the garden until September, but there’s ample zucchini and tomatoes to collect and butterflies, hummingbirds all over the towering blooms. I have to admit, this has always been my least favourite time of year! But I’m really coming around to its place and purpose in the whole picture, the crispy, colourful, sun-drenched high point in the full cycle of the land. August, August—soon an entirely different and special kind of month to be honored and celebrated for the rest of my life…

Much of this year has felt, really, like an in-between. My work is morphing, but it’s not exactly the moment to figure out exactly how and how much and in what way; I just feel it rumbling there with nothing to do but acknowledge it, ponder perhaps, then return it like a small exciting box placed up and away on the shelf for safe-keeping. Like a baby, some things just have to ripen in their own time. I am trying and really learning to not get ahead of myself, to do just this—rest in the moment that is, take a slow breath, witness, be here now. One dream before another. I am a mere fragment of this place at the behest of the elements and the seasons and there is something distinctly powerful in the noticing of that without action or taking control: I grow, I grow, I grow.

Despite how it may feel now, I won’t be pregnant forever. I am almost at the final edge, the free fall into newborn days and beyond. You’ll hear from me next on the other side.

xx hannah

p.s. if you’d like to support me & this newsletter a little further in this next phase, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. There will be a little lull soon, but I plan to keep writing through. And thank you, as always, for your readership either way!

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& some photos of late:

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The big thing I learned in the first go-around of having a baby is that birth is not the big event. Well, it is the big event, but, truthfully, there’s not that much you can really honestly do to prepare yourself for it, in my humble opinion. Birth is beyond the human conception of control. You can certainly learn about it and craft your birth vision, read about positions and practice breathing exercises. But so much of it is truly a mystery in the hands of the universe, not your own. What feels much more important to me, something I didn’t understand at all with my first child, is that it’s really the days and weeks and months after that matter the most and your own well-being to anticipate and prioritize.

Postpartum is an incredibly tender time and often much less highlighted and emphasized than the pregnancy and birth. With my first, having no close friends yet with children, I was so caught off guard by how hard and lonely and involved it was—breastfeeding, sleeping, feeding and hydrating myself, connecting with the information and community I so desperately needed. This time around, I know a little more and a little better and postpartum is where my preparatory energy has been directed in these final weeks of pregnancy.

So, I wanted to share a little about what that has been looking like, how I’m thinking about it and what I’m personally doing, a few little lists, some recipes, etc. etc.

I hope it’s potentially helpful to you or, at the very least, illuminating <3

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The Mullein is finally finally blooming in the garden. That might sound odd if you know much about mullein, which is weedy and tends to grow in the scrappiest of soils, basically on rocks, and usually blooms with ease and without fanfare (again, a weed) BUT this mullein, oh boy oh boy oh boy, it’s been a dream and a project and an exercise in patience and it deserves all the pomp and circumstance. So here’s the brief, but riveting story of the mullein:

I started these mullein plants from seed 4 years ago and planted them in my old herb garden right next to our house. They are not your typical roadside mullein species, Verbascum thapsus, with the single flower stem, a small blossom here and there at peak, but rather the Greek or Olympic variety, Verbascum olympicum, which produces instead a massive candelabra-esque inflorescence teeming with small yellow flowers all at once. In my early twenties I worked at a couple of farms with prolific Greek mullein patches and they are astoundingly beautiful and I have always longed for my own.

The same season I planted the mullein I transitioned much of that old garden to the new, bigger space where I grow now and, by some thought process or other, the mullein I left behind. Mullein is typically a biennial plant, meaning that it has a 2-year life cycle, doesn’t bloom the first year and usually does the second, which then culminates its life. The fallen seeds then sprout again and the plants seemingly live on in a perennial fashion, but they are actually brand new. Burdock is the same way, as is the Mullein’s close relative, Foxglove—also in the Figwort family or Scrophulariaceae. Plant once and, theoretically, you’ll have them from then on.

One of the big reasons I abandoned the old garden spot was that it was too shady—we live both on a hillside and on the edge of the forest, so sunlight and space are minimal and the garden just wasn’t growing that well. After a season of neglect and weed takeover, the next spring, I decided to move the mullein too. Interestingly, I chose to move them to the little sunny area in front of our porch where the daffodils and daylilies come up, and after another season, they still looked small and, you guessed it, they did not bloom. The next spring I took a chance and moved them again, this time to the new garden. I tucked them in an open corner in the back where, unsurprisingly, it’s also pretty shady—even though this new garden is much sunnier than the old spot, it is surrounded by a sea of walnut trees and doesn’t get the full cast of sunlight throughout the day. Here they also did not bloom, but, intent on seeing these dinky plants to fruition, I left them alone, ignored them completely as many suggested to me online, for, I believe, another 2 seasons, and occasionally gazed hopefully in their direction, dreaming of the day when the torches would light up like I’d always envisioned.

That day is today, people!!!! A garden success after literal years of trial and error. May they bloom every July forevermore.

The garden generally has been a busy place since I last wrote to you about it, a slew of successes, failures, and pivots that typically make up a growing season. The pea trellis, my great accomplishment in the early spring, was better than I could have imagined and yet, the sudden heat wave we got last week—4 days of 100 degree weather after weeks of rain and temps in the upper 60s—caught me off guard and I didn't have my watering system set up and the snap pea plants fried a little in the hot sun. I did get a few decent loads of them and they are still producing, plus a large basketful of shelling peas, which I spent an evening alone plucking open on the porch in my nightgown while the fireflies danced around me. Are shelling peas worth it? It depends on your perspective, but a couple good meals with fresh peas is a delight to me enough to go through all that finger effort.

This year I also have my first annoying garden pest: Peter the rabbit, so named by my daughter who can’t help but draw the similarities between my plight and one of her favourite stories. I guess that makes me Mr. McGregor! Little Peter has chomped his way through the beet tops and all my lettuce heads, in particular the radicchio, which, if you know me, is a real blow. I love my radicchio. I live for my radicchio. I have yet to catch my furry friend and vow to cover everything next year at the outset. Radicchio flop. But another lesson learned.

I did cover the brassicas this year, in hopes of minimizing cabbage looper damage. It made me feel like a real farmer again, setting up hoops and unrolling the remay and it was worth it—everything looks beautiful beneath:

Gardening is never a practice in perfection. I find myself reckoning with this often, the pressure to have everything just right every year, another vehicle of proving my worth to others or myself, perhaps? But worth is inherent and the greatness of a garden is actually measured in just continuing on, recognizing that every year throws a different kind of challenge your way to dance and make peace with.

In the throes of trying to salvage my onions in late May, which I had planted in brand new purchased soil and were not thriving, I went to my friend Madeleine’s spring garden work party where we made massive hugelkultur beds with sticks and leaves and compost and she reminded me that you won’t necessarily reap the rewards right away for the efforts you put in now. Some things you do this season are for next season or maybe a few seasons down the line—like building new beds or increasing soil fertility, like the story of my mullein. I look at my garden and see many years of past hard work and taking chances and improvement after failure and I also see many years to come of “ok this is what I’ll do better next time.” Honestly, for me that’s really thrilling. I got home from that work party and determinedly hoed those last few wan little onions down and planted potatoes in their place instead.

In other news, I am 35 weeks pregnant today and it feels like new baby arrival is racing toward me! My days are filled with various work bits and other volunteer projects—I’ve taken over communications and social media for the music festival/nonprofit my partner co-runs, Oldtone (September 4th-7th!), which has been really fun, and I’m on our town’s Conservation Advisory Council where I’ve been heading up the process of getting a Natural Resource Inventory for Pine Plains. Plus preparing for birth, which mostly means harvesting and freezing a lot of berries and making sure our house is clean and organized and cozy for a postpartum autumn. Nesting, if you will. And of course swimming as much as I can because my large aching sweaty body feels best in the water…

Pregnancy is such a threshold, birth a portal into a brand new way of life. All this year I’ve felt on the cusp of massive change that I can’t really predict and it’s really truly been a powerful exercise in letting go, protecting my peace, and being present with what is vs. anticipating what will be. I am not sure what I will be capable of after or what my business will look like or even whether I want it to look any particular way anymore at all. I am naturally a massive planner—it typically stresses me out *intensely* to not have a precise vision and objective for what happens next. And yet, currently I am the happiest I’ve ever been, floating around in a limbo state, finding solace in the tangible moments and tasks and people of the here and now, visioning, yes, but not making any sort of solid plan. You could say that, like the mullein, it’s taken a while but I’m blooming too.

xx hannah

p.s. if you know and love me and this newsletter and would like to support this next phase of life and motherhood, please consider becoming a paid subscriber! It’s $5/month (less than a fancy coffee, as they say) or $50/year. There may be a moment of waning connection in August & September, but I do plan to keep writing through it all. OR, if you’d like, you could contribute to my postpartum care/maternity leave fund—Venmo: @foliagebotanics —any and all of this would mean the world :)

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Some pinks for your inbox today:

Oof I love pink in nature!

Also, a reminder: I’m leading a plant walk this Sunday, May 25th 10 am at Thompson Pond Preserve in Pine Plains NY. It’s a spring tree walk, specifically, but we’ll also see and talk about whatever plants and wildflowers that we see along the trails including, I hope, some of these! I only have a couple people signed up and would love to have a few more to make it happen. It’s beautiful out there right now, lush, and such a good time to hit the trails and see the plants. Pre-registration required!

If you don’t know, plant walks are my favourite thing I do as foliage botanics, a real joy and are pretty much what they sound like—we walk together and look at plants! I point out things of interest and share what I know, but it’s also quite casual and everyone’s input and insight is welcome. A great way to gather in community and get outside. Walks usually last about 2 hours.

About the trail: Thompson Pond is a fairly easy flat trail, with a few small inclines and a couple rocky bits to navigate—we won’t do the whole loop, just a small portion. This spot is incredibly ecologically diverse and one of the best places around to peep a vast range of plant and animal life.

Register here! The cost of the walk is $25, but you can give more if you’d like to, a pay-what-you-can structure, sliding scale-esque. Email if you need a lower rate for accessibility! No one turned away.

xx hannah

Annie Dillard once wrote “how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” I’ve had one of her books, a collection of essays that includes The Writing Life, splayed out on my nightstand recently, something I’ve read multiple times before and now thumb through leisurely in the evening or the morning without an agenda or timeline. The windows in my room are thrown open too, morning and night—we’re mostly still pre-mosquito season here—and I do the bedtime routine to the mesmerizing whir of the Veery somewhere up in the woods and wake bleary-eyed most mornings to the ratatat of a woodpecker nearby in an already well-lit world of fresh glorious green by 6/7 am. Some mornings I try to write something down before my kid wakes up in the other room, thoughts or worries or ideas, others I just lay there and listen to the busy world: the chickens begging to be let out of the coop, the thrum of the stream that runs through our yard, the drone of a lone bee trying to find a spot to dig into the wood siding of our house. When my daughter does finally wake, she wanders in with a cat or two right behind and I fold her up in my arms and we lay there for a while, listening together.

There’s been a lot of rain lately, the lilacs have mostly come and gone in soggy perfection, and the dry days now smell of autumn olive blossoms, maligned but magnificent. I’ve been trying to drink it all in fully, thinking often of the above quote (even though it’s sort of a sliver from a longer quote about the value of keeping a schedule)—I don’t want to put off the small joys that provide me meaning; I want my days to add up to something good, to reflect a full and present life and the values I’ve worked so hard to cultivate. I don’t want to say one day, “oh wow I missed that important part of what living is really for.” There’s no slowing down time. I don’t want to lose something I can’t ever get back.

This year, as I’ve said before, I am not very focused on work or making money. I am no business guru and please don’t take this as any kind of elevated advice, but it’s working out for me in many ways—in doing less this year, with intention, I am making more. Still not a lot! But more, in multiple senses of the word. This year, instead of business-first, I’m in an active state of choosing motherhood, or that’s what I’m calling it. Despite having been a mother, officially, the last 4 years, I don’t think I’ve ever really done this. In a lot of ways, no matter how many times I’ve said “ok now I’m finally leaning in” there have been other choices and needs dominating my heart and mind, some intentional and some unexpected, no better or worse—a house to rebuild, a business to grow, a health crisis to handle—that’s just what has happened. Mother’s day was this weekend, a day I’ve come to love so much, and I’ve read a few lovely reflections on it (I particularly enjoyed this one by Rowen Brooke and this one by Andrew Forthoefel). And I, too, have been reflecting myself on what mothering and motherhood mean to me.

Choosing motherhood right now is choosing my garden. In so doing, I’ve filled my life with a lot more day-to-day joy. I love toodling about in there aimlessly, dreaming up new things, weeding seldom weeded corners and tending seldom tended plants. I love observing small changes that have occurred over the years, noticing things, cleaning up after myself, making long-neglected improvements, just sitting and thinking—unhurried…

My daughter and I recently hung a couple bird houses on the garden fence posts, something I’ve been wanting to do for years, and almost instantly in one the most precious Carolina Wren has meticulously made her home and in the other, a Tree Swallow cloaked in iridescent blue, pops her head out and wings around my head protectively when I walk by. I have not peeked inside, preferring to respect their privacy, but I feel somewhat motherly about those two clutches of eggs (and that of the Phoebe’s over our backdoor!) that I imagine are clustered there, warm and safe in the dark. And today I am devoting my mothering efforts to the onions, who are looking pretty shabby and pale in their new bed. I’ve decided to make a Nettle compost tea to add some nutrients to the soil, which I’m excited about. I tenderly started these onions from seed in late February and I’m determined to help them live!

Choosing motherhood right now is also honouring and celebrating simple things. A wildflower in the woods, a friend’s new baby, a meal I made, a moment on the porch with a cup of tea, a walk with a friend. As a sensitive person, it is very easy for me to fall into “I’m a failure” thought spirals and “there’s so much cruelty in the world” overwhelm that leaves me feeling isolated and helpless. Lifting up the quiet ways that a life worth living makes itself available to me and the ways that I, too, can be available for it in return—this is a deeply healing act.

I think I’ve always thought, or really been socialized to believe, that I need to do big things in order to prove my worth, especially as a woman, but really, when looking within myself and without with more honesty and grace, I am happier with the small. Or perhaps it’s really that the things we often learn are small (like being a mother or growing a garden or giving birth or making a gift by hand) are actually quite magnanimous. Must I be a scientist contributing to groundbreaking research or is being a silent witness to nature enough? Must my newsletter reach and be loved by thousands or is it ok to write for just you and me?

It’s hard to say exactly what motherhood is or means, it’s different for all of us. I kind of think of parenting like being a giant Kleenex. Sometimes you get vomited on or have to wipe snot away with the sleeve of your favourite shirt or, potentially, you might even catch poop with your bare hands, reflexively, without thinking much about it. I’m sure that take will shift as my kid grows. But what feels very palpable about it is it’s not just your own child you do this for and that’s an important element of the beauty and hugeness. Motherhood requires offering snacks to every hungrily begging hand at your bag, comfort to any teary-eyed warrior on the playground, gratitude to anyone who willingly cares for your flesh and blood too. The empathy expands you. It’s any child, every child, which inherently means everyone, and to me that includes the birds and the trees, the hungry, the hopeless, the people of Gaza, and, also, myself. What could be bigger than that? Sacrifice is a hard word as it usually implies loss, and certainly that happens, but right now I’m looking toward all that is gained, the more. In 5 or 10 or 15 years, perhaps, other choices and dreams will take the spotlight and I’ll be in a different era, but right now I’m choosing learning to live more peacefully and patiently in this one.

This year I am also growing a new baby (surprise!) and so I’m choosing motherhood in this distinct way too. I’m in my 28th week and early August is starting to feel not so far off. This is another part of that more that I’m doing while less of other things, a big springboard for the business reshaping that has happened and the continued concerted discernment of what I really want to be doing in my career moving forward.

I remember when I was pregnant with Goldie, around this point in the pregnancy I was so panicked about slowing down when I really wanted or “needed” to be ramping up and how, once she was in my arms, I felt like I was constantly agonizing over and apologizing to the world for how behind I was, how little I was able to do. I wanted to mother and do everything else, just as before, but this simply left me feeling like never enough of anything on either side. I am really trying to embody a different energy this go-around, despite the lack of supports this country has for us. You could call it savoring the slowness, relishing in a pregnancy that for a time I really thought would never come to pass because my health felt like such trash. You could also call it spending my days like how I want to live my life: patiently, graciously, present, honest, paying attention, full of care, always open to learning something new about both the world and myself. A witness, a vessel, a good mom, a gardener, a writer, a friend, an advocate for life.

xx hannah

& happy belated mother’s day to all <3

Some upcoming foliage botanics learning opportunities:

-Sunday May 25th: Spring Tree Walk at Thompson Pond, 10am. $25 or you can give a little more. Register here.

-Saturday June 15th: Distillation in the Garden, 11-3. $80 with 2-part payment plans available and accessibility rates if you need one. I’m very excited about this class. Register here. Here’s a little description:

Join me for a peaceful afternoon in my herb garden, a day of distillation in all its many forms—from the simple practice of making space for plant connection & reflection to the incredible art of using the copper still to capture the inner beauty of the flowers. This is a day not specifically for “learning” or piling on new information (though there will be some of that!), but a moment for quiet engagement and slow transformation, assisted by the plants in my own personal plant sanctuary. We’ll certainly get some hands-on time and experience the copper alembic still from set-up to finished distillate—in our case, a hydrosol! We’ll talk about at-home methods too and discuss the properties and benefits of this kind of medicine. All with the thread of working with the plants with a kind of unhurried openness for the learning process and listening to our own personal callings, in a beautiful setting I love! A few botanical refreshments will be offered. Bring your lunch, bring a journal! Everyone leaves with a bottle!

-Lastly, my dear friend Micah Wiles of Cedar Creek Farm in Kentucky is coming to the northeast in early July and he’ll be leading a 2-day split wood basketry workshop at our home in Pine Plains NY. Micah is an incredible basket-maker. He’s traveled all over to learn this art form, most recently to Japan—I visited him in KY this spring and got to see a lot of his work and photos from his trip (mostly baskets and food) and he’s truly just amazing! Read about the workshop and register here.

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May has arrived, resplendent in greenery and flowers and sunshine! Trilliums are blooming, Mayapples are unfolding like tiny green umbrellas along the forest floor, and the perennial herbs in my garden are coming back to life. So much beauty happens in May.

In the Celtic tradition, today is Beltane, the halfway point between spring and summer, a day for calling in fertility and renewal, for celebrating all the new life as we truly transition out of winter’s grasp into the months of plenty ahead. This weekend, in honour of this seasonal milestone, I’m hosting Nettle Day on the land here—a day of feasting, folklore, and fairytale centering on the beloved (and tricky!) Stinging Nettle, Urtica dioica. I’m really excited about this class, which will be held in our magnificent and magical Nettle patch. We’ll eat Nettle treats, tell Nettle stories, make Nettle medicine, and everyone will leave with armloads of fresh Nettle if they so desire. There is still room for you to join us.

Nettle is truly one of my favourites and an incredibly versatile plant medicine that is both plentiful and so easily accessible. While we hear so much about its European origins and lore, Nettle is also native or naturalized throughout much of the globe and has been used by peoples everywhere it grows for generations and generations as food and medicine and fiber. A plant truly of and for the people!

While I'm holding most of the stories and tales of Nettle for the actual day, recently I’ve discovered some of its various associations with dreaming that I thought would be fun to share. One in particular that I like comes from old Scottish tradition that says if you dream of gathering Nettles, it means that people think highly of you and that bounty and harmony for you and your family will ensue. But if the Nettle stings you in those dreams, disappointment and potential harm could follow… Still other traditions harness the sting of the Nettle to create the visions and dreams, seen actually as a source of strength and dream power!

Wherever in the world though, Nettles has always been associated with the deepest kind of nourishment and physical renewal in a variety of applications—an important spring medicine and food that is not to be overlooked or missed. I’m excited to dig in together and celebrate its simple commonness and unique resourcefulness, to drink tea and eat :)

I hope to see you on Sunday among the Nettles. This class is sliding scale, with 2-part payment plans at every tier and accessibility rates if you need one—just reach out! Register here. We meet 12-3 this Sunday May 4th (rain or shine, but hopefully more shine!).

xx hannah

The stinging nettle only

Will still be found to stand:

The numberless, the lonely,

The thronger of the land,

The leaf that hurts the hand.

That thrives, come sun, come showers;

Blow east, blow west, it springs;

It peoples towns, and towers

Above the courts of Kings,

And touch it and it stings.

—A.E. Housman

It’s time, it’s here! The spring ephemerals are finally blooming. I keep thinking about my explanation a few newsletters ago about chopping up the spring into little seasonal slivers and, I have to admit, this one is above and beyond my favourite. This year I am getting to partake in it twice after my dip down into the south 2 weeks ago where I got to see Toad Trilliums and Squirrel Corn and Bluebells—species we just don’t have here in NY. A very lucky me!

So, what makes something “an ephemeral”? I think there’s a little flexibility here as to who exactly falls into the category, but, as the name suggests, these flowers are usually fleeting and they bloom in the early days of spring. I think it’s useful in the explanation to harken all the way back to what the point of a flower is, just as a little reminder. Flowers are the reproductive organs of a plant. A massive tree can have (and usually does) a teeny tiny, almost unrecognizable flower and a tiny plant can have something large and garish and colourfully gaudy. No matter the size or shape, their function is the same—to be pollinated in some way, to make seed, and then to spread it around in order to reproduce. All the other parts of a plant, for the most part, function to gather nutrients—the roots from the soil and the leaves from the sun. There are plants that don’t flower—ferns, for instance, are spore-producing, but that’s a story for a different time.

Blooming takes energy! Some plants bloom first, using their stored up winter reserves, and then spend the rest of the growing season soaking in the sunlight and water. Others photosynthesize for a while first and bloom further on down the line. Each plant has their moment and, unless something wacky is happening, that moment is the same time each year, adjusted only for weather and climate differences.

Spring ephemerals are, typically, forest floor dwellers (though some creep out into open spaces too, like Bloodroot) that bloom in the early days of spring when the trees do not yet have their leaves and the forest canopy still lets in ample light. They are small and delicate and many of them bloom for just a few short days. To me, they turn the woods into a magical fairy land and it is something not to be missed.

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot and something I love so much about nature is the mysterious unknown of it all. Sure, there’s science and I do love scientific explanation, but I also very much enjoy wondering, just to wonder and never to know. And for many things in the natural world, explanation is kind of a loose term—can we ever really know why something is there or does what it does? It’s such a human and, frankly, a white supremacist mode of thinking to believe everything has a purpose that makes sense or falls in line with our own world view. To think everything has a purpose that involves us! What is the purpose or function of the spring ephemerals other than to be beautiful and turn the forest floor into a carpet of colour and joy? I honestly don’t care beyond knowing that some people need that sort of thing to give it value.

I’ve also been thinking about ants. Yes, ants! Among other insects who rely on the various plants for survival. The other day I saw the Spricebush trees blooming and was reminded that this shrub (and its Laurel family brethren) have a specialized butterfly that relies upon it for survival—the Spicebush Swallowtail. But the ants are an especially fascinating one to me. Usually seen as pests, we rarely talk about them as pollinators of sorts or, more accurately, vehicles for plant dispersal. And this is very crucial when we talk about ephemerals!

Myrmecochory is the name for the mutualistic partnership certain plants have with ants and it fascinates me. These plants evolved to have a fatty structure attached their seeds that ants, in particular, love, called an elaiosome—which essentially means “oil body”—that contains a mixture of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates, making it delicious. The ants come to eat this nutrient-rich treat and by way of doing so, take the seeds along with them. Ants are communal creatures, so they gather food not just for themselves but for the collective (Socialism! And something to admire + emulate, no?) and return to the nest to share their delicacy discoveries. They eat the elaiosome then discard the leftover seed in their trash heap, really a glorified compost pile rich in nutrients, which then nurtures and protects the seed as it grows, allowing these plants also to spread further and further away.

There are about 11,000 plant species in the world that rely on this symbiotic ant relationship for seed dispersal and germination. In our North American deciduous forest, this equates to about 1/3 of our understory plants, including many, if not most, of our beloved spring ephemerals: Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis Papavaraceae), Trillium (in our case here in the hudson valley, Trillium erectum Ranunculaceae), Dutchman’s Breeches (Dicentra cucularia Papavaraceae), Trout Lily (Erythronium americanum Liliaceae), and Wild Ginger (Asarum canadense Aristolochiaceae), just to name a few!

While I am more on the plant side of things, I want to adequately celebrate the ants. How cool are they?! Insects are so easily folded into that line of questioning where we ask “what’s the point of them?” because they can be freaky or bothersome or frustratingly enter the home in excessive numbers (like ants). But a lot of these tiny creatures have massive and positive impacts on the greater environment. Ants, for instance, are even seen by many as a keystone species—an organism that holds an entire ecosystem together—because of the major influence they have on the soil and both plant and animal life. And when a more readily understandable purpose is hard to find, there is always indigenous perspectives to look to that add a little myth and magic (often rooted in practicality) that provide answers when the more pragmatic science (AKA white) approaches fail us. As a related example, here’s a link to a Doug Elliot story based on an indigenous tale about mosquitoes.

And a great video describing the myrmecochory process with exciting footage of the ants in action!

I encourage you to get out into the woods this week and next (that’s where I’m headed after I hit send!) to spy some of these beautiful evanescent flowers before they are gone and I hope you think, too, of the ants underfoot, the creatures who make the whole thing happen.

xx hannah

Also, I’ve made a little change to this newsletter—it has a title now! I’m calling it In the leaves :) And while I write just to write and to share the things I am excited about, sometimes it truly does feel like I’m shouting into the void. Is anyone reading this? Am I writing enough? Am I writing too much? Do the people care? I am not immune to self doubt. Leave a comment! Tell me what you think! Like the posts you love! Share it with a friend! Grateful for your readership as always <3

And don’t forget about Nettle Day!!!!! Read more & register here.

A little list of spring updates for you:

All the lambs on the farm have been born. The grass is getting green. Chickens are out to pasture again. Forsythia is blooming up and down both ends of the street, but not yet in our yard—I snagged a bundle yesterday from the roadside to adorn our kitchen table because I need this yellow in my periphery at all times and I had almost forgotten just how good fresh flowers smell and make me feel.

Last week my daughter turned 4! We had a cat-themed party to celebrate. I took 0 photos. I personally ate most of the cake, stale and delicious, in the 3 days that followed. The invitation is one of my greatest artistic accomplishments, see below.

I cannot believe she is 4, how did this happen?!?!? I love this spunky, creative, thoughtful, strong-willed, deeply kind & empathetic human so much, I feel so lucky to have her in my life, I simply can’t remember what it was like before.

I’ve been spending most of my spare time in the garden. With Trevor’s help, I added 5 new 8 x 4 beds and 2 hog panel arches for the squash & pole beans & cucumbers I plan to plant. I also worked very hard on a pea trellis after many years of last-minute thrown-together shabby ones that would easily succumb to the peas and usually end up sideways. Finally it’s warm enough to get into the perennial beds and do some clean-up—everything looks really good and my head is full of ideas and just that very special pronounced spring feeling of garden-induced joy.

I went on a brief, whirlwind roadtrip to Kentucky 2 weekends ago to visit my dear old friends Micah & Candace who run Cedar Creek Farm where they raise sheep and cows and fruit trees, spin wool and make baskets and weave cloth. We hunted for morels and wildflowers, the latter was more successful, but mostly we just sat around inside while it rained buckets and flooded the rivers (it seems I have a real knack for traveling during climate disasters…) and caught up on each other’s lives while eating a lot of sourdough bread. Just before I got there I finished a pair of mittens I’ve been working on for ~5 years (a start and re-start situation) made, in part, from wool Micah & Candace gifted me long ago! I’m tickled and so proud and I will patiently wait to wear them and show them off next winter.

BLOOM WATCH:

Spring has been a little slow this year, it’s been cold! But the wildflowers are steadily emerging. 2 favourites that can be found blooming right now are the Willow trees and the Hepatica.

Willows, like the Red Maples I mentioned in my last newsletter, are dioecious. They have separate pollen-producing (staminate) and seed-producing (pistillate) flowers on separate trees. Here the two versions are next to each other, growing in a wetland. These flowers are technically catkins, also called aments, a cylindrical cluster of many flowers! The yellow is the staminate—pollen is usually bright yellow—and the green is the pistillate, on the left. These trees are wind-pollinated, which I remind myself every time the wind so painfully blows in springtime, because I know it is essential for so many of our native plants to thrive.

Hepatica! Tiny beautiful treasures. Around here they tend to be purple-blue, but sometimes they are white or pink with low-lying leaves that are dark, mottled, often even deep purple on the underside. Hepatica grow in the woods, down low in the leaf duff and are one of the first “spring ephemerals” to bloom. Interestingly, the flowers close up on rainy days as a form of preservation in their short lives, so their pollen doesn’t get wet! The 3-lobed leaves resemble little livers, hence the name—hepatic. Keep your eyes peeled on your walks, they are fleeting!

Learn with me!

Next up on the spring schedule: Nettle Day, May 4th, 12-3pm. Come hang in the Nettle patch with me—we’ll gather Nettles, drink Nettle tea, feast on Nettles, talk about Nettle medicine, tell Nettle stories, and everyone can take as much home with them as they like. Read more and register here. Sliding scale! Accessibility rates available, just reach out :)

Work with me!

~ Though I’ve closed up my more public-facing apothecary & online shop for the time-being, you can still work with me virtually 1:1. I offer herbal consultations & custom tincture formulas for a variety of health needs & conditions. Read more and book your consultation here.

~ Did you know that I also offer private plant walks/land consultations? I’ll come out to your property (or anywhere you’d like!) and walk with you or a small group to offer my insight and help ID the plants & trees. I offer these throughout the year, on any property, in an effort to support a greater understanding of who grows around us and how better to steward the land where we live.

Email me at foliagebotanics@gmail.com to chat about it and make a plan!

And a poem for those who made it this far :)

Forsythia by Ada Limòn

At the cabin in Snug Hollow near McSwain Branch creek, just spring, all the animals are out, and my beloved and I are lying in bed in a soft silence. We are talking about how we carry so many people with us wherever we go, how even simple living, these unearned moments, are a tribute to the dead. We are both expecting to hear an owl as the night deepens. All afternoon, from the porch, we watched an eastern towhee furiously build her nest in the wild forsythia with its yellow spilling out into the horizon. I told him that the way I remember the name forsythia is that when my stepmother, Cynthia, was dying, that last week, she said lucidly but mysteriously, More yellow. And I thought yes, more yellow, and nodded because I agreed. Of course, more yellow. And so now in my head, when I see that yellow tangle, I say, For Cynthia, for Cynthia, forsythia, forsythia, more yellow. It is night now. And the owl never comes, only more of night and what repeats in the night.

xx hannah