Month: September 2026

September, desiring of rest

The garden and I both look like we could use a break, I think. A nap, a slumber. Good for the garden, because it’s almost time for it to settle down and sleep for the winter. No such luck for me.

This month has been a *lot*, most of which I can’t or shouldn’t get into here, but I’ll say a highlight was getting to go to a concert with some friends for the first time in a literal decade (even if it was a sensory nightmare, and I left a little over halfway through – totes worth it for the first half, and the dinner beforehand), and I had a lovely time volunteering at the nature festival I mentioned last month.

Anyway, a brief entry, as I have only just started this at 9:30pm on the last day of the month, and the cats and my physical need for sleep are going to cut my time [for writing] short well before midnight:

A few native plants I’ve seeded in the last year or two have showed up in force this fall. There was a brown eyed susan I didn’t get a picture of, but this little wood aster was a welcome newbie to our yard:

So dainty, so cute!

My little mousebean army really produced this year. I had really wanted to harvest a bunch to cook at some point, but it didn’t happen, although I did eat a few underripe ones fresh – they had a very pea-like flavor to them.

In cool bug territory, I came across a couple of these Brown-hooded Owlet caterpillars while I was pulling some of the over-enthusiastic goldenrod that’s been running amok. (Don’t worry, I put the stems down near the rest of the goldenrod so they had easy access to more food if they needed it, although they were big enough that I think they might have been getting ready to coccoon.)

I feel like I’m doing a poor job showing off how cool these are – their colors are really bright and dramatic.

There’s a couple of slime molds that really love the wood chip mulch we use in the garden, I’m always weirdly delighted to see a Stemonitis, the chocolate slime mold, crawl up onto the plants:

Don’t worry about the plant; the slime mold just climbed up onto it to sporulate so the spores can be spread by the wind. They’ll be gone soon enough, no damage done to the plant.

And of course, would it really feel right for there to be a rainy fall in the garden without a sad-dick-looking Phallus sp. stinkhorn showing up? ….I mean, yeah it’d be fine, they smell weird and they’re a little gross, but they’re at least kinda fun-weird, they’re not hurting anyone really, and they’ll be gone soon enough.

Phallus impudicus, I’ll let you write your own jokes.

That’ll have to do for now. Here’s hoping for a more relaxed October, and hopefully I’ll be back with photos of our late raspberries in a few weeks.

Maypop? More like Just-popped, amirite?

About 20 years ago, when I was in grad school, I was walking through a garden on campus and came across a passionflower. I think that was the first time I ever saw one – at least, it was the first time I ever really looked at one – and I thought it was one of the coolest-looking blossoms I had ever seen. I’m not sure what species it was – maybe Passiflora caerulea, which isn’t cold-hardy enough for Wisconsin, but could have easily been kept in pots and moved indoors for winter – but I was very excited when I later learned that Passiflora incarnata, aka the maypop, lives in regions just south of me, and can survive here, particularly if babied a little bit.

All that to say, I have been charmed and delighted by passionflowers for two decades, and as of yesterday I have one blooming in my back yard.

I’m not really a “bucket-list” or “New Year’s resolution” type person when it comes to goals, but it feels like I checked a box with this one. And I know it’s not, like, a huge deal, but it is a reminder of both how profoundly lucky and privileged I am (in that I have a yard, and can afford to buy plants that I don’t need), and also of how the time and energy I have poured into acquiring knowledge and skills, and actively working on improving the garden, pays off in the long run.