spring: outside

Happy summer solstice, my friends (and enemies.) The end of June brings the end of spring wildflowers, as wild columbine withers away to make room for early goldenrods.

I was inspired by this series on the Scattering Seeds blog to make notes of what algorithm-free things I enjoyed this season. I hope that this is the first post in a long series, reflecting on how rich life can be when I step away from social media feeds.

I happily completed another full season of powerlifting and am approaching my one-year milestone. I started weightlifting again after many years away after my L5/S1 disc slipped in March 2020. I had been certain for a very long time that my bulging discs disqualified me from strength training, but thankfully, I was wrong.

Lifting has been a particular joy the last few months because I have been biking the North Branch Trail to the gym. This takes me to my second Offline Thing, which is that I learned how to change a bike tube after taking shortcuts through alleys a few too many times.

We are very lucky to live in an apartment with a large backyard garden unused by other tenants. I planted my usual tomatoes, beans, basil, and carrots, but what fills the rest of the bed changes annually. This year, additions included horehound and chamomile.

Two years ago, I added native flowers including foxglove beardtongue and anise hyssop, which have brought many more types of insects to the yard. Bees are the sign that spring is in full swing. On the beardtongue, we got a bunch of orange-tipped wood-diggers in May, which really do look like they dipped their bum in boxed mac-n-cheese powder.

I took a deep dive into Agatha Christie for the first time this spring. My favorites so far have been Crooked House and Murder of Roger Ackroyd, but there are plenty of her most famous books that I haven't read yet. Endless Night and Five Little Pigs are still on my list.

I also read and loved Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which was written during a volcanic winter. Stag Dance by Torrey Peters, Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, and Hungerstone by Kat Dunn were all spectacular.

We cook at home a lot. In March, I got our favorite knives sharpened, and never have I ever enjoyed chopping so much. Did you know that knives can cut through green onions when they're sharp? Making a salad is fun now.

As of mid-June, I have already attended several moth sheet events. At a park or forest preserve on hot nights, the host hoists a white bedsheet onto a frame made of PVC pipes, we set up bright lights to draw in moths which land on the sheet, and then we upload photos of them to iNaturalist. I started attending these last year, and I was miserable all winter without them. Here are some of the moths we've found so far:

You too can set up a moth sheet, follow one of the many online guides to make a bucket trap, or just observe what shows up at your porch light at night. Moths are woefully understudied even though they are essential ecosystem workers. Just taking some time to notice and report observations makes a difference (while being lots of fun.)