Tag Archives: wildflower

Wildflower Seed Harvesting Tips

At Spirit Tree Farms, we’re learning a lot about wildflower seed harvesting as we go along. Why do we do wildflower seed harvesting? Simple: To grow more wildflowers, to aid Mother Nature, and to attract more butterflies and other pollinators. Wildflower Seed Harvesting Lessons This year (Dec., 2021), as I was harvesting goldenrod and crownbeard […]

Making Healthy Elderflower Tea

Elderflower tea may boost your immune system in the same way that elderberry juice does. This healthy tea, served hot or cold, is a refreshing drink that’s available in the early summer, well before elderberries are ripe. And tea from elderflowers is simple to make, with only a few things to watch out for. Check […]

Earth Day At 50 With Me: Haiku – Haibun Memory

Earth Day’s 50! Then:/ I’m in Milwaukee’s River./ Now: I’ll plant Earth’s fields. Earth Day is 50! A half century ago I stood in the Milwaukee River in Estabrook Park near my home in Glendale, Wisconsin, loudly singing with other youth and cleaning out the old tires, mattress springs, tin cans and other junk that […]

Wildflowers And Pollinators: A Hopeful Prose Piece

I posted this piece on Wildflowers and Pollinators in the “Pollinator Friendly Yards” Facebook page. After only 4 days, I had dozens of comments and over 1500 likes! Obviously I hit a nerve; many people said that my post and what I was doing gave them hope. Most importantly, it shows that changing your lawn […]

Why Make And Maintain A Natural Yard: For The Birds, Bees and Butterflies

Natural yards for the birds, bees and butterflies — and for the pleasure they brings human senses — are nothing new. I personally have created my own natural yard for decades, as has my brother. Where did that inspiration come from? Our forest ranger father, who taught all my siblings that lawns were silly, foolish, […]

Scents The Fog Reveals – Free Verse

As the sun sets through oak and hickory trees, the cold fog brings a new set of smells, rich and deep, as though you could stick out a butter knife and cut a little square of the air and pop it into your mouth and let it dissolve into rich, earthy flavors: Fresh mown hay, […]

Finding Wonderful Hidden Wildflowers: Haiku

It is often so/ that when we clear dross and junk,/ we find wonderful. Using a loping shears to clear underbrush and non-native privet from around the hardwood trees in my back yard reveals an undergrowth of black-eyed susans and other hidden wildflowers. Sometimes you have to burn the grasses and weeds from large fields, […]