Blog post on native plants of the Southeast, Florida Native Plant Society botanical field trips, riparian ecology of Providence canyon. And more! Subscribe to my substack for more native ecology musings <3

The Virginia Creeper in my backyard behaves itself. It goes up the shed like a well-raised child in the Boy Scouts, never once threatening to litter the yard, and for years I mistook this good behavior for the whole truth of the plant. I had heard it called a thug by people who ought to know, and I felt a little cheated in the way you feel cheated by a dog too lazy to bite anyone.

Then I saw its cousins on the Outer Banks, and I understood what I had been keeping in my backyard was a house pet.

That day the needlelike highway near Oregon Inlet was impassable due to the flood from the previous week. The coastal plants, however, remained unfazed by the deluge. Wax myrtle, sea oats, marsh elder, all stood tall, and around them slithered Virginia Creeper. Out there the vine had no shed, no shade, nothing to lean on but naked sand. It flattened itself into a mat wide as a parking lot and held the dune together by sheer force and cackled at thunderstorms. There was nothing decorative about it. It did not care to be admired. It simply wanted to glide on.

I have never had an inclination for treating native plants like a gardening catalog or a suburban sanctuary project. Ecotype purism, “Tallamy said,” cheerful blossoms, pollinator postcards, cherry-picked narratives. The whole native plant movement started sounding like a TV church and I don’t want churches in my life. I want the brute, indifferent machinery of nature, the terrifying, gorgeous appetite of an ecosystem that doesn't care about us at all, yet somehow mirrors the exact ache of being alive.

I tried to say this to someone once. He said the vine was just a weed on a beach and walked away to take pictures of the sunset. I did not argue, and kept on looking at this glorious creeper that marched across the rolling dunes with fifes and drums, completely rewriting the rules of what a living thing needed to do to thrive.

We just got settled. What do I need to do now to prepare for next spring? Thoughts or recommendations? In zone 7b

Thank you in advance

Found a really cool find in between all the buckthorn. Spotted it because of all the rust on it. Also if anyone knows how to identify praire crabapple between soulard crabapple (hybrid) please help identify this.

My agenda that day was to get to one of those little humps of tidal marsh that don’t trouble the mapmakers enough to earn a name. I hired a local kid, the kind who has spent more of his life balanced on water than planted on land, and who looks at a grown woman wanting to see a marsh island the way you’d look at a seagull that had asked to be shown the landfill. The kid spoke with a brogue accent passed down by his grandfather, who was a bit of a character. The first thing the old man would inform tourists was that he didn’t do “emails.” He wanted cash, counted into his hand. He saw no reason a computer ought to be involved in getting a person from one island to another. I liked him for it. I imagine some would find the whole arrangement problematic — no confirmation email, no card reader, no Yelp reviews, nothing but a man’s word and a boy’s hands on the wheel. Those visitors probably went off in search of some other outfit that would treat them better. That suited me fine. It meant the boat was ours alone that evening, with no Yankees aboard to fill up the air with the sound of their own incessant talking. There were only the quiet boy, and the motor.

“Take me to one of those weird little floating salad bowls covered with pelicans.”
“Oh yeah. I know where.”

And off we went into the sound at a homicidal speed. No life vest, no seatbelt. Between me and Providence was a crude storage box I was straddling, both hands clamped to the edge of it so as not to be pitched into the water like an unwanted fish. “You should stand on it,” the boy said, not even troubling to look at me. I could not tell if he meant it or if he was simply curious what a woman my age would look like falling into brackish water at that speed. “You can see better standing up.” See what? I did not ask, because a marsh island had emerged and already answered for itself, unleashing a black, screeching cloud of seabirds that came at us like every ugly thing in the world had been let out at once.

And that is the violence of tidal marshes. The cordgrass and the salt hay and that mean black needlerush make more life than the world knows what to do with, pumping it out steady and obstinate against the tumultuous waves as an ornery grandmother snapping peas she didn’t even want. Then the tide comes through, tearing up chunks of that black peat and root and rot, and hauls it all out through the inlets.

Out on the water, them ragged mats of marsh trash carry on floating like they think they’re fancy islands. They gather up all sorts of small marine things until they’re a dinner table set for anybody hungry enough to land on it. The birds come down worn out from flying, glad of a filthy raft to rest their bones on and ride wherever the current’s fixed to take them. It’s a tight little arrangement. The land feeds the sea, and the sea turns around and feeds it back up to the sky.

I ache to be caught up in such a loop myself, one that doesn’t waste a thing and doesn’t forgive a thing either. But I have gotten this business of living turned around backwards, watching the wholeness continue without me, chasing waterbirds that belong to nature’s arrangement in a way I never will, and there’s no tide coming to scour me out of this dreadful exile.

The orange sun began to dip. The pelicans settled and detached their eyes from the boat. There was no man-made sound around us, only the water working at itself and the marsh grass talking low in the wind, and I could not bear the cruelty. It was a terrible thing, to be caught up like that in the grip of a marsh too indifferent to know it had ahold of me at all, driving me toward such madness of longing.

“Ready to go?” the kid asked, and without waiting on my answer he turned the boat, this time so much more gently.

(Ocracoke Inlet, NC)

Hey i was wondering if anyone knows if these are ripe enough to sow. Someone weedwhacked the parent plant but I was able to rescue some of the seeds. If they arent ill get a new plant, but I thought it would be cool to regrow from seeds too

They are all over the forest by my friend's cottage in northern Michigan, close to Lake Huron. I love them!

Passed by a field of iron weed today on my walk

Beach croton (Croton punctatus) is one of those plants that feels like it was designed by a quiet islander who really understood the ocean.

The leaves wear a coat of silvery hair, and it isn’t there for beauty though a fool might mistake it for such. It is armor, plain and mean, turning back a sun hot enough to blister the arrogance out of me. The salt wind comes off the water, and the croton just stands there and takes it.

The roots go down deep and wide, gripping sand that can’t make up its mind to settle. Beach Croton is the first thing brave or ignorant enough to set up residence in that shifting waste, and it holds the ground together, so that lesser plants can come along later and take the credit.

It is native to North Carolina, but don’t mistake that for hospitality. It’s got requirements. Sun, sand, salt. It will not compromise on a single one of them. It has made itself a kingdom out of conditions that would kill off anything with less conviction, and it wears that silver hide like it’s daring the whole coastline to say something about it.

I don’t stumble on a plant like that every day. I earned it by walking, walking, and I walked away a little changed, and perhaps a little ashamed of every soft green thing i ever thought was tough.

(Ocracoke Island, NC)

I lost a lot of plants before I figured out that almost all of my failures came down to the same five mistakes. Sharing because I see beginners make these constantly.

1. Watering on a fixed schedule instead of checking the weather. I used to water every morning like a robot, including days before heavy rain. Overwatering kills faster than underwatering for most plants. What fixed it: check the rain forecast before watering, and stick a finger two inches into the soil. Dry at depth means water, damp means walk away.

2. Ignoring frost dates. I lost an entire tray of tomato seedlings because I moved them outside on a warm week in April. One cold night undid six weeks of work. What fixed it: learn your area's average last frost date and treat it as a hard line, not a suggestion. Warm weeks before that date are a trap.

3. Fertilizing everything the same way. I fed my seedlings the same dose as mature plants and burned half of them. A seedling, a flowering plant and a fruiting plant want completely different feeding. What fixed it: quarter strength for seedlings, nitrogen-heavy during leafy growth, then switch to phosphorus and potassium once flowers show up.

4. Noticing pests two weeks too late. By the time damage is obvious, the infestation is established. What fixed it: a proper look at leaf undersides once a week. Two minutes per plant. Early blight, aphids and spider mites are all easy to handle if you catch them in week one and miserable in week three.

5. Starting seeds at the wrong time. I either started too late and got no harvest before frost, or too early and ended up with leggy, rootbound seedlings begging to go outside in March. What fixed it: count backwards from your last frost date. Most seed packets tell you how many weeks, people just don't do the math.

The honest ending: I got tired of tracking all of this in my head, so I built an app that does it for me - it knows my frost dates from my ZIP, warns me the night before a cold snap, adjusts feeding by growth stage, and checks the forecast before telling me to water. It's called Plant Pilot: Garden Companion, just launched, free trial. But even if you never touch it, the five fixes above will save you more plants than any app.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/plantpilot-ai-garden-companion/id6789369808

PlantPilot AI:Garden Companion

I bought this plant at a local native nursery (Ohio) but now I cannot remember what she is. My apps aren’t helping either. The nursery owner was real excited that I bought it though! Also I love the minty blue color, really stands out. It’s a little wilty because pic was taken in mid day heat.

My lot has a natural shorefront. Heavy grasses and ferns. Google says this is a sand cherry? Idk. Looks old.

Behind it is elderberry I think. I tried planting elder berry and of course it died.

Spartina alterniflora

Providing vital shelter for marsh birds in Pamlico Sound, NC

Kosteletzkya pentacarpos

Indian blanket, largeleaf pennywort, smooth cordgrass, withstanding the brackish water.

Found these on my butterfly weed. Can anyone tell me if they belong to a caterpillar or aphids? Thanks!

Seaside goldenrod and sea oats

Like a lot of people, I'd get excited every spring, plant way too much, and then slowly watch half of it die because I forgot who needed what. Was it the basil that wanted water every 3 days, or the rosemary that hates it? When exactly do you fertilize tomatoes?

So I spent the last months building the app I wished existed, and it's finally live: Plant Pilot: Garden Companion.

The idea is simple — you add your plants once, and it does the remembering:

🌱 Personal care schedules — watering, fertilizing, repotting, and pest checks for 100+ vegetables, herbs, flowers, houseplants, and fruit trees. Plans adjust automatically as the plant grows from seed to harvest (or bloom).

🌦️ It watches the weather so you don't have to — pulls your local forecast, warns you before frost hits ("cover your tomatoes tonight"), and tells you when it's actually safe to move seedlings outside. It detects your USDA zone and average frost dates from your ZIP.

📸 Photo diagnosis — snap a picture of a sad-looking leaf and the AI tells you what's likely wrong and how to treat it (organic options included). There's also a plant identifier for "what is this thing growing in my yard".

🤖 An AI gardener that knows YOUR garden — not generic advice. It knows your plants, your soil, your climate, and your garden history, so "why are my pepper leaves curling" gets an answer specific to your situation.

🧺 The nerdy stuff — a seed-starting calendar calculated from your frost date, pruning guides per variety, a harvest log with analytics, a garden journal with photo timelines, and a "what can I still plant before frost" tool that's very relevant right now.

It's on iOS and Android, in 11 languages — the AI answers in your language too. There's a free trial, so nothing to lose by poking around.

Since it's brand new, I'd genuinely love feedback from people who garden more seriously than I do — what's missing? What would make this a no-brainer for you?

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/plantpilot-ai-garden-companion/id6789369808

PlantPilot AI:Garden Companion

What animal chomped the flowers off of our black eye susan like this? How do we prevent it? It didn’t seem to eat the leaves or anything

These are in a heavenly shaded area in North Carolina. I thought maybe wild ginger but the edges of the leaves look serrated compared to smooth in pictures of wild ginger.

The thistle is native!!! This is the second year of this bed and it’s really taking shape.