Weekend Reading Link Round-Up | September 2023
Spotted lanternflies, messy gardens, good books, and fall baking!
I thought I’d do a little link round-up with some brief thoughts to cap off the week. I’m still brainstorming some future essays here and between those ideas simmering in my brain and a lack of time this week, there won’t be an essay for at least another few days. Until then, here’s a little bit of reading for your weekend!
PS: We finally got some decent rain last week and a little yesterday, and while it isn’t making up for any deficits from the summer, at least we’re moving in the right direction again. I even tempted fate and sowed some fall seeds!
The Rot Collective over on Instagram posted a series of slides today in their feed and it was right up my alley, so much so that I saved the post and then someone who has been paying attention to my rants these last few months even tagged me to check out the post! It’s always good to know I’m not alone in this thought process with our gardens. Do click through and read the rest of the slides and check out their feed!
Nancy Lawson is asking us to challenge our thoughts around the spotted lantern fly in a post over on her Humane Gardener website. While I don’t live in an area where they are prevalent (yet) I do get on iNaturalist from time to time to see where new locations are popping up. They have been known to hitchhike on cars as well as packaging—usually showing up dead on the other side of the country from where they are currently being seen. I’m not sure I’m totally on board with her thoughts but I’m willing to read a bit more about it!
Something we should be paying more attention to, and perhaps be far more worried about, is Beech Leaf Disease. The disease is associated with a nematode and has a distinctive leaf striping that helps identify it in beech trees. I first heard about it from my friend Bonnie over on Instagram and I am absolutely concerned about it coming to Texas and affecting our amazing beech slope forests here in east Texas.
Mid-link pause—another rainstorm is rolling through as I write this! Hooray!
I really love this blog Looking Out in North Texas. Mary is a prolific writer, sending blog posts out into the world daily from her explorations in North Texas. She writes about anything from plants to insects to the weather. There’s always something interesting to read and learn about and I love to take some time to stop scrolling and peruse the things she’s written.
I’ve become mildly obsessed with finding natural history books used on the internet, attempting to find first editions or signed books. I’m mostly searching for Texas authors, though I do have my eye on some Florida authors, too. There’s a lot more written than I knew about, mostly because so much is out of print and the authors are long gone, so today’s naturalists aren’t aware of them. This will definitely be a future essay!
And speaking of reading, I have not read much in the way of gardening or natural history recently, but I can recommend a few books that are adjacent for y’all to check out.
The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green: Listen on audio. If you watch any of the Hank and John videos on YouTube this will make a lot of sense. Loved the book! You will laugh and you will cry!
Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton: I read Sarton’s Plant Dreaming Deep several years ago and was left in awe of her writing and her life. Journal was no different and now I plan to pick up her other journals and fiction.
Now that the weather is not scalding, I can look forward to fall baking. And I now have plans to try this Plum Torte from the NYT, which I read about today in Amy Stewart’s
post entitled Plums! And More Plums. I’ve followed Amy on and off since her days on Garden Rant, even reading a couple of her plant oriented books, but it was only earlier this year I found out she was an artist, too. Worth hitting the subscribe button over there!A brief podcast update: It’s going to stay in hiatus until at least the New Year, if not until spring. I am dreaming a potential re-brand but still uncertain about its future. I feel like podcasting is undergoing a transition overall within the community as people become overwhelmed with too much to read and listen to. I know my own podcast listening dropped off a cliff in 2020 and has never returned to the levels it was pre-pandemic. I’d like to continue providing content in that manner but am trying to figure out how to make it work not only for me but for the audience as well. If you have thoughts about podcast content overall, ie: your listening habits, content, frequency, please share!
That’s it for this week. Do share what you’ve been reading or studying nature and gardening-wise! Would love to hear!
Misti writes regularly at Oceanic Wilderness and On Texas Nature and can be found on Instagram at @oceanicwilderness. She hosts two podcasts, Orange Blaze: A Florida Trail Podcast, and The Garden Path Podcast.
I love John Green and May Sarton. Thanks for the book recs.