In this month’s blog:

When “the World Is Too Much with Us”: The Garden as Mental Health

Springing Early in the Garden

Climate Log: As Drought and Fires Set Records, Oil Giants Seek Lawsuit Immunity

The April 2026 Photo/Video Gallery

Brand new Canada Goose babies feed by the path at the south end of the lake, then Mom appears in the video, on a cool, cloudy April 26

When “the World Is Too Much with Us”: the Garden as Mental Health

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

I sometimes think of this 1802 poem by William Wordsworth, when I get overwhelmed by all the worries of this awful time in our nation’s history, when our democracy seems to be collapsing from the lies, cruelty, greed, and war-making by our supposed leaders.

So, to get a bit of solace, I turn to the gardens I have in my life.

I turn my focus to the plants and animals who surround lucky me and who seem to have figured out how to survive and even thrive, while not utterly destroying their fellow creatures as we humans do.

My gardens are two, and both are physical, mental, and indeed inspiring.

One garden is the small lake and surrounding land that includes the community in which we reside. This is a garden I walk through daily and which I cultivate by trying to leave it alone. I gain comfort by trying to observe respectfully its rhythms and inhabitants. My camera helps me see closely and capture images that ease–and inspire–my mind, but which leaves these inhabitants to do their life-generating work.

Grey Catbird, recently arriving here, calls and mimics amid the Arrowwood Viburnum beside the southeast cove of the lake, cool morning, April 25

The other garden I turn to is  the one where my wife and I dig into the soil in order to plant flowers and veggies. This small plot, only 225 square feet, we deliberately disturb–in typical human fashion–so that we might use its mineral and organic resources to grow what we want to grow. From one perspective, digging a garden is an act of selfish violence, because if we left it alone, it would produce what it wants to with the assistance of rain and sun and wind and visiting insects and birds. The undisturbed soil is home to the little seeds and sinewy rhizomes that stay quietly alive under the surface.

Oh, we know what that undisturbed garden would look like, because it partially greets us after a winter of icy cold that keep us indoors. Its colorful profusion of little plants like Yellow Dandelions, Blue Speedwell, green Ground Ivy, Pink Henbit, and Daisy Fleabane shows how hard the soil has been working all winter. If we left it alone, it would do more amazing things–just as our lakeside garden does–but we humans just want too much to get our hands dirty and use that soil to produce stuff that we can eat and tickle our senses with.

So before we start digging, we say to the soil and the wind and the clouds,

“Please let us use just a little bit of your bounty to make room for other plants that we want to give life to. We promise to use just a little land and then to let you take over again when the winter returns. Is that OK?”

A benign violence? Yes, I hope. Our indigenous forebears on this land knew better than we do how to use what actual Nature produced to keep those humans alive, too, but most of us have lost that knowledge. And so the best that we can do is to use just a little of the soil to grow the plants we’re more comfortable with–tomatoes, peppers, culinary herbs, potatoes, corn, and so forth–and let the native plants grow in the rest. One thing we promise not to do is turn these little garden plots into the one-crop (AKA “monoculture”) plantations that dominate way too much of the country.

We also promise the soil not to poison it with the chemicals, like glyphosate, which kill most of the plants that want to share the soil with the crops that large farmers and many homeowners favor on their land. As a result, our garden includes both the plants we’ve planted and the many hardy species that “volunteer” in the garden. We’ve found that there’s usually room for both kinds.

When it comes right down to it, a great way for both of us to ease our minds in these troubled times is to get down on our knees, dig holes in the ground, and plant little seeds and seedlings, then water those plants, watch them from day to day, and marvel at what these little beings turn into as April turns into May and then on to September.  We are grateful that every little bit of this mental solace goes a long way, and we get it each time we visit either of our gardens.

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Springing Too Early in the Garden?

Well, it happened again. But can you blame us?

Yes, the garden managers pleaded with us gardeners not to plant before May 1: “the ground won’t be warm enough.”  But, then, the thermometer kept going up and up after April 10, until it reached the low 90s! Can you believe it? It had been so cold and rock-hard snowy in February that we’d begun to get stir-crazy. Then March kept teasing us with off-and-on warm and cooler days, mostly warmer, so surely, once we got into the 80s, then the 90s in early April–the 90s!–of course winter was past, right?

So pretty much everyone in our garden community had been out in March to begin spiffing up their raised beds and building their soil base, and to put into the huge compost piles beyond the fences all the old garden waste from last year. We were all champing at the bit to get started planting. But still most of us held back out of caution–“wait until May 1!”

But not all of us. A few of our neighbors were getting an early start on the planting. And of course, we two transplanted Californians, as accustomed as we still were to year-round gardening, decided to flout the May 1 rule.

So, on April 11, with the temp already in the 80s, we were among lots of other gardeners in our town at Home Depot, where we bought a few bags of soil, some Snapdragons, 4 Cherry Tomato plants, 1 Zucchini, 1 Basil, 2 Mild Peppers, and 2 Strawberries–and immediately drove off to put these beauties in the ground.

With low temps in the 40s, what could go wrong? But as the week wore on, the forecast showed lows in the mid 30s, then on the 20th, hour by hour the temp lowered–until it registered 27 F (what?!) at 6 AM on the 21st. With trepidation, I drove over to the garden later that morning, and, sure enough, there lay the 4 tomatoes, the basil, the 2 mild peppers, and the zucchini–their stems deflated, their leaves shriveled, their greenness turning brown. Of the new plantings, only the 2 Strawberries and the Snapdragons, as expected  of these hardy types, were frisky.

Of course, the Blue Speedwell, the Pink Henbit, and the Yellow Dandelions were bright as ever, mocking me with their lively weediness.

But never say die! Out came the shriveled ones and into the compost pile they went. By the 24th, they had been replaced, and we added several more that we couldn’t resist, like a Jalapenó Pepper and Peonies. So, with all forecasts now well above freezing beyond May 1,  almost all the gardeners are now out and planting.  We all have our eager fingers crossed.

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How drought intensity in US has advanced since February (US Drought Monitor and Washington Post video, April 29)

Climate Log: 

Droughts, Temps, and Wildfires Set Records; Fossil Fuel Cartel Seeks Immunity; Supreme Court’s Anti-Climate Agenda Revealed

This month’s climate log is just a series of headlines and photos, with links or references to the articles that go into detail. Suffice it to say that these are the sorts of things happening right now–or in the recent past in the case of the Supreme Court’s secret memos–that would receive attention and new laws if the US had an Administration, Congress, and Supreme Court focused on the people of the US and the health of the world we live in rather than on ensuring mega-billionaires’ bottom lines. They are also the sorts of outrages that inspire me to seek solace in gardens and make me so grateful that we still have that opportunity.

Worst spring drought on record grips US, fueling wildfires and water worries

CNN, by Chris Dolce, Meteorologist, April 23

Evacuation instructions amid Florida wildfires (CBS Jacksonville, April 21)

“The EPA’s Lost Science” (Lisa Friedman, New York Times, April 28)

National Geographic (April 8), Laura Parker:

The Supreme Court’s Secret Docket: the 2016 Memos (New York Times, Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak, April 18):

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April 2026 Photo/Video Gallery

The new Canada Goose babies arrive and wildflowers spring forth around the lake. Birdsong concerts are a daily event.

Red-winged Blackbird calls in Red Maple on the southeast bank, warm morning, April 16

White-throated Sparrow in Katsura tree, east bank, April 18

Canada Geese, adults and 6 babies, enter the northwest corner of the lake to begin their swim, April 26

Three cormorants atop dead Oak, east bank, as Blue Heron watches from below and another flies over the tree.  Rare sighting of all these birds of prey together, April 26

Morning Dove walks into grass, east side; meets mate; both look toward lake; warm April 19

Toward downtown, view of the mirror lake in spring glory, with Red Cedar in foreground, warm morning, April 18

And on to the mad, mysterious, magnificent month of May, with blooms in whatever garden is yours…