A few years ago, a friend texted me a photo like the one below, asking me if they should pull out this plant—was it a weed?—as it was growing throughout their garden beds.
I usually define a weed as plant growing in a place where humans don’t want it.*
"The most common way gardeners attempt to connect with insects is by planting for butterflies. It is a noble idea... Sadly, the execution of this enterprise is so often directed by misinformation that we end up having fewer butterflies than we started with."
-Doug Tallamy, Bringing Nature Home
Sometimes when I go for a walk around the grounds I sometimes forget we are in the middle of a pandemic. While Covid-19 has turned our world upside down, the natural world is moving along as if nothing has changed – the flowers are blooming, the bees are pollinating, the fireflies are dancing; nature seems the way it have always been, rather normal. Though in nature, nothing is ever normal.
Whenever I am talking about adaptations, I always tell my audience, "Everything in nature – ...