madisonandgrow

04/02/2026

I festooned shop for spring! It was a gorgeous rainy morning and it felt like the perfect time to give the front of shop a refresh into spring! 🌧️

03/30/2026

we are expanding the pollination strip this year! replaced most of the forsythia with native bayberry and winterberry shrubs + lots more native plants! keeping all the daffodils because they are pretty damn it.

03/28/2026

apparently i’ve been obsessed with flowers for a bit. 😜

03/26/2026

03/25/2026

The tulips I’m growing this year, a very pretty peachy pink with a classic tulip form. ☀️☀️☀️ I’ll have bunches available real soon.

03/19/2026

Tomorrow is the Spring Equinox. 12 hours of light. 12 of dark. You’ll notice it as a date. Everything in your yard has been counting the minutes since the winter solstice.

Here’s what “twelve equal hours” does to the living things within 200 feet of your bed.

The robin in your maple tree has had her pituitary gland measuring daylight through her skull. Not her eyes — through the bone. Photoreceptors in the hypothalamus detect light passing through the thin skull of a songbird. As day length crossed eleven hours last week, luteinizing hormone surged. Her o***y began developing the first egg. Tomorrow, at twelve hours, the follicle that becomes the first egg of the year starts accumulating yolk.

The honeybee colony in the hollow tree shifted from winter cluster to brood mode three weeks ago when the queen started laying. She uses day length information relayed by foragers who measure it through flight duration. Right now she’s laying 1,000 eggs per day. By the time the equinox passes, she’ll be at 1,500.

The garter snake under your porch step is torpid but sensing photoperiod through its pineal gland — the “third eye” on top of its head. When tomorrow’s light-to-dark ratio crosses even, its testosterone surges. Within days, it’ll be mating.

The sugar maple you tapped three weeks ago is responding to the equinox by shifting from sap flow to bud development. The twelve-hour photoperiod triggers enzymes that convert stored starch into the sugars that power bud break. The sap season ends because the tree is spending its sugar on leaves instead of leaking it from drill holes.

The White-throated Sparrow in your thicket has been gaining weight for ten days — pre-migratory fattening triggered by photoperiod. Tomorrow’s light-to-dark ratio completes the trigger. Within a week he flies north.

None of these organisms know it’s March 20. They don’t read calendars. They read light. And tomorrow the light says: go.

03/11/2026

time to wake up the dahlias! I will have a limited number of potted dahlias just in time for mother’s day ☀️❤️☀️ and many, many cut flowers this summer! dm me if you would like to reserve tubers or join my monthly newsletter, it’s where I am sharing resources and ecological garden advice

03/10/2026

joe-pye w**d/ eutrochium exactly as she landed this winter. She will be left alone until we have 2 consecutive weeks of days above 50 degrees. moth/lepidoptera caterpillars are waking up and inside, currently using leaves and stems to survive. 80% of caterpillars are destroyed when gardeners do spring clean up before this time. All of the birds are coming back and these caterpillars are the ONLY food they can feed their brood. A chickadee needs approximately 6k - 9k of caterpillars for a single brood. That is 350-570 caterpillars a day! seriously. 😳