The Blooming Idiot

06/15/2026

06/13/2026

I try not to panic when I see caterpillars anymore 🐛 A few things I check before removing them:
🦋 Monarch caterpillars need milkw**d, so I leave those alone.
🌿 Black swallowtail caterpillars often show up on dill, parsley, or fennel, and I usually let them stay.
🍅 Tomato hornworms can strip plants fast, so I move them if they’re doing too much damage.
🥬 Cabbage loopers are a different story because they can chew brassicas quickly.
👀 Identification matters because some caterpillars turn into beautiful pollinators, while others can wreck a crop.
A few chewed leaves are not always a disaster, but knowing who is doing the chewing helps a lot.

06/12/2026

06/12/2026

Gosh, what a difference a week makes. This will be our second weekend at the Urbana farmers market at Lincoln Square in Urbana. Last week, we only had about six or seven plants that were blooming reliably that we could take flowers to the market on Saturday. This week we have our choice. And I think we have some really nice plants/flowers. And I think they will look beautiful in your garden. Come see us this weekend. 7 AM till noon this Saturday.

06/04/2026

Hi everybody. This weekend, Saturday June 6, the blooming idiot will start another season at the Urbana Market at the Square, at Lincoln Square in downtown Urbana. It’s early in the season, and we will probably only have able 6 or 7 flowering varieties. That gives us a chance to sell some flowers that seem to grow between the early season in the middle season and some of our late season bloomers that bloomed their best in the late summer and early fall. I hope I have described it properly, but feel free to send me an inquiry so that I can help clarify. Still, some beautiful flowers and we’re looking for it to be at the market this weekend. The weather has been beautiful, come out and take advantage of it. We hope to see you there.

06/01/2026

One little bee does a lot more than we notice 🐝 A few ways I try to support them:
🌼 Plant flowers that bloom at different times of the season.
💧 Leave a shallow water source with stones for safe landing.
🚫 Avoid spraying flowers when bees are active.
🌿 Let a few herbs flower, like basil, dill, or cilantro.
🌸 Grow simple, open blooms that are easy for pollinators to reach.
A bee-friendly garden usually ends up being a healthier garden too.

06/01/2026

A lot of people say these really work, and if they work for them, my hats off to them.

Pest-repelling plants can help, but they’re not magic 🌿 A few ways I use them:
🌼 Marigolds and nasturtiums are easy to tuck around vegetable beds for extra color and diversity.
🌿 Basil near tomatoes and peppers is one of my favorite kitchen garden pairings.
💜 Lavender and rosemary like sunny, well-drained spots, so I don’t plant them where the soil stays wet.
🌱 Mint is useful, but I always keep it in a pot because it spreads fast.
🧄 Garlic and chives are great around garden edges, especially if you already use them in the kitchen.
I think of these as part of a healthier garden setup, not a guarantee that pests will disappear overnight 🌱

06/01/2026

The four things erasing American wildflowers from landscapes your grandparents walked through: herbicides, development, the compulsion to mow everything before it flowers, and agriculture that leaves no margin for anything that isn't the crop.

Twelve plants. Same four causes. And every one of them can come back in a garden corner, a roadside strip, or a meadow edge given forty square feet and a season without interference.

🌸 What's disappearing and why:

- Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) — roadsides and meadow edges, declining with herbicide spraying of "w**ds" on right-of-ways and early mowing that prevents seed set
- Wild lupine (Lupinus perennis) — sandy pine barrens and open meadows; the only larval host for the endangered Karner blue butterfly; declining with fire suppression and habitat closure
- Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) — tallgrass prairie native, shrinking with prairie conversion and over-collection of root material
- Butterfly w**d (Asclepias tuberosa) — monarch milkw**d, losing ground to herbicide drift in agricultural margins and roadsides; cannot recolonize tilled soil easily
- Wild columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) — open woodland edges and rocky slopes, disappearing as forest closes and "tidy" land management eliminates rocky margins
- Prairie blazing star (Liatris spicata) — wet prairie and meadow species, losing habitat to drainage and development across the Midwest
- Wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) — native bee magnet of the eastern prairie, declining with the conversion of meadow edges to mowed turf
- Common blue violet (Viola sororia) — host plant for all native fritillary butterfly larvae; actively eliminated by "w**d-free lawn" culture and pre-emergent herbicides
- Pasque flower (Anemone patens) — among the first wildflowers of the northern plains, down to a fraction of its historic range from prairie loss and grazing pressure
- Shooting star (Primula meadia) — wet meadow and woodland edge species of the East and Midwest; disappearing as both habitat types decline simultaneously
- Showy goldenrod (Solidago speciosa) — one of the most ecologically valuable fall natives for bees and migrating monarchs; dismissed as a w**d and cut before seed set
- Blue wild indigo (Baptisia australis) — slow-growing prairie perennial that takes years to establish; once gone from a site, it rarely returns on its own

Every one of these can grow in a home garden. Seed is available. The main requirement is leaving them alone long enough to bloom and set seed before anything gets cut. 🌱

06/01/2026

I think I have all of these in my yard

The mess in your yard this month wasn't mess. It was habitat with tenants.

The orb weaver's web on the porch railing — trapped flies and gnats all month. The paper wasp nest on the far eave — the colony picked hornworms off your tomatoes before you noticed them. The rock pile by the shed — a garter snake moved into the gaps and started hunting slugs.

🌿 The parsley and dill you let go leggy — black swallowtail caterpillars striped every stem. You would have pulled the plants a week before the butterflies emerged.

The windfall apples you didn't rake — red admirals landed and drank from the fermenting fruit. The bee balm you didn't deadhead — a hummingbird kept returning to the spent flowers long after you'd written them off.

The slug pellets you skipped — a toad showed up and handled it.

Every messy corner had something living in it. The web you didn't sweep. The fruit you didn't clear. The stems you didn't cut.

The yard knew what to do with all of it 🐾