Obligatory Garden Newsletter
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A Note for You, If You’re Having A Bad Day
Dear Friend,
It’s good every once in a while to reevaluate the place you go in your mind when you want to feel most at peace. If you somehow don’t have one of these yet, I beg you to please stop reading this email, close all your electronics, and mentally construct one. It should be a place where you feel safe, calm, and powerful. My default place is on a new blanket in a wide field of wildflowers, resting against a cow. I’m happy to have the cow place, but my preference is to be in my Other Place. My Other Place is, as I have told you before, my own backyard.
We’ve lived in our bright yellow house for seven years. When we bought it, it was evidently a capital-P Project, which my partner Luke claimed he wanted. He said he grew up living in houses that were under construction; dusty kitchens that made promises about what they might someday be. I thought this sounded just awful, but when a person is leading with confidence, you sometimes choose to follow. See what happens.
I love our yellow house, and I’d easily count its acquisition as one of the top ten greatest strokes of luck of my life. But here is a list of its many, many disasters to date:
When we were getting the roof replaced, the roofer set the whole right side of the house on fire while trying to melt some ice with a blow torch. And then he fled. As far as I know, he is still at large.
So we lived under a blue tarp instead of a roof for something like seven months, many of which were in winter.
When the walls came down in the fire, we discovered the inside of the house was brimming with black mold!
The furnace broke.
The water heater broke.
The stove broke.
The refrigerator broke.
The basement floods when it rains, so we lost a lot of the stuff we put in the basement to water damage.
The root of a tree grew through a sewage pipe in the basement and then poop flowed freely from the pipe into some floodwater, and our basement was full of poop.
The washer and dryer broke.
We had well-meaning but ultimately quite young roommates who installed new toilets for us, which we paid for, but they did it wrong, so the toilets were kind of… loose.
Actually, I’m going to stop. The poop basement is the real gauntlet, and we’ve already addressed that. Just know: there were other things. It is hard to own a house, and we bought one that we knew would take work. But I was sold mostly on the yard. For a house in Chicago, the yard was substantial. An odd shed coming off the garage looked perfect for chickens, which I knew I wanted. And then I had lots of other ideas. Peppers would go there. Tomatoes would go there! Here, kale kale kale kale oh my god you would not be able to comprehend the amount of kale. A fire pit for our friends to come sit by every Friday night or something, and we’d play music by it, and the friends would all go home with kale because that is the amount of kale there would be.
In New Orleans, I’d lived with someone who gardened. She was very successful at growing Thai basil, a variety of peppers, and (you guessed it) kale. The tomatoes never went the way she wanted, and she tried all kinds of things. One of the things was blood meal, which struck me as the worst namable thing. I don’t remember how frustrated she was about the tomato situation, but I recall her trying lots of solutions and never quite getting it. This is really a parable. It’ll come back later.
The first spring we lived in our house, I did the thing that every first-time gardener does, which is, I just threw whatever wherever and hoped for the best. There was a lot of grass in the backyard when we moved in, and we ripped half of it up for a huge raised bed. I told the then-roommate (the toilet one) that he could plant whatever he wanted wherever he wanted, because I was going to be a Fun Garden Mom. As you might’ve guessed, some things grew (tomatoes, believe it or not!) but most things didn’t. I had no idea what was a weed and what was something I’d planted. (Mostly everything was a weed.) The kale did pretty well! But mostly, the first year of the garden was kind of a bust. Oh well!
The next year, we got chickens. A lot of effort went into building the chickens a coop with a small run. We swore up and down that the chickens would be allowed to free range wherever they wanted. I put a fence around the raised bed so the chickens wouldn’t eat my kale.
The first bad thing was that one of the chicks (the white one) we’d bought turned out to be a rooster. Ultimately, we kept him, and here is a link to the whole long tale of that. The next bad thing was that the chickens our roommates had brought with them (New roommates! Ones who came with preexisting chickens!) wanted to eat the small chickens we’d raised from chicks. If you know even the first thing about keeping chickens, you know that integrating them is a whole Thing, but we didn’t know that. Then next, the chickens hopped over the fence and ate all the kale. Goodbye, kale! The chickens seemed to be insatiable. They tore out the grass. They even destroyed the mint that had been a massive weed. By the end of the summer, we’d made the chicken run waaaay bigger (thus making the yard way smaller), because we understood that it wouldn’t be feasible for them to free range all day long every day.
This summer — Summer Number Two — was nevertheless my favorite. We still had lots of soft green grass to sit on, and I could let the chickens out and give them watermelons and they’d come sleep on my chest. The yard felt comfy. And once again, the tomatoes did great. This was when I experienced enough moments of pure euphoria that I understood the backyard to be my new Place. In the winter, I went to the yard with the chickens and the watermelon and the birdsong and people I loved not too far away.
And then everything got much, much worse.
The next summer we got bees, which was fun, but added a new layer of maintenance and learning that we were ultimately unprepared for. (Just wait until you have a BABY, Younger Sophie!) And also, the rats came.
Here’s the thing about chickens: if you have chickens, you’re going to have rats. There’s simply no way around this. I mean, OK: You can rip up your whole yard, line the full perimeter with broken glass and wire netting, fastidiously feed the chickens only during quite specific feeding times, and with a weighted feeder a rat can’t infiltrate, while checking multiple times per day for eggs and fully cleaning and sanitizing the interior of the coop at least once a week. You can do that. But… can you do that and have any kind of life?
The rats came. I’ve written about this too, from the depths of despair.
And so, the backyard that was my Place was gone. Every year I tried new things:
A taller raised bed. (Rats tunneled in from the bottom and destroyed it.)
Companion plants that rats dislike such as mint. (The rats ate the mint that they dislike.)
Letting my cat outside at night to frighten the rats. (The rats frightened the cat.)
Cleaning the chicken coop nearly constantly. (The rats said, “Thank you for our new clean hotel.”)
Catching live rats in a cruelty-free trap and driving them, one by one, to this spot on the other side of the river five miles from my house where I thought they’d be able to find food and could make a family and no one seemed to live there so that was good. (I did this seventy nine rats amount of time before I realized that there were endless rats.)
The tomatoes did great though! (Except the rats ate the tomatoes, too – when they were green, like lawless ANIMALS, which they are.)
Also: the chickens had destroyed all the grass, and now what was left was a variety of weeds. Also, whatever Toilet Roommate planted took over that corner of the garden and I’m still staring at it right now. And also, most of my yard is actually in the shade, so not a whole lot wants to grow here, and so it is the perfect place for mosquitoes to happily nibble on one’s baby if one has a baby. (Which one has, and one loves, but babies are harder than bees.) Speaking of the bees: every year, the bees cause a major drama. But that’s for another letter.
Now I read a lot of gardening blogs and find my algorithm firmly positioned inside GardenTok, and so I learn a lot about gardens all the time, and the main thing I learn is that every year, gardeners make plans, and the plans never go quite right. Skilled gardeners know how to pivot when something isn’t working out, but many of us just have to wait it out and try again next year.
Remember my friend’s tomatoes? It’s possible Louisiana is simply too hot for tomatoes. You make plans, and you get attached to them enough that you are willing to buy and use a thing called blood meal.
For me, the bottom line was: did it matter more to me that I could walk out into my yard and pick dinner for that night for a few weeks in August? Or did it matter more that I lived alongside chickens? And you already know I picked chickens. I love the chickens. They’re family.
This year, Year Seven, I had a come-to-terms. I did not plant any food — except hot peppers, which rats reliably do hate — in my garden. I took down the big raised bed we built that first year, with big dreams. Without the raised bed, the native prairie plants I put in place of the grass five years ago will be able to spread and ultimately take the yard. And why shouldn’t they? They deserve it.
Rats mean house flies, and I can’t abide those, so I bought some parasitic wasps and released them. Voila! Goodbye houseflies. The mosquitoes were still a huge problem, so I installed a few buckets with mosquito dunks (naturally occurring bacteria that don’t harm any living thing except mosquito larvae), and then I built a pond with more mosquito dunks inside, and I’ve been sitting out here next to the pond for the past four hours and have not weathered a single mosquito bite.
Instead, I watched a green hummingbird stretch out his wings and take a shower in the sprinkler I had going. I saw a red-eyed vireo too. There are hover flies that live in the pond. The bees are zipping past me with heaping pollen visible on their back legs.
There are still rats. But right now, I’m listening to a person who has stopped by the Chicken Window (I pulled out the vinyl strips that prevented people from looking into our yard), and they’re talking about how they take people to this window when they have visitors come in from out of town. They have taken a Coop News. One of them just said, “Awww, I think actually Moshpit is my favorite.”
I wanted to tell you that my backyard is my Place again. I’ve been very weepy about it. I told my therapist, but then I said, “It won’t last. Something else bad will happen that I can’t foresee.” She said, “Good things happen, and they don’t last. Bad things happen, and they don’t last either.”
I hope all the best things for the outdoor spaces you cultivate and visit and adore. And for what it’s worth, we built a side yard on the neutral ground between our house and the street, and I put the tomatoes there this year. They’re going to do great. And when they ripen, I’m going to put out a sign that says, “Take as many tomatoes as you can carry.”
Good luck out there, bravely facing all that breaks your heart.
Love,
Sophie
Housekeeping
As promised, here are the 60-minute webinars I’ll be offering over the next 12 months! Each one will take place on a Saturday at 1:30 p.m. Central Time (CT). If that time doesn’t work for you live, not to worry! Videos of each webinar will be posted to a central web location. These are free to all paid subscribers; non-paid-tier subscribers can sign up for individual webinars for $40. (Or, you could become a paid subscriber for $40 by clicking this super-special link.)
Registration for these will open with in the next month; keep your eyes peeled!
2025
July 19 – Birds in Colored Pencil
Learn how to use graphite and colored pencils to bring birds to life. We’ll mostly talk about bird anatomy and how to translate it into drawing, but we will also learn about layering colors, and also, of course, you will get a whole ton of unsolicited bird facts.
August 9 – The Artist Toolbox
Learn what tools I use for making my art and how I use them. Bring your own tools to the table, and we can talk about strategies for using those too. We’ll talk about India ink, dip pens, types of paper, and Procreate on the iPad.
September 13 – Building Your Substack
Here you are reading a Substack. Do you want to write one? I agree! You should! This is a session on how to build a Substack that reflects your voice and attracts readers.
October 11 – Birds in Watercolor
More birds, but make it wet! Bring any watercolor materials you have (truly – you can bring watered-down ketchup), and we’ll have a relaxing time painting basic birds and also talking about them.
November 15 – The 10 Biggest Takeaways from “KIN”
My book will come out this month, and I would like to share with you what I learned while researching and writing it. Just a taste: chosen family, boundaries, caregiving, and the future of connection.
2026
January 10 – Constructing a Writing Practice
Kick off the year by building a writing habit that works for you. I am pretty good (and could be certified in) diagnosing the root cause of a writers’ block, so let me do that for you! You’ll leave with a PLAN for writing as much as you’d like to write in the new year.
March 14 – Basics of Cartooning and Comics
You can already draw cartoons! Let me just prove it to you in an short session that maps out for you the loose basics of getting pen to paper.
April 11– Art-making as Play
Do you want to play more? Yes, you do. You can do it by yourself with stuff you have around the house. This session will be full of ideas for artists’ dates you can take yourself on. Very Lynda Barry-coded, if we’re honest, but I’ll bring my own spin.
June 13 – Intro to Watercolor
Watercolor is the best art form, and I will fight you if you choose to disagree. So come find out why I think this! You’ll learn simple techniques for blending, layering, and embracing the unexpected.
Loose Thoughts:
On candy: hot take, but I think my favorite candy is strawberry bonbons, like in a 90-year-old person’s purse. Not sure what to do with this. Should I put them in my own purse?
What are some inside house plants that CANNOT go outside during the summer in Chicago? Like, I know you can bring an elephant ear outside and just let it do its thing. Are there ones that need to sit inside or else? I bet I could google this.
I absolutely love ceiling fan season, though many readers have pointed out that the cords on ceiling fans are terribly designed. The ones in my bedroom came with little charms at the end — a fan one and a lightbulb one — so you know which is which. So I started adding charms to the other ones in my house, but I can’t remember what the charms *mean.* Anyway, there’s something there.
Tomorrow, we are taking our very first just-the-three-of-us family vacation. We’re going to Indianapolis, which has the world’s largest children’s museum. Your friend Sophie is wild for a children’s museums, so I’m pumped to go to this one. We’re also going to check out a nature preserve. Any tips for traveling with a three-year-old? This will be a low-stakes road trip, and I have one day to do anything that needs to be done in advance. But don’t hesitate to tell me after the fact, because I’ll do this again, probably!
Generally, I find travel stressful, but there are exceptions. A short road trip with Luke and T sounds pretty fun.
I think there’s a candy factory between here and there.
Welp, I just went on a journey I did not mean to go on, searching for things to do along the route, and I have landed on “bison viewing area.” Don’t worry, I will like it even if there are no bison.
BUT WHAT IF THERE ARE BISON!?
Some of my recent google searches (and tell me yours): “why is jules not on ms rachel now”; “pandy paws”; “deer tick vs wood tick”; “part of your world chords piano”; “parasitic wasp how tiny”; “my cat got stung by a bee”; “camel noises”; “is thredup using ai models”; “soften stale bread”; “is rob lowe canceled.”
On Jules: There’s no definitive answer. It’s really unclear. I’m going to let it go until I hear that I shouldn’t.
Parasitic wasps are VERY tiny. Tinier than ants.
I feel sad for my cat, but he seemed OK within ten minutes. The bee, on the other hand, who was probably just trying to find some pollen, died a horrible death because a cat caught her.
Camels sound BANANAS.
THREDUP IS USING AI MODELS AND I AM SO MAD ABOUT IT. Browsing ThredUp for treasures in the middle of the night is currently my only real vice, and I feel like I need it. And now they’ve added this AI model component which is really confusing. I wear a size Large, 10-12, and the AI models are definitely not my size. This makes it seem like the cute, weird ModCloth thing I’m looking at is going to be loose, when really it is probably going to be so tight it won’t zip. Also, not for nothing, I like to browse online thrift shops in part because I’m angry about clothing waste, because the planet is burning, and making these images cannot be good for the company’s carbon footprint. Why are they doing this? It’s horrible and bad and I hope they’ll stop. I hope they read my newsletter, and this bullet point will make them stop.
Wow I didn’t realize I was going to go off like that.
Rob Lowe is not really canceled. He made questionable choices in his youth and then reformed.
We did a six(?) hour road trip to southern Indiana with our 2.5 year old a couple of weeks ago. Reliable hits for entertainment were 1) melissa and doug Water Wow books. Theoretically they are mess-free. 2) LCD drawing tablet, which we call her iPad so now she does which delights us to no end. 3) Arnold Lobel reading the audio version of Frog and Toad. This is on Spotify, may also be on Libby. She liked this AND it made her fall asleep, which she hasn’t done much in the car lately, so it got her a nice little nap at naptime which made for a nicer arrival at our destination. 4) Her 11-year old cousin in the backseat. I don’t know if you have access to an 11-year-old cousin, but I do recommend it for many different applications.
If you would like to be guaranteed to see bison, please pencil in the first Saturday in November, which is National Bison Day, and come down to Peoria and go to Wildlife Prairie Park where a very charming eccentric bison-obsessed local eye doctor will take you on a 90-minute hayrack ride through the bison herd and tell you so many things about bison. It’s free with admission. (You can also sleep in a train caboose at Wildlife Prairie Park and you will very likely hear wolves howling during the night, which is DELIGHTFUL). (We also have a small but adorable children’s museum and a small but free museum with lots of big heavy machinery because this is where Caterpillar still is, sort of.)