From the Compost Heap header. A pencil style illustration of a compost heap with flowers and plants growing around it. A bee buzzes by and a white rabbit hops by.

  • A little scrappy gardening vlog.

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  • Wildflowers growing in our backyard with fence and tree beyond. Most are royal blue bachelor buttons. Little tufts with the sky beyond. White Love-in-a-Mist are shorter. They are ethereal flowers with delicate leaves and spiraling center that transforms into a seed pod. These flowers evoke fairyland to me.
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  • Chaos Gardening: Tips from a Chronically Ill & Neurodivergent Gardener

    Chaos Gardening black and white zine among blooming daisies in my garden. The title is cut out magazine letters and peony leaf rubbings are overlaid. The subtitle readers: tips from a chronically ill and neurodivergent gardener.

    I think I’m finding my groove with zine making. I had a lot of fun going analogue this month and in addition to my typewriter I also incorporated collage and nature rubbings.

    BUY A ZINE

    Or subscribe for zines delivered to your mailbox every month.

    The back of the zine. You can read some text typed on my typewriter and see peony leaf rubbings. The text reads: VI. No dig• A few strategies I use to minimize pain are: No dig garden beds (areas with soil piled on cardboard). Cardboard lined raised beds. A low gardeningstool (B to avoid back pain & dizziness). Suppressing weeds (minimizing weeding) with cardboard or spare paving stones. Anything that will block sunlight & not blow away will do. A Kindle Curiosity Zine. May 2025.

    Read more: Chaos Gardening: Tips from a Chronically Ill & Neurodivergent Gardener
  • Survivor CBS screencap. Eva confides to Joe, "There are times when I get super overstimulated, I call them episodes. I'll be stuck in a loop in my head and the thing that I need to do it to get grounded. What I need from you is getting squeezed. Take my hands and squeeze as much as possible." The second image shows Joe and Eva forehead to forehead squeezing her hands to coregulate.

    This season of Survivor was close to my heart.

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  • Therapeutic weeding. The front bed is overrun with witch grass because I wasn’t well enough to garden last year, but reclaiming it one patch at a time. Excited about our first sea holly – it’s a variety called Hobbit.

    Runner grass surrounding plants in the garden bed. My rainboot, a narrow widger, and a sea holly are also visible.
    Mulch surrounding sea holly, sage, and russian sage with tall grass growing beyond.
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  • Fence of treated wood opens on a patch of blue and white wildflowers in our backyard under a gray cloudy sky.
    Blue and white wildflowers with a mown path leading to a fence of treated wood.

    I really prefer British style fences, but with the wildflowers blooming I am coming around to ours.

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  • Laptop with yellow hobbit hole wallpaper. An edison bulb lamp sheds a dim golden glow on a goddess vase filled with pens. The workspace is otherwise shrouded in darkness.

    Have I mentioned I set up a desk in our living room? I’ve been using it since January or February. It was especially nice when the severe winter weather meant I couldn’t use the studio.

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  • A tiny oak tree sprouting from an acorn in a mason jar full of water.

    We found this beauty when we were weeding the mulch under the jungle gym. A fascinating science project to see how an acorn sprouts into a mighty oak.

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  • A pile of weeds from the wildflower area of our backyard and a green nitrile glove.

    This is the first year I’ve been well enough to really spend time weeding the wildflower area of our garden. Years past I’ve let the seeds go truly wild and only pulled a few “mean dandelions” (you know, the spiky ones) and weeds I suspected might be poisonous. This year I’m enjoying sitting among the bachelor buttons and pulling up plants that are less desirable so we have fewer weedy seedlings competing with wildflowers next year.

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  • “Hey, I work with college students often. Do you know what brings their attention back to the surface after years of Zoom classes, Generative AI cheating, and smart phone usage? 

    Zines. Freaking zines. You put a zine in an undergraduate’s hands and say “Someone like you made this. You could make this. All you need is some found images, paper, scissors/glue, and your own imagination. No chatgpt necessary.” 

    They light up, every single time, without fail. They start to recognize how little Generative AI serves them in the long run. They’ve called zines “Anti-AI” to my face and gleefully showed me their first zines with thought, intention, and inventiveness. 

    Critical thinking isn’t dead in the land of zines. It’s thriving. Academia has to pivot, as much as I loathe that corporate term.”

    Abigail Schleifer via Substack Notes

    See also: What Are Zines? by Abigail Schleifer

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