The new issue of MacBeth Derham’s Wild Monthly is up! This month’s theme is crabs, a big favorite around here. Rose got a pair of hermit crabs for her birthday last summer. Scott and I had been planning the gift for months—she was pining for a pet. Imagine my horror, the day before her birthday, when I asked her what she’d like for her birthday dinner and she answered promptly: “Crab legs!”

The gruesome pet-and-platter combination didn’t seem to faze her a bit, however. At the birthday dinner, she happily wolfed down her crab legs while animatedly discussing names for her new, instantly beloved pets. (She finally settled on “Pagoo” and “Pagooess.”) She’s going to love exploring the links in this issue of Wild Monthly.

Here’s an excerpt:

Careful planning went into our honeymoon in Mexico. My husband and I wanted to spend time visiting Mayan ruins rather than partying in nightclubs in Cancun. We visited Coba, which boasts the tallest Mayan pyramid in the Yucatan, Nohoch Mul. We visited Tulum, the city by the sea, which boasts the “descending god” images that have delighted those interested in extraterrestrials and so-called “ancient astronauts.” We also visited a small area of ruins near Cancun called El Rey…

Read the rest!

Maybe everybody else already knew about this brilliant method of creating a new flower bed, but it was new to me last year, and my friend Lisa, gardener extraordinaire, said she hadn’t heard of it either. If you want to make a flower bed somewhere on your lawn, but you don’t have the time, energy, or inclination to dig up the grass, here’s a neat trick. Use a garden hose to outline the bed, then lay down a thick layer of newspaper (five or six sheets thick) right on top of the grass. Cover the newspaper with mulch. Lots of mulch. If you do this in the fall, by spring the grass will have rotted away underneath the newspaper, and voila, you’ve got your nice new bed ready for planting.

So claims Mrs. Greenthumbs, and I took her at her word. Except it was spring, not fall. Last spring, I wanted to extend the flowerbed that runs along my front walk. It was a boring rectangle, and I like curves. We had a lot of mulch leftover from another project and a mountain of newspapers in the to-be-recycled section of our garage. I followed Mrs. Greenthumbs’s instructions and turned that severe rectangular bed into a graceful double curve.

Of course then I had a funny-looking contrast between the empty new curves and the original bed full of spring flowers. On a whim, I bought a flat of moss roses (portulaca, my favorite flower) and planted them in the new mulch area on top of the newspaper. I just scraped away the mulch in places, made little pockets of potting soil above the newspaper, and stuck a plant in each pocket. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but it did. The moss roses spread all over the new section of the bed. I was thrilled.

Portulaca isn’t hardy here, so I planted bulbs in the new sections of the bed very late last fall. This year you can’t tell where the original bed ends and the additions begin. It has blended into one cohesive bed. I dug into the mulch and found that both the newspaper and the grass beneath it have indeed rotted away. It’s just a flowerbed now.

“Just” a flowerbed. Now there’s an understatement. The girls and I spent our morning painting (very bad) watercolor pictures of the hyacinths and anemones that are blooming between the withered stems of last summer’s moss roses. What a universe there is in that little crescent of land. Last year’s news is nourishing earthworms and windflowers, which in turn are nourishing the imaginations of small children. Not to mention their mother.

I’m a wimp in the cold. Much as I respect the Charlotte Mason “get out for a walk every day, no matter what the weather” principle, I don’t live by it. No well-bundled foul-weather treks for me, invigorating though they might be. The children are encouraged to get outside for fresh air every day, but if they want my company, they have to settle for the sofa, the fireside, and a good book. Preferably one full of heroic wilderness adventures in the elements.

But as soon as the weather begins to turn, oh, I’m there. Just try and keep me inside. Housework? Pah! The floors can take care of themselves. The kids and I have paths to tread, shoes to muddy, trees to meet.

In addition to field guides and the indispensible Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock, there are a few other books that leap off the shelves at me this time every year:

Wild Days by Karen Skidmore Rackliffe

Keeping a Nature Journal by Clare Walker Leslie and Charles E. Roth

Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots and Sunflower Houses by Sharon Lovejoy

Mrs. Greenthumbs by Cassandra Danz (for adults only)

Noah’s Garden and Planting Noah’s Garden by Sara Stein

Onward and Upward in the Garden by Katharine White (A collection of gardening essays by the wife of E.B. White).

These old friends keep us busy during the wet and chilly days of March. Come April, we’re outside living the adventure instead of reading about it. I am intrepid! I am daring! No breeze is too balmy, no creek too melodic, no backpack too full of snacks for this nature-loving mother.

That is, until the weather turns hot.