I just found this post in my drafts from July 2021. I no longer have this garden, now that I live outside Toronto. The plants and insects in that small space were the thing I loved most about that home. Here are, clockwise from top left, some aphids on cup plant; a hawkmoth visiting common milkweed flowers; a lady beetle on cup plant, again with aphids; a solitary bee on purple coneflower; a stink bug (I think) on giant hyssop; a small wasp on wild bergamot; a tiny solitary bee on Queen Ann’s Lace; a bumble bee queen on lavender; a gorgeous yellow fly on a milkweed leaf; tiny solitary bees on wild bergamot; some kind of beetle (perhaps a weevil) on a plant I can’t identify from the photo; a small beetle on marsh milkweed; and a lacewing on common milkweed.

I initially collected these photos for young Finn, who was worried about the decline of insects in the world. There is lots to worry about. But there is plenty of joy and wonder to be had from insects close to home nonetheless.

Spring is always a time of anticipation. I find myself checking on the growth of my plants many times a day, always astonished to find visible changes in the height of a common milkweed shoot (Asclepias syriaca) or the surprisingly scarlet first growth of dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum). My wild strawberries (Fragaria virginiana) are doing very well, and both redbuds (Cercis canadensis) are about to burst into flower. I’m particularly psyched about the many giant hyssops (Agastache nepetoides and A. foeniculum) that have taken hold. No plant got more bee visits last year than them.

Yesterday I saw a few Dunning’s miner bees (Andrena dunningi) making holes in the bare ground at the base of my burr oak (Quercus macrocarpa). I had never noticed these bees, let alone seen their nests, which look like ant holes. The bees are a bit smaller than a honey bee. In the photo to the left (below), you can see two bees: the fully visible one and also the head of another one poking out from a tunnel. The image on the top right is a new lupine (Lupinus perennis), with its gorgeous star-shaped first leaf. I have yet to succeed in growing a lupine beyond this early stage. Let’s hope for better luck this year. Under the lupine is a cluster of redbud flowers, and at the very bottom is a closeup of one of redbud’s main pollinators, the orchard mason bee (Osmia lignaria), though so far it seems to prefer visiting forget-me-not flowers (Myosotis scorpioides), one of the few non-native plants I am not actively trying to eradicate from the garden because it flowers abundantly in the early spring, when small bees and flies have few other options.

There’s been something new this year. Along with the usual movement of migratory birds–the most exciting of which is always hermit thrushes–I’ve been hearing a white-throated sparrow singing in the neighbourhood for a few days now. This is an instantly recognizable song for anyone who’s spent time in the Norther (see a version here, though this is rather different from the one I’m hearing); in fact I’ve always associated this song with canoe trips. I’ve never heard it in Toronto before. Who knows that it means, but I couldn’t help find it uplifting.