Five Things for the First Week of June 2026

Flora Bidens alba, aka “beggarticks,” is a plant that can cause a controversy. Some argue it’s native. Some argue it’s introduced. Some say it’s a “weed” that needs to be removed. Others invite it into their yard because it’s edible and popular with pollinators.

I heard in a webinar that if you don’t already have it in your yard, don’t worry, it’ll find you. (Paraphrased, but close.) That’s because when it seeds, it seeds. It produces hundreds of sticky stick-shaped seeds that will travel with you wherever you go.

Personally, I was a huge fan of the plant before this weekend for a few reasons. (Like, a fan to the point that I want this plant to be my next tattoo.) Primarily, it’s a great plant for our pollinator friends because it provides nectar year-round, even when a lot of other plants aren’t in bloom. (It’s like a universal donor that way.)

It’s also edible. Now, your mileage on how much of this plant you choose to eat is entirely up to you (and given that it’s commonly found alongside highways, you might want to clean it), the fact that it’s a source of calories and vitamins for people as well as animals and insects can’t really be understated in this age of high food prices and shortages.

Fauna The Phaon Crescent (Phyciodes phaon) butterfly uses the fantastic groundcover plant Turkey Tangle Frogfruit (Phyla nodiflora) as its host plant. Since I cannot seem to get Phyla nodiflora to grow in my yard, despite my best efforts (I suspect I don’t have enough sun in the right places), I had given up on seeing Phaon Crescents in my yard. Imagine by excitement when I spotted one hanging out on my patch of Bidens alba! Apparently, one of their favorite nectar sources is the asters, including good ol’ Bidens alba.

These little butterflies are found in a lot of North America from Guatemala to California and through the southern U.S. over to Florida. While rarely seen in the Midwest, it’s commonly found in places as different as Cuba and South Carolina.

I’ve seen this butterfly before, but usually out in more disturbed parts of the Everglades, like around the South Florida Water Management mitigation areas or near parking lots for Parks Service centers.

Books I just finished the audiobook of Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. You can tell Vuong is a poet in the way he constructs sentences, paragraphs, chapters like poems you get to find the story within. The language is beautiful. The story is sad. Absolutely recommend with the caveat that there are a few instances of poetic, but graphic gay sex.

Friend of Timber Creek recently finished This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M. Homes. He describes it well in that ordinarily I also have no interest in a rich white man doing rich white man things, but Homes so quickly derails this character’s rich white man world and deposits him into a series of life-altering events that I just kept reading to find out what she’d do to him next.

I borrowed 9.5 Theses on Art and Class from a friend and I’ve been slowly making my way through it. It’s fascinating, but not exactly a light, evening read.

Art Speaking of said friend and art, she’s going to be my highlight for number four this week. Stephanie McMillian was once a cartoonist and now she’s aimed her art at nature and politics. Her Florida nature works with native and introduced species always make me happy. There’s a few of her works I’d be delighted to live inside.

Her political and class struggle works are a little less “happy trees” and more about how we get to the point of the happy trees again. I have this one in my bathroom and adore it.

McMillian is an absolute delight and her art graces a lot of the electrical boxes around the city of Fort Lauderdale. She’s also a resident in artist locally at the historical association.

Sign up for her zine or purchase some of her prints. If money’s tight, she has free coloring sheets available on her website. (Don’t resell them. That’s stealing and it’s naughty.)

Wild Card The Great Southeast Pollinator Census is coming the end of August to six states in the southeastern United States. If you’re in one of those states, please make plans to participate. If you’re in another region or country, please look into ways you can help pollinators in your area. Pollinators aren’t just bees and butterflies (moths do more pollinating than butterflies just in their family and native bees often look nothing like the honey bees everyone’s familiar with). Without our pollinator friends, we’d be in a ton of trouble and they are so threatened by all kinds of things like habitat loss, pesticides, herbicides, and just general misundersanding.