Hortulus Animae llc

05/07/2026

5/7/26 9:05AM
Morning garden…

05/05/2026

The night air is warming at the gate house…

04/27/2026

This evening on Hearts Content Road:
Community - friendship - art - creativity - nature - inspiration - great food - hope!





✨🪾🪨🕯️🫐✨

04/27/2026

Today on Hearts Content Road

04/27/2026

04/16/2026

“All flourishing is mutual.” — Robin Wall Kimmerer

Serviceberry (Amelanchier arborea) is one of the quiet anchors of my Catskills landscape. It blooms now, just as winter loosens its grip—feeding early bees, signaling the season’s shift, and soon after, offering fruit to birds, bears, and anyone paying attention.

A small tree with outsized generosity: delightful early season flowers, nectar for pollinators, berries for wildlife, and over a hundred species of caterpillars that in turn sustain songbirds. A whole web held together in a single plant.

Sometimes called serviceberry or shadbush, its ethereal bloom marks the shad fish river run season—and, legend has it, the thawing ground for burial services.

04/06/2026

One of my favorite harbingers of spring: Skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) is a fascinating, prehistoric-era plant known for generating its own heat (thermogenesis) to melt snow, often reaching 70∘𝐹 to attract pollinators in February. It produces a pungent odor similar to rotting flesh or skunk to attract flies for pollination and can live for decades, perhaps even centuries.

04/05/2026

🥚👁🧜🏻‍♀️🍓🌳
etinarcadiaego

03/24/2026

This herbaceous border is about to enter into it’s second year…
Can barely wait to see this cut back and new growth emerge…
̇gn

03/12/2026

Wild garlic, Allium vineale

Exquisite detailed line drawing by Ippy Patterson
From My Weeds - a Gardener’s Botany, by Sara B. Stein

Elevating the mundane to the divine