There is a lot of milkweed growing in my yard. I didn’t plant it there. Like a lot of plants growing around my house, the milkweed just showed up and I let it spread. It’s a pretty, sweet-smelling plant and, you know, saving the monarchs. In the years that the milkweed has been proliferating, though, monarch sightings have been rare, and I have never spied a monarch caterpillar—or chrysalis, or eggs. What this milkweed has managed to nurture is a thriving multicultural community of earwigs, ants, and slugs.
The slugs are only visible at night—and the sheer volume of slugs is like something out of a horror movie—but, by day, it’s quite clear that they’ve been feasting on pansies and violas in addition to the milkweed. And not only does the milkweed harbor the demon hordes of slugs, but it’s also crowding out poppies, snapdragons, nigella, and larkspur. So, I’ve been thinking about pulling it up—at least from the beds where I’m actually trying to grow flowers.
Then I watched Alexis Nikole Nelson’s video about milkweed cordial, and it encouraged me to harvest some milkweed flowers and make a fermented beverage instead of yanking the plants out by the roots.
I wasn’t just inspired to spare the milkweed by the idea that it could be useful to me in spite of the fact that my backyard isn’t swarming with butterflies. I was also inspired by some words she had to say about reciprocity. What I took away from her words is that we shouldn’t just think of plants in terms of what we get from them—which is obviously a lot. Instead, we should also consider what we can do for plants—and for me that also involves asking what a plant does for lifeforms that don’t happen to be us.
So… Earwigs are creepy as fuck, but no less deserving of life than I am. Also they eat aphids, I guess, for which I should be grateful. When slugs aren’t just totally devouring plants I am trying to grow, they are prodigious composters of dead matter and also food for birds, among other small creatures. And if milkweed is thriving where my flowers aren’t, there’s probably a lesson in that, too.
![Milkweed, milkweed blossom harvest, milkweed cordial fermenting](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F65b4a7e1-4922-4d6b-b0ce-2654e3a95a36_1252x1252.jpeg)
![Milkweed, milkweed blossom harvest, milkweed cordial fermenting](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff7c04a39-13ba-4cc3-8b36-2c20649b7db1_1450x1450.jpeg)
![Milkweed, milkweed blossom harvest, milkweed cordial fermenting](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7add0158-955b-4853-8759-39409de59adc_1457x1457.jpeg)
If you’ve read A Postmodern Witch’s Guide to Litha, you know why Nelson’s words about reciprocity caught my attention. While previous works in this series focused on tradition, the Litha guide is an interrogation of how earth-based religion might—should? must?—evolve in the face of climate change. In my essay about motherwort, I describe how my relationship with the land I’ve lived on for 20 years has changed. I expect I’ll be writing more about how this has changed my faith and my practice.
In the meantime, I’m encouraging us all to get to know our plant allies in a way that’s informed by respect, gratitude, and a spirit of community. Maybe this is how you work with plants already, but it’s something that I’m still learning. Paid subscribers will find a handy worksheet for getting to know a plant after the jump.
You could, of course, spend a lifetime getting to know a single plant. This worksheet is 2 pages. Obviously, this is just a starting point, but these 2 pages represent what I have found to be valuable in beginning to acquaint myself with the plants with whom I share space.
I hope that this worksheet is mostly self-explanatory, but I should probably point out that the empty space on the first page is for a drawing or photo of the plant you’re working with.
In designing this worksheet, I tried to leave room for you to record what matters most to you about the plant you’re learning about. If astrology is an important frame of reference for you, there’s room to work with that. If you’re most interested in how you can use this plant to work magic, there’s room for you to do that. I do hope, however, that you will take some time to learn what this plant means in the environment in which you are encountering it. We all have to live together.