The San Francisco chef Heidi Swanson occasionally posts a list of articles that have caught her eye, on her blog 101 Cookbooks.

While I continue to prepare the upcoming In the Weeds podcast, I thought I might offer something similar, a little path of reflection dotted with links.

This time of year, one’s thoughts inevitably turn to growing things.

Though I continue to be bothered by how few native plants I see in cities and suburban gardens, there are some beloved ones I’m happy to greet in the spring, including viola sororia (aka “the lesbian flower” or the common blue violet). Here’s my advice: encourage your violets; don’t weed them out.

On a trip to Washington DC last week, I was struck by the strange flowering habits of the Eastern redbud. I wasn’t sad to have missed the cherry blossoms as these spring delights were just as lovely.

Gardening-wise, I’ve been thinking about the virtues of neglect (as per a recent opinion piece in the New York Times) and I’m excited about the new movement to create Pollinator Pathways that takes up Sara Stein’s idea of corridors for wildlife.

It’s also the season for the last season of Game of Thrones. As we prepare ourselves for zombie battle (let’s hope it will be mercifully short – there’s only so much zombie one can take), I can’t help thinking about the parallels with climate change and the ways in which we sublimate our fears about the future of our Earth in popular culture.