You Belong Among the Wildflowers

A Lazy Girl’s Love Letter to Messy Beauty, Motherhood, and the Music That Made Her

Last spring, I found myself in my first trimester of pregnancy—fatigued, cranky, and absolutely hating my scruffy, patchy front garden. I’d mow every other week in the summer and loathed the task. I wasn’t beautifying—I was just keeping ugly at bay. I wanted a pretty yard, but I didn’t want to do much work.

My favorite song as a kid was “Wildflowers” by Tom Petty, my first love. One of my earliest memories is a hazy, magical night when I was just four years old, watching him live in concert—his music bigger than anything I’d ever felt. His music’s blend of truth, freedom, love, Americana, and raw authenticity has spoken to me in every season of life. An old friend once told me, “Your life is a Tom Petty song,” and I took it as the highest compliment—because that’s exactly how I’ve always wanted to live: wide open, honest, and unafraid to run down my own damn dream.

“Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, 1977,” via Wikimedia Commons

I got to see him again at Mountain Jam in New York, just months before he passed—a gift from my now-husband that I’ll never forget. It was my first music festival—three days of camping, mountain views, barefoot kids, and music that felt like medicine. I’d always assumed festivals were all glow sticks, party drugs, and brain-numbing beats, but this was something else entirely. I remember standing in that crowd, soaking it all in, knowing I was witnessing something eternal. Petty’s spirit still lingers, whispering through every highway, heartbreak, and honest moment.

Mountain Jam 2017: One American Girl, two PBRs, a legendary festival, and a backdrop of plastic thrones. Rock and roll never looked so glamorous.

Petty’s words, “You belong with your love on your arm,” whispered through that bare patch of earth, and I pictured myself nursing a new baby and reveling in a riot of poppies, daisies, black-eyed Susans—whatever could grow with minimal interference. Something wild and free to remind me that even as I stepped into motherhood, I didn’t have to disappear. “You belong somewhere you feel free.”

That’s how I ended up following what I now call the Lazy Girl Method—equal parts intention, surrender, and just enough effort to get something magical started.

I wasn’t about to dig up my front yard by hand (remember, lazy). Step one? Rent a rototiller. My mom objected (“You’re going to chop up the worms! Tilling is bad for the soil!”)—and while I respected her Master Gardener status, I lovingly ignored her advice. I made my Home Depot reservation for a Saturday morning and then did what any respectable Lazy Girl would do: handed the machine to my husband and said, “Go forth and till.”

If you’ve never used a rototiller, just know—it’s basically a blender for the earth. It churns the topsoil into soft, loose dirt, breaking up grass and years of compaction. It’s loud, messy, and incredibly effective. My husband spent an hour or two wrestling the machine while I supervised from the porch with a cup of decaf (CO₂-processed, not chemically decaffeinated, of course!), fully committed to the Lazy Girl role.

Once the yard was tilled and the soil fluffed like cake batter, I brought out my wildflower seed mix that I bought online. I used a blend of native wildflowers—both annuals and perennials—chosen for drought resistance. (I am not an affiliate of this company, but I think their packaging is lovely and their seeds are excellent!)

My mom, despite her judgments, came over to help. I didn’t overthink spacing or rows. I simply walked across the dirt, scattering seeds like a flower fairy. California poppies, cosmos, coneflowers, yarrow, coreopsis—they all went in. My mom gently raked them into the soil behind me.

The most poetic part? I planted them during the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. There was something witchy and wonderful about that moment. As the sky dimmed, I rested my hand on my belly, and thought: This is good magic. I imagined the seeds taking root with intention, growing into a small oasis of peace for our home, our baby, and whatever chaos the future might bring. “You deserve the deepest of cover. You belong in that home by and by.”

Photo taken by my husband on our three-year “houseiversary”

I watered the seeded soil gently, and then, instead of straw or store-bought mulch, I used what I already had: the piles of leaves left over from the previous fall, mostly from the giant silver maple that shades our front yard. My mom and I gathered armfuls and scattered them gently over the damp soil—just enough to keep birds from stealing the seeds and the wind from carrying them off. Decomposing leaves make perfectly good (if slightly smelly) mulch. Messy? Yes. Free and nourishing? Also yes.

And then… I did pretty much nothing. That was the best part. I didn’t water religiously. I didn’t fertilize. I waited. Occasionally, I’d yank out something truly monstrous-looking (I drew the line at six-foot thistles), but otherwise, I let the wildflowers do what they do best—thrive on benign neglect.

And thrive, they did! One of our poppies, battling it out with a dandelion, yet growing and blooming in the crack of our neighbor’s sidewalk.

By summer, green shoots began to rise—not all at once, not evenly—but slowly, patches of color emerged. Cosmos danced in the breeze. Poppies unfurled like tissue paper. Bees showed up. The landscape, once a dry patch of unsightly weeds, looked and felt alive.

July 28, 2024, in my wildflower meadow: Beer belly got benched for a baby bump!

Now, a year later, the only maintenance is weeding every couple weeks and watering on the days it doesn’t rain (which, let’s be honest, means my husband does it). I don’t mow. I don’t fertilize. I don’t trim or edge or panic about bare spots. The perennials returned confidently. The annuals reseeded with a casual, effortless grace. The poppies are in full bloom—bright red like little Spanish dancers. The bachelor buttons are prolific and blue . . . and there is, fittingly, baby’s breath, an annual that did not come up last year! My little meadow hums with life: butterflies drifting through, honeybees at work pollinating the flowers, songbirds tugging worms from the earth and fluttering off just in time for the neighborhood cats to prowl in, seeking shade in the afternoons. Every time I see my wildflowers, I think of that eclipse and how planting with no control and no perfection led to something unexpectedly whole.

This meadow wasn’t just about aesthetics. It was an act of trust. I planted it not just for a prettier yard but for the home I was building in every sense of the word—for our child, our love, and our joy.

Our son may be small, but he’s already obsessed with the wildflowers. When my husband goes out to weed, he straps our son to his chest and gets to work, thinking he can multitask. But the second he looks down or turns to yank a dandelion, our little guy is on the attack—tiny fist grabbing a poppy or clump of yarrow and yanking with glee. Sometimes he manages to get a fistful of petals into his mouth before we can stop him, looking way too pleased with himself. The garden may be wild, but our son is wilder. “I have seen no other who compares with you.”

So if you’re overwhelmed and craving something alive in your space—plant a meadow. Rent the tiller. Scatter the seeds. Use your old leaves. Trust nature to do the rest. The Lazy Girl Method works. And if you can time it with a solar event? Even better.

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Read about my childhood in my mom’s hilarious memoir about a lot of things wild and woolly (including children). Available on Amazon.