How to Tell Time with Your Garden (And Not a Watch)

Is it possible to tell time with your garden? Apparently, birds and plants can tell us what time of day it is! When we recorded this episode, I was in my third trimester, so sometimes I would be up at 2 AM whether I liked it or not. Which was how I found out that the birds in my Florida backyard start up around 4! For a while, I'd check my phone to see how close we were to sunrise. Now I learned to listen. That's the idea behind The Fullness of Time by Cathy Haynes. It's a book I read about how to tell time without a clock, instead using birdsong, blooms, shadows, and stars. It touched the gardener in my soul, and I knew I needed to have Cathy on the podcast to talk about all of the different ways our ancestors kept time in their gardens and in nature. Come learn with me!

In this episode, we learn:

[02:07] Meet Cathy Haynes!

[03:12] What is The Fullness of Time book about?

[04:05] The evening primrose in her London backyard that started all of this!

[05:55] How does gardening change your sense of time?

[07:17] How did ordinary people tell time before clocks?

[09:26] Cock crow, midnight spirits, and what each part of the day means!

[11:42] Reading a clock vs. actually sensing time

[12:20] What is the ornithological clock (how to tell time through birds)?

[15:24] Espoma Organic

[17:00] Learning to pick out the individual singers in the dawn chorus