Renkl thinks about the eastern hardwood forests of America, which are “now all but entirely gone” (67). European diseases and destructive human behavior have wiped out many of the oldest forests in the US. With them, many of the local animal populations that evolved to live in such forests are now dwindling. Renkl worries about selling her family home, since “the next owner will [likely] tear it down” (68) to build a new house, just as the old forests were removed. She thinks about elderly relatives who have passed away, reminding her of her own mortality. The world has changed, she knows, but it’s still beautiful. This is the tragedy of people like her, she suggests: The “beauty-besotted will find a reason to love the world” (70).

In “Praise Song for the Maple Tree’s First Green,” Renkl thinks about the poetry of Robert Frost. His lines, though beautiful, seemed strange to a young girl from Alabama, but as she grew up, she learned that “nothing gold can stay” (71), as Frost suggested.

Stickwilly is a plant that is “nearly universal across the temperate world” (73). Naturalists know it as Galium aparine, but most people know it by one of hundreds of localized naming variants. Serviceberry is common, too, and likewise has many names. Renkl embraces these “old-timey plants” (75). She thinks the names people give wildflowers “tell you who they are” (75).

Renkl remembers contracting COVID. She became sick and, while recovering, endlessly scrolled through the bad news. By the time she recovered, “springtime had come to Tennessee” (77). While the TV and the internet may be rife with pessimism, Renkl finds optimism in the spring. She appreciates the “natural world’s perfect indifference” (78) and its ability to cure her anxieties. Rather than sitting indoors and worrying, she would rather explore the world outside and remember “how it feels to be part of something larger, something timeless” (79).

The trees begin to flower, and Renkl thinks about her favorite flowers. Many of her favorites are wildflowers; she criticizes the American preference for carefully mown lawns and heavy pesticide use. She dismisses lawns as “a status symbol invented by the English nobility” (82); they don’t provide habitat or food for wildlife. She and her husband are preparing to help their two youngest sons move out of the family home. The death of the natural world forms a difficult mirror for this change, but Renkl resolves to appreciate the flowers and the rebirth of spring.

In “Praise Song for the Killdeer on the School Softball Field,” Renkl recalls teaching her students about literature. They were “city kids in a secular school” (85), so she taught them about religion and nature for the first time. The entire class visited a killdeer nesting on the school softball field as an example of how nature works.

Renkl remembers the toads and frogs that existed throughout Alabama. They seemed to be everywhere, and she recalls the sounds they made each night. She recalls how, when she was a girl growing up in Alabama in the 1970s, she and her sibling were “half feral” (88). They explored independently and loved the toads. They caught tadpoles, and the tadpoles grew into toads. As the toads grew bigger, they fed them bigger and bigger creatures. They began to feed crickets to the toads, and the crickets started breeding, until they had “a self-contained cricket-replenishing, toad-growing system” (90). Eventually, the toads escaped, scaring Renkl’s mother, and they had to release them into the wild.

Renkl doesn’t see many toads anymore and misses them. One day, she and her son decided to create a “haven for tadpoles” (92) to encourage frogs to come into their yard. She doesn’t know whether it’ll work. Like so much in this current age, she feels her faith challenged. Her faith, however, often feels like “the very last thing” (92) she has.

“Praise Song for the Alien in the Shade Garden” briefly describes an alien landing on a “hospitable planet.” Warmth and light will call it, Renkl says, until it finds a place where it belongs.

Tennessee’s Lost Cove is “one of the most biodiverse tracts of land” (95) in the US. During the COVID pandemic, Renkl and her husband, Haywood, often visited their friend’s cabin in Lost Cove to be alone, giving their sons space away from their parents. The area now experiences regular droughts that threaten the abundance of wildlife. Determined to snap a picture of a pileated woodpecker to send to her friend (the owner of the cabin), Renkl searched for the bird for days. When she finally spotted it, however, her phone stayed in her pocket. She may not have gotten the photo, but she enjoyed a special moment with nature: Walking back to the cabin, she heard a group of whitetail deer galloping through the trees beside her.

In this chapter, Renkl recalls various points in her life during which rodents played an important role. In 1971, her family moved into a new house, and while exploring one night, she found a pregnant mouse in the cracker box. In 1973, her neighbors had a guinea pig that lived under their dishwasher. In 1976, she encouraged a squirrel to eat nuts from her hand. Eventually, however, she ran out of nuts, and the squirrel was “[her] friend no longer” (102). In 1980, while away at college, she pined for her animals, so she bought a feeder mouse and kept it in her dorm. In 1987, she visited a friend’s cabin with Haywood and, during the night, she saw a pair of rats in the bedroom. In 2000, the children’s babysitter accidentally dropped a gerbil into the hamster’s tank. The animals fought and, at that moment, Renkl resolved to never again “keep a creature in a cage” (104).

In “Praise Song for the Redbird Who Has Lost His Crest and the Skink Who Has Lost His Tail,” Renkl reflects on the skink, which regrows its tail, and the redbird, which molts its feathers. Renkl believes that “renewal is a costly effort, exhausting and uncomfortable” (105), but is an essential part of spring.

While walking her dog, Renkl encountered a full-grown bobcat. She froze in disbelief as it ran away. It uses, she says, creeks and covered streets that create “a wildlife corridor through the heart of Nashville” (109) to survive in the suburban world. Renkl has never seen the bobcat again, though other people have. It seems to be thriving, though the area has fewer rabbits.

The return of spring means that birds are gathering in Renkl’s yard. A pair of bluebirds lives in a nest box; they laid six eggs, but only one chick remains. Renkl doesn’t know what happened to the other eggs, but suggests that this is what it means to observe the natural world, to never know “the full arc” (112) of any particular story. She does, however, know what happened to the remaining chick. Quite by accident, she killed it. Noticing that it had fallen from the nest, she tried to put it back in the nest before a cat reached it. However, it leapt again, falling to its death.

As a child, Renkl often played in graveyards. Children haven’t yet learned that such places are “hallowed ground” (115), she notes. This time of year often reminds her of death, particularly because of the recent anniversary of her father-in-law’s passing. Like many of Haywood’s family, he’s buried on a barrier island on the Georgia coast. The island was a de facto wildlife sanctuary for years, until the first bridge was built and vacationers changed the island. When the time came to lay her father-in-law’s ashes to rest, Renkl thought about death and renewal. She thought about the people buried beneath the oldest, unknown gravestones. These kinships, she writes, are now “lost to time” (118).

In “Praise Song for Solomon’s Seal,” Renkl writes about how the stalks and leaves of this plant are the “perfect embodiment of springtime” (119). Seeing the plant reminds her of the Song of Solomon from the Bible.

In 1986, Renkl recalls, she planted her first garden. She was proud of herself and desperate to surround herself with nature. Her mother was a passionate gardener, but Renkl wanted to move away from her mother’s liberal use of pesticides and chemicals. Her plans, however, changed from month to month in response to what thrived in her garden.

Most of all, she wanted to make her garden a place for monarch butterflies to convene, since they’re under threat. However, nothing she did seemed to encourage them. She let her garden grow and mature, and eventually found a single female monarch laying eggs on her milkweed. Five days later, caterpillars were leaving “pinprick-sized holes in the leaves” (124).

In “Praise Song for All the Beginnings,” Renkl recalls her mother’s death. She remembers taking “soft white hair” (125) from her mother’s hairbrush and leaving it outside, where a chickadee claimed it to make a nest.

Driving south in springtime can be, Renkl says, “like speeding up time” (127) due to the dramatic change in scenery and climate. Renkl remembers traveling south for a funeral and visiting the house where she grew up in Alabama. During the eulogy, she wondered how she ever allowed herself to “become so busy” (129). She thought about her mother’s final days and her own limited time. She recalls a holly fern, which her mother dug up just before her death with the intention of replanting it. Finding the fern, Renkl completed the task. She still has the fern.

In “Praise Song for the Baby Chickadees,” Renkl writes about the Carolina chickadees that raised four chicks in her yard. One day, the chicks were all gone. She regrets missing their maiden flight, but “only a little” (131).