Episode 13: The Engagement Calendar — And How to Build a Relationship with Nature This Year

What are you already in the middle of? This week, I spent a day away from my birds and realized something: the relationships that matter aren't the ones we're trying to build from scratch in January—they're the ones we've already been living and forgot to notice.

In this episode, I talk about:

Why missing one day with my backyard birds felt like breaking a promise I didn't know I'd made

The difference between "planting natives to save pollinators" and creating conditions for life to return when it's ready

How belonging is harder to sell than saving—but why it's what actually sustains us

Why wildlife gardening isn't about decorating a space, but entering a relationship

The worn path to my feeder and what it taught me about staying with something long enough to become part of the pattern

If you're tired of New Year's pressure to add more, do more, be more—this episode is about recognizing what you're already part of and choosing to stay with it.

What's the tiny ritual that starts your day? What rhythm, when you broke it, made you feel a little lost?

Those are the things worth returning to in 2026.

Not because they're new. Because they're true.

Related links:

Episode 12: Goal-Setting Theater vs. Nature's Quiet Rehearsal

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Follow along on Instagram: @flutterbymeadows

Episode 12 | Goal-Setting Theater vs. Nature’s Quiet Rehearsal:

January doesn’t ask for reinvention. It asks for patience.

Maybe what January is really asking is not what you’ll become, but what you notice while you’re becoming it.

January often arrives with a false starting line — resolutions, reinvention, and pressure to begin again. But nature keeps a different rhythm.

This episode is not about:

- resolutions

- productivity

- self-improvementIt is about learning to read the season you’re in.

In Episode 12, I reflect on moonlight and unfinished darkness, winter birds pairing up, and an unplanned New Year’s Day walk on a windswept New Jersey beach. No goals. No lifers. Just noticing. Because maybe January isn’t for becoming someone new—it’s for paying attention to what’s already unfolding.

This is a bonus episode — a seasonal aside that begins with a fallen mailbox and ends somewhere else entirely.

It’s not about ecology in the traditional sense, but about systems, interdependence, and how removing one small, seemingly insignificant piece can cause everything around it to wobble.

And a quiet thank-you to our mail carriers, who show up day after day — in wind, rain, heat, and cold — keeping so many small systems moving along, often unnoticed.

I hope you and yours are having a joyous and celebratory holiday season, filled with peace and reflection.

See you in 2026, everyone — and thank you, as always, for listening.

As if the mailbox saga wasn’t enough, we also drove over a present in the garage too (that’s a whole other story…).

Consider this your reminder that perfection is not required this time of year.

A winter storm turns a Monday upside down — narrowed roads, canceled plans, and an unexpected quiet that only snow can bring.

This episode is part reflection on the meaningful space between intention and outcome, and part short story involving a hawk in the woods she went searching for.

In Curveballs & Snowballs, Samantha reflects on presence over productivity, inspired by slower mornings, birding on a cold December day, and Japanese planner systems.

A reminder that life’s detours aren’t interruptions, but invitations to pause, listen, and let the moment be enough. And to always leave a little space in the margin.

Have you ever started a big project—decluttering your home, planting a garden for wildlife—and hit a wall halfway through? The initial burst of energy fizzles, and suddenly momentum feels impossible.

Decluttering and rewilding share something in common: both ask us to overhaul something. Minimalism isn’t about stark white walls and one coffee mug—it’s about keeping what truly serves you and letting go of the rest. Planting for pollinators isn’t about transforming your yard into a prairie overnight—it’s about noticing what supports life and planting with intention.

In this episode we’ll talk about these 3 core themes:

* Noticing what matters

* Letting go of what doesn’t

* And building a life — and a garden — that feels like it actually serves a purpose

A cleared drawer can ripple into a calmer room. One tiny native plant can spark curiosity that spreads across the season. Noticing what matters, letting go of what doesn’t, and tending your space with care—that’s where real momentum starts.

Start small. Pause. Notice. And trust that these tiny, thoughtful choices are building a life—and a landscape—you’ll be grateful for tomorrow.

Ruby-throated hummingbird sound courtesy of:Patrick Turgeon, XC139834. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/139834.

LicenseCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0

This week, Samantha reflects on the surprising wisdom hidden in the chaotic, mesmerizing murmations of European starlings. Just like these birds move through the sky without a set path — tightening, expanding, shifting in response to unseen forces — our lives often unfold in the same swirling, unpredictable way.

Between winter heaviness, endless notification fatigue, and the emotional load of parenting (hello, SSAT season), the days can feel messy and directionless. But starlings return to two reliable anchor points every day: dawn and dusk, departure and roost. Samantha explores how we can find our own anchors — the routines, rituals, and moments that keep us grounded when life feels overwhelming.

Along the way, she shares the unexpected beauty of a lone starling in her yard, the history of how these birds arrived in America, and why looking up at the sky has always helped humans find their way.

Listen if you’re craving:Calm in chaos • winter grounding • sky medicine • nature as metaphor • a deep breath

Audio Credits:Common Starling call courtesy of: Sonothèque ADVL, XC934628. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/934628.

License: Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 1.0

November has a way of turning every day into an improvised obstacle course. You start the morning with a plan—simple, linear, achievable. And then suddenly you’re vaulting over school emails, leaping around rescheduled appointments, and dodging the relentless notifications that somehow always arrive at the exact wrong moment.

It’s not just busy. It’s parkour.The untrained, mildly chaotic kind.

And yet—this is also the time of year when nature is quietly doing its own kind of parkour, too. The squirrels in our yard have reached peak acrobat mode, launching themselves across branches like tiny woodland stunt doubles. They’re quick, nimble, determined…and absolutely forgetful.

Researchers estimate that squirrels forget a significant portion of the nuts they bury—little pockets of intention scattered everywhere. But here’s the surprising part: the things they lose end up becoming the forests we later walk through. Their forgetfulness turns into renewal. Their misplaced acorns become maples and oaks. Their “oops” moments become canopy.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that.

Because every November, I find myself misplacing things—keys, earbuds, my sense of time, sometimes my entire train of thought. Just trying not to do a face plant into the holidays.

Every day our phones send us tiny digital bells. There are pings and reminders intended to grab our attention at any given moment. They pile up sometimes, and just as quickly, get swiped away. The notification bells of our lives are often a nuisance.

Seen…gone. Noticed? Not really.

Episode 7 of The Flutter By Effect dives into a strange little truth I’ve been wrestling with: notifications were originally designed to help us know things. It’s the very origin of the word. But somewhere along the way, we traded knowing for reacting. We traded awareness for urgency. We see it. But do we notice it?

We’re living in a world where our devices constantly ask us to pay attention, yet we’re becoming less able to actually notice anything at all. We want to stay informed, but we’re drowning in so many “important” things that everything starts to blur together. The reflex to swipe away what we “don’t have time for” might be slowly training our brains to notice…less.

Perhaps the rapid swiping and dismissal of the notifications is re-calibrating our brain to stop noticing at all.

And noticing — really noticing — is where you find presence and maybe something you’ve been overlooking. In my garden, the counterweight to this is always the same:one bird, one moment, one pause long enough to take it all in.

Episode 7 is a little love letter to that pause, guided by a red-breasted nuthatch that stole my heart.To the tiny gap between seeing and noticing.To reclaiming attention in a season where everything feels urgent.

And if you want the full expanded essay version — the deeper dive into definitions, attention, and the little moments that grounded me this week — it’ll be up on the blog tomorrow.

Lastly, many thanks to my neighbor Kim for the notification you sent me that night. For without it, this episode would not have be scripted!

With gratitude,Samantha

Audio Credits:Red-breasted nuthatch call courtesy of: Ross Gallardy, XC344953. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/344953.

License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0