🌿 September in the Prescott Garden
Your Monthly Garden Keeping Summary from The Whiskey Porch

​Practical guidance for dry, demanding climates. Written from Zone 7, but useful anywhere gardening has gotten drier and harder.
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This month: mosquito season finally winding down, what's blooming right now, and a hard lesson learned about snails and my Salvia.
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🌿 August in the Prescott Garden
Your Monthly Garden Keeping Summary from The Whiskey Porch
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August celebrates the start of harvest season in Prescott’s high desert. With monsoon rains continuing, your garden should be in full summer mode - filled with produce, flowers, and growth. It’s a month to enjoy your garden’s bounty and prepare for the cooler months ahead.
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If you've got a garden that's more bare than planted, or an expansive back yard that's at the bottom of an impossibly steep hillside with no access, you already know that feeling of the gap between your dream landscape and the weedy reality you are looking at.

Maybe your older home feels awkward and dated and you've got a Pinterest board with picture perfect ideas that make you feel frustrated because there's no clear path to bringing that vision home.

Keep hold of that dream or that vision. But know that making small edits and efforts along the way, maybe a little bit every day, counts as progress. Give it time.

And each step feeds the creativity and energy for the next thing. Take those impromptu ideas and let the dream evolve. Enjoy the process and just start.

From this week's dispatch in Letters from The Whiskey Porch - a weekly letter on home, garden, and smaller, simpler, more beautiful living, written from a 1924 Craftsman bungalow in Prescott, Arizona.

[Read the full letter →] 50 Fridays over on Substack.

🌿 July in the Prescott Garden
Your Monthly Garden Keeping Summary from The Whiskey Porch
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​As July rolls in, Prescott settles into the heart of summer — a season defined by tending, timing, and watchfulness. With monsoons often arriving early, this month is less about big projects and more about daily presence: adjusting irrigation, watching for pests, and harvesting what your garden has to offer.

Tomorrow is summer solstice.  "Midsommar" in Sweden.  

​There’s something about the longest day of the year that brings so much joy.
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This week's letter over on Substack is a reflection on Midsommar, the Summer Solstice, and a few small ways to welcome the season with more beauty and less fuss.

Read it here:  A Simple, Peaceful Midsommar
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I hope you'll hop over there and say hello.

If you're looking for more inspiration, check out the other blog posts about Living with the Seasons here.

A man in a mask with a mosquito fogger at the garden gate was not exactly what I expected during a client call.

But it became the beginning of this week’s World Environment Day letter - a small reflection on the imperfect choices that help us care for the living world close to home.

Read the full letter: The Dragonflies Would Like a Word.

There’s something truly remarkable about herbs.

Long before herbs became little more than culinary ingredients tucked beside tomatoes in the garden, they were woven deeply into everyday life - valued for fragrance, beauty, tea, healing, ritual, pollinators, and household care.

Many herbs offer all of those things at once.

In this week’s Letter from The Whiskey Porch, I’m reflecting on the old wisdom of herbs and the countless ways they enrich a more sensory, grounded, and beautiful life - from lemon balm tea and rosemary shower bundles to lavender beside the bed and gardens alive with bees and fragrance.

This is less of a how-to garden post, and more of an inspirational story.
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The letter also explores some of my favorite herbs to grow for beauty, atmosphere, pollinators, and everyday rituals here in the high country of northern Arizona.

Read the full letter here:  The Old Wisdom of Herbs.

🌿 May in the Prescott Garden
Your Monthly Garden Keeping Summary from The Whiskey Porch

May brings a shift into full garden mode here in Prescott. With the final frost typically behind us, this is the time to start planting warm-season crops, prep irrigation, and set yourself up for the dry summer ahead. It's a month of steady progress and deepening color in the high desert.

📝 Full Checklist is on our Substack.  The Prescott Garden Keeping Journal – May Edition includes:

• 🌱 Plants & Planting
• 💦 Water
• 🦌 Critters
• ✂️ Maintenance
• 📝 Planning & Reflecting

👉 Get the full monthly checklists on Substack  Exclusively available to subscribers of Letters from the Porch on Substack.  Subscribing is FREE.
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I’m moving all of my seasonal content — including these monthly garden checklists and my more personal reflections on design, simple living, and the art of living well — over to Substack.

It’s a quieter, more intentional space where I can share practical tips, stories, and behind-the-scenes moments — all without ads or social media noise.  And, we can foster a more personal conversation there which feels more like sharing from the porch than broadcasting into the algorithm void.

It’s still completely FREE to follow along, and I’d love to welcome you there.

​🌿 Start here to learn more and subscribe
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It's really fun to put these checklists together.  It forces me to sit down and gather all of my usual to-dos in a more logical and organized setup - which helps me too.  And I'm getting great feedback from you all which really makes it all worthwhile!

Let me know if you think anything needs to be added to this list.

Until next time, happy planting!
~Miriam

At Letters from The Whiskey Porch, over on substack, The Spring Porch Invitation is now open.
April 15th - 24th, 2026.
​Become a member or upgrade now
Receive a handmade studio thank-you gift
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I just opened a small and very special invitation for readers who would like to step a little further onto the porch.

For a short time, readers who join Letters from The Whiskey Porch as annual Porch Companions or Studio Stewards receive a small handmade thank-you gift from my studio at Juniper Hill Cottage in Prescott, Arizona.

The Spring Porch Invitation is open through April 24.
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​You'll find all the details on membership benefits and access at the link below. 👇🏼
Join the conversation and be inspired.

Gardening has a way of nourishing more than just the plants we grow.


Over the years I’ve found that tending a garden - whether it’s a few pots on a balcony or a full backyard landscape - offers benefits that go far beyond aesthetics or food production. It’s one of the simplest ways to reconnect with nature, slow down, and engage in a creative, hands-on process.

In honor of National Gardening Day, I recently shared a short reflection on this topic in my Substack letter:  10 reasons gardening is good for the mind, body, and soul.
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You can find the post over on my substack:  How Tending a Garden Nourishes the Mind, Body, and Soul.