I’ve seen very few Monarch butterflies so far this year, and each time I have it’s only been one at a time in the yard. Today, I finally found some eggs. Four eggs are now in their respective containers, and only time will tell how many more eggs I may find this year.
Continue reading “My 2021 attempt at Monarch Guardianship has begun”
“For nearly as long as they’ve been popular, lawns have served as a totem of middle-class vulgarity, conformity, and excess. In her landmark 1962 book Silent Spring, Rachel Carson denounced the wanton use of lawn pesticides. Carson’s contemporary, activist Lorrie Otto, condemned yards as ‘sterile’ and ‘flagrantly wasteful.’ Polemics as cutting as a mower’s blade have proliferated in the decades since, but lawns abide. Spivak and her team come not to bury them, but to adapt them to the insects vital to the entire ecosystem—and our food supply.”
— Tom Philpott,
“Your Perfect Green Lawn Is a Buzz Kill.”
Mother Jones, May 7, 2020
Continue reading “It’s time to change the standard for American lawns”
“If your plan is for one year, plant rice.
If your plan is for ten years, plant trees.
If your plan is for one hundred years, educate children.”
Today was the first day we’d hoped to start tackling the blackberry corner. Although it was predicted that there would be showers today, we had no idea how consistent they would be on this cooler March day. So I did my level best to work on other garden related things that needed tending. Continue reading “Rainy day research, bookmark sorting and other progress bits.”
Welcome to the first installment of Wild Wednesdays! This week I’ll be sharing info I’ve learned about the Northern highbush blueberry Vaccinium corymbosum. It’s the first berry plant we bought for our garden back in 2017. Continue reading “Wild Wednesdays: Northern highbush blueberry”
“A bumblebee can only fly for about 40 minutes between feeding. But we’ve lost 97% of our wildflower meadows. So please plant at least one nectar-rich flower in your garden or community this year. Your one flower could be the pit stop that saves a bee”
~ Little Green Spaces Tweet Continue reading “Save a bee–plant a bee pit stop”
It took me a while before I started to feel like the conspiracy board meme guy, but all through this week ants just keep showing up in my life. Continue reading “I see you shiver with ant…”
One of the ideas I’ve been mulling over this winter is how to help promote the use of native plants in folks’ gardens. The hardest part of that for me is knowing more about the native plants here in Gardner, MA. That is what the hold up was when I first thought up the notion a few years ago. How could I ever find the time to research them weekly? Continue reading “Wild Wednesdays: a new series on plants native to my area”
“Our children don’t inherit the land from us,
we borrow it from them.”
–Native American Proverb
