Armistice Day

Today’s blog post on Places of the Spirit.  https://placesofthespirit.blogspot.com/2018/11/veterans-day-and-armistice-day.html

Another ginkgo post

I posted about ginkgos (again) on Places of the Spirit, so am linking that post here.
I've included links to many of the past posts about ginkgos that I've made on this blog over the years -- ginkgos are such great tree with a wonderful story.

Nov. 15,  2016

This year, the small tree in front is much yellower already, more like last year, although there are still ginkgos in the neighborhood that are completely green.

Wildlife in the garden

I'm currently revising and updating a favorite presentation (Gardening for Nature/Gardening for Wildlife/Creating a Garden that's Full of Life) for the Blue Ridge Eco-Gardener program at the NC Arboretum.  Their course satisfies a Wildlife and Garden credit for their certificate program. 

I've always focused on encouraging habitat and plant diversity (especially natives) in urban, suburban, and rural gardens (large or small), with the goal of restoring as much ecological balance in our landscapes in all of the versions of this presentation I've done over the decades.

But having a class with a more general title (Wildlife in the Garden) is giving me a fresh opportunity to reframe the benefits of ecological balance and diversity in our gardens, for a group of participants who live in a diversity of places in Western North Carolina.  Some live on mountain ridges, others in the urban landscapes in the Asheville Basin, and yet others in the open agricultural landscapes near Hendersonville -- with lots of other sorts of places, too.

The landscape that you start with is an essential part of the mix, of course.  What's around the property?  Is it forest?  How "natural?"  Is there farmland nearby?  New subdivision?  Old subdivision?   Is the landscape conventional tree and lawn?  What kinds of shrubs and trees?  Ornamental? Native?  What are your neighbors growing?  Are there sources of water?  etc.  These situations influence all sorts of things:  from the kinds of wildlife you may be able to enjoy watching in your landscape to the ones that you may wish to discourage!

Some of the most sterile landscapes I've ever seen are gardens full of ornamental plants that offer little in the way of food or habitat -- no flowers producing nectar, no native plants with leaves that provide food for a variety of wildlife, no shrubs with edible berries, etc. 

Not my kind of garden, nor one that satisfies any goal of doing anything more than producing some CO2 (it's still better than concrete and stone!)

A paper wasp nest

 Watching a Carolina Wren and a Tufted Titmouse forage for the larvae in this paper wasp nest on the porch roof this afternoon pleased me.  We don't bother active nests (unless they're next to a frequently used door) as the wasps do beneficial work in the garden -- and otherwise don't interfere with our activities.  (Yellowjackets are another story).

location of paper wasp nest

I believe strongly that we need to recreate and strengthen the ecological frameworks of our landscapes, communities, and neighborhoods to keep our cities and towns healthy and vibrant places for humans and wildlife.  I've been following habitat loss since I was a young plant ecologist, teaching classes on People and the Environment and doing research. 

I became an advocate of gardening with native plants and encouraging people to be gardeners as an antidote to just being gloomy about the state of the natural world;  it seemed more helpful to encourage people to plant a diversity of native plants and grow their own vegetables than to keep lamenting about loss of habitat.   Two Natural Gardening posts that came up doing a label search for "sustainability" were telling.  I've been thinking about these things for a long time.  Here was one on Sustainable Gardening and another on Gardening as Stewardship. 

I could just as easily have written them today.

BearWise basics: co-existing peacefully with black bears.

I hadn't been aware until hearing a Backyard Bears program last Sunday how strongly the black bear population had rebounded in North Carolina;  this range map tells the story.

From a low of 1500-2000 bears in the 1970's, there are now close to 20,000 bears in our state.  So more bears and more people mean that we're more likely to interact, so we need to learn how to better co-exist responsibly. 

With an acorn failure at higher elevations in the mountains this summer,  many more bears than usual have been in spotted in urban Asheville, where I live, particularly in neighborhoods that don't usually see bears in the summer.  They're looking for food and being unfortunately "rewarded" by the easy pickings available in our trashcans, dumpsters, bird feeders, pet food bowls, and recycling containers.

Yes, they may also take advantage of the abundant acorns in the urban forest, or occasional fruit-bearing trees or shrubs, too, but the easy pickings are the unsecured "unnatural" foods.  Bears are adaptable and smart. But they're also normally shy and wary of people; we don't want them to lose their fear of people by becoming accustomed to unnatural human foods.

The neighborhoods in the mountains and more rural communities located in more typical bear habitat are used to bears and securing their trash, not so much in our central neighborhoods near downtown, where we normally might see just a few single males wandering through in spring or early summer.  (I wrote more about bear sightings this summer and fall on a previous post in Places of the Spirit.)

I was so impressed with the Bearwise program (and website) which the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission takes part in, that I'm planning to distribute their literature and outreach materials to some of my neighborhoods and include their recommendations in upcoming gardening for wildlife programs.

Black bears are NOT inherently dangerous to humans and black bear attacks are extremely rare, in spite of what you might "hear."  Black bears often walk through rural and suburban neighborhoods looking for food; ; if food and garbage are secured, they'll keep on going.  According to the BearWise site, bears that get unnatural foods may eventually lose their fear of people, which can be a risk to public safety.  Also, don't confuse grizzly bear behavior with black bear behavior.  They're quite different animals.

So, here are the BearWise basics:

I'm planning to learn a lot more about black bear ecology and their habitat requirements;  as a biologist, albeit a plant one,  I'm inherently interested in promoting living harmoniously with wildlife as much as possible.

The ecological framework of our planet is dependent on these interconnections, after all, and as  forests slowly came back across the Southeast (and the Eastern U.S., too), post widespread logging in the late 1800's and early 1900's,  and as abandoned farm fields turned back into forest, bear habitat came back as well, so their numbers have also come back.

More about black bear ecology to come!

Revisiting a visit to Linnaeus' house and garden in Uppsala

An online discussion of a plant name had me remembering a botanical pilgrimage from July 2017 to Uppsala, Sweden.

Here was my remembrance on my post this afternoon.

Linnaeus as a young man

Places of the Spirit

I’m largely posting now on my new blog site, Places of the Spirit, where I’m doing daily posts.

Please follow along if you’re so inclined.

https://placesofthespirit.blogspot.com/

Fun with drawing

A grocery store apple with interesting markings, and having watercolor pencils, notebook, and pen along, found me doing an apple sketch.  

I would have tried the distant mountains, which are interesting, but somehow not quite as inspiring.

https://placesofthespirit.blogspot.com/2018/10/a-grocery-store-apple.html

Being at home in the Southern Appalachians

It's been so nice to revisit posts that I've made in Natural Gardening over the last few weeks -- on fall color, favorite plants, preserving fall leaves, etc. 

I've been doing this on Places of the Spirit, my new blog, where I've committed to posting everyday for the next year.

yesterday's dogwood leaf drawing

And I'm planning to do a lot more of that reweaving of past posts with new ones in the year to come. So much of what creates a sense of place for me is the natural world, the gardens and natural areas that surround us, and where we are in the world.

I invite you to follow my new blog, too, if you've been following this one or are interested.  I'm finding that I'm doing similar posts, just on a slightly broader theme than strictly gardening and nature.

But I haven't abandoned gardening, either, so there will be more posts about those topics to come here as well, as we continue to develop our "new" garden in Quebec, and spend more time in our garden in the Southern Appalachians of Western North Carolina.

A pussy willow drawing

My last few posts on Places of the Spirit have been about doing some drawing at home -- along with a few sketches.  

It's nice to tip-toe back into drawing and watercolor - an aspiration for many years, but something that I just didn't do, unless I took a class of some sort. 

It's been fun.

After a quick partial clean-up of the front meadow, I thought, well why not a quick sketch, too.

Often taking just a little time to do something is all the encouragement that's needed.  A dried pussy willow stem was my sketch this afternoon.

Some thoughts about Vancouver a year ago

I was checking on seasonal posts from last October and was reminded that we'd just returned from Vancouver at this time last year.

Here are the thoughts I shared on Places of the Spirit.


And a reminder of the full moon view from Cambie Bridge.

View from Cambie Bridge

Time in Quebec

Thinking about the Northern Appalachians, a search here for "a house in Quebec" brought up so many good memories.

I've just written more about this on a post in Places of the Spirit:  Thinking about the Northern Appalachians.  It's a place that's compelling, as I think about visiting for a month or so this winter, and then returning in the summer and fall.

At the table in the living room

Many more monarchs

An abundance of monarchs deserves a repeat post, at least a link from here.  Our Asheville neighborhood is currently graced with multiple monarchs nectaring on Mexican sunflower, Buddleia, and Zinnia.

A nectaring monarch

My post in Places of the Spirit continues the story.

Back to gardening

This post, in Places of the Spirit, about gardening again, a plant mystery and raised beds to tend is pertinent here.

It started out as a reflection about gardening as a practice, but detoured into an investigation of apparently sorrel seedlings.

This link describes the mystery.

Warm days, presentations, and garden transformation

That's what I just wrote about in Places of the Spirit.  Our approach in transforming our "new" garden in Quebec is all about natural gardening, after all.

Clicking through the green link will bring you to that post.

Sightings of multiple monarchs

On our neighbor's butterfly bushes, we saw upwards of 20 monarchs nectaring over two days in a row.  How exciting!

Here was my post about it in Places of the Spirit, my new blog.