Thank you for the summary Cylvia! It is a helpful toolkit when you're feeling low. Every one of the strategies you mention brings one back! Following on to your description of the joys of your garden, I wonder if you've had a chance to read entomologist Doug Tallamy's book Nature's Best Hope.
His important and fascinating research can cause one to totally drink the kool-aid and try to become an insect farmer in one's yard and on public restoration projects. His message includes the concept that the importance of host plants, i.e. those that the insects can lay their eggs on and which the larvae can eat, is usually undervalued even by restoration teams and urban foresters. Plants and insects co-evolve in an arms race. Ergo, plants imported even from a state away may create a food desert for local insects and therefore birds, since these plants don't host the local insects. The exotic plants don't bring their own insect pests with them. This is a problem, considering the amount of land in private ownership and agriculture and the number of larvae and caterpillars that a typical chickadee nest, as an example, burns though in one day, about a thousand! Desires to import plants from elsewhere in the hope that they will survive climate change is an understandable goal, but Tallamy urges that we exhaust all possibilities of what is truly local. Right plant, right place! Holes in the leaves of our native plants are good news! In this way, we can pay nature back for what has been stolen from her with what she needs, which is hyperlocal native plants where ever they will still thrive in a warming climate, to provide plants for co-evolved insects larvae to eat, not only plants for the adults to drink nectar, since they are not the same plants. The Native Plant finder at National Wildlife Federation is a rudimentary guide to insect hosting, a good start. It has occurred to me that paying back nature for theft is embodies some similarities to contributing to the "Real Rent" program of the Duwamish Tribe, based on stolen culture and land! Thank you for the message and opportunity to share.
Sep 3, 2023·edited Sep 3, 2023Liked by Cylvia Hayes
Lovely prescription for a world that, quite often, seems too scary to handle. As you point out, even within the small confines of your home and garden, it is amazing how the whole ecology seems to applaud your efforts. We have 2 gardens, all quite small, but the birds and other fauna seem to abound in this space. No change is too small. We have to work together if we are to pull our magical world back from the brink we have driven it to. Thanks for sharing this post, Cylvia.
Thank you for the summary Cylvia! It is a helpful toolkit when you're feeling low. Every one of the strategies you mention brings one back! Following on to your description of the joys of your garden, I wonder if you've had a chance to read entomologist Doug Tallamy's book Nature's Best Hope.
His important and fascinating research can cause one to totally drink the kool-aid and try to become an insect farmer in one's yard and on public restoration projects. His message includes the concept that the importance of host plants, i.e. those that the insects can lay their eggs on and which the larvae can eat, is usually undervalued even by restoration teams and urban foresters. Plants and insects co-evolve in an arms race. Ergo, plants imported even from a state away may create a food desert for local insects and therefore birds, since these plants don't host the local insects. The exotic plants don't bring their own insect pests with them. This is a problem, considering the amount of land in private ownership and agriculture and the number of larvae and caterpillars that a typical chickadee nest, as an example, burns though in one day, about a thousand! Desires to import plants from elsewhere in the hope that they will survive climate change is an understandable goal, but Tallamy urges that we exhaust all possibilities of what is truly local. Right plant, right place! Holes in the leaves of our native plants are good news! In this way, we can pay nature back for what has been stolen from her with what she needs, which is hyperlocal native plants where ever they will still thrive in a warming climate, to provide plants for co-evolved insects larvae to eat, not only plants for the adults to drink nectar, since they are not the same plants. The Native Plant finder at National Wildlife Federation is a rudimentary guide to insect hosting, a good start. It has occurred to me that paying back nature for theft is embodies some similarities to contributing to the "Real Rent" program of the Duwamish Tribe, based on stolen culture and land! Thank you for the message and opportunity to share.
Lovely prescription for a world that, quite often, seems too scary to handle. As you point out, even within the small confines of your home and garden, it is amazing how the whole ecology seems to applaud your efforts. We have 2 gardens, all quite small, but the birds and other fauna seem to abound in this space. No change is too small. We have to work together if we are to pull our magical world back from the brink we have driven it to. Thanks for sharing this post, Cylvia.
Once again a beautiful article, and so well written👏💕👏
Thanks Cylvia for all the energy and time you put into creating this newsletter. I really appreciate it.
Marcia Mitchell