Butterflies Need Us

As we humans continue to monopolize the geography for our own shopping needs, we keep plundering the shopping needs of other species. Monarch and other butterly species need native plants to sustain them in both their migratory journeys and their reproductive activities. We can help support them by growing plants in our gardens which provide them with nectar for adult food and leaves for caterpillar munching. Monarch Watch has a website that shows how to be a help to butterflies which happen past your own yard. Plant some native species this year and help keep the butterflies fluttering by !

Monarch Watch

Winter Doldrums

A week of rain and fog, the Vikings lose a chance at the Super Bowl, and another week of subzero wind-chills...welcome to Minnesota in January ! With all the melting the past week, we still have snow covering the ground, due to the heavy snows we had in December. I'll be ordering a few seeds soon, and then some stratifying. Enjoying other people's blog posts, and dreaming of germination temperatures. And watching Lily the Black Bear, as she continues to hibernate with the one cub she gave birth to in the past few days. Check out her live cam here at the North American Bear Center...http://www.bear.org/website/ And take a look at some of the videos on the site also, there is some amazing footage of the researcher interacting with bears at close range !

Introducing Nature Art

My nephew, Jim Rataczak, is a fantastic Nature Artist, outdoor lover, wildlife biologist, family man, and all-around great guy ! It's cool to know that he is able to paint birds and scenes from nature professionally. I still have to hold down a "9 to 5" (sort of) to keep me able to garden the native plants I enjoy. Take a look at his work on his website here.

North American Pollinators in Decline

A study by the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, released in 2006, shows populations of pollinators in North America declining for various reasons. A link to the brief of the report is here. Another reason to plant gardens with native plants is to provide native pollinators with more of the food and habitat that only native plants can provide. Here's a shot of a local bee enjoying a little sustenance on a Missouri Evening Primrose bloom in my front yard.

Assisted Living for Plants

Your Grandma or your parents may be in an assisted living residence, now scientists are working to assist plants in finding new homes as the planet continues to heat. Global warming will continue to dislocate whole communities of plants as higher temperatures make their present environment inhospitable to their gene pools which evolved in a cooler time. Scientists at The Chicago Botanic Garden are making a valiant effort collecting seeds from different populations of prairie species with the intent to preserve the species and possibly even assist the movement of communities of species to more suitable environments. Historically, plant species were able to make pilgrimages even across large distances in the event of climate changes, but only because those changes happened at a very slow rate. The current human-induced forcing of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is happening at an unprecedented rate, the effects of which many plant species may be unable to outrun. The effort to help plant species migrate in the face of climate change is not without debate; some scientists fear the unintended release of invasive plant species, which take over new habitats, reducing native biodiversity in their wake. Read the whole article here.

Don't Kill the Messenger

From "Grist", an article about how human psychology affects the reception of the message about climate change...and how to best deliver the message, without being put away.
Climate Psychology

And for possibly the best one volume book on the science of climate change, see "The Weather Makers", by Tim Flannery. Also, Flannery discussing his latest book, "Now Or Never", on MN Public Radio on Nov. 3, 2009.

Finally, possibly one of the most effective things a person can do to reduce their carbon footprint; stop eating animals ! See Jonathan Safron Foer's interview with Ellen Degeneres about his new book.

Don't think that Climate Change is really happening? Or that it's not human induced? It's time for you to present your science on why not...what facts are you basing your decision on? Are they tested facts? Have they been peer-reviewed? Are they demonstrable and repeatable? Because this is how real science works. Facts. Data. Repetiton. Peer-Review. If your story doesn't have these, it's probably not science.

Finally, why am I blabbing about climate change on this quaint little blog about native plants? Because it is one of the most important (yes, in my opinion) issues affecting our families in the human history of the planet. I wish that people would try to educate themselves on this topic from a scientific, not political point of view. Find out what the vast majority of scientists think about the issue. Take off the blinders of cultural and political denial. It's happening, and we're doing it, and it will bite us all hard if we don't do something different.

The Carbon Cycle

Carbon flows through the environments of Earth, always has, always will. But how much? The amounts that humans continue to add with all our combustion for energy use are not only intensifying the heat increasing "Greenhouse Effect", but are also causing ocean waters to become more acidic, to the harm of all oceanic creatures, great and small. Watch the new short film, "Acid Test", by the Natural Resources Defense Council, to see what's happening and how we might choose to be kinder to ourselves in the near and longer term future.

Acid Test

And pass it along !