quercus

The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation: Leave the Leaves!

Leaves are not litter

They're food and shelter for butterflies, beetles, bees, moths, and more. Tell friends and neighbors to just #leavetheleaves

Wild Ones: Lifetime Honorary Director Lorrie Otto (1919-2010)

Source with pictures of example soft landing gardens, plant lists tailored to the North American Eastern Temperate Forests can be found:

https://www.pollinatorsnativeplants.com/softlandings.html

Oaks are universally the top keystone trees that support moths and butterflies. Across the United States, more than 940 types of caterpillars feed on oaks (Quercus).

Top genera: Oak, Willow, Cherry, Pines, Poplar

Lepidoptera in image: Great oak dagger moth, Luna moth, Red-banded hairstreak, Eastern buck moth

Many of the moths and butterflies that feed on oak trees must complete their life cycles in the duff and leaf litter (i.e., soft landings) near or beneath the tree, or below ground.

Lepidoptera in image: Blinded sphinx moth, Juvenal's duskywing, Hog moth

Creating soft landings under the dripline of oaks (as well as any other tree) invites all kinds of beneficial insects to complete their life cycles in your yard.

A number of beneficial insects such as fireflies, bumble bees, beetles, and lacewings need soft landings to survive.

Lepidoptera in image: Edwards hairstreak, Skiff moth, Pink-striped oakworm

Planting intentional soft landings under keystone trees builds healthy soil, provides food for songbirds and pollinators, sequesters more carbon than turf grass, and reduces time spent mowing.

Other ways to support insects that spend a phase of their life cycle beneath trees include eliminating landscape fabric and decreasing mowing to reduce soil compaction.

DON'T FORGET TO LEAVE THE LEAVES UNDER YOUR TREES!

Over the centuries, physicians have placed migraine in various positions along the mind / body spectrum. Headache experts currently consider migraine a somatic disorder rooted in the brain. But this is a break from the past. Up until thirty years ago, doctors primarily viewed migraine as having both a psychological and a somatic basis. In what follows, I trace these historical understandings of migraine from the nineteenth-century understanding of migraine as a disorder of upper-class intellectuals, to the influential concept of the “migraine personality” in mid-twentieth-century America, and finally to contemporary theories of comorbidity.

[...]

I pay close attention to how, at each historical turn, biomedical discourses come to enact and reinforce cultural narratives about gender, class, and pain via the encoded inclusion of moral character. After all, the credibility and the legitimacy of a disorder — and how much we, as a society, choose to invest in its treatment — is intimately tied to how we perceive the moral character of the patient.

FreeSewing is open source software to generate bespoke sewing patterns, loved by home sewers and fashion entrepreneurs alike.

Mastodon instance: FreeSewing.social

Source: sarumomorchella on deviantart

Huffin' the flowers has been a huge stress relief here in the Southeastern USA Plains.

The shrub on the right is buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis). Flowers are: orange coneflower (Rudbeckia 'goldsturm'), sweet Joe-Pye (Eutrochium purpureum), anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum), pokeberry (Phytolacca americana), and catmint (Nepeta × faassenii).

Closer to the ground there's: wood sorrel (Oxalis sp.), three seeded mercury (Acalypha rhomboidea) and blue violets (Viola sororia). The empty space has wild stawberry (Fragaria virginiana) slowly creeping and a young little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium).

The image below shows the opening of the rain garden where the runoff enters. Plants are 4 - 5 inches max. Here there's: Virginia pepper (Lepidium virginicum), blue violet (Viola sororia), wood sorrel (Oxalis sp.), nimblewill (Muhlenbergia schreberi), prostrate spurge? (Euphorbia sp.).

Also seen: white clover, creeping cinquefoil, and Bermuda grass.

In short, this is a proposal for an abolition of compulsory work for all beings. It involves rewilding at least 75% of the Earth with guidance from local and Indigenous communities, and ensuring that the remainder of the planet “abolish[es] the wage system, and live[s] in harmony with the Earth” as proposed by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) (2021).

n her 2016 Edward W. Said lecture, Naomi Klein examines how Said's ideas of racial hierarchy, including Orientalism, have been the silent partners to climate change since the earliest days of the steam engine, continuing to present day decisions to let entire nations drown and others warm to lethal levels. The lecture looks at how Said’s bold universalist vision might form the basis for a response to climate change grounded in radical inclusion, belonging and restorative justice.

Ways of Seeing is a 1972 BBC four-part television series of 30-minute films created chiefly by writer John Berger and producer Mike Dibb. Berger's scripts were adapted into a book of the same name. The series and book criticize traditional Western cultural aesthetics by raising questions about hidden ideologies in visual images. The series is partially a response to Kenneth Clark's Civilisation series, which represents a more traditionalist view of the Western artistic and cultural canon.

CW: Around the 20 minute mark, footage of an execution is briefly shown.

Related essays can be found on ways-of-seeing.com

Join Iowa attorney and business professor Rosanne Plante as she explains what to do if the “Weed Police” knock on your door!

Most towns, cities, and other municipalities have weed ordinances (local law) concerning what is a weed, what is not defined as a weed in their jurisdiction, and what is allowed to be grown on the property of local citizens. How do you know if you are really in violation, or if your “flowers” just remind others of weeds?

Rosanne presents a handy checklist to use if you are ever accused of breaking a weed ordinance. Many times, citizens are not in violation at all, but can use the citation or threat of a citation as a teaching moment for local government officials.

As a past city attorney herself, Rosanne has extensive experience not only drafting city ordinances of all kinds but also prosecuting offenders. She truly knows what is needed to “prove up” a weed violation.

Download a Sample Native Planting Ordinance: https://wildones.org/resources/