Growing Wild

And this is why some of my carefully curated wildflower and nasturtium patch is not doing so well. The Groundhog babies have big appetites. I like seeing what they eat and what not, it helps with planning for future seasons. They do not touch peonies or catnip. I like that they eat Burdock, and I am also happy I buried the fence around my veggie garden, even though these guys even climb trees. They make me laugh, so there's that. (I know the angle is not perfect for their size, this is an experimental setup.)

This is a parasite that usually causes about 3000 cases of illness per year in the USA, Michigan currently has reported about 2900 (the confusion about “Michigan outbreak” is because Michigan is the first that caught an uptick in cases and has been very proactive about trying to trace them). Last official update from Massachusetts was 18 cases here centered in Greater Boston. The CDC recommends NOT assuming there are no sources of the parasite in your state even if no cases have been reported.

It isn’t an unknown illness but it is an unusual quantity of cases, and the fact that they haven’t been able to pin down the source after weeks of tracking is what makes it particularly concerning this year (harder to contain).

When I first found some triops by accident, back in 2010, they absolutely blew my mind. The next time I found a few, in 2018, I was excited to see them but they seemed less alien because I knew what they were. And since they lived in puddles quite close to home, I knew where to find them.

Triops eggs can dry up and lie dormant for extended periods, which allows them to live in the desert. They need good rain to hatch, and it takes two or three weeks for them to grow to adulthood. Their lifespan is 60-90 days in good conditions, but of course conditions don't always cooperate.

This year we had a nice monsoon, with steady rain starting in late June. I saw the first triops in Palominas at the beginning of August, and found this bunch a week or so later. I have never seen them laying eggs before, but that was clearly what they were doing as they made little dips in the mud by swishing their shrimp tails.

When I went looking for them at the end of the month, with a friend who was excited to see some triops, there were still good puddles but not a triops (or even a tadpole) to be found. At least I know they had a chance to lay eggs.

Y'all, I've managed to grow some peppers!

INCORRECT!!!!!

Gardening is always exciting! Every gardener i know gets HYPED AF whenever someone gets into gardening and gets to enjoy those first fruits! That "I did this!!!" feeling never goes away, you just get bolder and more confident in the kinds and amounts of things you attempt to grow! Once you get the gardening bug, it never goes away. You WILL find yourself feeling an actual physical craving for the smell of putting mix and green things and digging into the ground sometime later winter.

Seeing a deer fawn in an otherwise safe location and taking it to an animal rescue? You just kidnapped it and now it's likely to die from the stress of capture.

Feeding a feral cat colony without even working to TNR or capture and retame the kittens? You're encouraging a larger population of cats living a very hard life, while making them even more efficient at hunting song birds.

Feeding my goats pastries even though I've told you not to? You could seriously mess up their digestive system and I asked you not to! Now no one gets to see the goats because of you.

Feeding birds white bread and white rice? Please do not. It does not have the protein and other nutrients they need, and you can cause wing deformations if you keep it up.

What is Permaculture & The 12 Principles of Permaculture

a rare closeup of a black swift, found throughout north america and small parts of south america. swifts are rarely seen up close; they spend more of their life in air than any other species of bird - they eat, drink, mate and sleep while in flight. they are incapable of perching like other birds; they must cling to vertical surfaces.

but yeah, apparently completely true.  these birds stay aloft for as much as 10 months nonstop, feed on insects, spend more energy at night (when there aren’t warm thermals to ride) and at dawn and dusk climb to 10,000 ft altitude where the 30 min slow descent is probably when they catch their sleep.

they’re unusually long-lived for such active critters (20 yrs) and they may be limiting energy expenditure by being extremely aerodynamic and narrow bodied.  Also a single bird travels the distance of about 7 roundtrip journeys to the moon in its lifetime (>3 million miles).

Snake thoughts.

Greater Roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus), chick (fledgling), family Cuculidae, order Cuculiformes, Arizona, USA

So far I've noticed spiders really like making webs between them, and the birds like standing on them to hunt bugs in the garden. They're not the sturdiest on their own but once they're tied together & have plants on those ties they stand pretty firm

And an immediate benefit I was hoping for has paid off: the ability to easily drape a shade cloth over the beds for me and (if I can find some actually meant for plants) the beds on these 90F+ days

Saving these stalks to dry instead of tossing them out or into the compost meant that any overwintering pollinators like mason bees made it out, and now that they're cut to new openings and standing tall they'll provide extra housing for another year this winter

Image: The Taylor's Checkerspot butterfly. [source]

Habitat loss is one of the biggest driving factors towards its decline, because its habitat is Garry Oak Prairie, which is an endangered ecosystem due to fire suppression, agriculture, etc.

A significant part of the Taylor's Checkerspot population in Washington is centered around a big swathe of land that wasn't converted to other uses due to being a military base (Fort Lewis), which means that it's also potentially threatened by military exercises.

I believe the push to grow Milkweed for Monarchs took less effort because milkweed grows like a weed. Paintbrush is hemiparasitic: it connects to other plants' roots for extra nutrients/energy, but usually specific plants, like lupine and grass species. So one would need to grow those first, or sow their seeds and paintbrush seeds at the same time, and hope they connect. I suspect it would be rather difficult to make growing paintbrush a widespread thing over there.

Images: harsh paintbrush; golden paintbrush. Golden paintbrush is a threatened species. [Source] [Source]

But you know what ISN'T hard to propagate?

Plantain.

Images: the two most common species, common plantain and ribwort plantain [source] [source]

That's right, this incredibly common non-native plant that will grow in your lawn is the ONE other genus that these endangered butterflies will eat.

But lawns are not hospitable environments for baby caterpillars!!

If you have a pollinator garden within the range of this butterfly, consider including plantain. I don't know how much it will help; I don't know what the likelihood of them finding it is, and there are more threats than just loss of host plants.

But I was in the land of milkweed recently, and it was incredibly heartening to see the number of people who had allowed Milkweed to grow: even letting it grow in the middle of their otherwise manicured lawn.

- the reason why the caterpillars can use plantain is because plantains have the same iridoid glycosides as golden paintbrush!

- as with Monarchs and milkweed, the plants the caterpillars feed on are mildly poisonous (because of the iridoid glycosides) and the caterpillars use these compounds to make themselves mildly poisonous and taste bitter to prevent predation!

- Golden paintbrush in the South Puget Sound region has most successfully been grown using yarrow or Oregon Sunshine as host plants. When I show people this plant in real life, I point out that you almost always see them right next to either yarrow or Oregon Sunshine. Sometimes they use other plants, but they have the most success with those two species.

- Golden Paintbrush itself used to be federally endangered, but once they figured out the host plants, propagation efforts became very successful.

- You can buy golden paintbrush here:

- You can buy Oregon Sunshine and Yarrow seeds here, from the CNLM which is very involved in the efforts to save Taylor's Checkerspot and Golden Paintbrush:

- You can also get the seeds here:

- Both yarrow and Oregon Sunshine are tough, resilient plants that like full sun and well-drained soil. Do not make the soil rich and fertile like you would for non-native garden plants. Do not water once established. Do not plant them in shade. They are prairie plants, adapted to the conditions and soils of the prairies that developed on glacial till and have been maintained by the native peoples of this area.

- Taylor's Checkerspot butterflies are present in three prairies located in the south sound region that I know about, and I have personally seen them using narrow leaf plantain. These are areas south of Olympia. If you're between exit 95 and Fort Lewis in the Puget Lowlands, there's a lot of work going on around you to support these species.

- while considering these, also consider Viola adunca (a host plant to multiple other local struggling butterfly species) and local Lomatiums (support SO MANY native bee species)