Yeah! Our first towhee! This garden is really starting to work. The towhee was particularly going after the red flowering currant berries. Red flowering currants are native here, and support lots o' insects (caterpillars & pollinators) and chickadees, wrens, sparrows, juncos, hummers, and towhees!
Plants feed insects feed birds: it’s about the right plants and the more of them the better. It doesn’t have to be random or messy looking. It can be a highly structured garden that pleases the person who likes straight lines. I am wowed again by the humming insect universe that arrives for yarrow.
Been reading "The New New Thing" by Michael Lewis. Of businessman Doerr he says "He'd once told me that he didn't understand why business journalists thought businessmen would tell them the truth... A good businessman was obliged to manipulate public opinion ..." Sound familiar?
Like birds? Want functioning ecosystems around us? Gotta embrace natural systems, starting in our gardens. anntiplady.com/green-worms-...
And feed him gruel. Nice smooth gruel, thin, but not too thin.
Drinking begets international camaraderie? anntiplady.com/message-in-a...
Brandon Taylor has a wonderful introduction to a new (Jane Austen) "Persuasion". His description of Sir Walter Elliot amuses " ... cranky, somewhat addled elderly relation whose ways cannot be reformed and must simply be humored until they are out of earshot ... " time.com/7302901/jane...
I focus instead on increasing general awareness. There will be a tipping point. The hard one is the acquaintance who knows what I'm doing, and asks my advice, but is inclined to dismiss it. I share some easy ideas, then let it go. Nobody wants to be lectured or bossed.
That's the thing, isn't it. Such much "buzz" about pollinators, and much less talk of supporting the insects that eat plants and fuel the whole ecosystem. But interest in pollinators can be the door into the conversation, right?
I happily tell people, when the moment is appropriate, that I've switched to gardening with almost 100% native plants, to support insects to support birds. (And my garden must be beautiful for that to have influence.) I'm wouldn't tell someone how they should garden, but model it instead. You?
This from almost a year ago. I question the value of keeping honey bees in a city, and question where the keepers think the nectar and pollen the hives need is supposed to come from. I plant to feed native bees, not someone else's livestock. Hmmph.
anntiplady.com/bees-the-goo...
Doug Tallamy is the best! I love his gentle, reassuring style. And the information he shares is top of the line.
A friend has a buddleia in his back garden. Someone asks what it is. He says it's a "butterfly bush, but I never see any butterflies on it."
I don't say, but it and others displace the native plants that would actually support the caterpillars that would actually become the missing butterflies.
This story about a dear friend was published in print last fall, and now here it is online! I love the artwork. www.boulevardmagazines.com/lifestyle/na...
A quick, fun introduction to the importance of reason. The "shadow puppets" are wonderful. Watch, learn, and enjoy! www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk7g...
photo of John Le Carre's novel The Constant Gardener showing front cover with flying bumblebees, next to two old books
Page 54: "...a [nation] lies dying at our door, and here we [are] drinking coffee ... while just down the road children starve, the sick die and crooked politicians bankrupt the nation that was tricked into electing them." Published 2001, today these words are jumping off the page at me.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Th... Being reminded of YouTube's start 20 years ago, I recall first seeing this in about 2008(?). I thought "what a force for good!" It's charming, it's catchy, it's funny - it makes you like humans more.
Recently had to login to IRS Direct Pay to pay our still owed 2024 taxes, and WOW, what an excellent website! This is clearly the work of dedicated civil servants over years. Very easy to use. Thank you to all the beleagured IRS workers!
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
I met one of these "little" people just recently, who had lost his crypto "investment". I held out my hands, wiggling my fingers to show "nothing here" saying "but crypto literally is nothing". He said "but the hype!" Trump Is Planning the Biggest Heist in History open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...
Trump Hates Canada for its Decency open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug... Because why?
www.dailykos.com/stories/2025... Employing Americans to feed starving people isn't wasteful. Killing the program is. Not just wasteful, it's cruel.
youtu.be/CVgNJf6CsBA?... This is a long talk, but terrific. I'm encouraged. I love "we rattle every single doorknob to see which ones get us somewhere." And over and over "learn your rights, know your rights!"
My relation (by marriage), Kalliopi Monoyios, is doing amazing art raising awareness of plastics, plastics, everywhere. I'm in awe. hopeintheplasticene.substack.com?r=33tr5&utm_...
We marched with 100,000 people 8 years ago. All agreed with this guy.
On Jan 21, 2017 one hundred thousand anti-Trump protesters filled the streets of Seattle, making a river of pink flowing south to north.
Eight years ago a river in pink flowed - that spirit continues today!
A photograph of the cover of the book Avid Reader, written by Robert Gottlieb. Cover shows photo of author as young editor at an office desk reaching for a telephone
Been reading Robert Gottlieb's "Avid Reader." He tells of his teenage self finding a moral compass: "My ... first reading of "Emma" . When Emma behaves so rudely to poor, harmless, talkative Miss Bates in the famous scene of the picnic, I was [mortified]" He was connecting reading with himself.
