Ellen Qualls

A 10 inch oval sign with colorful fallen leaves decorating the top and bottom and a friendly Park Service vibe font inviting people to help the bees, butterflies, and other beneficial insects by leaving the leaves.

I know there’s much greater tragedy in the world, but today is the day of the Great Spring Insect Apocalypse when 8 people wearing gas-powered leaf blowers on their backs sweep across my neighbor’s yard.

My @xercessociety.bsky.social “Leave the Leaves” sign is working hard for the chickadees. 🌱

Meta Plans to Add Facial Recognition Technology to Its Smart Glasses

Last 3 words 😎

“Facial recognition technology has long raised civil liberty and privacy concerns for its potential use by governments to monitor citizens and suppress dissent, by corporations to track unwitting customers or by creeps at bars.”

Fusion of Horizons: Democracy, Identity, and the Art of Holding Differences When we embrace universalism, when we invite those with different perspectives to engage in genuine dialogue, we forge a path toward a new, common future.

Thank you @ilyseh.bsky.social for deep thinking

Protest sign from MN that says, “DEARLY BELOVED. WE ARE GATHERED HERE TODAY TODISMANTLE THIS THING CALLED ICE.” with a picture of Prince in the left hand lower corner.

10/10 ICE protest sign

Oh hey @costasamaras.com —GRID NEW DEAL!

Children’s choir dressed in white coats with navy blue scarves

Lt Gov Hashmi in sea foam green and Gov Spanberger in all-white wave and smile at choir

Good vibes only in #Virginia today as children from the largest Muslim community center in the commonwealth sing “this land is your land, this land is my land” to first woman governor @abigailspanberger.com and first Muslim woman to win statewide office in US, Lt. Gov. @senatorhashmi.bsky.social

Big yellow Big Bird character dominates a photo of the float with orange Elmo and blue Grover on either side

ABC News headline “What $9B s spending cuts could mean for PBS, NPR stations, especially in rural areas”

American split screen this Thanksgiving:

Macy’s crowd goes wild for the Sesame Street float … while fewer children will get to see it as the evil dictator’s cuts to public stations hit home.

We all need Big Bird energy this year!

What's the deal with indoor air quality? Podcast Episode · Volts · 11/19/2025 · 1h 3m

We spend 90% of our time indoors, and unhealthy air is making us sicker and dumber than we need to be!

All humans who 🌬️breathe air 🌬️should listen to these great ideas.

Thanks for giving this topic some oxygen @volts.wtf and his guest Georgia Lagoudas of @pandemiccenter.bsky.social.

An underrated part of our misinformation problem: It's not just that we're awash in deliberate propaganda from ideologues and hacks. Huge, huge numbers of people are primarily getting their political news from morons. They're not deliberately lying; they just pull stuff out of their ass on stream.

From urban gardens to agrihoods: The rise of agricultural neighborhoods in Detroit | One Earth How The Michigan Urban Farming Initiative is using regenerative agriculture to improve food insecurity and community investment.

Saturday morning sunshine: Detroit has 1,400 urban gardens, growing food for communities ... and peppers for hot sauce!

Fun story on the rise of 🌱agrihoods🌱 from @bibathediva.bsky.social.

The world’s first trillionaire initiated a move that has left more than half a million people dead, most of whom are children.

Duh.

But @wired.com continues to understand the assignment! 🏆

Maybe dumping poop on voters from an airplane is not a surefire electoral strategy

Board - PerfectEarth The board of directors and bios of Perfect Earth Project, a nonprofit dedicated to toxic-free, nature-based gardening.

Ahh sorry! I guess the great Edwina Von Gal isn’t yet on BlueSky. She does this now.

perfectearthproject.org/board/

Totally 🪏digging🪏 this new 📺 series (yaasssss that was a garden 🌱pun). TY @rebeccalovesplants.bsky.social
@edwinagurl.bsky.social
for the personal and inspirational tours. #NativePlants #EcologicalGardening

If you don’t have any Northern Sea Oats near a window, get one in the ground or a container now! 🌱 They provide 365 days of zen.

Also the larval host for 3 Skipper butterflies and seed provider for birds and small mammals.

Your Prime Day reminder that Amazon...

-Provides cloud services that help fuel ICE's deportation machine
-Donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund
-Scrapped plans to display tariff costs after pressure from Trump
-Shelled out $40M for a documentary about Melania Trump

I love a good carved pumpkin, but if people spent 1/10 of what they spend on “seasonal decor” and “lawn maintenance” on planting and watering a few native 🌳shrubs and trees🍃, imagine the 🌱biodiversity paradise we’d live in.

The Quiet Shutdown Becomes Loud Appropriations rupture exposes the constitutional stakes

Clarity:

The one thing that should be in any budget deal to end the government shutdown should be ending the Trump administration’s illegal power grab of Congressionally mandated spending.

Any other deal is Congressional “suicide.”

In my first real year of identifying volunteer native plants that I won’t “weed,” this bushy 🌱 plant that I think is a Small White Aster grew and grew, and finally bloomed this past week with what must be 800 tiny flowers.

I just counted about 8 different species of pollinators 🦋. It’s rockin’!

Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware collects, develops, and tests particularly good-looking cultivars of useful plants to make sure they’re still useful to nature.

One of their standouts is Solidago sphacelata ‘Golden Fleece’. We planted these 2 years ago.

And all the 🐝 bumblebees say yasss. 🌱

There is so much in the news cycle these days that the complete dismantling of the Forest Service -- so *our* forests can be auctioned off to Big TImber -- is unfortunately getting little air play. But if this happens, US landscapes may be almost unrecognizable in a decade, and never coming back. 🌍

A 4“ x 2“ mushroom that looks like a coral or a human brain, a very light cream color. Growing among some brown fallen oak leaves on a hillside under a chestnut oak.

The internet suggests this is Sparassis spathulata growing under our giant Chestnut Oak. First time I’ve seen one here. 🌱

We knew the forest has a brain, but this is just showing off!

Source: ultimate-mushroom.com/edible/221-s...

They’ve come for the ice cream.

Also, we are all now left wondering what that flavor was going to be named.

Red and white warning sign tacked to pole: DANGER DUE TO and someone hand wrote “FIERCE RABBITS”

Uh oh

Always look up

#birds 🦅

DC Uber driver: It’s awfully quiet. Not many cars at all.

Me: Why?

Driver: Ain’t no federal workers no more. And no one coming here.
Feels like the pandemic.

Me: Maybe a political pandemic?

Driver: Ha, you could say that. He’s a mess.

This feels very Homer Simpson.

Climate change makes winter less cold. We use less natural gas to heat. So Washington Gas bills us more so we're not shocked by paying less. D'oh!

www.washingtongas.com/billing-and-...

'Ignorance' Is Most Pressing Issue Facing Ocean Conservation, Says Sylvia Earle The ocean conservationist on hope, and why, on the cusp of her 90th birthday, she keeps diving.

“‘Ignorance’ Is Most Pressing Issue Facing Ocean Conservation”

Baller ocean scientist Sylvia Earle blends snark, wisdom, and hope into a tight message about saving life on 🌎. 🌱

Jumbo screen on side of WGBH TV headquarters in Boston says “Local. Trusted. Defunded.”

Boston’s @wgbh.org — which launched the TV careers of Julia Child, Vincent Price, Bob Vila — today