#nature #lichen

#OscarWilde

#gardening

#Rumi

#AlanWatts

Credit: Survival Bushcraft "Your fence posts are rotting because nobody taught you to burn them first. What most people treat with pressure-impregnated chemicals, creosote, and toxic preservatives that leach into surrounding soil for decades was solved permanently by Japanese and British hedgerow builders using nothing but a controlled fire applied to the below-ground timber section before installation. Meet Sunken Fence Post Charring. Japanese Yakisugi timber charring documentation and British hedgerow management records both confirm post-charring as standard installation practice for centuries — carbonized timber in wet ground lasting forty to sixty years without any preservative treatment. While modern pressure-treated timber leaches arsenic, copper, and chromium compounds into surrounding soil continuously from the day of installation, a charred post surface is completely chemically inert and contaminates nothing it touches. The particular sharp, clean smell of a fence post section burning in a controlled fire on a dry autumn morning — the surface carbonizing to a dense black crust while the structural timber beneath remains completely undamaged — is a craft memory almost no working fencer under fifty carries anymore. Hold the below-ground section of any wooden post in a controlled fire until a solid quarter-inch carbon crust forms across the entire surface, allow it to cool completely, then install directly into wet ground."

#gardening #mantiseggcase

#AlanWatts

#gardening

#nature #Pigeon

#gardening

#funny

"Healing isn't about someone else showing up for you; it's about you not disappearing. When you feel something and don't abandon yourself, the wound begins to close. Unconditional love and loyalty of the Self are the antidote to self-abandonment." J. Mike Fields Artwork by Catrin Welz-Stein

#ThomasSowell

#funny

Credit: Guardians of Nature (Facebook) Those white silk tents in the forks of your cherry and apple trees appeared this week. They're full of caterpillars. And your first instinct is wrong. Eastern Tent Caterpillars are native. They've been in North America for as long as the trees have. They appear every March in silken communal tents built in the crotches of fruit trees — wild cherry, apple, crabapple. The tents are conspicuous and alarming. Dozens of hairy caterpillars streaming out of a white web looks like an infestation. It's not. It's a food delivery system for every nesting bird in your yard. A single tent colony contains forty to three hundred caterpillars. Each one is a calorie-dense, soft-bodied, slow-moving protein packet. Chickadees, titmice, orioles, cuckoos, and at least twenty other species feed on tent caterpillars during the critical nesting period when they need the most protein. Black-billed and Yellow-billed Cuckoos are among the few birds that eat hairy caterpillars — and tent caterpillar outbreaks are what trigger cuckoo nesting in an area. No caterpillars, no cuckoos. The trees survive. A healthy cherry or apple tree can lose most of its leaves to tent caterpillars in spring and fully releaf by June. The damage looks dramatic in April and is invisible by July. Spraying kills the caterpillars — and eliminates the primary food source for birds that are feeding nestlings right now. 🌿 This week: - If you see silk tents in cherry, apple, or crabapple trees, leave them alone — the birds will find them within days - If you absolutely must remove a tent, do it by hand at dawn (caterpillars are inside the tent before sunrise) and relocate the branch to a wild area - Do not spray Bt or any pesticide on tent caterpillars — Bt kills all caterpillar species, including monarchs and luna moths - The tents dissolve on their own by mid-May The silky mess in your fruit tree is the grocery delivery your nesting birds ordered. It arrives every March. Let it. 🌿 #TentCaterpillars #NativeCaterpillars #BirdFood