Wild Flora's Wild Gardening: The Best Part of This Award is Passing It Along

The Best Part of This Award is Passing It Along

I WAS SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE of a (not entirely intentional) blogging holiday when I heard that Garden Blogger Extraordinaire Jodi DeLong had honored me with a blogging award. The Bloggers for Positive Global Change award was created at the beginning of July by some wonderful people who are writing about climate change over at Climate of Our Future. I can only hope that this "meme" is spreading widely.

One of the best things about this award is the opportunity to give it to up to five other bloggers. My choices are blogs that encourage greater appreciation of the natural world, inspire a more environmentally friendly way of life, and/or give good "how to" information on wildlife-friendly gardening:

Keri Dearborn's AnimalBytes gives delightful, fact-filled introductions to garden wildlife, especially invertebrates. Keri is a writer, poet, and urban naturalist who lives in the Los Angeles area.
Don and Benia Zouras's Native Suburbia is an account of their effort "to convert a typical suburban yard in Bartlett, Illinois into a native plant preserve." The blog includes many photos and an excellent list of resources.
In Pines Above Snow, Julie Dunlop makes superb recommendations of books about nature. I love her intelligent, thoughtful way of writing about two of my favorite topics.
Pocket Farm is the story of Liz and James's effort to live simply on a small farm in Maine. I find it informative and inspirational, and besides they have ducks. (In fact, I discovered their blog while looking for hints on how to take care of my own quackers.) I also like their spin-off blog, One Local Summer, in which participants are challenged to create one meal per week entirely from local foods throughout the summer.
In Suburban Wildlife Garden, Dawn, a bookseller in Austin, Texas, relates her efforts to create a wildlife-friendly garden. Dawn has assembled a particularly nice set of links.

I'm looking forward to seeing what blogs Keri, Don, Benia, Julie, Liz, James, and Dawn choose to recommend. Meanwhile, from the Climate of Our Future website, here is the background on how this award works:

It’s easy to participate in this meme. At minimum, you can proudly display the BPGC badge (it’s available in two varieties: Transparent GIF and JPEG with white background) on your blog and bask in the glow of our collective good will. If you are sharing the kudos, however, please make sure you pass this list of rules to the blogs you are tagging.

The participation rules are simple: 1. When you get tagged, write a post with links to up to 5 blogs that you think are trying to change the world in a positive way. 2. In your post, make sure you link back to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme. 3. Leave a comment or message for the bloggers you’re tagging, so they know they’re now part of the meme. 4. Optional: Proudly display the “Bloggers For Positive Global Change” award badge with a link to the post that you write up.

As for me, I'm happy to say that after a summer full of big life events and other suprises, I think I am probably back from vacation. After spending the last few days reading blogs from inspiring bloggers such as those listed above, how could I not?

2 comments:

Dawn said...: Dear Wild Flora,

Thank you very much for your kind words and for honoring me with the Bloggers for Positive Global Change Award. You are very thoughtful. It's good to meet kindred spirits who care about our planet. I have added your blog link to my site. It will be my pleasure to display the BPGC badge on my blog as well as nominate 5 more environmentally conscious blogs to this meme.

Thanks Again!
Dawn; August 25, 2007 at 5:01 PM
Wild Flora said...: This is posted on behalf of Julie Dunlop of Pines Above Snow, who had difficulty getting Google to accept her comment last night:

Hi Wild Flora,
Congratulations for your Bloggers for Positive Global Change Award, and thanks for passing it along to PinesAboveSnow. I am looking forward to getting to know the other blogs that you tagged as well as reading more of yours. It's great that so many bloggers are environmentally conscious, each working in a unique way toward a healthier planet. Now I just have to decide which of many good ones I know should get the tag from me. . . .

Thanks again, Julie; August 27, 2007 at 11:58 AM

About this blog and its owner

I’ve lived and gardened in Chicago and the Seattle area, and now I live on 250 acres in eastern Canada. Most of my life has been spent as a journalist and editor, but after moving to Seattle I took a detour and ended up designing and installing wildlife-friendly gardens. For a long (sorry) but (I think) funny essay about this experience, please click here.

In this blog, I try to combine my gardening experiences with journalism-type research to come up with items that I hope will be useful to you, the gardener who wants to be kind to wildlife. The blog will probably be most useful to people living in areas where I have some practical experience, namely the band of states and provinces that are on either side of the United States-Canada border.

Being self-employed, I go through spells when I’m self-unemployed and am able to post frequently, and spells when I’m involved in a project and not able to post. This site is a labor of love and, alas, like so many labors of love it often has to take a back seat to labors of lucre.

If you like what you find here, please consider joining the site as a member or adding it to your “follow” list. The modules for this are below.

Q&A

Question: I have a neat old elm tree in the front yard which is sorely afflicted with mistletoe. I don't know quite what to do with it, as every windstorm drops branches, bark and other parts down on the yard below. I know the infected wood will have to go, at least that is what I'm told, but a considerable amount of tree must be removed in the process. It is a dear tree, and I don't want it to come to fatal harm. What should I do? From Mary

Answer: Dear Mary, old is not ugly, dying is not bad, and dead is part of the natural order. At least if you're a tree.

Old, diseased trees, and the dead trees they eventually turn into, play just as important a role in an ecosystem as the young, healthy ones do--even more important because, thanks to the misguided practices of the past, dead and dying trees have become so rare. Holes in dead and dying trees are vital nesting spots for many birds and small mammals. Dead branches and other litter (which is not necessarily a sign of disease--healthy trees drop litter too), if left to decompose naturally, are also important for ecosystem health.

When working with old trees it's important to get advice from an arborist who understands their value and won't be in too much of a hurry to make drastic changes. Before hiring an arborist, I'd ask him or her to explain the ecological value of dead and dying trees. Ideally I'd want to work with an arborist who could show me examples of dead or dying trees he/she has left standing (aka snags).

I don't know much about mistletoe because I've never lived anywhere that it grows, but I wasn't surprised to read in the Wikipedia that it is an ecologically important species. All too often, valuable native species are classified as pests just because they don't fit preconceived notions of attractiveness. To me it sounds like a pretty cool plant and one I would be happy to have in my garden.

All in all, as long as the tree doesn't pose a hazard to people or property (the advice of a professional could be helpful in making this decision), I would leave it alone to live out its life in dignity and peace. If the tree does pose a hazard, I would look for an arborist who is willing to do the least amount of work necessary to remove the hazard, making every effort to leave as much of the tree as possible and not destroy its appearance.

With any luck you will find someone who appreciates the aesthetics of old trees--who recognizes the beauty, as well as the ecological importance, of big holes, broken limbs, and gnarly wood. (With any luck, we will all find people like this as we get older--but that's another story!)

I like to answer questions! Send me a question at wildflora at gmail dot com and I'll try to answer it. If you provide an email address, I usually respond privately within a few days. (If I forget, please forgive me and send me a reminder.)

Looking for a question and answer that appeared here previously? I am archiving them at my new website. Currently you'll find one question and answer about how to get rid of a multiflora rose and another about how to move a bumblebee nest.

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