More of My Favorite Bloggers' Favorite Blogs

The following is a continuation of yesterday's post about blogs recommended by my favorite bloggers. All the blogs I've chosen to list appear to be updated frequently, are more than 50% about nature or natural gardening, and appeal to me for one reason or another.

I HIT PAYDIRT AT POLLINATORS WELCOME. Gloria's thorough research turned up the following great nature and wildlife-gardening-related blogs:

• Ramblings of a Naturalist features the photos and observations of Patrick Roper of Sedlescombe, East Sussex. Much to my delight, Patrick also has anoother blog about the wildlife that visit his windowbox and yet another blog about his observations of a single square meter in and around his garden. (These confirm my long-held belief that it is possible to be a wildlife-friendly gardener no matter how small your garden is.)
• Sweet Pea Chronicle is about the efforts of "Firefly," a Maine gardener, to create a wildlife-friendly garden.
• The Regent's Park Wildlife Garden is about a community-run wildlife garden in the famous London park.
• Maryland's Windstar Wildlife Institute has a blog that seems to focus on wildlife-friendly gardening.
• The Ojai Garden features a natural community garden in Ojai, California.
• Green My Planet is by San Francisco enviromental consultant and landscape consultant Jennifer Berry.
• Community of the Land is one of the places where professional writer and wildscaping consultant Susan J. Tweit blogs.
• Natural Gardening is by "LKW" of upstate South Carolina.
• Chicago Nature Lady paints watercolors and observes nature in and around you-know where.

Gloria also gives a nod to The Blog of Henry David Thoreau, Burning Silo (2 votes each so far), and Monarch's Nature Blog (up to 4!)

Meanwhile, over at Surburban Wildlife Garden, Dawn is the only one of my favorite bloggers who noticed that Don and Lillian Stokes, authors of the ubiquitous bird books, have a blog. Also, though it's not precisely a blog, I'm grateful to this tireless investigator for discovering that GardenWeb has a forum dedicated to wildlife-friendly gardening.

In Toronto, Native Plant Girl recommends the blog of Southern Ontario native-plant gardenener Garden Nerd. And though it's not a blog, I'm grateful to NPG for pointing out that the popular You Grow Girl website has a forum devoted to discussion of gardening with native plants.

And closer to home, Bloomingwriter Jodi DeLong recommends:

• The blog for Blithewold, a 33-acre public garden-arboretum on Narragansett Bay in Bristol, RI. I like all the items about garden wildlife.
• Ontario's Crafty Gardener, with hand-made items for birds.
• Flatbush Gardener, "Adventures in Neo-Victorian, Wild, Shade, Organic and Native Plant Gardening, Garden Design, and Garden Restoration."
• Greenbow, the blog of Lisa, a gardener and bird lover in Indiana.

Finally, sustainable gardening writer Susan Harris maintains a lightly annotated list of blogs at her website. One of these days I'll check them out, for but for now I'm going to content myself with getting to know the blogs already listed.

My Favorite Bloggers' Favorite Blogs

NOW THAT I'VE LISTED my own favorite blogs, a comment left by "PCrucifer," a newbie blogger over at Peepers Pondering , got me interested in what these bloggers are reading. PCrucifer, for example, recommends the following links that I also thought were pretty cool:

• Wiggly Wigglers, run by Karen Dowell, who works for a mail-order business based on a farm in Herefordshire, England. It's just as cute as it sounds.
• Monarch's Nature Blog belongs to a naturalist, field biologist, and nature photographer in Western New York.
• Urban Dragon Hunter is about observing dragonflies in Southeastern Michigan.

And what about the ever-thoughtful and ever-reliable Julie Dunlop, over at Pines Above Snow? Here's another vote for Monarch's Nature Blog. Also:

• A DC Birding Blog seems have a lot of good information about birds, and not just in DC.
• Julie Zickefoose writes about trying to live the good life on 80 acres of Appalachian woodland.
• The Blog of Henry David Thoreau features the Best Blogger Ever, only of course they didn't have blogs when he was around. If you're familiar only with Walden, this is a great way to read Thoreau's journals.

From Bug Girl's Blog, we get:

• Burning Silo, with lovely nature photography.
• Another vote for Monarch's Nature Blog (that makes 3 so far).
• Endangered Ugly Things ("Sure they're not cute, but they're at least as important as your fuzzy thing.")
• The Invasive Species Weblog.

Bug Girl also gives us (none too surprisingly) these fascinating insect-related blogs:

• The Backyard Arthropod Project: Nature watching in a back yard in Michigan.
• Bug Dreams: Gorgeous photography.
• Bugs for Thugs: I'm running out of ways to say "this is a blog about entomology." (Bug lovers--they're irrepressible.) But it is.
• Songs of Insects is about the singing insects of North America. (How can you not love this one?)

Incidentally, I'm not passing on every blog recommended by my recommended bloggers. If a quick check of recent posts revealed that the blog hadn't been updated in at least a couple of months, it doesn't make the cut. I also eliminate blogs that seemed to be more than 50% about topics other than nature or either wildlife-friendly or natural gardening. And finally, I'm not including a blog unless something in it caught my interest.

More tomorrow, if the storm that's coming our way doesn't blot out the satellite dish.

A Few of My Favorite Blogs

I HAVEN'T DONE ENOUGH -- couldn't possibly do enough -- to thank the fellow bloggers who have made blogging such an enjoyable experience during the past year. Here are a few of my favorites, classified (roughly) according to the types of topics they usually write about:

Conventional gardening

I confess that I don't often read blogs about gardening as it's usually practiced. However, a few such blogs are such standouts that they attract my attention even when I'm trying to focus on blogs that are supposed to be closer to my own interests.

One such blog is Bloomingwriter, by my friend Jodi DeLong. Jodi is a fine writer and photographer, and so passionate about her topic that she can get you carried away with the glories of a new plant even when you're weakly protesting (as I often do), "but ... it ... isn't ... naaaaaa .... tiiiiiiive."

Garden Rant, which has a slightly subversive attitude toward gardening (e.g. "Bored with perfect magazine gardens"), belongs to several garden writers--one of whom, Susan Harris, frequently writes about the issues that interest me: sustainable gardening, wildlife-friendly gardening, and native-plant gardening.

Nature watching

This Week At Hilton Pond is a naturalist's account of his observations at the Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History in York, SC. The weekly reports typically tackle a specific topic (a recent one was all about saw-whet owls); they are information-filled and always include wonderful photographs.

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.

In Bootstrap Analysis, "Nuthatch" writes about birds and other wildlife, books, and does occasional reviews of scientific literature on topics of interest to wildlife-friendly gardeners.

Wildlife

Written by several people, 10,000 Birds seems to be emerging as the pre-eminent blog for bird lovers and bird watchers. The volume of posts can be overwhelming, and if you're not a bird watcher you probably won't be interested in many of them. But quite frequently one of the authors will devote an entire post to a single topic that is of interest to wildlife-friendly gardeners (an example was a recent post on milkweeds).

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.

Bug Girl's Blog is by an entomology PhD who is also a frequent guest blogger at Skepchick.

Wildlife-friendly gardening

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.

Hope Kuniholm has described her habitat garden at her website. This isn't precisely a blog, but I include it because it's a great example of an attractive habitat garden in a relatively small space. Hope gardens in New York State.

Frogpond is about Australian gardener Jo's you-know-what. I love the photos and hope she will keep updating it.

Gloria, a Chicago-area gardener, is developing an excellent blog about her wildlife-friendly garden, Pollinators Welcome. I particularly like how fact-filled many of her posts are. For instance, a recent post is all about leaf-cutter bees.

Native-plant gardening

See Native Plant Girl for "news and resources for Toronto [and other] native plant geeks, gardeners and stewards." With tons of great links.

Wildlife Gardening and Deer

Above is a photo of a black-tailed deer that was munching on fireweed a few feet away from my living room window in Redmond, WA, a few years back. I found that native plants did not attract deer to anything like the extent that my neighbors' exotic ornamentals did. When deer did eat my natives (like this fireweed), the plants grew back quickly and were not seriously damaged.

"Few events in the history of North American wildlife have been so remarkable, so unexpected, and so provocative of conflict as the rise of suburban deer," writes Richard Nelson in his wonderful book Heart and Blood: Living With Deer in America. Famously referred to as "rats with antlers" by writer John McPhee, suburban deer have sadly helped to turn many gardeners against wildlife and wildlife-friendly gardening.

Yet there's an irony here, because it is humans who have caused deer populations to explode in areas of human habitation. You see, deer like the same kind of environment we do: A few wooded areas but lots of open ones; an abundance of well-fertilized, well-watered plants (decorative to us, tasty to them); and a complete absence of predators. When we provide them with their ideal environment, quite naturally they breed. Some suburban areas in the United States are now trying to cope with deer populations that can be as high as 250 animals per square mile. Killing or removing the animals has no long-term effect, because they simply repopulate.

So naturally there are conflicts. Yet oddly enough, suburban gardeners seem to assume that nature is to blame for the deer problem, instead of looking a little closer to home.

Why wildlife corridors

I started thinking about this today after reading a post at the Garden Rant website, in which Susan Harris discussed a lecture by Doug Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens. According to Harris, Tallamy makes the case for native-plant and wildlife-friendly gardening in a way that many conventional gardeners have been able to accept and understand.

But in describing Tallamy's lecture, she happened to mention that he recommends what are called wildlife corridors. These are plantings of trees and shrubs, which can be anywhere from a few to many feet wide depending on how much room you have, that join one natural area to another.

Say, for example, that you've put a wetland garden near your house, to collect rainwater from your roof. Half an acre away, just outside your property line, is a greenbelt. A wildlife-friendly way to design your property would be to plant a corridor of shrubs, trees, and wildflowers, preferably native, stretching from the greenbelt to your mini-wetland. This allows the wildlife using the greenbelt, including frogs and salamanders, to reach your little wetland. You get to enjoy the new wildlife, and they have a small addition to their habitat area.

No, they don't attract deer

Wildlife corridors are recommended by just about everyone who writes on wildlife-friendly gardening. But in comments on Harris's post, several gardeners complained that wildlife corridors would only bring more deer into their gardens.

So this is my 2 cents on that: The deer are going to be in your garden anyway. As long as the suburbs remain an almost perfect environment for deer, there will be lots of deer around. And as long as you plant things that deer like to eat, the deer will come to the table for the meal you've put out. Being a lot larger than most other suburban wildlife, deer do not need special wildlife corridors in order to move around. And being practically without predators, they have nothing to fear from coming out into the open.

If gardeners refuse to put in wildlife corridors, however, it's the smaller creatures--especially birds and amphibians--that will suffer. These are the creatures that are finding it increasingly difficult to live in suburban landscapes. They are the ones that need protection from predators--especially the domestic cats that are a feature of most suburban landscapes. Amphibians in particular, being slow moving (thus more vulnerable to predators) and with porous skins that must be kept constantly moist, are dependent on corridors in order to move from place to place.

Refusing to plant wildlife corridors will have no effect on your deer problem, if you have one. And oh, by the way, if you're looking for someone to blame for the deer in your garden, find a mirror.

PS: Purely by coincidence, I am about to go down to a supper of venison, courtesy of a local hunter. Here's my recipe for slow-cooked venison roast.

The trackback URL for Susan Harris's post on the Tallamy lecture is http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/854423/23874574

For the Bird Lover on Your List

MANY THANKS TO MIKE BERGIN, who founded the birding blog 10,000 Birds, for recommending what surely will be the most requested Christmas book of the year, at least among bird lovers. See his review here.

Appreciating Insect Damage

The illustration above is courtesy of Dover Publications. I believe these are sphinx moths and their larvae, one of which is shown munching on a leaf. Caterpillars eat leaves in order to survive and grow up to their adult forms. Without insect damage, no caterpillers, no butterflies and moths.

Right now I can look out the window at a vast expanse of snow, which arrived far earlier this year than it ordinarily does. But on the Internet, something is always in bloom! In my files I found this link to an August entry from one of my favorite online newsletters, "The Week at Hilton Pond." Published by the Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History, based in York, S.C., these weekly updates never fail to be informative, and are usually illustrated with beautiful photos. I particularly enjoyed this unconventional look at insect-damaged leaves, in which the usual ("Quick, get the insecticide!") response is replaced by a naturalist's appreciation for natural beauty wherever it's found. As you look at these photos, keep in mind that plants are able to withstand substantial insect damage without suffering any ill effects. Typically if a plant dies as a result of insect activity, it was already weak for some other reason. So except for extreme infestations, it's rarely necessary to run for the insecticide just because you see a chewed leaf. It's quite ok to just stop and enjoy what Hilton Pond calls "the artsy side of insect damage."

Quick Take: An Ode to Be Visited

"THIS WEEK AT HILTON POND" is always worth a visit, but this week they have an especially visit-worthy installment. "Ode to Goldenrod" is a photo essay with text devoted to the many small organisms that make their homes among these flowers. The photo essay is composed of large, perfectly focused close-up shots of creatures such as the jumping spider (shown gazing at the photographer calmly, using four of its eight eyes), the green lynx spider and a batch of its hatchlings, a katydid, several wasps, and of course the ever-present and always beloved bumblebee. The photos are all accompanied by text that discusses the life and habits of the creatures pictured.

"This Week at Hilton Pond" is a weekly newsletter posted to the website of the Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History. According to the author, Bill Hilton Jr., the newsletter is devoted to phenology, "the study of change in nature--including the unfolding of seasons and the sometimes subtle ways in which plants, animals, and habitats respond to different photoperiods, variations in temperature, and other biotic and abiotic factors." I had never heard that word until I read it at this website, but I think I will be using it often in future. (In fact, these days I often think that I am much more a phenologist than I am a gardener!) My only complaint about "This Week at Hilton Pond" is that they don't seem to maintain a browsable directory of entries. You can search the site for a topic if you know what you're looking for, or you can page through old entries in the series by working your way backwards from the current installment, but there is no list of topics you can browse. (Or at least I didn't find one.) But this is a quibble compared to the quality of the writing and photography on this blog.

For my own reflections on goldenrod, please see this post.

Meet the Natives: Swamp Milkweed

ESSENTIAL FOR MONARCH BUTTERFLIES, plants in the milkweed family are such important additions to the wildlife garden that I cannot imagine being without mine.

Shown above with a visiting monarch, swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) grows about four feet tall and bears flat heads of pink flowers in summer or even into early fall. A cultivar called "Ice Ballet" has white flowers, while the cultivars "Cinderella" and "Soulmate" are varying shades of pink. The flowers are followed by attractive seed heads in the fall.

As the name implies, this milkweed is a lover of wet places, making it a perfect addition for any wetland (or just plain wet) garden. Mine is growing in a drainage area that also serves to draw water away from my house. The photo below shows the rock-filled drainage ditch leading away from this mini-wetland, which was just scooped out of our clay-filled soil. As you can see from the photo, the flowers attract hordes of butterflies, and not just monarchs. (These are fritillaries.) Swamp milkweed also attracts hummingbirds, hummingbird moths, and certain beetles.


Milkweeds are essential for monarch butterflies because plants in this family are the only ones monarch caterpillars will eat. The milkweeds contain toxic chemicals (warning: toxic to humans though apparently only in large quantities) that cause the caterpillars to taste bad. This protects them from predators.

In Canada, swamp milkweed is native in Manitoba, Quebec, and Nova Scotia; in the United States, it is native to the Northeast; as far south as Georgia, Texas, and Louisiana; and as far west as North Dakota.

Plant swamp milkweed in a moist spot; heavy soil and/or occasional standing water are not a problem. The site should probably receive full sun, though some sources say that this plant can tolerate part shade. Because it has a long taproot, don't plan to move it after you've planted it. Swamp milkweed will spread slowly by rhizomes, and you can naturalize it by scattering the seeds.

The plant is said to attract aphids, but it's highly unlikely that these insects will kill the plant. If aphids gross you out, try to remember that birds take a different view--"bird ice cream," I call them--and will most likely control any aphid outbreak for you. If deer are a problem in your neighborhood, you'll be happy to hear that they don't like the taste of milkweeds.

For more information on milkweeds, I highly recommend the 10,000 Birds blog entry for July 20, 2007. Ten Thousand Birds is a great blog to follow if you're interested in birds, especially if you're a bird watcher.

For additional information on swamp milkweed specifically, check out "This Week at Hilton Pond" for July 15-21, 2001. While you're there, I hope you'll look around this website. The Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History sure sounds like a place I'd like to visit. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center also has good information on swamp milkweed.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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?