Midwest IA/IL. 53 year old Latina. Nature nerd. One acre mid-city. Certified wildlife habitat. Plant native plants to your area. Buy straight native plants online, garden stores are usually crap. I follow back with @sadderbutwisergirrl, this is a secondary account. On Tiktok, YouTube, and Instagram too.
I have attention problems when I try to read books, but I’m able to listen to audiobooks. So I was only able to read the beginnings of these, but they seem great.
Grief has robbed me of my former ambition. I used to be overly enthusiastic about everything native plants. I barely got these seeds in milk jugs out this winter. It’s probably too late since it’s very warm now (50 degrees) and all my existing plants are starting to wake up already. * these plants need cold stratification to germinate*
Ants nuptial flight back yard 2023 - year 6 of "observing" this miraculous event. A cardinal alerted me year #3 in 2021, a catbird in 2022, & I missed this goldfinch showing me in 2023 until I watched the video of the goldfinch months later and saw the ants flying behind it, right on schedule (July)! My scientific mind doesn't want to believe but it's uncanny. Birds are kindly reciprocating my caretaking of the land.
We got 25 inches of snowfall. I have many native plants, but not enough to feed all of the birds here so I put feed out for them. I also make sure all animals have clean drinking water that’s not frozen. 
Okay. So. You know how some people want to finish exterminating all large predatory mammals so they have less competition for deer and so they don't occasionally lose livestock? And you know how native deer species in North America have been hit increasingly hard with Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in the past couple of decades due to overpopulation thanks to the eradication of large predatory mammals that normally keep them in check?
We already have evidence that reintroducing predatory mammals to their native ranges not only knocks deer populations back to a healthier level, and now we've discovered that apparently the digestive systems of cougars and bobcats are lethal to CWD prions. Prions are among the most difficult pathogens* to eliminate; you have to heat them up to about 1,800 degrees F in order to thoroughly destroy them. And prion diseases like CWD are almost universally fatal.
So to find that these wild cats can safely eat CWD-infected animals AND significantly reduce the chances that the prions will be spread to other deer is a pretty big deal, especially since some other animals like coyotes and crows do pass prions undamaged through their digestive systems. And it's just one more example of why an ecosystem needs all of the species that have evolved in it over thousands of years, not just those are convenient for humans to have around. The spread of CWD is directly related to the overpopulation of deer, and it's likely that continuing to reintroduce large predatory mammals to their native range will help quell this awful prion disease.
holiday season scares me now. All the decorations are winter and snow themed and there's a decent chance I'll never see snow again. When I was 8, it would be snowy and freezing in early October. But now, only 9 years later (yeah, I'm young, fuck off), I saw snow once this year and it was melted before noon of the same day. In Wisconsin. A state infamous for people who brag about handling the cold, has only been under freezing for about twenty days this year.
Lake Superior was too cold to support algae for as long as people have been around, but last decade it started growing all kinds of shit out of nowhere.