CritterCam Reveals Yet More Rats and a Plea to Not Use Poison

...further the IPM cause. At the time, and to some extent to this day, there’s a lot of incentive to sell poisons. IPM offers a balanced, common sense approach to dealing with critters like rats: observe, reduce habitat for the creatures we don’t want and increase habitat for predators, use barriers, use biological controls and use toxins as a very last resort. Our own health and the health our planet demands a less toxic approach to pest management...

Read…

What is green water?

...the space between the soil particles and in the bodies of the microscopic creatures which live in healthy soil. How much water? I don’t know, but the real answer is, enough. Plants acclimated to your local climate (natives or similar), living in spongy, healthy soil don’t need supplemental irrigation. Not even in the summer. (Drip line doesn’t occur spontaneously in the wild, after all.) Conversely, in times of heavy rainfall, healthy, spongy soi...

Read…

Bird’s Nest

...onto our patio every night, as we steadily lose our war with the nocturnal creatures for our grapes. But that is the subject of another post. Anyone have any guesses about what kind of bird made this nest? The bowl is about 3 inches (7.5 cm) across. ETA: I’ve been looking at this great page of bird nests–it’s heaven for the bird nest enthusiast. So many types of nests! Wee little eggs! Baby birds! One bird even made its nest in a sweatshirt hangin...

Read…

Front Yard Update: Welcome to Crazy Town

...ut I just can’t do it. I like them, and as I said, they’re feeding lots of creatures. These sunflowers are not native sunflowers. The native sunflower is shorter and better behaved. I might try to swap those out for these guys next year, though these guys may be hard to dissuade. Some of the wildflowers earlier this spring: The pink are clarkia, the white is yarrow, the orange are Nasturtium (not wildflowers), the purple are Phacelia tanacetifolia...

Read…