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A beautiful leaf cutter bee has started visiting my sunflowers!

This lovely lady visits up to 2,000 blossoms a day and has a 95% success rate for pollination. She’s a solitary bee, which means she doesn’t have a hive and instead cuts leaves to form tubes. And in these tubes she lays eggs with blocks of pollen. Come next year her children emerge in spring to find their own places to lay eggs.

To give some context the European honey bee, a social bee, only has a 5% success rate. The leaf cutter has a higher rate because she’s double the size and she stores the pollen on her abdomen(tummy) vs the honey bee which stores it in specialized led pouches.

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I’m super excited about this!

There is a big native plant movement nowadays, and people are starting to understand the importance of planting native plants to support native insects and thus support the food web and protect ecosystems.

But unfortunately, a lot of people aren’t planting plants native to their locality. People might plant species native to their country, or better, their state, but just because something is native to your state doesn’t mean it is native to your particular area.

Political boundaries do not correspond well to ecological boundaries, which is where my site comes in!

I have published plant lists for specific ecoregions. North America is divided into 182 level 3 ecoregions, 84 of which intersect the continental US. For these 84 regions I have published plant lists of native plants AND lists of all plants, showing the plant’s status (native, introduced, expanded, extirpated, etc.) in the region. You can also do in-region searches!

Please share this with anyone you know who does gardening, landscaping, or ecological restoration! I hope people find this useful and that it helps people to make more ecologically-sound choices!

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Honestly as an owner of two Russians and three buffs. This is a very accurate description of the birds.

an expert analysis of my five day old chicks

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Just braided the garlic!! Not a terrible harvest.

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Three years since Holly passed away. She was my little pony growing up. Lived at least to 15 years old.

Miss her, even though she always managed to spin sharp enough for me to slide off the other side of her.

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Jade and Caramel giving the bedding a test run before I line the coops. First time they’ve jumped in while I was still carrying it.

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Can confirm both these points. My hens are incredibly spoiled! I feed them produce and plants from my garden, organic food so I can see all the ingredients, and I fret over their heath and comfort sometimes way more than I do my own. I consider them more pets than livestock, since I raised them by hand.

My bees I buy and grow flowers just for them, I worry about rain levels for the wildflowers so they can grow to give my girls food, and again I fret over their heath and if they have enough room in the hives.

I understand the ethics behind veganism, but as op said there are small farmers and beekeepers trying to present an alternative to factory farms.

vegans who refuse to even eat backyard eggs….why

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if golf and football switched commentators 😂

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FUTURE BEACH GCDS x PAPER MAGAZINE

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Ok I feel like this needs to be said, by me specifically because I run a cottagecore/farmcore aesthetic blog. There is inherent colonialism rooted within these aesthetics. The cottagecore community is notoriously full of trad fascists and Nazis and the like. I think it is possible to enjoy cottagecore and farmcore but you HAVE to acknowledge the racism/fascism/colonialism that goes along with it and take measures to ensure that you aren’t perpetuating those ideals. If you’re like me, and you actually want a farm someday (or something similar) you need to acknowledge that whatever land you buy will be stolen land, and make sure you don’t repeat the mistakes of your ancestors (or just people of the past if you’re not white, but let’s be honest, most of us are white). Call up the local tribe and ask them how they want you to care for the land and LISTEN. Care for the land in a sustainable way that won’t damage the soil and local ecosystems. LISTEN TO NATIVE PEOPLE. I feel like that’s the most important point. You can like farmcore and cottagecore but you have to understand its issues.

[the-flying-z]

Started sweet potato slips from a store bought potato. Soon they will be planted outside to enjoy the fresh air