I really enjoyed today's WPBL game! It was the San Francisco Firebells vs. the NY Heights. I don't have a preferred team so I cheered for everyone. It was so much fun! Really, if you get a chance, head out and take in a game before the season ends.
Looks pretty nifty to me. I'm big on third spaces and this one seems great.
I'm writing a grant to help supplement our native pollinator patches at our community garden. We're pretty good on plants, but I'd like to make sure we have covered all of the other things that would help make our landscape more inviting to pollinators.
The most glaring omission to our success right now is a lack of water features. I want to add a nice quality bird bath, as well as some puddle stations for bees and butterflies.
Other ideas? Links to products/materials you have used and like is helpful, but if that's not allowed here, feel free to dm me. I appreciate it! Fucklawn the world!
Eta - central Illinois, zone 6a
I tried to hook into my city's native plant groups a few years ago and as usual, I find it a challenge. I'm not middle/upper class, and my views on things are so very different. When talking about coming up with some actual code to allow native plants, they talk about 30' setbacks, while I live in the inner city on a 40' lot, and they don't care because we need neat and tidy and can't bring down the property values, etc. Fuck that.
I thrive when I do my own thing, and have partnered with a volunteer at our community garden to grow as many native plants as possible and give them away with our weekly free farmers market. We've potted up hundreds of natives that we collected seed for last fall, and keep giving them away.
Our community garden now has a greenhouse, and 2027 will be an epic adventure of what plants to raise in our small greenhouse because yes indeed we hope to give people the means to access more native plants and MORE native plants (as well as veggie and fruit plants)! My neighborhood has a 51% poverty rate, so no one here is going to be able to afford a $7 plant, let alone enough to plant a pollinator patch. Free it is!
I was recently contacted by someone in an established group because clearly we need assistance by someone who knows what they are doing lol. I think the groups in our town are largely doing great things, planting and upkeeping pollinators in our public parks as well as growing all kinds of milkweed varieties and giving them away. But it kind of rankled me that they feel we're obviously doing it wrong.
The take was that we need to add an educational component, because yeah, you can't just give away pollinator plants! People need to know the ins and outs of planting natives, not just getting plants in their hands. I think there are a lot of additional add-ons that could complement our initiative of giving away plants, but we don't have time or resources for that. Our primary purpose is growing food for our community, and our big add-on this year is also giving away pollinator plants. Also, they are giving away plants and this educational component is not part of their outreach already?
We're going to meet and see what they have to say. My plan is to encourage them to do whatever add-ons they want to do in whatever way they want to go with it. I'm willing to listen to criticism of what we're doing, but it's gotta be valid for me to act, not just upper middle class goings-on about stuff that I don't give two shits about.
I feel most people who are excited about planting natives have at least done a bit of looking into it. I planted my entire front yard being a complete amateur, and yes, I have learned a few things, but I'm so satisfied with how it's turning out, 7 years later. It's gorgeous and I'm glad I didn't wait to do it "the right way."
Ranting here lol. Fuck them lawns!
I live in the inner city in central Illinois, and we have a few hoot owls that live in the neighborhood. Unlike a lot of inner city neighborhoods, we have a fairly dense covering of 100+ year old trees. The Merlin app says a barred owl is unlikely to be in an urban neighborhood, but at the same time I have to ask, who, who? Who cooks for you?
I live in a neighborhood with a 51% poverty rate. Even though any kind of exciting firework is illegal here, there are plenty across state lines. In a regular year there are fireworks going off at least weekly if not nightly from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
This year, nada. Money is tight even for people who usually have extra. I'm not complaining at all as I have ptsd and in years past it's been really hard to make it through summer not completely on edge all of the time. But it's definitely an indicator of hard times.
Awaiting the inevitable tornadoes today and hoping it won't be as bad as the worst case scenario. I'm glad I have a solid basement and that my family will be home this afternoon during what is likely the worst of it.
My home was hit by a tornado in 2006, and I'm always really nervous for the first severe weather event of the season, and then chill for the rest. If I can look at radar and listen to live coverage, it calms me. We've already been to the basement several times this year already, with Illinois leading the nation in tornadoes.
My city failed to sound the sirens during a storm last week, and a tornado hit the airport and the local animal protective league. Then city officials gave some excuses that seemed very much like covering their butts. Meanwhile Ryan Hall and Max Velocity live coverage announced it will before phone alerts went off. It's sad to have to rely on YouTube coverage rather than your city officials but here we are.
Y'all stay safe today! I'm monitoring the weather closely. I am supposed to lead an outdoor volunteer group today lol.
From what I've read of news reports, the APL took a direct hit from a tornado last night. All animals are safe, but they are in desperate need of fosters and likely clean up help.
The ED said to check their Facebook page for updates but nothing had been posted that I can see.
It sounds like a lot of folks on the north end have tree damage. I encourage any disaster tourists to stop their cars and get out and help! The number of people who drove by my house in 2006 to take pictures was astounding. If even half of them had lifted a finger to help, our neighborhood would have been cleaned up much faster.
Yeah it's going to be a beast of a hot and humid day with more severe weather on the way, but let's pitch in and do what we can to help our community!
Also, why were their no sirens? I live a mile from the APL and had to rely on a phone alert. (edited to add I apparently live 2.5 miles from the APL, not a mile.)
Or at least my city. Or my neighborhood.
I manage a community garden, and in addition to raising fresh produce for my hood with a 51% poverty rate, we've also been focused on planting and giving away native pollinators. I have a friend who is autistic with a special interest in natives and DIY, and coincidentally I'm also autistic with a special interest in natives, so we are obsessing our way to fucklawning this earth.
We collected a shit ton of seeds last year from my front yard, the pollinator patch at the park and our pollinator patches at the community garden, and random other spots. We got kind of a late start, but we're doing it!
This week we had a pop up pollinator potting up party at our garden and had a few people join us. It definitely went faster!
Tomorrow begins our free farmers markets at our community garden, and we'll give away the monarda we potted up a few weeks ago to folks. I'm so excited!
Next year our greenhouse will be operational (it just got finished), and we'll get an earlier start and abundance our way into native pollinator gardens everywhere the eye can see. Fucklawns for the win!
I've read a bunch on here, plus watched videos, and I feel just kind of overwhelmed with information. If you can give me advice for my specific situation, I'd appreciate it!
I'm in central Illinois, zone 6a. We finally got a greenhouse built at our community garden. It's a polycarbonate 12' x 20' hobby greenhouse, with ventilation and heat. We plan to grow late January through early May. While we do have the occasional hot day in spring, May is really when we start to cook.
So when it gets really hot, I'm ready to put up the shade cloth and be done with actively using the greenhouse. I'm not growing in there past May as our season ends in September. (While we could keep going, our volunteers are usually exhausted by then, as am I.)
I've read about needing space between the shade cloth and the greenhouse to reduce temps, but most of what I've seen online is shade cloth right up against the greenhouse.
Any recommendations for informative videos, or rex for what kind of shade cloth and fasteners to use is much appreciated. Thank you!
Here's an annual update from this midwestern fucklawner. My yard is good and fucked! There's not a ton blooming right now (spiderwort finishing, poppies and milkweed beginning), but everything is lush and green and freakin beautiful! The different heights of the plants are so compelling in real life, and you can't really see that beauty as much from pictures.
The redbud we planted in 2019 went from a bush to a tree this year. I love it so much, and it is providing some much-needed shade on our porch from the harsh west-facing sun. The bur oak we planted on the parkway will someday shade the redbud as well.
I have a ton of natives in my yard, plus flowers I just like, like poppies. I also have spots for annuals, which I'm about to purchase and install. By my driveway I have butterfly milkweeds and will put in some lantana there also because it's low growing and protects our line of sight as we have a lot of pedestrian traffic. I also put in lantana by the street so the people who drive by and turn in complaints for overgrown yards in the city can more easily tell it's all flowers and not weeds.
We started this project in 2019 with one section of the parkway. (The parkway is like 14' wide, so it's a lot.) We pulled out dozens of the more prolific plants this year because they were too close to the sidewalks. We shared these with friends and neighbors. The gift that keeps on giving! I love it more every single year.
It's always interesting to see what pops up and where. The milkweed started with a single plant and eventually crossed under the sidewalks. The sidewalks partition the yard into four sections, and it is currently prolific in three of these. The milkweed just started blooming and it smells amazing out there.
Sadly my new neighbor is terrified of butterflies. It's going to be a long summer for her.
Heard one fairly close by where I live on the north side this morning at 7:03 a.m. It sounded like a quarter stick of dynamite going off, but that nonsense doesn't usually begin until after Memorial Day. I've heard them randomly throughout the years in different parts of the city, but it seems like there's never any sirens or other kind of follow-up.
Any other explanations? (cue fart jokes, I know...)
We had quarter sized hail on the north side, plus smaller hail in the second round. The lightning was way too close and frequent. Even my nearly deaf dog was shaking.
I'm hopeful that it'll be less severe this afternoon because it was nasty this morning. At least that's what the meteorologists said might happen. I heard about a tornado warning near Taylorville and hoping they lucked out and got nothing.