Love you like a moth loves the flame

Show us your native plants!

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look up what butterflies are native to your area, find out what their host plants are, and start planting those. We have helped bring hundreds of gulf fritillaries and zebra long wings, along with monarchs when we were up in Pennsylvania, into the world, simply by planting their host plant.

Find out what milkweed is native to your area.

If you are in the eastern and southeastern United States especially, plant some purple passionflower (Passiflora incarnata). It is the host plant for 11 different species. And it has edible fruit that is delicious, and flowers that look like they're from an alien planet, and despite those alien looking flowers, it's native!

there's a whole bunch of tree species that are host plants as well. Tulip trees, oak trees, black walnuts, pecans, you don't even have to plant small things.

You can't solve climate change, but you can make a difference for hundreds and hundreds of butterflies with putting a single plant in your yard. Even if it's just in a container.

Just ask my mom, who despairs of ever seeing the passionflower we gave her actually flower, because it is constantly covered in caterpillars lol. (And our solution to this quote unquote problem? Planting more purple passionflower seedlings in the nearby woods so that the butterflies have more than one (1) single plant to go to in a 5 mi radius)

Seriously, and especially if you are up north in the northeastern US, plant common milkweed. Not only will it attract monarchs and provide a host for them, it is also the host plant for so many other awesome species. Like the absolutely adorable milkweed bugs and red milkweed beetles.

Again. You can't fix climate change, and it's not your fault. But if you literally just plant a single host plant, preferably more but if all you can do is one, trust me, trust my mom (who is so upset about this development lol), it will make a difference.

moss mfriday #3: Glacier Mice

[image credit]

That's right - it's glacier mice. One of my favorite things maybe on the entire planet. Let's talk about these freaky fuzzy little rats!!

Glacier mice are balls of moss that live in large herds like this in a few select glaciers. They are moss all the way through, with a center consisting of dead moss matter, implying that they begin as small growths of moss and simply accumulate over time, like snowballs. However, their outside surface is alive and well on all sides. Glacier mice have been observed, through tagging and tracking, to roll across the glacier like a majestic herd of wildebeest, exposing all of their sides to the sunlight. They trundle along at a pace of about 2.5 cm per day. That's 30 feet in a year! They're really schmovin'! Certainly further than most mosses can claim to travel.

What's really exciting, though, is that they all move in the same direction, and we're not sure why or how. Scientists experimented to try and attribute their coordinated behavior to wind, sunlight, and the direction that their grazing ground slopes, but to no avail. They speed up, slow down, and change direction in unison, based on some mysterious moss code that we haven't cracked yet.

Cross-section of a glacier mouse. Note the dead moss matter inside, and the short gametophytes on the outside, adapted to harsh winds and sunlight. [image credit]

We have figured out how they roll, though - while the moss ball sits on the ice, it insulates the ice directly underneath it, protecting it from melting. This forms a little pillar of ice that the moss eventually rolls off of. The insulating power of glacier mice also gives it the wonderful ability to host all kinds of microorganisms that otherwise wouldn't survive the glacier's harsh conditions, and their ability to move makes it possible for microorganisms to spread from one habitable spot to another. They're like a bunch of little tardigrade passenger ships, braving the dangerous glacier to go where no water bear has gone before!!

Glacier mice have been found to consist of several moss species, most of which must reproduce asexually in order to survive in the dry climate. They've been observed to live for at least six years, but are projected to live much, much longer. I love them. So much. I hope they know that I love them!! I LOVE THEM!!!!

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To The Substitute Art Teacher - Jordan Bolton

see the THING IS I don't feel like I ever worked hard enough to have "earned" the burnout, which is. probably how we got here.

I’m starting to sound like a nutcase at work because upper management keeps trying to implement AI programs and AI assistants and Chat GPT and my middle-of-the-road, don’t-infodump, don’t-engage response has been “I don’t like AI”, “I prefer to remain in control of my own tasks”, “I’d rather make my own mistakes”, and “I don’t trust any machine smarter than a toaster”

My honest opinion: “Generative Artificial Intelligence” is a purposefully misleading liar’s name we gave to a labour-stealing company’s proprietary algorithm so they could market it to businesses who would rather see simple work done badly at the expense of the consumer than contribute to the community it is profiting off by offering even a single human being in that population the barest minimum honest wage to learn and do it properly, simultaneously robbing the working class while grifting both the client and the customer, and we’re buying into it because we’re a superstitious social species of codependent apes would could pack bond with a rock if we spent enough time around it existing in the most extreme state of social disconnection and parasocial reliance humanity has ever known, like a dying man in the ocean drinking saltwater

What I have to keep saying to avoid being classified as “the conspiracy theorist”: Haha yeah I guess I’m a bit of technophobe lol

You don’t realize how good you have it til you lose institutional JSTOR access

Ode to dandelions + details

A tribute to the misunderstood, under-appreciated, beautiful, edible, tough, wonderful dandelion!

Pencil on paper, 12”x15”, 2025. Prints are available

A spotted salamander (Ambystoma maculatum) in Suffolk County, NY, USA

by Alex Roukis

Longhorn beetle (Cerambycidae)

Photographed by Feng Jiang

Even though you cant see it, the tiny shoots of grass are getting ready to pop out of the soil. The sap is running in the trees. The bees are waking up. Spring is coming even if we cant see it yet. There is hope

Sea weed illustrations taken from ‘Sea-weeds’ by C. A. Johns.

Published 1860 by SPCK.

Fisher - University of Toronto

archive.org

@starfoozle The Festival Of The Skunk Cabbage is upon us in my neck of the woods as well! In great bounty! (I only fell a little ways down a 45° slope in order to reach them and only dropped my phone a little bit in the swamp taking photos.) There was also good lichen and a clamourous chirring of redwing blackbirds throughout and I also saw and a hunting redtailed hawk as I was clambering my way out.

here they come!