Mosquito season is here! Instead of spraying pesticides onto our entire yards—and onto fireflies, ladybugs, bumblebees, and butterflies—why not just kill mosquitoes?
But wait, first: let’s PREVENT mosquitos from breeding in our yards. Here’s an infographic (link) from the CDC to remind us of the free and easy common-sense ways to do this, like removing standing water in toys, saucers and gutters.
And then, why not try a Mosquito Bucket of Doom?
It’s cheap, it’s safe, it works.
“Are you home now??” texted my neighbor. ”I think there’s hundreds or thousands of bees making a nest in our pine tree as we speak. It’s crazy!!”
To me, it wasn’t crazy: it was perfect. Two friends had already witnessed this very thing in their yards recently, and I was jealous.
So I texted back: “It’s swarm time!”
By the time I got to my neighbor’s yard, all the bees had gathered in one spot, AS one spot: one big blob of buzzing, crawling, and flying creatures, at about 30 feet up the tree. They looked like a giant dollop of bubbling goo about to drip from a branch.
A honeybee swarm!
I am grateful my neighbor knew what to do: call me,
and I am grateful I knew what to tell her: call a swarm-catcher.
Today’s Front Yard Nature: an inchworm on a Black Cherry seedling.
This is how nature is supposed to work: native plants = caterpillar food.
No one was eating the equally tiny seedlings of exotic bush honeysuckle in the same porch crack.
My nearest mature Black Cherry tree is blocks away, but every summer, birds poop the purple-painted seeds onto the driveway, the yard and the cracks in the porch. This too, is how nature is supposed to work.
I toss the exotic weeds to shrivel in the sun, but I plant some of the natives in cups to grow, or to give away, or to plant somewhere else when nobody’s watching.
Black Cherry / Prunus serotina is one of the Prunus species on the National Wildlife Federation’s native plant finder for my zipcode. The list states that it can feed 320 species of caterpillar, but right now, this particular Black Cherry is only big enough to support *one.*
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Bio:
Joanna Brichetto is a naturalist and writer in Nashville, the hackberry-tree capital of the world.
She writes about everyday marvels amid everyday habitat loss, and her essays have appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, Fourth Genre, Hippocampus, The Hopper, Flyway, The Common, Stonecrop Review, The Fourth River and other journals. Her forthcoming book is Paradise in a Parking Lot: Unlikely Stories from Urban Nature.
To squeeze a Sycamore ball is a seasonal pleasure, and the season is now.
Now is when last year’s clusters of Sycamore seeds start to fall and to fall apart.
For the next few weeks, they’ll disintegrate into drifting piles of loose, fluffy achenes: Sycamore “snow.”
To squeeze a Sycamore seed-ball is oddly satisfying.
Call it a Contemplative Practice.
Call it fun or sick or weird, but try it.
The Sycamore Squeeze is one way to get to know Where—and When—you are.
Continue reading “The Sycamore Squeeze”
February is the best month. Why?
You can watch spring start.
You can catch it in your hand.
How? With a Red maple.
Continue reading “Catch Spring Red-handed”Here’s one way to I.D. a tree in winter.
Let’s call it “Ye shall know them by their fruits.”1
I made this dry-erase Key to help a couple of friends in the neighborhood who want to learn nearby trees.
It won’t work for all trees, but it’s decent for local, deciduous street trees that still have fruit on branches or on the sidewalk.
Continue reading “Winter Tree I.D. by Fruit”
Today’s Sidewalk Nature: a spider-egg necklace in a Yew hedge. There are 1, 2, 3 pearls in this one, but I’ve seen up to eight. The mom spider—a Basilica orbweaver—is always nearby, till the frost gets her.
Continue reading “Add-a-Pearl (spider) Necklace”
Michael and I were walking past the storm drain, exactly where I’d hoped to finish stealing the tidily stacked bags of Chinkapin oak leaves.
Me: “Aw, Metro must have gotten them yesterday.” I looked for evidence on the asphalt, where knuckle-boom truck can leave scars. Nothing.
“Or maybe someone else stole them?”
Michael: “Right. Like other people go around and steal leaves for their yard.”
Me: “You’d be surprised.”
Continue reading “Leaf Thief”
I grew up eating what Mom called wild onion. It showed up in the yard as free food. The long, hollow leaves were good to chew, as were the bulbs, but those were too intense to eat raw unless cheese and crackers were involved.
Continue reading “Yard Nature: Free Chives”
“Wondering how trees help birds and wildlife survive a Nashville winter?”
That’s the first sentence in my short piece at The Nashville Tree Conservation Corps, called “How Your Tree Helps Wildlife in Winter.” My goal was to highlight “essential services” that only native trees can give to our birds, butterflies, and other animal neighbors.
Even if you already know the answers, take a look? Are there other stories I should have included in the allotted word count? We all want readers to fall in love with what native trees can do.
Continue reading “How Your Tree Helps Wildlife in Winter”
Sidewalk Nature 
