Nashville Mustard is blooming!
Want to Meet the Mustard?
Psyched for the superboom?
Wondering why this small flower is a big deal,
and what I mean by “Trace of the Trace?”
Drop by Fort Negley between 11am and 1pm on Saturday, March 8 and 29th to find out. And keep reading…
Here’s an update from our Meet the Mustard event from March 1:
Continue reading “Meet the Mustard: Nashville’s Superbloom”
After a festival or a hike, my husband will ask, “Did you tell anyone about your book?” or “Did you mention you have a blog?” and I will answer “No.”
Honestly, I forget. And I’d rather talk about Mosquito Buckets of Doom or Caterpillar Host Plants or Native Habitats than talk about myself, even when “myself” is 100% relevant to the topic at hand.
So, I am extra grateful that Margaret Renkl let slip that my forthcoming book is finally coming forth.
She put two surprise shout-outs in her essay in The New York Times, “The Cicadas are Here, Singing a Song for the Future” (link). While quoting from one of my cicada Instagram posts, she mentioned my book, “This is How a Robin Drink: Essays on Urban Nature.”
Greetings, Cicada fans!
My goal is to capture every stage of the life cycle during this Brood XIX emergence.
Hatchings are the next step, but till then, here goes…
Let’s meet a periodical cicada.
This cicada is 13 years old:
His story:
13 years ago, his mom laid an egg in twig in a tree. Six weeks after that, the eggs hatched, the new nymphs fell to the soil, found a crack, and burrowed inside to suck on tree rootlets.
For 13 years he and his siblings ate, peed, grew. They wriggled out of their skins four times before their final outfit, which included brand new accessories: wings.
**If the tree is cut down during the 13-years, the cicadas will not survive.**
Continue reading “Meet a Periodical Cicada (life cycle)”Part 1 tried to calm panic about tree damage, noise, stink, inconvenience.
Part 2 will try to stir panic, but on behalf of the cicadas.
Here’s a new yard sign I wish I could sneak all over town. Even though many of us had a “No Mow April” sign, some of us need this new one, just for a few days: “No Mow Cicada.”
**Can we please delay our obsessively tidy, short-bladed, weekly mow and blows? For another week or maybe two?**
Cicada emergence is well underway, and in some areas almost over, but our lawncare is killing them before they get a chance to mate.
It’s all about timing. These cicadas have spent 13 years underground prepping for the moment they emerge from the soil, climb a vertical thing, hang on tight, and break out of their nymphal exoskeleton. This final transition can take hours. They start to appear at dusk, but by morning many are still searching for a safe spot, or are mid-way through their final molt, or are still hanging to let their white, dough-soft bodies sclerotize into stiff, black, flight-ready condition. New adults don’t even try to fly until the sun warms them, and sometimes not until afternoon. When startled, females drop to the ground. And all cicadas are notoriously clumsy fliers.
So when a lawn crew arrives with lawnmowers, trimmers, leafblowers, pesticide sprayers, nearly all the newly emerged cicadas are doomed. Lawncare may be their most successful predator yet, and unlike the predators with whom cicadas evolved, a lawnmower does not reach “predator satiation.” A lawnmower never tires of eating cicadas. There is no end of cicadas that lawncare can kill.
Until there is an end of cicadas.
A roundup of quick Sidewalk Nature updates: one warning and three wonders.
Kwanzan cherry trees don’t feed pollinators or birds. They look great two weeks of the year but they don’t support our foodweb. Prunus serrulata ‘Kwanzan’ / ‘Kanzan.’
My concern is that when people have room to plant one tree, this is the one they’ll want. It is cultivated for pretty, and pretty it is, but it doesn’t have nectar, doesn’t make fruit, and as a nonnative congener, its leaves support only a fraction of the Lepidoptera species a native Prunus / cherry can.
But at the Cherry Blossom Festival this month, festival-goers can walk away with a free Kwanzan cherry tree from the Nashville Tree Foundation.
Continue reading “First Week of April: Trees”
Keen to see Nashville Mustard while it lasts? It only blooms a few weeks each spring, and now’s the time. Why go see it? It’s yellow and gorgeous, it’s a mini superbloom, it’s a good photo op, and a true native. Think of it as a remnant of our historic grasslands, or as I like to imagine: a trace of the Trace. Trace, as in buffalo roads, when bison travelled to the salt lick that “made” Nashville (near what is now Bicentennial Mall.)
This post is to show where the Mustard is, so you can visit your nearest site, or go see them all.
And, it’s a happy update to last year’s post about Cutting the Mustard…
Nashville’s 13-year periodical cicadas are coming this May, but what’s already here is panic.
For months, worried people have been asking about the 2024 “invasion.” Should they cover their trees? Should they wait to plant new trees? Should they reschedule outdoor events, and even indoor events? Will there be “too many” cicadas? No. The answer to all these questions is “no.”
3 reasons not to panic about “too many” cicadas:
Continue reading “Periodical Panic: Why Not To”
Today’s Backyard Nature: bee butts. These are the back ends of little bees: native, solitary bees who make a nest *inside* last year’s flower stems.
Each bee is one female making one nest: laying one egg at a time in its own little chamber and with its own cake of pollen as baby food.
This is my proof that “Save the Stems” works.
Continue reading “Save the Stems”
Have you seen cicada husks lately? Or actual cicadas? These aren’t our annual cicadas yet, these are periodical cicadas, one year too early. Next spring—May 2024—is when Middle Tennessee gets our Big Emergence of 13-year cicadas.
I say “emergence,” not “invasion,” because invasion is a bad thing, but emergence is a normal, natural, functional, wonderful, amazing, and magical thing!
Cicadas are magic!
After all, the genus name for our 13 year species is Magicicada.
But, magic or not, cicadas can’t always count properly. The ones who emerge a year (or more) before or after their due date are called “stragglers.”
For the past few days, stragglers have commanded my undivided attention. They are small, dark, and handsome. They have round, red eyes! And they are fascinating.
Continue reading “Cicada Magic”
I am lucky to be in a gardening group with a friendly email list. We share plants, news, tips, questions. Today, someone asked what to do about April aphids on a late-blooming aster, and added, “There are a gazillion of them on the plant (I counted).”
This is someone who had done due diligence by looking for answers, but had found too many: No, don’t kill; Yes, do kill, but only with this, not that. What should they do?
What I should have done was congratulate them on having late-blooming asters—so important for late-season nectar / pollen / leaves / seeds! —and on trying to find a “best practices” solution to avoid harming the foodweb.
Good job, gardener!
But what I did was jump right in with zero manners and lots of info:
[Too-Long-Didn’t-Read version: pesticides will kill aphid predators along with the aphids.]
This time of year, most aphids are wingless, so they can’t fly away from us if we decide The Big Squish is required. The Big Squish = running a thumb and forefinger along a stem (or using a moist paper towel if squeamish).
Actually, it should be called the Selective Big Squish. Please keep reading to see what not to squish.
Continue reading “The Selective Squish: Aphids”
SIDEWALK NATURE 