Full Homegrown National Park Moon

Full moon rises tonight in about an hour, sorry I'm so late. The full moon rises 10 minutes after the sun sets at about 815pm. Down here in the flat we generally have to wait another hour to see it over the trees, especially those of us who live down in amongst the bottom land hardwoods and on the flat.
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Paula and I have our fire pit set up to burn while waiting for the moon to appear. We will raise a glass of tart red beverage of our choosing to all of you our friends!

I choose this name for this full moon to honor the great Douglas W. Tallamy the author of Nature's Best Hope. Tallamy is a famous Entomologist, a scientist who studies insects, and a great ecologist. He first came into my sights several years ago when I became fascinated by his disclosing, to my know it all self, the numbers of insects who use oak trees or maple trees or willow trees to complete their life cycles. Hundreds of species per species of tree. Not individuals but different kinds of insects per kind of tree. Luckily Tallamy had many Graduate Students "Slaves" who climbed trees and counted bugs,  what fun, they didn't mind, they were "geekie entomology grad students".

Then. two books later, in this book he begins with a conversation about Monarch Butterflies their life cycle, their rapidly declining numbers and what is missing in their lives, and therefore in our lives. He informed my know it all self how Monarchs have evolved to tolerate the defenses that milkweeds throw at them. He also goes on and on and on making connections between how we live on the earth and, for example, where the have all the butterflies gone...

Tallamy promotes the idea of converting our yards to masses of plants other than turf, native plants are best for this. Mowing so much grass is dumb and we enrich our lives by diversifying our habitat, wake up my friends. Homegrown National Parks!

Thanks to Mac Vidrine for addressing this in his talk at our Native Plant Meeting in January!

On a personal note at the end of April I purchased impatiens for a bed in our landscape. I also bought two Mexican milkweeds because one had a Monarch caterpillar on it. Soon the caterpillar disappeared and the wait was on. May Day, I found the newly hatched Monarch adult with a badly crippled wing, it would never fly. It was a sad time. I have seen no others since, lots of butterflies, no monarchs.
Sigh,
peace love possumhugs
BT

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