Dirt is Good

My helpers aerating the soil in the garden. We've planted some peas, spinach, and red beets. It's probably too early for the spinach and red beets, but we just planted one square each. We're back to the Square Foot Gardening method. It worked well enough last year and I really like the tidiness of the system. Not that I'm a particularly tidy gardener. As we were cleaning up the garden, we found onions, carrots, and red beets from last year. All still edible. And the cilantro has done a good job of reseeding itself.

Check out Desert Girl's irrigating boots. She was the only one in the family that didn't have irrigating boots, and I just couldn't resist. I imagine that she'll get some pretty good use out of them this summer.

Desert Girl is building up her immunity by eating some dirt. Dirt is good.

Backyard Biodiversity Challenge #2

Do you have your trees figured out? Even if you don't have them all named, you can assign Tree1, Tree2, Tree3, etc. to the ones you don't know and keep working on figuring them out.

While you're enjoying the trees, it's time to start Backyard Biodiversity Challenge #2:

WHAT BIRDS DO YOU SEE IN YOUR YARD?

We're in migratory bird season, which means that there are a lot of birds making their way from the warmer southern climes to their breeding grounds up north.

In fact, I noticed lots of snow birds on the road this week. Snow birds=RVs that spend the winter in the south and the summer in the north. People have already learned a lot from birds! (Sorry, I couldn't help digressing.)

One thing you might want to do as you write down the birds you see (and yes, I strongly recommend writing them down in a dedicated biodiversity journal) is to note when you first saw them in 2011. Then you can compare that with another year (assuming you'll keep doing this!) and see if the birds are coming earlier or later or not at all. These records can actually prove to be quite important. Ornithology, the study of birds, is heavily reliant upon amateur observations, and many databases are comprised primarily of sightings from citizen scientists.

Another cool thing about getting into the habit of observing the birds in your yard is that you don't have to travel far, but some of the birds have come from or are heading thousands of miles away.

So leave a note--what birds are you seeing? And what birds have traveled/will travel the farthest?

My Backyard Trees

First off, what is a backyard?

For some people this is easy to define--it's the yard around their house. But what if you live in an apartment in the city on the twenty-eighth floor? If there's a nearby park, you can call that your backyard. Or your friend's yard out in the suburbs. Or the greater area. You can decide what to call your backyard for the Biodiversity Challenge.

So have you figured out what trees are in your yard? I was a little surprised when I listed mine: ash, elm, two different looking junipers, catalpa, apricot, peach, Lombardy poplar and white poplar. What surprised me? There are quite a few different species of ashes, elms, and junipers, and I'm not entirely sure what we have. I'm going to have to take a closer look.

That might not be the easiest right now, given that the trees have no leaves on them, but there are clues. Last year's leaves, the bark, the height, the shape, and more can be very helpful. Or I can just wait a few weeks!

Are the trees in your yard native? From a biodiversity standpoint, that's the best. Sadly, none of the trees in my yard are native. The only native trees around here at this elevation grow next to the creeks. If there isn't water, we don't have trees, we just have shrubs or grasses or other plants. I think it's very important to find out if species are native or not, so I encourage you as you make your list to put asterisks next to the species that are non-native.

Okay, I want to find out more about what's in your yard! Please leave a comment about the trees you find there, or what tree you would like to plant in your yard and why.

Backyard Biodiversity Challenge #1

Ready to explore what lives around you?

I hope so, because we're about to embark on the Backyard Biodiversity Challenge!

Together we can learn about the fantastic species that live close at hand.

I've just started doing some research about doing backyard biodiversity, and there are a variety of articles out there that I'm reading. There will be posts about biodiversity and how organisms are grouped, but I like to jump in with both feet, so here goes:

Challenge #1: What species of trees live in your yard?

Take a tour of your yard and write (or draw) what they are. If you have some that you don't know (I just realized we have an ornamental juniper that I'm not sure about), then see if you can find a tree i.d. book and figure it out. Maybe there's a neighbor who's good with trees, or a local cooperative extension agent that can help you. If all else fails, send me an email at desertsurvivorATlive.com, and I'll see if I can be of any help.

Our objective for the Backyard Biodiversity Challenge is to better appreciate what lives all around us.

Taking a little extra time to see what's so close to us will help us to see the wider world and the myriad of connections that make everything work.

So stop reading and head out into your yard!

Meeting E.O. Wilson

Most of the week while I was in New Orleans I wasn't seeing cool sights, but rather was in the Sheraton Hotel attending the George Wright Society biennial meeting. The George Wright Society focuses on preserving protected places, such as national parks.

There were countless great talks, and it was a bit overwhelming with about 16 concurrent sessions. I found out more about forest health issues, geographical information systems, hydrology, White Nose Syndrome, park management, and much more.

The highlight of the conference was when I was in a biodiversity session, and half-way through, Edward O. Wilson from Harvard University walked into the room. He listened to our discussion and had some very pertinent comments at the end. After the session ended, a bunch of us science geeks swarmed him like a rock star. I got his autograph and a photo of me standing next to him.


If you haven't heard of E.O. Wilson, here are a few things about him:

• He coauthored a paper about Island Biogeography that helps explains why there are fewer species on islands that are small and far away from the mainland
  
• He is an expert on ants, having started as a young child identifying them
• He has won two Pulitzer prizes, for On Human Nature (1979) and The Ants (1990)
• If he had to live his life over, he said he would focus on microbial biology
• He studied the social behavior of ants, which helped him found the field of sociobiology
• He found that if ants disappeared, so would humans
• He is a champion of learning about the biodiversity around us, and encourages people to go out and find what lives in their backyard.

I happened to have a flyer for our Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, and ants) Bioblitz that I'm helping to organize, so I was sure to invite him to it. Yeah, the chances of him coming are less than one percent. But I'm an optimist! And just meeting him makes me want to go out and find what lives in my yard. So here's a heads up for the topic of some upcoming posts...