The Pretty Big Pollinator Project

On April 29th, Mary Gilkison was the guest speaker at our online group meeting for The Pretty Big Pollinator Project.  Ms. Gilkinson is a leader for Green Mountain Sustainable Neighborhood and won a Lakewood Sustainability Award in 2017 for her work with local schools to create recycling programs in the lunchrooms.  

Ms. Gilkinson spoke with us about planting for pollinators.  She covered what native plants are best for your garden and the most efficient ways to arrange them for the pollinators.  Ms. Gilkinson explained that pollinators are four times as likely to visit a native plant than a non-native plant.  Ideally, you should put these native plants in clumps of roughly 3 x 3 plants.  These groupings decrease the distance pollinators like bees and hummingbirds have to travel to get the amount of pollen they need to stay healthy.  It’s also important to plan your garden so you that you have blooms in spring, summer, and fall. 

Ms. Gilkinson also talked about providing water sources for bees in your garden.  Like humans, bees need water to survive, and giving them a clean water source nearby can ensure they get enough water, especially during hot days.  When putting a water source out, you need to make sure that you put rocks, corks, or other items in the water that bees can stand on so they don’t drown while trying to drink. 

We enjoyed having Ms. Gilkison visit our group and are grateful for her willingness and enthusiasm in sharing her knowledge with us. She also recommended some useful resources for our project which will be posted soon on our new Resources page on this website.

Have you ever had a caterpillar on your nose? I haven’t but my cousin has. Her name is Lilu and she raises monarch butterflies. Last week, Lilu and my aunt shared their story with our group in a Zoom meeting and it was funny and interesting.
A few years ago my Aunt and Lilu adopted a caterpillar from a kindergarten teacher at her school. She took it home with two leaves from a milkweed plant. Two leaves turned out not to be nearly enough food to feed her new caterpillar.
They went to a garden center and bought a small milkweed plant, but the next morning all the leaves were gone! And there were caterpillar droppings everywhere. And there were 4 new caterpillars (the new plant had eggs on it). So they went back to the garden center and bought a GIANT milkweed plant.
One caterpillar made a chrysalis on the plant so they supposed that the other caterpillars would too.  But that didn’t happen. Soon they found chrysalises all over the house like the light fixtures, a shelf and there was even one under the bed.
The butterflies started emerging and laying eggs on the plant. They ended up buying another GIANT milkweed plant because they had 14 new caterpillars to feed. They raised the butterflies in their house for a whole year and released them one by one as they emerged. 
They raised over 50 butterflies before they decided to move the plants outside. My aunt took clippings from the branches and grew new plants for her yard. Now their yard is filled with Milkweed, caterpillars, and Monarch Butterflies. 
My cousin says the flowers on the Milkweed are beautiful and she can see the butterflies surrounding the plants from her window. And sometimes she still brings one in and puts it on her nose. 

I found many amazing and cool things on the “nature walk”. I found some branches with leaves and seeds, moss on a piece of wood, some skinny and chubby wood pieces, petite stones, and a couple of seeds. Can you find a black beetle in my picture? The beetles are one of important pollinators. They are among the earliest prehistoric pollinators. They visited flowering plants about 50 millions years earlier than bees. They still pollinate flowers today.

It was pouring down rain in the morning and we went for a “nature walk” in our neighborhood. I collected things on the walk. I had fun arranging them onto cardboard to show the pretty and cool things (oh, those pretty pink and white flowers!) The gecko is one of my cool things and it is one of pollinators! Gecko is one of important helpers pollinating the trees and flowers. They do have a big job as important as bees do. Frog may not pollinate well as gecko and bee, but it is important part of our ecosystem.

She sat upon a blade of grass,
Fluttering her delicate wings.
How lovely! Colors like stained glass.
Nature creates sweet living things.

I wanted to write about a bat that likes prickly pear fruits, the fruits that I collect and eat.

You can use tongs to pick up the prickly pears, but most of the time I like to stab them with my knife, cut them up and eat them. The flower of the prickly pear is edible too. Usually in summertime, you find the pear cactuses turning red and they’re good to eat. Make sure you have something to pick them up with because they are spiky little things!

Matthew Winters Park is a great place to find them, and I wish I could see a leaf-nosed bat eating them here too. There’s also lots of small crevices and caves, rocks and ledges for the bats to rest in. I mostly see bees around the prickly pears now, and lots of birds that eat the seeds. 

– by Wilder