Here in Wisconsin, mistletoe comes to mind only at Christmas time, and then only to those hoping to kiss or be kissed beneath it. Come January, nobody gives it another thought. It’s not that way in some parts of the U.S., but we’ll get to that later. The tradition of kissing under the mistletoe comes [Continue]
Last summer I spent an hour a week walking around in circles on baseball diamonds, staring at the ground. People probably thought I was a crazy person. What I was really doing was biosurveillance. No, I wasn’t wearing a hazmat suit or carrying high-tech spy equipment. I needed only my eyes and a pencil and [Continue]
When my husband and I moved to our home 23 years ago, I discovered a pretty purple flower in the flowerbed called creeping bellflower. I thought it an odd name, since it didn’t appear to be a creeper: the two-foot stems were upright and held cute purple bell-shaped flowers along their sides. Years went by [Continue]
I spend an hour a week walking in circles on baseball diamonds doing biosurveillance. I’m not wearing a hazmat suit or carrying high-tech spy equipment. I need only my eyes and a pencil and paper to record what I see. I am searching for nests of cerceris wasps, a non-stinging – to humans – native [Continue]
Here’s what happened. When my husband and I moved to our current home twenty-three years ago, it was beautifully landscaped with many flowers, shrubs and trees, most of which I couldn’t identify. One pretty little purple flower that I eventually identified was called creeping bellflower. I thought it an odd name, since it didn’t appear [Continue]
It’s quite likely that you have invasive plants on your property. I’m not talking about dandelions or creeping Charlie, but something much more insidious. Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources defines an invasive species as “non-native plants, animals and pathogens whose introduction causes or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human [Continue]
Getting poison ivy isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you. But if you do get it, for a month or so you’ll be hard pressed to imagine what any worse thing could be. The itching and blistery rash will consume your every thought. The best prevention, of course, is to learn how to [Continue]
People who are able to identify only a few wildflowers usually know Queen Anne’s Lace. The white, lacy umbrella-shaped flowers are easy to recognize. That is, until the past few years when several even more invasive very similar looking plants began their march along our roadsides. But Queen Anne’s Lace has a secret. In the [Continue]
The weeds in your lawn are trying to send you a message about your soil. You can shush them temporarily by killing them year after year, but until you pay attention to what they are trying to tell you and take action to correct the underlying problem, they are going to keep coming back. The [Continue]
You’ve seen them lining ditches along Wisconsin highways in mid-summer. Big patches of orange daylilies on tall stems that reach for the sky. You probably noticed them, but never gave a thought to whether they might be invasive or not. It’s even less likely that you considered that they might be something you could harvest [Continue]