Author: marlenecondon@aol.com

“Look Deep into Nature and You Will Understand Everything” (Albert Einstein)

©Marlene A. Condon

January 4, 2019
After a raccoon kit fell out of a nest box located on a radio tower in the author’s yard, its mama had to work against gravity to carry it about 30 feet straight up—an arduous task, indeed! Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

When I wrote my book in 2005, I mentioned that no matter how many precautions you took, you would get scratches, and I dutifully pointed out how important it was to keep tetanus shots up to date and to clean your wounds with soap and water. However, I did not dutifully mention applying antibiotic ointment to them. 

When my editor read this section, he called to ask why I hadn’t suggested using these ointments that are so widely recommended for cuts. I told him that when washing with soap and water was not possible, or my cut not serious enough to make me take the time to get into the house to wash it, I had always applied my saliva to the broken and bleeding skin instead. I had never gotten an infection in all my decades of gardening, so I had never personally found the use of antibiotics to be necessary.

I explained that during my life, I had observed numerous kinds of mammals. I’d noticed that when an animal had a wound, it licked it—sometimes a lot—suggesting to me that saliva must have antibiotic properties. Just as form follows function in architecture and animal anatomy, I realized that in life, behavior follows necessity.

Wild animals, like humans, get hurt, but unlike humans who have salves they can apply, wild animals need a way to help their injuries to heal without infection. It was obvious to me that because wild animals do not waste energy (every behavior can and must be explained in terms of benefit to the organism), they would lick their wounds only if it were beneficial. I saw no reason why that rule of thumb would not also apply to me when I suffered a superficial cut.

My editor found this fascinating. It made sense to him, and he pushed very hard for me to include this information in the book. However, I demurred. Knowing how litigious our society had become, the lawyer in me thought better of making any recommendations regarding human health without an official study to back me, even though the scientist in me knew I must be right.

Indeed, just two years after my book was published in 2006, researchers in the Netherlands confirmed what I’d told my editor, and went even farther than I did:

“A report by scientists from The Netherlands identifies a compound in human saliva that greatly speeds wound healing. This research may offer hope to people suffering from chronic wounds related to diabetes and other disorders, as well as traumatic injuries and burns. In addition, because the compounds can be mass produced, they have the potential to become as common as antibiotic creams and rubbing alcohol.” [Licking Your Wounds: Scientists Isolate Compound In Human Saliva That Speeds Wound Healing] sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/ 080723094841.htm

I wasn’t surprised by these findings. For man to have survived on this planet for as long as he has, I would expect the human body to be able to heal itself, at least to some degree, when a person emulates wild-mammal behavior that results in healing. By living in close association with nature, we can pay attention and thus learn important life lessons that empower us to make wise choices.

I’ve watched many kinds of critters raise their young, and this activity provides valuable mentoring for anyone who’s a parent. Wild animals raise their offspring to be self-sufficient within the timeframe allotted them, and then the young are sent out into the world to make their own way.

Humans should copy this blueprint, but parents do not always properly prepare their young adults to set sail on their life’s journey. Especially in today’s electronic world, children are unlikely to be taught the basics of survival.

Such things as knowing how to grow your own food; how to cook, clean, and sew for yourself; as well as how to behave in human society to keep it functioning properly are critical skills that are no longer viewed as particularly important or essential to life. Yet if our civilization decays into chaos, as so many ancient civilizations have done before us and as currently seems more likely every day, the only thing of value will be your ability to perform the tasks necessary for survival.

One type of behavior you don’t see in the natural world is helicopter parenting. Although a degree of oversight is necessary to prevent your child from getting seriously hurt, some parents stifle their children by hovering over them and denying them any independence. But a degree of self-determination is necessary for youngsters to learn about the trials and tribulations they are likely to experience. 

I once heard a baby animal crying and looked out the window to see a Common Raccoon frantically running around in circles, obviously terrified. I then noticed its mom coming down from the den to rescue her kit that must have fallen out of its home high above the ground. She calmly picked up the little animal in her mouth and, although it was quite an effort, carried it upwards about 30 feet. I’m sure that baby learned a valuable lesson about the necessity of exploring its world in a more cautious manner, as it never again fell out.

Birds can teach us valuable lessons. In many species, males of mated pairs not only help to raise chicks, but also take care of the female as she is incubating. A male Carolina Wren, for example, brings his mate food. A male Eastern Phoebe perches nearby the nest site all day to warn his mate if predators are around and to try to drive them off. Women would do well to find men with these qualities!

Mother Nature is a wonderful teacher, and you can apply her wisdom to your own life by paying attention to what our fellow inhabitants of the planet are doing out there. Best of all, there’s no tuition to attend this school where the learning never ends. 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: “Look Deep into Nature and You Will Understand Everything” (Albert Einstein)

In Month of Giving, Give to Nature

©Marlene A. Condon

December 7, 2018
Don’t worry about the sap wells that Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers make on your woody plants. It’s a myth that the shallow holes will kill your trees and shrubs. These winter visitors have been feeding on my plants for almost 33 years! Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

Although I stopped participating long ago in the frenzied, commercialized commotion of holiday gift-giving, I think this is a good month in which to suggest that folks consider offering a present to nature. Humans can’t help impacting the natural world as they go about their lives, but folks can certainly adjust many of their activities to impact it less—and that would be a gift to all of us!

It’s crucial to be kind to the planet upon which we live. There’s a lot of talk these days about living on Mars, but does anyone really want to reside where he is a prisoner? You would need to remain inside the “living” quarters, or you would need to inhabit a spacesuit. No fresh air to freely breathe, nor fresh water to drink—it would be recycled from fuel cells, urine, personal hygiene, and by condensing each person’s breath and sweat from the air. 

When you give some thought to how perfectly the Earth is suited to providing us with everything we need to exist, and that it is the only planet available to do that, you can more easily understand why we should take care of it in the best manner possible. To keep the environment working properly, it is imperative that everyone make his property as nature-friendly as possible. 

It’s not difficult to provide wildlife with the same things we need for life: food, water, and shelter. However, you need to look at your landscape as wildlife habitat instead of as a showcase of plants.

Start by considering the amount of lawn you maintain around your home. If you had to stay “out there” 24/7 as our critters do, would it provide you with shelter from the weather, a place to reproduce, food, and water? If it won’t do that for you, it won’t do much for wildlife either. It’s simple to minimize lawn area.

Keep the amount of lawn you use for recreation and as a pathway to walk around the yard, but start considering where you can plant shrubs, trees, and flowers. You do not need to rip out the lawn; you simply need to replace some areas of grass with different kinds of plants, and you can do this at whatever pace suits your available time, abilities, and pocketbook.

Let’s say you want to grow flowers, but you don’t have much experience with gardening. Start with a small area, just a few feet square or a bit larger, and grow “failproof” plants, such as zinnias, marigolds, or cosmos.

These plants sprout easily from seed in sunny areas, are not particularly fussy about soil, and will grow until frost if provided with water (by you or Mother Nature) once a week. All of them are attractive to butterflies and other insect pollinators that fertilize the blooms so they can make seeds for birds (especially American Gold-finches) to eat. 

Ignore the advice often given to “deadhead” (remove the seeds of) these plants to prolong blooming. Plants exist to feed animals, and annuals (plants that live only one growing season) are quite capable of continuing to bloom while in the process of making seeds.

Deadheading wastes your time and partially defeats the whole purpose of growing the plants in the first place, which is to help your local critters. Just be sure to leave the plants standing after frost kills them so that the seeds are available to birds and small mammals throughout the cold months. The plants will also then be able to reseed themselves so you don’t need to make the effort next spring!

Many kinds of shrubs are useful to wildlife and easy to grow and care for. Although there is a big push nowadays for folks to grow only native plants, the reality is that a mix of non-native and native flowers and shrubs works best in today’s changing climate. And when deer numbers are high, it can be almost impossible for most short native plants to accomplish their “mission” of providing for any wildlife other than those hoofed browsers!

I highly recommend native viburnum shrubs because they produce flowers for insects, and fruits for birds and small mammals. However, you will need to protect them from deer with a wire cage if these animals are numerous in your area.

Another, albeit non-native, wonderfully useful shrub for hummingbirds and pollinators of numerous kinds is the Glossy Abelia (Abelia x grandiflora). Drought-tolerant and evergreen, it also provides shelter year-around for a variety of critters.

Trees, on the other hand, should always be native species because there are so many kinds to choose from, and they can be bought at a size that makes them resistant to the ill effects of deer. They are important for butterfly, and especially moth, caterpillars and other kinds of insects that feed upon foliage. It’s best not to plant these trees too close to your house to avoid problems with leaves in the gutter and branches (or even the entire tree) falling on your house when it gets tall.

If your yard is small, stick with trees that are less than, or do not get much more than, 30-40 feet tall. Common Shadbush (Amelanchier arborea) blooms are hugely attractive to bees, with the resulting fruits fed upon by a variety of birds and mammals.

A favorite small-medium tree of mine is the Sourwood (Oxydendrum arboretum). Its spring flowers provide nectar for bees and other insects, as well as hummingbirds. The seeds are taken readily by both Gray Squirrels and American Goldfinches, and in the fall, its leaves turn a bright red (which I love!) or burgundy.

Shrubs and trees of any size are useful for sheltering animals from weather and avian predators (hawks and owls), and they provide nesting sites for mammals and birds.

Lastly, you can provide water for wildlife by simply placing a shallow pan of fresh water on the ground daily, or putting in a little pond. Your wildlife haven is now complete! 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: In Month of Giving, Give to Nature

Garden Insects of North America

 

©Marlene A. Condon

November 2, 2018

A honey bee visits a Mahonia shrub, a non-native but extremely valuable food source for insect pollinators as it blooms very early, long before most native plants. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

I was probably eight or nine years old when I started to garden. The first plant I decided to grow in my tiny vegetable plot in the back yard was the radish. I didn’t like radishes, but they were red—my absolute favorite color—so to my way of thinking, it was the obvious choice!

My very first flower garden consisted, like my veggie garden, of just one plant: the stunningly beautiful blue morning glory commonly grown in New England. We had a carport with two support posts on one side, and I planted my seeds there where the vines could grow upwards.

I didn’t encounter “pests,” and I haven’t ever felt that growing plants was a war between me and the natural world. In fact, I have always very successfully gardened without problems, whether I was living in New England, California, or Virginia. But it wasn’t until I lived here that I realized that my own gardening experience seemed to be far different from that of other gardeners.

In 2002 I started giving monthly slide presentations in Shenandoah National Park. I talked about the wonders of nature that I’d found in my yard, from lovely pastel pink-and-yellow moths to adorable bunnies and chipmunks to the birds whose singing is so welcome.

By the end of each program, people were blown away by the fact that I could have an abundance of plants among an abundance of animals. They did not see how that could be possible.

Indeed, three years later when I wrote to Stackpole Books about the need for a book explaining the value of wildlife to gardeners, the nature editor called me up to say the Stackpole gardening editors did not believe it. Once they saw my slides and explanations, however, I immediately got a contract to write my book.

The reality is that you cannot garden without the innumerable kinds of organisms that exist to keep the environment functioning properly. The reason most people think of so many critters as “pests” is that gardeners create an artificial world around them that can’t possibly work right. Some kinds of animals then seemingly become problematic when they try to correct this situation.

Additionally, gardeners usually expect “perfection,” which is not a real-world possibility. Plants exist to feed animals, which means humans must accept that their plants are going to get nibbled. However, they can survive with holes in the leaves or even missing leaves, and even total defoliation! Therefore, it is easier on you to simply learn to live with the realities of gardening outdoors.

The first step to becoming more tolerant of wildlife and gardening successfully is to learn about the animals that share your world. Princeton Press has recently published the second edition of Garden Insects of North America by Whitney Cranshaw and David Shetlar. It’s a heavy book that you might want to give a permanent spot on a table so it will be easier for you to use it.

Containing more than 3000 color photos, it will help you to identify not only insects, but also (despite the title) spiders and mites, as well as other invertebrate species that you might find in your yard and garden. This edition includes expanded sections on pollinators and other flower visitors, predators of plant-eating insects, and insect decomposers (rather than just earthworms) that folks don’t often hear about.

The most compelling reason to purchase this book is that many of the photos are of eggs and the larval (immature) forms of critters that you do not usually find illustrated in guidebooks. Knowledge is power, and if you can know what something is, you are less likely to want to destroy or kill it, “just to be safe.”

Unfortunately, and this is my one complaint about this otherwise extremely useful compendium of information, this book perpetuates the myth that many garden insects and other invertebrates exist solely to harm your plants. Evolutionarily speaking, this notion is illogical.

If animals seriously harm or kill the plants they depend upon for their lives, those plants can’t reproduce to perpetuate their species. Over time, the plants will die out, which means the animals will die out right along with them! To keep this scenario from taking place, predators work to limit plant-eating animals. Therefore, overpopulations signify that your yard is not functioning properly because it obviously does not support the necessary predators.

Every type of plant is represented in this book, from flowers and vegetables to shrubs and trees, and even turfgrass. You locate the critters in sections defined by where you are most likely to spot them, such as on leaves, blooms, shoots, roots, or in the soil.

There’s a glossary near the end, right before the index. It provides explanations for many of the terms used to describe invertebrates as well plants. Thus, if you’re just beginning to learn about these kinds of critters or plant “anatomy,” there is help right at hand.

You can learn a lot by reading this book, rather than just using it as a reference. Looking through the photos, you might spot a critter you’ve seen sometime in the yard and finally discover its name and information about its life.

Or, you can learn about unfamiliar animals. During my many years of growing radishes (I did eventually come to enjoy the taste of them), I never found other critters wanting to eat them. But Garden Insects introduced me to the Radish Root Maggot, the larva of a western fly that feeds on the roots of crucifers, such as turnips and a variety of cabbages in addition to radishes.

An interesting tidbit of info, the significance of which I’m sure was lost on the authors, is that the Radish Root Maggot also feeds on various mustard-family “weeds” (their word, not mine). If folks out west would let those “weeds” grow in their gardens, they would have less competition from maggots for their radishes!

I’m no longer able to garden as much as I would like, but when I did have large food gardens, I always allowed wild flowers and wild grasses to grow among my cultivated plants. I credit this action with my extremely successful gardening endeavors, in which I was able to grow enough fruits and vegetables to eat fresh and give away, as well as to can and freeze for later use.

Consider buying this book (for yourself or another gardener) to learn about the critters that are, or should be, sharing your landscape. I can assure you that a nature-friendly garden works!

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Garden Insects of North America

Peter Brask, My Tribute to a Friend of Nature

©Marlene A. Condon

Three Little Brown Bats (Myotis lucifugus) sleep the day away in (the late) Peter Brask’s living room. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

Peter Brask, a decades-long Batesville resident, passed away this September. He had been a close friend as he shared my love of nature in its entirety, although he may have been most fond of birds.

Peter lived as I imagine some folks might think that I live—with doors literally wide open to the out-of-doors and the critters that inhabit it. As a result, he experienced nature as most of us will never experience it, with an intimacy that was hard to imagine.

For example, he knew how much I enjoy observing the Carolina Wrens around my home, so he made sure to invite me over to see the ones nesting in his kitchen. Yes, you read that right. A pair of Carolina Wrens had built their dome-shaped nest inside his kitchen. The female had laid her eggs and the two birds went about their business as if there was nothing unusual about the location of their nest, and in a way, there wasn’t.

Carolina Wrens are fairly comfortable around humans, and often make their nests somewhere around houses, albeit on the outside! There’s a good reason they do this. Wrens and their chicks are more sensitive than most birds to chilly and wet weather, and several spots around houses often provide better shelter from the elements than more-natural locations. If you have a garage and you leave the door open, you may well come home to find this species either trying to nest there during the warm months or sleep overnight during the cold months.

I once made the mistake of leaving my shed door open for just a few minutes on a very cold winter day after getting seeds out of there to fill a bird feeder. My male wren flew inside almost immediately, and it took me many minutes to get him out! Luckily for him, I had already provided shelter boxes on my porch where he and his mate could sleep together (Carolina Wrens stay together year-round).

I found the thought of wrens nesting in Peter’s kitchen to be incredible, but a telephone call from him a few days after I’d visited was even more unbelievable—a Black Rat Snake had come into the house and eaten the wren eggs! The snake had slithered right into Peter’s living quarters and found itself a meal.

You’ve probably seen those signs that some people have placed outside their houses proclaiming that no matter where you have come from, you are welcome in the community. Well, Peter didn’t need one of those signs in his yard. Actions speak louder than words, and his nondiscriminatory welcome extended to all kinds of critters as well as people, which is just as it should be.

Being Peter’s friend meant sharing many more wildlife encounters. One August day he called me up to say he had bats in his living room. No, they were not in the rafters above the living-room ceiling; they were in a corner at the ceiling! He wondered if I could come over to identify them, and of course, I grabbed my camera and drove over there as fast as I legally could.

I got to Peter’s at 12:30 in the afternoon. Sure enough, there were three Little Brown Bats resting at the ceiling in the corner of the room. Peter told me the bats had been entering the room every night for the previous three weeks, and they had started sleeping there during the day about a week prior to my visit. He said he heard them flying around in the darkness the past night, and they settled in for the day about 3:30 a.m. This man knew how I loved details, and he had paid attention so he could report them to me! That is what I call a dear friend, indeed.

Apparently, the bats were content to roost there, because they stayed for several days, going out each evening and coming back early the next morning. Common roosting sites for the Little Brown Bat around and near human structures are more typically on the outside of buildings, often behind shutters, and perhaps most often, inside tree cavities. I suppose Peter’s living room just seemed like a super-sized tree cavity!

You may be thinking Peter must have been a real kook. Obviously his open-door (and window) policy was highly unusual and didn’t follow the norms of societal behavior. And yet, so long as he was happy with living as he did, why should it matter to anyone else?

I personally found his nonconforming behavior a delight. Here was someone who lived in a house (though he often slept outside in a small open shed), but who enjoyed the out-of-doors so much that he didn’t let the boundaries of his home restrict him. Peter Brask lived his life as he saw fit, and you have to admire him for that.

But there was much more to appreciate than his degree of independence. He was every bit as kind to people as he was to wildlife, being quite willing to assist anyone in need of help.

Peter deeply loved and cared about the natural world, and it saddens me greatly that he is gone. There don’t seem to be too many of us left with such an abiding and sincere affection for nature. I certainly feel more alone in this regard with each passing day.

But Peter will always hold a place in my heart, and every summer I will think of him when I see my Touch-me-nots growing. He called them Jewelweed, but I prefer the name that references the manner in which they disperse their seeds—propelling them outwards several feet when the seed pod is touched, whether by a person, an animal, or a nearby plant swaying in the breeze.

After Peter had finished putting in a pond (almost 30 years ago now) at my house, he brought a few Touch-me-not plants (Impatiens capensis) to place near it. Every year more and more plants shot their seeds out, and now, Touch-me-nots surround my home. Their hundreds of late-season blooms feed migrating hummingbirds and late-season insect pollinators.

I’m sure Peter never imagined how much those plants would spread and how much they would help the wildlife I care so very much about. Nor would he have ever realized how much his legacy of Jewelweed would mean to me at his passing, serving as a heart-touching remembrance of a special person who befriended nature and me during his life, and who continues to do so following his death. 

 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Peter Brask, My Tribute to a Friend of Nature

Consequences

©Marlene A. Condon

A tick waits patiently on a grass stalk with its front legs out, ready to grab onto any large mammal passing by. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

Thought experiments can be extremely useful when making decisions about how to manage the natural world. They can allow us to confidently predict a future outcome within specified parameters by employing knowledge of current, similar situations. 

For example, we know that one of the reasons the deer population exploded in the eastern United States over the past few decades was because the main predators (wolves, cougars) of these hoofed mammals were driven to extinction by humans in this part of the country. We also know that tick numbers increased as a result, along with Lyme Disease. 

By employing this knowledge, we can work through a thought experiment to predict what will happen when the efforts to bring back the American Chestnut (Castanea dentata) have reached fruition. It may make us rethink whether this effort is as good an idea as it might seem.

The American Chestnut, ecologically, culturally, and commercially significant, was infected by an Asian fungus first noticed around the beginning of the 20th century. Within 50 years, chestnut trees from Ontario, Canada (the northern edge of the species’ range) to its southernmost distribution in the eastern United States were virtually gone—the consequence of people’s interest in acquiring exotic plant species, some of which carry pathogens our native plants have no ability to coexist with.

Many organizations and scientists have since worked hard to breed a resistant American Chestnut. For decades, researchers have been crossbreeding a naturally resistant Asian species of chestnut with the American species in the hopes of creating a plant with the American Chestnut qualities that made it so valuable. However, it takes years for these trees to reach sexual maturity, making the entire process very slow, and no trees have been bred of extremely high resistance to the fungus.

But scientists have a new “trick” for improving resistance. American researchers are hoping to bring the American Chestnut back as a genetically modified organism, abbreviated as GMO, a term you may be familiar with. Many food crops are now GMOs, a tinkering with nature that some folks think is great, but which others have concerns about—and with good reason. “Transgenic” organisms (those with the genes of a totally different species within them) could possibly alter the genetic blueprint for others of their kind in the wild, with unknown consequences. Once the genie is out of the bottle, there is no putting it back in.

People tend to dismiss such concerns when they want something, and people want to bring back the American Chestnut. Researchers from the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry have engineered highly blight-resistant saplings by splicing a gene from wheat into the tree’s genome. Wheat and other grasses carry a naturally occurring gene that produces an enzyme that lessens the effects of oxalic acid, the main “weapon” of the fungus infecting our native chestnut.

It may take two to four years for the researchers to obtain permission from U.S. and Canadian regulators to distribute their GMO. If they are successful, their trees would be the first genetically modified organisms released into the wild for the purposes of reintroducing an endangered species. Recent tests have shown their genetically modified trees match or surpass the resistance of Asian trees to the fungus.

However, there will be consequences to bringing back the American Chestnut that people have not considered. Although many folks fall easily into the trap of believing that there couldn’t possibly be anything wrong with trying to restore the natural world to a former state, there can be plenty to be concerned about, especially in this case.

Today’s world is not the world of more than a century ago. When the chestnut dominated the forest canopy, it fed billions of Passenger Pigeons (Ectopistes migratorius) with the copious amounts of nuts it produced annually.

According to an 1813 account written by the renowned painter and naturalist, John James Audubon, “The air was literally filled with Pigeons…The light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse…” At the end of that day, these now-extinct birds were still flying by in the same numbers—their flight continuing throughout that night and into the next day and the next!

But thanks to humans, the population of Passenger Pigeons went from billions to just one within a hundred years of Mr. Audubon’s experience. A victim of overhunting and deforestation, their numbers dwindled until only Martha, a solitary female in a cage at the Cincinnati Zoo, was left (she died on September 1, 1914).

Fred Paillet, a University of Arkansas geoscientist, wonders whether it’s possible for the chestnut to someday be viewed as “invasive”, a problem, he writes, that he “would gladly live with.” [Winter 2010 issue of American Forests magazine] But he obviously hadn’t thought through that sentiment. 

Without the huge numbers of Passenger Pigeons that had coexisted with the American Chestnut, what will become of the superabundance of nuts that every mature chestnut tree will drop every year? They will be eaten by birds (such as jays, crows, and turkeys) and bears, increasing their numbers and making these animals a nuisance when they more frequently cross paths with people who will want more of them killed.

Deer and numerous kinds of rodents will increase in number, but the numbers of snakes (including venomous species) that could limit mouse populations may not increase, thanks to the overabundance of people who are living just about everywhere already, many of whom believe that the only good snake is a dead one. (Put this comment into a search box online and you might be horrified, as I was, to see the videos showing pointless cruel treatment of snakes.)

When folks refuse to coexist with these reptiles, snake populations do not keep pace with rodent populations, leading to a superabundance of mice and the ticks dependent upon them for a part of their life cycle. The ticks can reach adulthood and easily increase in number, thanks to the chestnut-fattened-up deer whose numbers will be virtually unlimited because people refuse to live with the predators that should be here. The associated diseases that ticks carry will then infect many more people than currently occurs.

The reality is that, in the 21st century and beyond, a world teeming with the imposing American Chestnut would be a world all out of whack and upsetting to people. Although it’s easy to fall for the allure of feeling virtuous by trying to recreate the natural world as it once was, that is an impossibility. You should be careful what you wish for, at least if you haven’t first considered the consequences. 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Consequences

Is Nature Bothering You?

©Marlene A. Condon

Newly hatched Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs are more colorful (and cuter!) than older nymphs and adults.

Should gardeners think of native plants as thugs when they grow well in their yards? A Kansas butterfly enthusiast wrote an article recounting her experience with Woolly Pipevine (Aristolochia tomentosa), a native Midwestern host plant for the Pipevine Swallowtail caterpillar. She wrote that the plant remained limited until its fifteenth year, “when suddenly it began suckering like that other fearsome thug, passion vine.”

This situation exemplifies how folks do not tend to see nature as it is, but rather as they want or expect it to be. Their subjective view typically leads to poor outcomes for the natural world, which matters because nature is our life-support system. Rather than badmouth organisms, people need to accept that they can’t dictate how organisms should behave.

Consider the Multicolored Asian Lady Beetle (Harmonia axyridis) and the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (Halyomorpha halys), both of which bother people inside their homes come late summer and fall. These insect species overwinter as adults in their Asian homeland, which means they need to find shelter to get through freezing weather. Transplanted to America (intentionally and unintentionally, respectively), they enter buildings in fall via cracks and crevices around doors, windows, siding, chimneys, etc.

What is the proper way to view these insects that are not here of their own accord, but rather because of humans? It would help people’s psyches immensely if they stopped regarding these bugs as “pests,” as if their intent is to bother humans. Instead, you should learn about these animals and your house—the only way you can figure out how best to deal with the situation logically.

The insects that enter your house in fall are but a few months old, but they will likely discover more about your home than you have taken time to notice during your residency. This situation must change.

You need to seal interior openings around doors and windows, and inspect any location on walls, ceilings, or floors that has been breached for the purposes of electrical, plumbing, or HVAC needs. These places provide a pathway for animals to get in, as well as hot and cold air, which results in higher cooling and heating bills.

(Note: It’s amazing how much cold air you can feel in the winter entering the house from outer-wall outlets! You should put safety plugs into them.) 

If your windows are old, you might consider getting new ones that are better sealed (and more energy efficient). The expense of well-made windows will be offset somewhat by lower energy bills. Using screens on windows, doors, and over vents, and checking the seal around window air conditioner units, is also important.

Yet, no matter how hard you try to seal openings, some of these insects will manage to get inside. You need to accept that this is just the way life is now. It’s really no different from dealing with dust inside your house. No matter how spick-and-span you make your home, you are going to have to clean it again and again.

So, you should deal with this situation in a prudent manner. Your first thought might be to use pesticides, but applying poisons does not qualify as prudent—particularly in this case.

When these insects first arrived in the U.S., no one advised homeowners to employ pesticides against them inside or outside the house. Apparently that advice has changed, undoubtedly in response to people insisting that something had to be done. But utilizing pesticides for these insects is akin to insisting upon receiving antibiotics for a virus infection. It is not only useless, it is harmful.

Pesticides have never been a solution to controlling organisms because the critters eventually become resistant to them. You end up with superbugs, and then the development of super-pesticides that are evermore deadly to living creatures, including humans.

Pesticide applicators place a perimeter of poison on the ground around the outside of your house, which becomes a killing field for a variety of unintended victims that should not be needlessly harmed. It is completely ineffective and a waste of money using it for Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs (the species coming en masse into the house) because they do not crawl around on the ground; they fly to the walls of your home. 

You might have paid for such pesticide applications and thought they were successful because there seemed to be fewer stink bugs this past year. The truth, however, is that Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs had plummeted in number in 2017, thanks to Mother Nature.

These bugs start congregating on home surfaces at the end of August in our area, because that is when nighttime temperatures become cooler. At our house, they tend to start flying into our carport by afternoon. My husband catches them, kills them with a fly swatter, then leaves the carcasses for mammals to eat (all organic matter should be recycled). Gray Squirrels take the stink bugs during the day, and nighttime scavengers clean up bodies left behind.

Ladybugs do not start to enter homes in our area until October. Because they are smaller than stink bugs, they can more easily access your living areas where it’s too warm for them to hibernate. Therefore, you could see them all winter into spring, but you needn’t do anything. With no food and water, the ladybugs die, and you can pick them up as that happens.

Or, if temperatures are above freezing, catch them in a bug box (a small plastic container, which also works for stink bugs) and release the ladybugs outside (just as scientists did back in 1978-1981).

Returning to the Kansas butterfly gardener, she found a substitute for the native pipevine called White-veined Pipevine (Aristolochia fibriata), a plant she considers “really lush and cute!” Native to Argentina and Brazil, it makes seeds, which this Kansas Extension Master Gardener and Native Plant Society member is selling at spring plant sales in her area. Butterfly gardeners “are eager buyers, especially if they’ve not had a spot for its huge sun-loving thuggish cousin.”

I predict this new alien plant species will become yet another addition to the “invasive” plant-species list since it makes viable seeds. Concern about so-called invasive plants has been a huge contributor to herbicide usage in this country, even though herbicides are producing superweeds and killing many, many kinds of animals.

If you feel that nature is bothering you, please deal with the situation in a sensible way. Avoid creating new problems (for example, by bringing in more alien species) and/or use your own muscle power instead of pesticides that do not offer a permanent solution anyway. 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Is Nature Bothering You?

Child’s Play

©Marlene A. Condon
A Carolina Wren uses a large variety of natural materials to construct its dome-shaped nest: dried pine needles and plant stalks, moss, rootlets, twigs, bark strips, and sometimes a cast-off snake skin! Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

Today’s column is especially for children (per a reader suggestion), although adults are certainly welcome to read along too!

Gardening for Wildlife

Just like you, wild critters need a home. For them to live in your yard, they need lots of plants. But it is not necessary to buy trees, shrubs, and flowers to plant around your house.

Ask your parents if you can mark off a sunny area of the yard to call your own. If it’s okay with them, remove most of the grass in your garden patch, and then wait. Be patient, and soon “volunteer” plants will come up.

Although most folks tend to call plants that come into the yard on their own “weeds,” many such plants are pretty as well as helpful to such critters as birds, butterflies, bees, and bunnies. By keeping an eye on your little garden, you can discover which plants are most often visited by wildlife.

You might learn which animals feed on leaves and which go to flowers for pollen and nectar. Later, you might see which animals eat the seeds or fruits that the plants made.

A Place for Life

A bird lays its eggs in a nest made of natural materials that should be easy for it to find, such as moss, lichen, spider webbing, mud, and feathers. Birds also use many kinds of dried plant matter, such as pine needles and leaves, stems, grasses, and twigs from trees.

Can a bird find these things in your yard, or in the yards of your neighbors? People like tidy yards, so they often rake up all the leaves and pull or cut all the plants that have turned brown. Usually they burn this old plant material or send it away to a landfill, which means birds can have trouble getting what they need to build a nest. However, there is a way to help birds as well as other animals and still have a tidy yard.

See if you can find a corner of the yard that people don’t visit often and ask your parents if they could put all plant debris, including woody material, in that one spot. By doing this, you create a brush pile, which is one of the best things you can do for wildlife.

By piling up branches trimmed from trees and bushes with the other yard debris, you make a place where birds can grab nesting material, hide from predators, or sleep at night. Some kinds of birds, along with bunnies, like to nest at the bottom of the pile where they can hide their nests underneath the twigs.

The bottom of the brush pile that is touching the ground will, over time, begin to decay, creating a perfect place for lizard and salamanders to lay their eggs. It even serves as a restaurant for them because they will find many different insects and spiders hanging out there.

Giving Toads A Helping Hand

All animals need water to live. Many people put out a bird bath on a stand for birds to get a drink and to clean themselves. But if you put a bird bath on the ground, it becomes a toad bath, too!

Although toads have dry skin (unlike frogs, which stay moist), they need water to drink. A toad does not drink by using its tongue to slurp up water as many other animals do. Instead, it takes in water through its skin. If no rain falls for a long time, there might not be any puddles for the toad to get into for a drink, but you could provide the water it needs.

The bath should be no more than two inches deep. If you do not own a bird bath, you can use a shallow dish instead. Whichever you use, be sure to put in fresh water every day. If the surface of the bath becomes slimy and turns green or red, algae is starting to grow. Algae are simple plants that do not make flowers. They are related to seaweed. You can clean off the algae with a scrub brush and then rinse the bath out.

Place the toad bath where you can easily watch it as the Sun goes down and toads become active.

Helping Butterflies and Bees

You might also want to make a “puddling bath” for butterflies where these insects can get water and minerals.

Place a glazed ceramic-flowerpot saucer in a sunny area. Make a “mud” by mixing together soil and manure (sold at garden centers), using an equal amount of both materials. Fill the saucer with the mixture to about one-half inch below the rim, then add just enough water to make the mud wet. Keep it moist throughout the summer and watch for butterflies to visit. These lovely insects need salt to reproduce, which they can get from the manure.

You can help bees and other insects to get the nectar and pollen they need for themselves and their young by growing some of their favorite flowers. Zinnias and marigolds are easy to grow from seed and offer you a choice of colors.

Two Important “Rules”

By welcoming wildlife to your yard, you give critters a place to live, which is something you can feel proud about doing. But there are two “rules” you should follow:

Always try not to scare the animals by getting too close, and you should never try to handle them. Although you know you don’t plan to hurt them, they don’t know that.

By keeping your distance from them, you will learn much more about their lives. If they do not know you are watching them, they can go about their business as they usually do. And that is the secret to finding out just what they do all day!

Become A Scientist

A scientist is someone who makes careful observations and writes detailed notes about them. This is the best way to become an expert about nature in your own back yard.

For example, all plants and animals have their own calendars. By keeping track over many years of the dates and temperatures when, for example, you hear different kinds of frogs calling, you will know under what conditions each type of frog will be active. Then you will be well on your way to becoming an expert on frog activities.

Think of a nature-friendly yard as a teacher, showing you how the entire natural world works. There is literally a world of discovery waiting for you just outside your door, because what happens there, happens everywhere! 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Child’s Play

The Snakes and Lizards of Virginia

©Marlene A. Condon

The faces of three young Northern Copperheads (born just a few weeks earlier) can be seen at the opening of the “maternity” den underneath the author’s carport. The bright greenish yellow tail tip of one of the snakelets is visible to the right of the Field Cricket that seemed to know it had nothing to fear from the little snakes.

The very first snake I saw in my yard after I’d moved in more than three decades ago was a Red Cornsnake. I was thrilled to spot such an absolutely beautiful serpent, especially because it sported a fair bit of my favorite color—red!

For the most part, snakes prefer to stay out of sight, and if they tend to be active at night, your chances of seeing one are not really very high. In my experience, only the Eastern Rat Snake seems unafraid to show itself in the open in broad daylight.

It seems to know that most people are willing to coexist with it, something that other snake species are not often lucky enough to experience. And yet, snakes are hardly the threat to humans that folklore makes them out to be.

For years I have pointed out to people attending my talks that dogs, horses, and even lightning strikes kill many more people every year than venomous snakes do. And, of course, traffic fatalities hugely outnumber deaths from snake bites. Even so, most people would rather get into their vehicle every day than allow a snake to live in close proximity, despite the fact that people are far more likely to get killed on the road than they are ever to be hurt by a snake.

I believe the best way to overcome a fear of snakes is to learn about them. We have only 32 species, and, if you so desire, you need only learn about the lives of the ones that live in your particular area. You can determine this information from the map accompanying each species account in a wonderful guide to the snakes and the lizards of Virginia that has been published by the Department of Game & Inland Fisheries.

The small book is loaded with photos, and in addition to the usual information on habitat and behavior, each account includes a “Did you know?” section. For example, on the Red Corn Snake page, you find that the corn snake may have gotten its name from its habit of hunting rodents around corn fields. I prefer the second answer, which suggests the name could have come from this snake’s belly pattern, which looks like Indian Corn!

It might surprise you to see how many species of colorful snakes we have in Virginia, some of which are quite striking. However, there can be a lot of variation among individuals within a species, such as the Northern Copperhead. Some of these animals are a gorgeous coppery color, while others are a rather bland gray.

Longtime readers of my column may remember that female copperheads sometimes reproduce underneath my carport. You might think this situation would present a big problem, but it simply requires that we pay a bit more attention when walking around the carport during the month or so that the female is around. (There is usually only one female, although one year we had three!)

I’ve learned a great deal about copperheads as a result of inadvertently supplying a maternity ward for them, such as that people can coexist with these snakes. Although one or more females have each given birth to 7-9 young underneath my carport many times, we rarely see these animals around the house other than during their birthing season. Most snakes try to avoid people.

However, since we know they live in the area, we always watch where we step and where we place our hands. Living in agreement with nature means taking precautions, but this is no different than being careful around your fellow human beings. I’ve been able to avoid being bitten by any kind of snake, but I haven’t been able to avoid careless drivers who have plowed into my car, one of whom put me into the hospital and caused me many years of lingering pain.

There is no need to deliberately run over snakes on the roadways, or to chop their heads off if you come across one on the ground. In fact, most people get bitten because they interact with the snake instead of just keeping their distance.  

Learning about the lizards of Virginia is a bit more difficult task than learning about our snakes. A lizard usually makes a brief appearance, quickly running off to hide or to look for a meal of spiders or insects.  

Amazingly, the lizard species (and many other different kinds of animals) living on my property can often be seen lounging around the same carport opening where the female copperheads hang out when waiting to give birth! We’ve spotted broad-headed and five-lined skinks as well as fence lizards in that area.

The funny thing about this is that there are not a lot of spiders or insects to be seen there, and usually when you notice animals again and again in an area, it suggests a nearby food source. However, I suspect these lizards—being cold-blooded—are taking advantage of the warmth of the concrete and nearby bricks at that corner of the carport. The sun hits that area early on summer days, and the lizards (and, in season, a copperhead) show up only after the area has been hit by photons for a while.

Although the DGIF book does not mention it in the Fence Lizard account, these particular reptiles are quite appropriately named as they can often be seen on a fence! There are still a few sections left of an old farm fence that once ran along the front of my property, and I have found this fencing to be a reliable location for spotting a Fence Lizard.

It always brings me great joy and satisfaction to see one there because I know that most people would have long ago gotten rid of that decrepit fence.  I did not, and it has afforded me more views of Fence Lizards than I ever would have experienced otherwise, making it a valuable component of The Nature-friendly Garden.

A Guide to the Snakes and Lizards of Virginia is a good book to own if you want to recognize and learn about these animals. It is available from the DGIF Store (www.shopdgif.com). It is truly a bargain for $10!  

Here We Go Again-Emerald Ash Borer

©Marlene A. Condon

The United States Department of Agriculture started putting up purple boxes throughout Virginia in 2012 to detect the arrival of Emerald Ash Borers, a nonnative insect. These nondiscriminatory sticky boxes needlessly kill hundreds of innocent insects, including butterflies. Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

The Emerald Ash Borer, an Asian insect that was probably brought into the United States via cargo ships and airplanes carrying solid wood packing material, was first discovered in the Detroit area in 2002. From its initial occurrence, it has moved outward to 31 states and is expected to continue spreading throughout the country.

The adult beetle feeds on the foliage of an ash tree without causing any real harm. However, the immature beetle feeds on the inner bark where water and nutrients are transported throughout the tree. If there is an abundance of these larvae, they can kill the tree by interfering with its ability to get these essential liquids where they need to be.

The United States Depart-ment of Agriculture (USDA) has reported that the Emerald Ash Borer has killed hundreds of millions of ash trees in North America. Needless to say, and as is typical when a new foreign animal is found within the country, there is widespread panic. Municipalities, property owners, forest-products industries, and nursery operators are concerned about losing their ash trees.

In the beginning, the USDA behaved rationally, restricting and enforcing quarantines to prevent ash logs and firewood from potentially carrying Emerald Ash Borers into new areas. But as the insect’s spread continued unabated, the agency moved to pesticide usage.

Humans have become so used to the idea of employing poisons throughout the landscape that hardly anyone gives it much thought. Yet the consequences are profound.

A catastrophic result of treating trees with an injected pesticide (the main method of treating ash trees against the Emerald Ash Borer and hemlock trees for the Woolly Adelgid) is that those trees themselves become killing agents of non-targeted species as well as the targeted one. In these times of environmental consciousness, everyone knows that the wanton extermination of non-targeted species is an unsound practice.

Strangely, some environmentalists argue that we cannot afford to lose our native ash trees because they support native insects. However, there is no ecological value to keeping alive a poisoned ash tree that will attract and then snuff the life out of such critters as the caterpillars of Tiger Swallowtail and Hickory Hairstreak butterflies, among many others.

Imidacloprid, one of the commonly used pesticides suggested for use on ash trees, is already implicated in the decline of honeybees, and kills all kinds of insects and other kinds of invertebrates by interfering with the transmission of nerve impulses.

Proponents for the use of this pesticide always point to its safeness for use around people and their pets. But people and their pets are not the organisms that make the environment habitable for the rest of life on Earth, and therefore should not be seen as the only determinant for whether a pesticide is acceptably safe.

Although humans and pets would not, presumably, have much opportunity to eat this pesticide, the probability for other mammals, as well as birds, reptiles, and amphibians, is much higher. Employed systemically (injected into the tree), Imidiclopid moves easily throughout the entire plant, filling roots, leaves, pollen, nectar, and fruit with this toxic substance.

What this means is that any kind of animal making use of any part of a treated tree is susceptible to serious poisoning, whether it is a White-footed Mouse eating an ash seed or a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker getting sap. Does this matter? It certainly does when you consider that both of these species eat Gypsy Moths (an alien species brought to this country deliberately) and thus help to limit their numbers.

Although the United States government has spent millions of dollars trying to eradicate the Gypsy Moth from our forests via the use of pesticides, it is a battle that can never be won because pesticides simply breed resistance into the species, making it more of a problem for humans to deal with. 

It would be far more sensible to preserve ash seeds that could be planted after the borer populations have plummeted. Once large ash trees have been greatly reduced in number, the borers will starve for lack of a food source. A natural buildup of predator populations will take place and that will work to keep borer populations in check.

This scenario has already played out with the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug. Although populations of this nonnative insect (first detected in the US in 1998) were still noticeable in Virginia in 2017, its numbers were substantially reduced from previous years.

You might question my assessment, because for most folks, finding several dozen of these stink bugs around the house still counts as too many. However, just a few years ago there would be hundreds of them in the fall on house siding. In Shenandoah National Park, we couldn’t even exit the car because stink bugs were flying and landing everywhere! It was quite a phenomenon.  

Although my initial assessment of the population decrease was based upon what was happening in my yard throughout the 2017 growing season, I confirmed from bird-sighting and hawk-watch reports throughout the fall season that the population drop had occurred throughout the state. The complaints of stink bugs were very few and far between as compared to previous years! Lastly, a sure sign that numbers were way down was the absence of stink bug media coverage.

It’s strange that when some kinds of critters become problematic, the common and hysterical reaction of folks is, “We’ve got to do something!”, even if that “something” is to employ poisons that are harsh in their effect and non-selective in their action. No one considers that this demand for pesticides demands cruelty from researchers.

All pesticides are tested for toxicity by feeding them to animals and applying these substances directly onto their skin and/or into their eyes. Should people worry more about trees than about the inhumane treatment of animals, such as the bunnies and guinea pigs used in Imidacloprid testing?

If people would open their eyes to the big picture and learn more about all of the unseen but very real impacts of using pesticides, the world would be a much better place for us and the creatures that share it. Animals would no longer be subjected to immense physiological and psychological pain and suffering to test poisons, and our tax burden would be less because we wouldn’t be forced to support pesticide research and applications.

No species of organism has ever been eliminated by pesticides. Please reconsider your options the next time you think pesticides will solve your problems. 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Here We Go Again— Emerald Ash Borer

Resurrecting Faith Requires Connecting with Nature

©Marlene A. Condon

 

Photo: Marlene A. Condon.

The word “Easter” is not in the original scriptures. It originally referred to a pagan feast day of renewal and rebirth that honored the Saxon goddess Eastre. Because this holiday fell about the same time as the traditional memorial of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, early missionaries merged the two when they converted the Saxons to Christianity.

To disassociate church services that day from pagan ties and the commercialization of the holiday, some Christian churches now refer to Easter as Resurrection Day. It’s an appropriate name, not only for commemorating Christ’s resurrection, but perhaps also for a discussion of resurrecting faith.

The Millennials—those people born between 1980 and 2000—comprise the largest generation in American history, and according to research by the Pew Research Center, they are less likely to say they believe in God. They are also less likely to be affiliated with any religion, and they are not alone.

The Pew Research Center found that adults of all ages have become less attached to religious institutions since the beginning of the 21st century, but Millennials are at the leading edge of this social phenomenon. Why might that be?

Being the first “digital natives” (a term coined by writer Marc Prensky)—the initial generation to grow up with the Internet, mobile technology, and digital social media—they are also the first generation of “nature aliens” (coined by this author)—the first generation to grow up distanced from the natural world.

Millennials, generally speaking, are deprived of a connection to nature. And that deprivation is a direct pathway to a loss of belief in God. Spending an abundance of time within the virtual world of computers—a creation of man, not God—leads to the worship of Man, not God.

Thus, it is not surprising that in the quarter-century that the Pew Research Center has been polling on the topic of religious affiliation, the Millennial level of religious disaffiliation is at or near the highest levels recorded for any generation. But does living in the digital age preclude an attachment to the natural world?

A large part of the problem lies in the ease of mis/disinformation that can be so easily disseminated by way of the Internet. Anyone with a digital device and an Internet connection can post information (whether it be wrong, untrue, or blown all out of proportion to reality), and it is delivered instantaneously to what seems to have become an accepting and non-analytical public.

Thus, for example, we currently live in a world of germaphobes, people who fear so much the thought of getting a germ on them that they behave somewhat irrationally. They use disinfectant wipes on public surfaces, such as shopping cart handles, even though adults are highly unlikely to get sick if they don’t bother to do this (especially if they would just keep their hands away from their faces). The problem with using disinfectant wipes is that they help to breed supergerms.

How did we get to this point? A variety of culprits are responsible, from the engineers who come up with ever-more sensitive devices to tell us things we don’t really need to know, to the scientists who count the microorganisms and then inform the press to get publicity for more funding, to the news organizations that sensationalize their finds.

Unfortunately, no one applies critical thinking to the situation, which would tell them these miniscule creatures have been there all along, will continue to be there forever, and that humans have been able to coexist with them because our bodies are made to deal with them!

Worse, this compulsion to sanitize the manmade world has inevitably led to the idea of sanitizing the natural world. The number of “pest control” companies and the over one billion pounds of pesticides used yearly in the United States attest to this fact.

Additionally, people have a propensity to embrace negative ideas about nature, as if it’s their enemy. Considering that the natural world is literally our life-support system, this nonsensical attitude results from people viewing nature from a skewed perspective.

Consider ticks. These small arachnids are well known, thanks to Lyme Disease, a serious illness caused by a bacterium ticks can transmit to humans. Many people are terrified to go outdoors during the warm months of the year because, with the amount of publicity ticks get, people think the probability of getting Lyme Disease is extremely high. 

But compared to the other activities people engage in without worry, the risk of getting Lyme Disease is relatively low. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 11 people per 100,000 were confirmed to be infected in Virginia in 2013. With a population of about 8 million people, this works out to about 80 cases of Lyme Disease, which is treatable by antibiotics. On the other hand, 740 Virginians died in a car crash that same year.

Should people be more afraid of spending time outdoors than getting into their vehicles to drive the roadways? A rational person can see that, with the number of Lyme Disease cases about 11 percent of the number of vehicular deaths, the answer is, “Obviously not.” And yet they absolutely are. Why?

People tend not to fear the things they are familiar with, especially manmade objects such as cars, which can be quite deadly. Instead, they tend to fear the wildlife they don’t see often and thus are unfamiliar with. Worse, they pay more attention to and believe stories that exaggerate the dangers posed by wildlife.

How do we get people to connect with nature instead of holding onto a distorted view of it? Unfortunately, this situation is extremely difficult to rectify because people are bombarded 24/7 with a huge amount of misinformation, much of which originates with scientists.

Because these professionals tend to look at nature only through the lens of human experience, theirs is a biased view of the natural world in which organisms seem to be either “good” or “bad.” It is a subjective perspective, and thus not accurate.

Humans must learn to recognize the importance of coexisting with other life forms, which means understanding how to live in agreement with nature instead of fighting it. Every creature exists for a reason, and that reason is to assist in perpetuating life on the planet by helping to keep the environment functioning properly.

Yet the war on nature has never before been fought so vigorously, nor more powerfully, to kill all manner of creatures, from insects to mammals to plants. Satan himself could not have devised a more devilishly fiendish scheme to divorce man from God. 

 

Blue Ridge Naturalist: Resurrecting Faith Requires Connecting with Nature