Tell us about your green thumb (or lack thereof)

[samhexum]

 

First-ever World's Ugliest Lawn competition crowns woman who says 'ex-husband left with lawnmower back in 2016'

A yard in Australia took home first place in the first-ever World’s Ugliest Lawn competition.

[samhexum]

Scientists have confirmed the existence of the world’s oldest forest — and the ancient, secret spot is only a short drive from the hustle and bustle of the Big Apple.

First discovered at the bottom of an abandoned quarry near the town of Cairo in the Catskill Mountains back in 2009, the experts have been working to learn the exact ages of the plants and trees growing in the area, where rocks reportedly up to 385 million years old hold the wooded area’s fossilized treasure.

Researchers from SUNY Binghamton and the University of Cardiff in Wales, were excited to find evidence of extremely early plants — some that would have “even been seen by dinosaurs,” the BBC reported.

The forest, just over two hours’ drive from NYC’s George Washington Bridge, once spread out over an area of about 250 miles. The soil sifters are said to have been focusing their efforts on an area roughly half the size of a football field.

Rocks containing fossils dating back 385 million years were found in the scenic mountain region. brandtbolding – stock.adobe.com

“The Cairo site is very special,” Christopher Berry, a paleobotanist at Cardiff University, told Science in 2019.

“You are walking through the roots of ancient trees. Standing on the quarry surface we can reconstruct the living forest around us in our imagination,” he said.

For years, Berry and his colleagues have been examining plant and tree fossils in the area to help them build their case.

The New York site joins more far-flung locales such as the Amazon rainforest and Japan’s Yakushima Forest in an elite group of O.G.’s.

The site isn’t currently open to the public, but is surrounded by a wealth of scenic beauty. demerzel21 – stock.adobe.com

Those interested in visiting the exact site will be disappointed, at least for the time being — the quarry is owned by the Town of Cairo, and is currently strictly reserved for scientific study, out of concern for preservation of the area.

There’s plenty else to see in the area however.

Skiing at Windham Mountain and the trendy shops and restaurants of the city of Hudson are both just minutes away, while the hiking trails of Catskill Park are right on Cairo’s doorstep.

The Cairo site isn’t the only extremely old find in the region — another forest site was previously discovered in nearby Gilboa, dating back just three years shy of the current crownbearer.

[samhexum]

 

Richmond Hill HS partners w/ NY Sun Works, launching Hydroponics Lab to cultivate sustainability education

Edited April 4 by samhexum
for absolutely NO @%!*ING reason at all!

[Welshman]

Chance would be a fine thing in this neck of the woods. On average between January and March, this part of the United Kingdom is supposed to get no more than ten inches of rain. In that same period this year we have recieved 13 inches of rain and as such the ground is so sodden everytime it rains thereafter, flooding happens in people's gardens

[samhexum]

On 8/13/2023 at 9:29 PM, sync said:

Kudos to all the green thumbs.

Artificial greenery has perished in my care.

What did you do, cook for it? 

@sync:

I am so envious of those with the ability/skill/desire to prepare food(s).  I've trained my body to endure my food preparations, but I wouldn't serve my preparations to other human beings unless they were starving on death row.  

 

[samhexum]

[ICTJOCK]

Ready for spring annuals.   It has been a busy spring with non escort clients and tax season for sure.    Ready to get out and with it with both annual planting and perennials.  I not only have a green thumb,  but a green hand as well.

[samhexum]

On 11/21/2023 at 2:47 PM, samhexum said:

Council Member James Gennaro and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams joined students and faculty at John Bowne High School to announce a $5 million donation to the school’s agricultural program, recognized nationally as an exceptional urban agricultural education for its students. Running since 1964 and currently consisting of more than 500 students and eight teachers, it is run in conjunction with the FFA (Future Farmers of America). 

One Iowa high school student thought of a moo-ving way to ask her boyfriend to prom.

Late last month, Emma Lihs, a junior at Bondurant-Farrar, asked her boyfriend Wyatt Carlson, a senior at Dowling Catholic, to the annual event by writing "prom?" on the side of her pet cow.

"It was awesome," Carlson tells PEOPLE of Lihs' creative promposal. "I live in the city but have always loved agriculture and livestock, and she knew that."

"I was shocked to say the least. It was awesome and of course I said yes," he adds. "Having a cow in your front yard is pretty uncommon, but always welcome."

According to Lihs, coming up with the idea to write "prom?" in white chalk on the side of her beloved pet cow — named Fern — was a no-brainer.

"You can say Fern and I share Wyatt. I’m pretty convinced she likes him more than me. She was totally on board to get dressed up to surprise our boyfriend," Lihs jokingly adds.

Carlson later returned the favor to his girlfriend not long after when he brought a horse to her house to ask her to prom at his school, holding up a sign that read: "I am not horsin' around this time, join this cowboy at prom!"

Carlson tells PEOPLE that he and girlfriend Lihs met through the National FFA Organization, which is a nonprofit career and technical student organization that teaches agricultural education to middle and high schoolers.

"He was a 2023-2024 officer, and I am now a 2024-2025 district officer," Lihs says, noting: "Wyatt and I honestly just clicked right off the bat and have been loving every moment since."

"We have a common love for agriculture and growing the community," Carlson adds. "We both are outgoing and love to try new things."

As for their future plans, Carlson says he and Lihs will be continuing to focus on all things animal-related. "We will be showing cow calf together at the county fair," he tells PEOPLE.

Edited April 14 by samhexum
for shits and giggles

[samhexum]

Honey, they're home! 

Birdhouse-style ‘bee hotels’ coming to 7 NYC plazas to help at-risk pollinators

The city’s buzzworthy project provides nutrition and nesting in the form of wooden boxes on poles and bee-friendly vegetation, Department of Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez said Thursday.

 

Edited April 25 by samhexum
because he's bored as hell

[samhexum]

On 11/21/2023 at 2:47 PM, samhexum said:

The John Bowne Agricultural Program, also known as the Agri-Science program, is recognized nationally as an exceptional urban agricultural education for its students. It has been running since 1964 and currently consists of more than 500 students and eight teachers. 

Local high school students bid farewell to trout they nurtured as part of a conservation effort

Twenty-two High school students from John Bowne High School in Flushing took a trip to the Cross River to release nearly 230 juvenile trout that they had raised in their classrooms. The students had been taking care of the fingerlings since October of last year and cheered on their journey through the Ward Pound Ridge Reservation in Westchester County and the Cross River Reservoir. 

In October 2023, over 125 classroom educators joined the “Trout in the Classroom” program’s Fall Teacher Conference and received trout eggs from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Thousands of students across the state worked on an eight-month-long program to incubate the trout eggs and raise them into fingerlings. The program concludes with field trips between March and June of this year, where the students have the opportunity to release the fingerlings into streams. Students also have the opportunity to share their experiences about raising the trout and participate in other environmental activities.  

Since 2002, the DEP and Trout Unlimited have worked together to educate students across New York State about the importance of protecting shared water resources through the Trout in the Classroom program. The program teaches students from pre-K to 12th grade about connections between trout, the New York City water supply system and water quality. Trout Unlimited is a national non-profit organization that works to conserve and restore North America’s cold-water fisheries and their watershed. 

The DEP manages the city’s water supply, providing about 1 billion gallons of drinking water daily to nearly 10 million residents, including 8.5 million in New York City.

[samhexum]

Near the towering border wall flanked by a US Border Patrol vehicle, botanist Sula Vanderplank heard a quail in the scrub yelp “chi-ca-go,” that toddlin' town... a sound the birds use to signal they are separated from a mate or group.

Then silence.

A quail on the Mexican side called back, triggering a back-and-forth soundtrack that was both fitting and heartbreaking in an ecosystem split by an artificial barrier.

Vanderplank was among several botanists and citizen scientists participating in the Border Bioblitz near the Mexican community of Jacumé, about 60 miles east of Tijuana.

Roughly 1,000 volunteers armed with the iNaturalist app on their smartphones are documenting as many species as possible along the US-Mexico border in May.

Uploading photos to the app helps identify plants and animals, and records the coordinates of the location.

The hope is the information could lead to more protections for the region’s natural richness, which is overshadowed by news of drug trafficking and migrant smuggling.

On a recent day, Bioblitz volunteers scrutinized a bright yellow blooming carpet of common Goldfields, a sharp contrast to the imposing steel bollards of the border wall topped with rolls of razor wire.

Some navigated their way around piles of empty water jugs, a gray hoodie and empty cans of tuna fish left under the branches of native flora like the Tecate Cypress.

“There’s a fabulous amount of biodiversity here that’s traditionally been overlooked,” Vanderplank, of the binational program Baja Rare, said.

The efforts started in response to former President Donald Trump adding hundreds of miles of border walls that toppled untold numbers of saguaro cactuses in Arizona and passed through the biodiversity hotspot of Baja California.

“When the border wall construction began, we realized how little hard data we had, especially when it came to plants and small organisms,” Vanderplank said. “We don’t know what all we could lose.”

Since then, there has been a groundswell of initiatives to document the borderland’s flora and fauna as climate change coupled with habitat loss, pollution and development have hammered the world’s biodiversity.

One estimate in 2019 warns that a million plant and animal species face extinction within decades, a rate of loss 1,000 times greater than expected.

The United Nations is expected hold a high-level meeting in Colombia of signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity in October aiming to protect 30% of land, freshwater and oceans considered important for biodiversity by 2030, known as 30 by 30.

Representatives from nearly 200 countries are expected to present plans on how they will meet conservation targets agreed upon in 2022.

Currently, 17% of terrestrial and 10% of marine areas are protected.

Baja California peninsula, which borders California and is home to Tijuana with one of Mexico’s highest homicide rates, has more than 4,000 species of plants.

A quarter of them are endemic and at least 400 plants are considered rare with little to no protection.

Flora and fauna that have gone extinct or are in danger of disappearing in the US, like the California red-legged frog, are thriving south of the border, producing specimens that are being used to bring back populations.

But the region’s crime deters many US scientists from crossing the border. Mexico also is restricting permits for botanists and not allowing seeds to be collected, further curtailing the work, scientists say.

Bioblitz organizers work with local communities and say they take people only to areas deemed safe.

“You have to be really careful because of the violence,” said Jon Rebman, a curator of botany at the San Diego Natural History Museum, who has named 33 new plants for science from the southern California and Baja California region.

“It’s scary from that standpoint, yet those are the areas where we really need more information because there’s hardly any protected area on the south side,” he said.

Using the museum’s collection, Rebman made a list of 15 plant species endemic to Baja California and not seen since being collected nearly a century ago. He created a binational team to find them. So far, they have located 11.

Rebman also discovered two new plants to science in 2021 in a canyon off a Tijuana highway: the new species, Astragalus tijuanensis, and a new variety of the Astragalus brauntonii named lativexillum.

“I was worried they would go extinct before we even got them named,” Rebman said. “That tells you what type of area we’re working in.”

Tijuana-based botanist Mariana Fernandez of Expediciones Botánicas periodically checks on the plants.

Working with Rebman, she is pushing Baja California to adopt more protections for its native plants. Currently only a fraction are on Mexico’s federal protection list.

She hopes the state will step in, while she also tries to build support by taking Tijuana residents and Baja officials on hikes.

“People are amazed that these things exist in Tijuana, and I hope to show more and more people so they can see the beauty, because we need that,” Fernandez said. “It’s important to not be impeded by the barriers that humans create.”

As border security increases with the number of people being displaced by natural disasters, violence and wars at record levels worldwide, more migrants are traipsing out to areas like the stretch near Jacumé.

The tiny community of about 100 families includes members of the Kumeyaay tribe and sits across the border from an equally sparsely populated desert near the California town of Jacumba Hot Springs. Population: about 1,000.

The area has seen thousands of asylum seekers who wait for an opportunity to cross, usually in the cloak of darkness, and then camp again on the US side after turning themselves in to US Border Patrol agents.

Fernandez was among the botanists helping Bioblitz volunteers on the Mexican side near a crumbling crossing station from the 1920s.

“I never would have thought that there would be so much biodiversity on the border,” said Jocelyn Reyes, a student of Fernandez at La Universidad Autónoma de Baja California who stopped every few feet to hover over a plant and photograph its details. “It’s so interesting and makes you realize there’s so much worth saving.”

https://nypost.com/2024/05/19/us-news/botanists-are-scouring-the-us-mexico-border-to-document-a-forgotten-ecosystem/

 

[samhexum]

 

Queens Public Library in Elmhurst unveils new eco-friendly garden with support from National Grid

[Luv2play]

Anyone recognize this type of rubber plant. I’ve had it for 10 years or so and it was mature when I bought it. It has an interesting shape with multiple branches. 
The little one beside it I planted from a shoot of the mother plant but it is just growing straight up. How do I get it to branch out like the mother plant?

[samhexum]

49 minutes ago, Luv2play said:

Anyone recognize this type of rubber plant. I’ve had it for 10 years or so and it was mature when I bought it. It has an interesting shape with multiple branches. 
The little one beside it I planted from a shoot of the mother plant but it is just growing straight up. How do I get it to branch out like the mother plant?

I inherited one of those 22 years ago when a roommate moved out & left it.  I always thought it was a jade plant.  It is indestructible.  Stems fall off & lay there until I notice but don't die.  I overwater (often) or underwater (on occasion) and it doesn't care.  I have stuck fallen stems into water in chinese-food soup containers for over a year and they thrived (I have one like that now).

The majority of my plants are offshoots of offshoots of the original plant.  The original slowly withered and died until there was only one little stem left... which I replanted and is now large and strong and sharing a mug with one of its descendants, with has twisted around in a lovely way as it has grown along its (great?) grandparent.

 

Edited just now by samhexum
To maintain the incredibly high standards I have established here