CritterCam Reveals Yet More Rats and a Plea to Not Use Poison

...further the IPM cause. At the time, and to some extent to this day, there’s a lot of incentive to sell poisons. IPM offers a balanced, common sense approach to dealing with critters like rats: observe, reduce habitat for the creatures we don’t want and increase habitat for predators, use barriers, use biological controls and use toxins as a very last resort. Our own health and the health our planet demands a less toxic approach to pest management...

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What does the loving landscape look like?

...deny the “less attractive” life stages of plants, we also deny our fellow creatures food and habitat in the form of seeds, stems and roots. And, of course, Oudolf is well known for doing the planting design at the High Line park in New York, a mile and half long section of abandoned elevated train track which first, was transformed by nature into a sort of secret park known only to urban explorers–and then, beginning in 2006, was refashioned into...

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What is green water?

...the space between the soil particles and in the bodies of the microscopic creatures which live in healthy soil. How much water? I don’t know, but the real answer is, enough. Plants acclimated to your local climate (natives or similar), living in spongy, healthy soil don’t need supplemental irrigation. Not even in the summer. (Drip line doesn’t occur spontaneously in the wild, after all.) Conversely, in times of heavy rainfall, healthy, spongy soi...

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Got a Critter Question?

...Our guest on the next episode of the Root Simple Podcast will be Lyanda Lynn Haupt, author of The Urban Bestiary: Encountering the Everyday Wild. We’re interviewing her tomorrow (Thursday) so if you have a question about coyotes, moles, raccoons, opossums, squirrels, rats or any of the other creatures that visit our urban backyards, leave a comment....

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Book Review: What the Robin Knows

...all best: Eons ago, Homo sapiens were just as alert and aware as all other creatures…our sensory equipment and our brains are still designed for this awareness. These instincts are still in each of us, just buried, maybe deeply buried. Connecting with bird language begins the process of unearthing them. It changes the whole dynamic of our lives immediately. We now recognize the robin. We recognize the sparrow. These birds lift us from our troubled...

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