| HGCNY on Facebook |
As as more of us participate on our Facebook page, this will become a useful resource for asking (and answering!) local HGCNYers' questions about habitat gardening. Join in what can become a very useful conversation about habitat gardening in Central New York.
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| Our Habitat Garden |  |
Visit Our Habitat Garden website for information on providing habitat, earth-friendly gardening practices, plants, and various creatures here in Central New York. |
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Join HGCNY!
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Becoming an official member of HGCNY is easy: just join Wild Ones! When you're a Wild Ones member, you're automatically an official member of HGCNY. |
| 101 Ways to Help Birds | 
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Ten ways to do this, 50 ways to do that. Books and articles of lists are everywhere. Often, these lists are gimmicks that offer fairly simplistic ideas.
Not so with this book: 101 Ways to Help Birds by Laura Erickson. Each "way" is well-developed, each suggestion is substantive, and, most important, each is doable.
Not only will you learn about the many challenges birds face, but you'll learn about the many ways you can help.
(Note: This book is available at the library.)
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| Bringing Nature Home now available on Kindle |  | |
The Onondaga County Public Library now has Kindle e-books available ... and Bringing Nature Home by Douglas Tallamy is now available in this format (along with the "real" book).
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Sierra Club Outing
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Elmwood Park
Sun. Oct. 16 2 pm
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The local Sierra Club is hosting a walk that would be of interest to habitat gardeners. Besides the architecture, you'll have an opportunity to see native plants (and invasive plants, unfortunately).
Walk along a creek with embankments, stairs, and stone bridges representative of the Reform Park Era. The park was once a "First Class Temperance Resort" and is on the National Registry of Historic Places.
Find the corner of Glenwood Ave. and Wellesley Rd. and enter the park. Meet in the small parking lot. |
| Interested in Edible Gardening? | 
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If you'd like to get information on Edible Gardening CNY, just email John to find out about edible gardening tours and programs.
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The Lorrie Otto Seeds for Education Fund:
Deadline Oct. 18 | 
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This Wild Ones fund gives grants to schools, nature centers and other educational organizations whose "plants-roots" efforts best reflect the Wild Ones philosophy. The fund awards grants for education-centered projects that create native plant landscapes or develop outdoor classrooms. For more info... |
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Greetings!
October program: Rhiannon Crain, Project Leader of the YardMap Network, will present an introduction to and demonstration of Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Citizen Science project called YardMap.
YardMap is a free, social, interactive citizen science mapping project that allows gardeners & birders to learn more about enriching their habitat gardens to attract more birds and wildlife, while at the same time contributing to important scientific research on residential ecology.
Free and open to the public. Bring a friend!
REMINDER: We're now meeting at LIVERPOOL PUBLIC LIBRARY!
WHEN: Sun., Oct. 30 at 2 p.m.
WHERE: Liverpool Library (NOT Le Moyne)
(Directions to the library)
 We'd appreciate it if you could post our 8-1/2 x 11 list of our programs for this year. Just download our .pdf file, print, and post. Thanks!
Janet
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Mystery pair
These two plants may look very different, but even so, they're often confused.  (Answer at the bottom of the email.) |
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Purple lovegrass
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Though browner, still a habitat
It's easy to see how summer's large patches of flowers and large leafy shrubs and trees benefit wildlife.
But now that our gardens may be winding down--not quite so flowery, not quite so green--it's easy to think that the habitat garden season is over. Not so!
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Goldfinch eating coneflower seeds
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If we look around, we can see the many ways our habitat gardens still provide essential habitat to creatures. For example, leaving "dead" flowerheads provides nutritious seeds for birds, leaf litter provides a comfy home for insects, perhaps butterflies overwintering in one of their life phases or just uncharismatic insects that will provide tasty morsels for birds.
Think twice before removing all the remnants of our summer gardens. You could be removing just that element that is essential for creatures to survive the winter.
Read more:
* Our Habitat Garden
* Wildlife for all seasons |
 Bee Basics
It's available as a free download.
Highly recommended! This booklet is very readable, and full of information of interest to any habitat gardener kind of person. You don't need to be a scientist to understand or enjoy it!
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Get kids outdoors in fall
 Here are some ideas to get kids outdoors in the fresh air and to learn about nature.
Create fall leaf prints - Collect fall leaves and hammer the color onto muslin - See complete directions
Hold a scavenger hunt - This can be done for all ages by adjusting the difficulty and the territory covered. Young children could be provided with a picture list rather than text. Older kids could even take a digital camera to record their finds. For a real challenge, look for an A-Z set of objects.
An experiential hunt: The Love the Outdoors website suggests another type of scavenger "hunt": an experiential one. For example, check off when you skip a rock, hang from a low tree branch (for the younger kids, tippy-toes count), hike to the top of a hill, see a squirrel, hear a birdsong, and cross a creek bed without getting wet feet, smelling wet mud, and so on. Here are some more ideas for scavenger hunts.
YOU are creating the items to be found or experienced, so it's easy to adapt for YOUR own kids.
CAUTION: Be sure, though, that the area you use and the items you select will not be harmed. Caution the participants to check off the list, sketch, or photograph wildflowers and so on, NOT pull them up to take back, and don't bother the wildlife. The fun of the hunt, not a bag of collections, should be the focus.
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Mystery plants
 | | Stiff goldenrod |
The bright yellow--very noticeable--flower is a goldenrod, in this case, a stiff goldenrod (Solidago rigida).
It's a very important source of fall nectar for bees, butterflies, and other pollinators.
 | | Ragweed |
This is ragweed--a important source of (yikes!) LOTS of light pollen, distributed by the wind.
This is in contrast to goldenrod, which is pollinated by insects, and which therefore has much less, much heavier pollen.
Why are these two paired? Because they're often confused.
1) They're confused as to source of pollen, with many people thinking it's the goldenrod as the source of their allergies.
2) They're even confused as to identification. Sometimes photos of goldenrod are labeled as ragweed even though they're nothing alike. The reason they're often confused is that they often grow in close proximity to each other, and if someone glances over to see the source of their sneeze, which will they notice: the nondescript ragweed or the colorful goldenrod? Bad news: Studies have found that higher carbon dioxide (CO2) levels associated with global warming may have doubled the amount of pollen that ragweed produces--mostly over the past four or five decades. Another doubling could occur by the end of this century. (Source: USDA)For more information, visit * Our Habitat Garden * Goldenrod: Nothing to sneeze at |
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