When: Sunday, November 30 at 2 pm
Where: Liverpool Public Library (Directions)
Free and open to the public, so bring a friend or two!

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

In the spirit of the first Thanksgiving, most gatherings start with a few words of gratitude for the food they're about to eat. Remember to thank pollinators--especially native bees--in this message!

A few years ago, Whole Foods dramatically illustrated how much we depend on pollinators by temporarily removing the produce that depended on bees.

Here's a list of some of the foods they removed.
 
And since cows eat foods that require pollinators, they did the same with their dairy aisle. Here's the result:
  Read more about this Whole Foods experiment.

A harvestman (aka daddy longlegs)

Though many people know these as "daddy longlegs," another common name for them is "harvestman."

They earned this name since their habit of waving their long legs about as they travel gives the appearance of reaping crops.

It's not surprising if ones you've seen look a bit different, since there are thousands of species of harvestmen.

They are NOT spiders
Yes, they do have eight legs and they may give a spider-like impression, but they have only two eyes, they do NOT produce silk to spin webs or capture prey, and they have a fused body, NOT a two-part body.

(There is a daddy longlegs spider, but that is in a different order.)

They are NOT dangerous
An odd, but common myth: "Daddy-longlegs are one of the most poisonous spiders, but their fangs are too short to bite humans." Since our daddy longlegs are so common, if they were indeed poisonous, we would all have died long ago!

(When we were tent-camping, the sides of the tent always attracted a number of daddy longlegs, which we carefully brushed off before packing up the tent.)

They are a beneficial part of the soil food web
They live above ground, but as part of the soil food web, they function as decomposers, detritivores, scavengers, herbivores, and predators.

Learn more about this creature at MentalFloss.
Learn more about life in the soil in the book titled Life in the Soil by James B. Nardi (available at the library).

This white-throated sparrow is munching on seeds from un-deadheaded asters

"Our natural areas are too small and isolated to sustain the plants and animals that run our ecosystems. By using native plants in our neighborhood and corporate landscapes we can restore vital ecosystem functions where we live and work. We can all play a role in stitching the natural world together again, creating networks for life."

~ Doug Tallamy

Tallamy's latest book The Living Landscape is a wealth of ideas on creating attractive home landscapes using native plants.

In This Issue