Happy June, Gardeners!
This month includes Pollinator Week (June 22 - 28) and I find it very fitting to be able to share that the library was awarded another native plant grant to complete our landscaping project! If you are new to our newsletter, you may not be aware that we have been slowly transforming our garden beds around the library to be made up of predominately native plants to support our pollinators and our Bee City, USA initiative.
The southeast garden bed is already filled with plants obtained through a Xerces Society grant, and after November, our entre south side will be made up of native pollinator plants.
This has been such a special opportunity that has come together through the donations from the Xerces Society and Clackamas Soil and Water Conservation District, and the labor of our generous volunteers.
Upcoming Events
Kick off summer reading with a special craft for all ages. This year's summer reading theme is Plant a Seed, Read! Decorate a clay pot and then plant seeds in the pot from the Sandy Seed Library.
When: Saturday, June 6, 2 - 4pm
Where: Hoyt Community Room, Sandy Public Library
Plant a Seed, Read Artists' Reception
Come and join our Clackamas County artists to celebrate the summer reading show: Plant a Seed, Read! Snacks and refreshments are provided. Everyone is welcome!
When: Monday, June 8, 5:30 - 7pm
Where: Sandy Public Library, Fireplace Room
Visit during peak bloom to walk the blooming fields, shop farm goods, and enjoy seasonal scenery.
When: Friday - Sunday, June 12 - July 5 (Closed July 4), 9am - 4pm
Where: Willamette Valley Lavender Farm, Canby, OR
At the time of writing the newsletter, the group was still finalizing their plans, so please check the our website to confirm: https://www.ci.sandy.or.us/
When: Monday, June 22, 6:30pm - 8pm
Where: TBD
Celebrating Pollinators!
I love these infographics. The first one shows some of the most common bees observed in the Portland area, and the second illustrates the number of pollinator species each of those flowering plants feeds! I love that they included lavender to really showcase the diversity of species native plants support.
If you would like to read more about native plants and how they support bees, please click on this publication put out by OSU: Native Plant Picks for Bees: 10 Species You Can Grow to Support Wild Bees in Oregon.
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Image from Common Bees of Portland, Garden Ecology Brief, OSU Garden Ecology Lab
What I've Been Reading: The Pollinator Victory Garden by Kim Eirman This book has so many, large photos of a variety of pollinators feasting from flowers. It even gives side-by-side photos of 2 kinds of coneflowers (a double flowered hybrid and a native) to show why the overbred versions are often not a good choice for feeding pollinators. The chapter Creating and Growing a Pollinator Victory Garden is very good. There is even a checklist in the back to help keep you organized.  100 Plants to Feed the Bees by the Xerces Society This book is basically a list of plants that range from native flowers, trees, and shrubs to those that have been introduced and still feed the bees! It is more of a quick reference and shows the parts of the country each plants grows best in.  Attracting Native Pollinators by the Xerces Society This book is incredibly thorough and will take some time to sit with. One of my favorite things about the Xerces books is how they utilize photography. The sample garden section gives very detailed examples of how to bring pollinator gardens into a variety of landscapes. What I've Been Reading Children's Picture Book Edition: The Mighty Pollinators by Helen Frost & Rick Lieder Really wonderful up-close photography of a wide range of pollinators set to simple poems.  Before the Seed: How Pollen Moves by Susannah Buhrman-Deever How pollen moves and the various wildlife that helps it get to where it needs to go.  My Pollinator Garden: How I Plant for Bees, Butterflies, Beetles, and More by Jordan Zwetchenbaum A visually engaging picture book that highlights the pollinator and the flowers it pollinates.  Rick's Corner: Relearning How to See the Garden In Jim Harrison’s novella “The Beige Dolorosa" (from Julip) , Phillip Caulkins, a 50-year-old divorced professor whose academic career has been overturned by an accusation of sexual harassment and must retreat to rural Arizona to reevaluate his life, turns toward the natural world for solace. He is especially intrigued by the “otherness” of birds, and in a dream decides to rename the birds of America because he feels their current names are uninspired and off the mark. He renames the common thrasher the "beige dolorosa"—to his mind a more apt name meant to evoke Mozart and music that, like the bird’s call, “makes your heart pulse with mystery.” This got me thinking about the impact of naming things and of the notion, attributed widely on the Internet to the Indian spiritual philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, that once we name a thing, we lose the ability to truly see it.* The specific quote is “The day you teach the child the name of the bird, the child will never see that bird again,” but you’ll see similar expressions of the same idea from others–for instance, in the thriller The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides, you’ll encounter this: “Once you name something, it stops you seeing the whole of it, or why it matters. You focus on the word, which is just the tiniest part, really, the tip of an iceberg.” The idea is that names (labels, mental categories) dull our natural curiosity and limit our direct, intentional experience of the world. Once we say "that's a crow" or “that’s a rose,” we stop looking at the object itself and see only our concept of it, which becomes a kind of placeholder in our thoughts for the real thing. In The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton explores how the act of drawing can be a remedy for this problem, because acts like sketching force us to look at an object with intention and bypass the categories in our minds–in other words, drawing a thing makes us see it anew. All of which brings me to the book I wanted to highlight this month, Let’s Botanize! 101 Ways to Connect with Plants, which, much like de Botton’s sketching, offers a strong antidote to this “seeing” dilemma by giving us explicit invitations to look–really look–at the plants all around us in our daily lives. Botanizing, according to authors Ben Goulet-Scott and Jacob Suissa, both botany professors who met as graduate students at Harvard, “is to spend time in any setting with the specific intention of observing and appreciating plant life.” In other words, the authors want you to approach each plant you encounter as if it were the most interesting plant in the world, if only for 10 minutes. To that end, they present a series of prompts designed to get you to take a close, intentional look at the plants in your everyday environment, to pause and be curious and not just simply march through your to-do list of gardening chores. Sample prompts: #7: What are the largest and smallest flowers you can find? #46: What is the most brightly colored plant part you can find that is not a flower or fruit? #62: Can you identify the oldest and youngest leaves on a branch? #81: Spend 10 consecutive minutes with one tree. Even the most familiar plants have more to reveal when we’ve invested the time and effort to really look, too really see, and Let’s Botanize! instructs you to look closely not only when something blooms or otherwise shows off. Of the five tenets of botanizing that the authors offer, perhaps the most important is “Rediscover the familiar.” And this book invites you to do just that. To quote one online review: “It’s not a book you read, it’s a book you do.” Bonus Link: The authors have also founded an educational nonprofit that seeks to combat the climate and biodiversity crises by spreading curiosity, knowledge, and appreciation of plants: https://www.letsbotanize.org/. As always, thank you for being here, |
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