Links that may or may not be related to gardens, food, travel, nature, or heterotopias and liminal spaces but probably are. Sources in parentheses. Unless mentioned, all links should be free of paywalls.
article: Bundling Up: Soil Microbes in Winter (Maggie Weng/The Outside Story/Northern Woodlands) “Microbes exist across all three domains of life: Eukarya, Archaea and Bacteria” and many survive and continue to decompose leaves and other natural material by staying snug and warm under a good snowpack, which keeps the soil from freezing. Warming winters here in the northeast threaten microbes and the plants and animals (including us) that depend on them for nutrients and storage of carbon emissions.
list/thread: simple, small pleasures (pamelapolston/Threads) Folks on Threads contribute to a list of small pleasures … just sweet
essay: New Rules for the New Year (Margaret Roach/NYT – gifted) “Perhaps the best way to confront the swiftly changing landscape is to swallow hard, and then move forward with a fresh approach.” The two main ideas she outlines in this piece — applicable both to a changing climate and to evolving or devolving gardens — are to plant keystone plants (“ecological powerhouses”) and also charmers, i.e. “little doses of pure prettiness” and to practice phenology by paying close attention to when plants emerge, leaf out, bud, flower, seed.
article: Wild Bees in Winter (Nick Dorian, Ph.D./Pollinator Pathway) What are the bees doing? To put it bluntly, they either fattened up in late fall and are hanging out in their nests in a physiological state of diapause (a kind of dormancy) or they have reproduced, left offspring to overwinter in the nest, and died. We can aid survival for bees of all ages by planting fall-blooming native plants (with energy-rich nectar); leaving a light layer of leaves over garden beds and leaving some stems standing for bee habitat for some species; and leaving soils intact (not tilling) in spring to avoid disturbing overwintering bees.
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