Pollinator Passion

There HAVE actually been some good things happen in 2020. One for me was being fortunate to join a small group working to certify Austin as a Bee City through the Xerces Society. As part of that effort, we've formed Pollinate Austin - PollinATX for short - and, of course, I wanted to share it with you.

We intend to publish a newsletter with articles we're sure you'll find of interest. We'll link to events and resources within our community as well as simply delight in our favorite "gateway bugs" (yes, they're not true bugs but well, you know.) If you share our passion, you'll want to be part of the fun.

Subscribe to the newsletter here:
https://forms.gle/VcYiKxqmi618PjBSA

And follow us on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/PollinATX

Looking forward to seeing you!

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A Plant with Purple Leaves

There are a couple of groups on Facebook where I lurk and occasionally dip my opinion into the fray. They're places where people with knowledge of unbelievable scope can be observed, deftly identifying this obscure native plant or that scraggly left-behind orphan found in the backyard of a newly purchased home. One such backyard orphan recently was posted in need of identification. If it were a native plant, two people on "Texas Flora" would've named it within minutes. Even the taxonomy of those impossible grasses is typically put to rest in seconds. Not so with this poor guy. At first I was fairly certain it was one of the purple leafed basils, maybe 'African Blue'. It's fairly impossible to find it still thriving in a Texas January, but two plants in my yard are still hanging in there. They even look like they'll come back if we don't have a deep freeze before spring. BTW, this basil has one heck of a botanical monik

Ho-hum to Habitat: My Path to Native Bees - Resources

San Antonio's Festival of Flowers will resume this Saturday, June 3, 2023, after a break of three years. I've been given the opportunity to share how I garden, as well as a general overview of our native bees. A link to a Google doc containing my handout (the info dense slides from my presentation) follows this list of resources. Note that if you didn't attend, some of the handout pages may not make complete sense. Hyperlinks to more resources: https://www.wildbeestexas.com/ https://w3.biosci.utexas.edu/jha/research/native-bee-communities https://www.wildflower.org/collections/collection.php?collection=TX_central https://www.pollinator.org/pollinator.org/assets/generalFiles/BeginnerBeeFieldGuide_11March2022_LowRez.pdf https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/wildlife_diversity/nongame/native-pollinators/bumblebee-id.phtml https://www.pollinatorphotos.com/ https://www.homegrownnationalpark.org/ https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yOIlJFjzgAlhc5nfTXkqrVutPxWHLwfQ/vie

Flying Flowers - Butterfly Gardening Handout for Festival of Flowers 2024

Let’s dig into “petals, puddles, and pesticides”. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AkRpm5NGtWnj4aIW1rTnqt7h_w9TpIs2/view?usp=drive_link

Playin' Outside

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