- Publication date
- 2023-07-16 00:00:00
- Topics
- reason and sound thinking
- Contributor
- https://divining.app
- Language
- English
Paul will share alternatives to the green grass lawn.
- Addeddate
- 2023-07-17 14:59:21
- Church
- peoria UU church
- Duration
- 18.2
- Identifier
- peoria_UU_church-Sermon_2023_07_16
- Keywords
- Jerusalem, English, Illinois, Fert, Paul Resnick, Midwest, East Peoria, Opening Our Lawns To Nature, Decatur, Katie, Doug Calumet, Mysteries Bloom, Khan, National Park, Doug, King, New England, Gulf Of Mexico, Nevada, Niantic Illinois, The New York Times, Global Warming, Prairie, Tom Sawyer, University Of Illinois Extension Office, Bible, Bee Garden, Suburban, Doug Ptolemy, Springfield, Homegrown National Park, Play Red. Find The Bergamot, Homegrown National, Minnesota, Culver Sunset, Goldenrod, Prairie Burns, Illinois River, Ragweed, Planet Garden, Joe Pye, Hawks, Turf Lawn, Aesthetics, Young, Keystone, Wild Ones
- Scanner
- Internet Archive Python library 3.0.2
- Text
- It kind of feel like the prodigal, but you're going to need a Bible for that not. And I feel like the prodigal son, because a lot of you are like family and I've known you for decades and I just don't see him much. So I feel like I'm returning to where my wife and I got. So today I'd like to start with a slide here, like basically gives you the purpose of my talk. I can find it. That's the group that I was a part of with the master naturalist. But I want to start start right there. A little patch of prairie, Opening Our Lawns to Nature. And basically the purpose of today's talk is to encourage homeowners to convert some of their lawn Turf to a prairie patch. And I like this quote about thinking of your lawn as an area rug, not Walter wall Carpeting. And too often people think of their lawn and their landscape. So in 1817 the public land survey looked at Illinois and noticed how much yellow was Prairie. So everything you see in yellow there was native Prairie plants in 1817. Can we have a lot of records of what people described the Prairie as an endless ocean of grass? And they get disoriented. And not only were they get disoriented, but this 18th century English idea of the perfect, you know, landscape did not fit the Midwest, and if you try to take a picnic basket out into the Prairie, you would soon be inundated by Katie. Deads and bugs and insects and mosquitoes, and so the landscape of the Midwest didn't really fit this kind of 18th century perfect garden idea. But anyway, that's how much prayer there was, which was an amazing amount, and now we're less than 1% of prairie in the state of Illinois. Basically, I planted 180 in my backyard PR play. It was hard to find native Prairie plants. I had to look around. I found this tiny little town called Niantic Illinois, which is near Decatur, I think, or Springfield. It's literally out in the middle of nowhere, and they were selling Prairie plants for 90 cents- a Tom Sawyer thing. Instead of painting the fence, we're going to have a prairie plug planting- say that really fast- 180, and I was had it all lined up and exactly where every plant would go and how we, how visually pretty it would be and all this fun stuff, and it turned out okay. But after a while the Prairie decides where to go, and I love this idea of like. It's not egocentric. It's because the egocentric was my amazing design of where I wanted all my Prairie plants to go. But no, they decided, not me. That's what I learned after about 5 years of so. I also brought along a book with me called Nature's Best play, a guy named Doug Ptolemy, and he has this idea of a homegrown National, and the Homegrown National Park basically ties in my little Prairie with your little Prairie, with your little patch, with your little butterfly and Bee Garden, and it's all being, and that's what we're trying to do with homegrown National Park. He gets a lot of great ideas for people like you and I, who maybe don't know a bunch about this. I mean I was an English teacher most of my career and so I'm a. I'm a neophyte, and if I can do it with with barely, I don't have a green thumb. I think I'm pretty sure my thumb is, but if I can do it, anybody can. So there's a bit of my. We are a part of nature. One of the things I learned about the Prairie is from the very earliest play, some plant, and it's amazing, and it starts with a spring Prairie. Beautiful plant. You'll see this very early on in the. I love this. They have a new flower everyday, a gorgeous. These are all native land sleeve coreopsis comes later in the summer or late, late, late. Is there somewhere around our mailbox? Of course, purple coneflower- and my wife and I had time to walk around your church property. In fell out of purple coneflower. I love your compass plant. You have a nice patch of compass plant, Joe Pye weed. You have a lot of great native plants around here, which is rattlesnake Master. That's an interesting plant. Looks like it's straight from. We love Royal Coach fly. We look for it every year. Play Red. Find the Bergamot. I know she had some Bergamot behind me this morning. Play some Daisy fleabane and some brown Khan. And then Jerusalem artichoke. I never planted that. It just decided to arrive and it's a native Prairie plant. So I'm like okay and goldenrods, a key Keystone. So as much as we think it's a weed, it's actually a keystone plant. For how much is that? When they start to bloom we all start getting our allergies. We blame it on Goldenrod, but it's not Goldenrod that's causing all those allergic, allergic Ragweed. The Ragweed pollinates the same time Goldenrod. So everybody thinks it's spell plant. That's gotten a bad rap, even though it's really great for Culver Sunset. We love that red, that beautiful color from the Sun hitting the big blue stem. So we've just enjoy our, our native plants: Prairie, the great plan, and then the late in the fall will get the New England. And then there's a bunch of tons of wildlife. There's my daughter- she's in law school- be a while looking at our Eastern blue and the goldfinches that love the purple coneflower, dragonflies, black swallow, all kinds of stuff, tiger swallowtails, tree frogs, rabbits- leaving get some Hawks in our backyard, and this is a typical Suburban backyard in East Peoria. So I have to be kind of careful with my Prairie Burns, because I don't want to burn down any neighbor's house. I don't want to burn down my house. Start there and then I get some friends to come over the Prairie. It looks beautiful in the winter time, so I love Prairie. There's some of my own, Young. I really wanted to get to this today. How can we overcome barriers to converting lawn Turf to Prairie? How do we get people to- and I love the fact that your church is a community has done this with landscape here. I love that. But the number one thing that I've enlarging- you know what's our and how can we change? Some would say that this Prairie. Others say it was windy and and I'll have buddies of mine come over and say: when you going to mow that weed, kind of a little bit of Truth from what their. I look at that and I see a lot of chemical, I see a lot of water, I see a lot of fertilizer, I see a lot of herb and there's nothing growing on it. And in fact, years ago, my wife knows this. Our neighbors have a lawn like this just across the street and the little girls knocked on our door and they said: in the cutest can we, can we go into your backyard? Translate, of course you can go ahead- and there's tons of lightning bugs coming out of our Prairie and coming out of everywhere, and I'm like: well, they got a yard across the street and of course there's coming up. So kids come to our yard to catch the lightning bugs, because there are no one. They're not in these. So what other people would say? This is beautiful, right, and that's what they're. They're aesthetic. So can we make room for both? That's what I'm asking for. I'm not saying eliminate one and have the other. We need a place to. Is there a room for a prairie? Play something? Yes, by the way, we have the gallery back here, I think. And then you know descriptive landscape. What do people find attractive when? What do people find- and a lot of this stuff is is, you know, lack of yard care, no flowers, no shade, not landscape, not moan, messy, cluttered, you can still have a prairie and still make it and clean and neat, and so I'm thinking about your and also think about these kinds of things. How do we, do you know what's the anchor in your yard? What is it that you want people to look at and the decorative value of it? What do you want people to see in relation to things, tell me. Or what's carbon sequestering SE Wildlife Watershed? Do you want to buy a Swale? Do you want to put a little Pond? I mean there's tons of- and how do we balance this decorative value with the wildlife and Native? So this might be an ideal, a front yard, mixing Prairie plants with Turf Lawn, and, by the way, when you plant a cherry, it's not like: okay, I'm done. You've just started because there's a. There's a war going on there. I hate to say this in the place of peace, and but there's a war going on there in the prairie and a lot of that, a lot of that, has to do with, because Crown vetch is a rhizome and it's and it will take over my whole Prairie if I don't. Blackberries, which I love, those Blackberry thorn and I like him because the but I have to somehow keep my Prairie plants in there somehow, but also keep out those in the invasive. They do want to take over the world. And what's happened with some cities is the plant Prairie and think will work done? No, that's just the beginning. So there's still a lot of care that has to go into. I'm not okay. So a lot of places like Nevada, they're taking out their Turf because they're having water. Is Minnesota, they have some pilot programs to encourage Prairie Illinois. Where they can they put a native Prairie plants, that kind of stuff. So number two: how can we overcome barriers to converting lawn to Prairie? Earlier I mentioned Aesthetics, a sense of beauty. How do you change that or adapt that or enlarge that? The second idea is working with homeowners associations, because a lot of you might live in, you know who is where. They say no Prairie plants or know this or know that there's lots of rules. But in this case from The New York Times this summer they fought their homeowners association in the one, so they fought the law and the law and lost so they could put in Prairie areas into their yard, even though the homeowners association said no, okay. So let's go to this book a little bit if this works. I'm not good with this, but the third idea is to clear is to have clear borders. How do we overcome barriers to converting lawn to Prairie? So, notice, I do have some laundry and there's a clear border between the lawn Turf and the actual prairie area so you can walk around it and again. So your neighbor's know well, okay, it looks like they do take care of some of notice the borders around this prairie area. So those are all native plants, but they put Stone sidewalk, those kinds of things and more borders. And also another thing we have to overcome is what people think about with bees. You know I don't want to be around bees or the Beast. Freak them out, or maybe they have an allergic reaction to bees. I get that. But what doug tell me says is that out of the 4000 native bees, only bumble bees in your 46 species with sting to protect their hives while forging it flowers, bees are not aggressive at all. Yes, even if you go in there, they, they leave you alone. They're all about. These are responsible for pollinating 80%, 87% of all plants and 90 percent of all flower. If they were to disappear, this would be a fatal blow to another idea to barrier to converting. Lawn. Turf is what people you know people don't know well. How do I do X? How do I start a prayer? How do I start a little? How do I get rid of some of that little bit of launcher first? And what's a good way to do that? Do I use herbicides? Do I cover it? Do I get a sod remover and just remove part of the Sade? There's a lot of different options that you can have for that, but Wild Ones is very good. University of Illinois Extension Office is very good. There's tons of. So I want to get to Doug's book play. Top 10 suggestions for for improving your lawnscape. Number one: shrink: remove invasive species. Plant Keystone. Be generous with your plant plan for specialist pollinators. Butterflies: network with neighbors. That might be a little network with. I like my, but I haven't got the. I don't know the confidence or the, the motivation. I'm not sure. I haven't said you know. It's like I haven't done that. I don't know if I could, but I love the fact of networking and maybe then by showing some of my is my yard. Maybe that will interest them. I'm not. Build a conservation Hardscape. Things like motion sensor, window toads and stuff, don't get caught in your window. Create caterpillar pupation sites under your. Do not spray or fertilize and fertilize with new. For me, you know, Doug Calumet recommends not Fert add. Fertilize the front of our yard for a few years, but again that's run off. That's more nitrogen in the water, more nitrogen in the Illinois River down into the Gulf of Mexico. And educate your neighborhood civic association. So he's got a lot of suggestions for the Homegrown National. And then I love this quote by King. Home called the mystery, and the job is to evoke mystery. Planet Garden, where strange plants grow in Mysteries Bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for, and that's really what I that's really surprise me so much about a prairie. It's cuz I could go out there every morning and I would tell my wife every morning I'm going to see something different. Whether it's a new bug, I've never seen before a new flower, a new something. There was always something going on and it was much more interesting than just boring green grass. Honestly so, we have a job to do in terms of carbon capture right, we have global warming going on. I'm a firm believer and I don't have to be a believer in global warming. The science already tells me that its global warming. But if I'm doing a little bit just in our yard and we can all do a little bit just for a little Prairie patch, for butterflies and bees and those kinds of things, I think we're doing our job. But I know a lot of people here are already doing what I'm recommending here. So I think I'm talking a lot to the choir, but thank you very much.
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