Known now as a symbol of Christmas, the Druids regarded holly as a symbol of fertility and eternal life, and thought it to have magical powers. The Romans associated it with Saturn…agriculture, fertility and the harvest. Although the berries are poisonous, it’s been used as a healing plant by Indigenous Americans, who made a tea of it as a heart stimulant.
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Long Island needs more people to give to local organizations addressing our local challenges. Here are just a few to consider:
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Photo of Bee on Aster by Katheryn Laible
Here at home, one way Katie’s been overcoming pandemic poos is through her garden. It works!!! She’s been weeding, mostly, identifying local and invasive species with apps like PlantNet and iNaturalist, and then wrestling those who’d best go out of the Earth until she’s too tired to do it anymore. The reward has not only been a tremendous amount fresh air and healthy stress sublimation, but a yard full of gorgeous asters, goldenrod, wild raspberries and delighted pollinators! In recent week, the birds have started coming. It seems her yard is well rated on the Zagats Migration Edition! She’s been grateful for the Huntington Gardeners and the Long Island Native Plant Gardening Group on Facebook as she’s overcome her well-earned terror of poison ivy and endeavored to cultivate and better understand her own hyper-local ecology. They are wonderful!!! You can find others in our ever-evolving Down to Earth with the Synchronicity Network (submissions welcome!). Soon, we will add KMS Native Plants LLC, one of a growing number of sources for local plants and an excellent resource itself! Autumn is a great time for planting. There are still a few weeks to take advantage of it! Katie has been transplanting volunteer native trees and plans to purchase native plants this weekend! Her gardening grand finale for 2020 will be the Winter Solstice, when she will honor a tradition started when her first child was tiny: Planting bulbs as a rite of faith that spring will dawn again. This helps, too! Brain Pickings, we love you! Speaking of well-known appreciators of Long Island and human nature, Maria Popovich recently resurfaced this lovely meditation on Long Island’s own “Walt Whitman on Democracy and Optimism as a Mighty Form of Resistance” Read it, and carry on with whatever great mission you are on! |
-Photo of bees on asters by Katheryn Laible. Photo of Beth Fiteni provided by Beth Fiteni.
Our dear Beth Fiteni of Green Inside and Out was recently sharing word of a native plant, pollinator, and organic lawn care webinar organized by the North Fork Environmental Council.
Though the event passed, she says it was really informative and encourages folks to keep checking the NFEC Facebook page and the NFEC YouTube Channel for all the great resources they plan to share. She looks forward to offering the full video herself on the Green Inside and Out Facebook page once it is ready to go!
Meanwhile, Beth offers some basic tips for an organic yard:
The LINP is just one resource mentioned in a collection of Earth-and-Local-Ecology Friendly Landscaping Resources. that we ourselves compiled a few years ago. Grateful to all who contributed to it (send us more!) We’re still referring to it regularly!
One we will add soon is BlossomMeadow.com, which Beth recommends as a great LI company that participated in the NFEC webinar. There, they taught about various types of bees and where they live so we can create suitable places for them in our own yards.
Just a little ray of hope to brighten the lives of the child in all of us. It started with a Facebook group called “Rainbows over Nassau and Suffolk Counties”. and, we think, also a call to chalk up neighborhood driveways that we first heard about from our beloved Lois Howes. of the Friends of Freeport.
It involves sticking rainbows in your window, coloring your driveway, posting pictures. Our dear Firefly Beth Atkinson has been hiding rainbow rocks on her walk for the curious children of Northport to find….
It’s a small thing that means a lot. Be a part of it, will you? It can be a rainbow, it can be an act of service. The world needs all the love and support it can get….
The Kids are Here! by Katheryn Laible
We are grateful schools are working to provide digital education on the fly, and wish everyone the best in figuring that out. We are also grateful that they are endeavoring mightily to keep those who count on them fed.
Meanwhile, the kids are home, we really shouldn’t be taking them around other people and we need good ways to keep everyone thoughtfully enriched:
Here’s a great roundup of resources from Huntington NOW
Entertainkidsonadime.com offers 100 Activities to do at home with Kids
Funinfirst.com offers Free Online Resources for Learning at Home
Some wonderful Mrs. Fahrney offers 30 Virtual Field Trips with Links
AdventuresinFamilyHood.com has 20 Virtual Field Trips to Take with Your Kids
NESCA (Neuropsychology & Education Services for Children & Adolescents) had guidance on Making the most of school-closures
Meanwhile, freecodecamp.org has 450 Ivy League Courses You Can Take for Free.
Here are even more ideas from the New York Times
Photo of Northport Village by Katheryn Laible
This is a really tough time to be a small business or a not-for-profit organization. While everyone is rightly encouraged to stay home and keep their hands off the world, bills are still coming due and people are wondering what’s going to happen to their income. When you see one of your most go-getting survivors of a friend seeking donations for her employer, you have to stop and think — What are we going to do for our people here? Vision Long Island is one of our region’s strongest advocates for Main Street. They have just released their first Main Street News offering a great guide to what people can do in terms of personal initiative, resources and advocacy. Another strong advocate for local business that has been posting good stuff on their facebook page is the Long Island Business Council. In general, some ideas that have seemed good to us include:
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Photo by Katheryn Laible
Now is an excellent time to start a garden. Dark green leafies and other cold-weather crops can be sown outside now, and many dreams of early summer can be started indoors… plus…flowers…
The Mulch is a really neat gardening resource
Unfortunately, some of our favorite places are closing for the moment, but we’re heartened to hear that Main Street Nursery in Huntington takes online orders and is currently delivering.
Check out your own favorite local gardening places to see what they may be doing, both locally and online. We’ll post resources as we find them. .
It’s that time of year again! Please shop local and keep the magic that is our beautiful downtowns alive!
Also, please help me update this list of favorite local shops! There are so many wonderful places run by great people out there. They only exist because people like you spend money there.
The list barely scratches the surface, please help add to it!
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Dr. Kate Creasey-Krainer seems as much an elegant permaculturalist, dedicated to environmental health and sustainability, as she is a highly trained and published plant geneticist. She believes that science is only as good as the integrity of the science communication with those of us who aren’t experts.
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