Grandma Weavre's Garden

05/04/2026

If you know (or are!) a teenager interested in environmental and community stewardship, this could be a fun opportunity!

https://www.keeppabeautiful.org/programs/education/young-ambassadors-of-pennsylvania/

04/21/2026

04/19/2026

Question: Would you like to be on a Messenger notification list for near-future events, so you don't have to check the calendar? I'm looking at how to reduce the computer work I'm doing while also helping people not miss knowing about upcoming workshops and other events.

04/15/2026

That tiny brown bird carrying a twig into your birdhouse is about to fill the entire cavity with sticks. Not because she needs them all. Because she doesn't want anyone else to have the space.

House wrens fill every available cavity in their territory. Nest boxes, hanging planters, dryer vents, coat pockets left on the porch. They pack each one with sticks until no other bird can use it.

Then they pick one and actually nest in it.

The others are decoys. A bluebird who inspects a cavity full of wren sticks moves on. A chickadee who finds one gives up. The wren claimed the neighborhood by making every opening look occupied.

She'll also puncture eggs. If a bluebird or chickadee nested before the wren arrived, the wren may enter the box, puncture the eggs, and build on top of them. It's not rage. It's real estate. The wren eliminates competitors by eliminating their broods.

This sounds villainous until you hear her mate sing.

He's four inches long and his song fills a suburban block. He sings from the box she chose — not the decoys — advertising the real nest to her. She inspects his stick pile, tears most of it out, and rebuilds it her way.

They'll raise six to eight chicks in a cavity the size of your fist. Twice per season.

🐾 If you have nest boxes:

- A wren filling your bluebird box is normal — it's territorial behavior, not nesting yet
- Paired boxes twenty feet apart can accommodate both species
- If you find punctured eggs under wren sticks, a wren was there first
- The male who won't stop singing at six AM is advertising from the chosen cavity

Four inches. Six chicks. And she evicted every competitor on the block without touching them. 🌿

03/30/2026

(Just felt like sharing this from my journal. I think it was from 2016.)

Juan's Sunrise

One of the best walks in the woods ever in my life: My father-in-law, then about age 86 and speaking almost no English at all, had asked if I'd like to go with him to watch the sunrise over a little lake he *thought* he remembered where to find from years ago. Of course I did! We're the only two oddballs in the family who love that kind of thing!

So, leaving everyone else still asleep in our cabin, we headed out the next morning in the quiet darkness. When we came to the trail he thought led to the lake, there was a big chain across it, with a sign: "DANGER! NO ENTRY BEYOND THIS POINT. WALKING TRAIL CLOSED!"

As my father-in-law started to step around the sign, I stopped him. "No podemos pasar por ahí." ("We can't go that way.")

"Why not?"

I showed him the sign, pointing to it with our single shared flashlight and telling him what it said.

He shrugged: "That sign is not for me."

I assured him it absolutely was meant for us.

He dismissed my explanation. "That sign is in English. I don't know English."

And off he went. Eighty-six years old, no light, stepping around the chain through the brush and back onto the forbidden trail.

What was I supposed to do? Let him go off into the dark by himself??? I scurried to catch up and walk beside him, holding the light for us both.

We never did find the lake. We had the wrong trail. But silently, we watched a gorgeous sunrise off to the side of a burnt-out maintenance building that was surely the reason for the chain and the sign, and he reached over with a smile to squeeze my hand before we turned back.

And it was one of the best walks in the woods ever in my life, and I'll never forget it. I learned something that day that will never fit into words, and I'll never forget that again, either.

03/30/2026

Please do not fall for the BS line that you have to cut a morel mushroom at the stem in order to preserve future growth .
This is a moronic statement that hasn’t died of natural death yet . Every year I see people who lack common sense and the scientific knowledge commenting on things they don’t understand.

Mycelium , the mother of the mushroom, grows underground and it’s thread like components run deep.
You will not destroy a mycelium’s ability to produce more morel mushrooms by plucking it from the ground .
Since they are symbiotic , they are intrinsically locked in with the nearby trees root system
In order for the “ plucking “theory to work, you would have to remove all the forest soil and probably the trees roots too 😀

Having said that, I cut most of my mushrooms with a knife because it’s a speed thing when relating to large harvest projects .. I want the mushroom preserved, so I would rather release it with a knife.

Have I plucked morels, winecaps, and shiitakes ,etc when I didn’t have a knife? Positively !

Did I destroy the mycelium’ ability to reproduce ? Absolutely not.

In my mushroom growing experiments, I rarely ever see them pop back out from cut stems . Instead, I see that mycelium rise up to produce a new fruiting body. That’s how mycelium work and they evolved to produce things that way before we were ever here

If you want to encourage more mushroom growth, then carry your mushrooms in a net bag so that spores might be released and save that water you wash your mushrooms with and pour it back into the woods you got them from .
Having said all that, I want you to go out and get wild. Take your kids with or a dog..Get out and experience nature, and all of its wander wonder glory. And if you happen to find a morel mushroom along the way, do not be afraid to take that baby home.

Wanna tell me you use a knife to avoid dirt? Oh, OK. That stuff washes up with water and seeing that most people put their morels in water to flush out the worms makes it a unnecessary worry but that’s OK you do you.

The only thing cutting a mushroom does is it allows you to clean less.

And the washing of mushrooms is another arguable thing where some people say, you can wash them other people say you shouldn’t wash them. I wash mine which really is just nothing more than a light soaking and I rarely brush unless it calls for it.
Some wash morels to get rid of hidden ants in the nooks abd crannies

Remember that common sense in science is your friend, but it won’t pick you up at the airport …. I tried 🤣


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01/03/2026

01/01/2026

(no paywall)

Mariangela Hungria won the 2025 World Food Prize for her work on microbes that feed plants nitrogen, allowing farmers to slash fertilizer costs and pollution.

11/22/2025

Jessica Letteer - can you believe it's been 3 years now since the Wilkes-Barre Area Community Gardens hosted its first GWG event??

https://facebook.com/events/s/plants-fungi-and-foraging-host/462888115819230/