salami mami

At least 32,000 gallons of jet fuel has leaked from a military base into Maryland watersheds. The Defense Department refused to disclose the spill for at least 3 months.

If a million of us each planted one native flower this spring, we'd feed pollinators across hundreds of species, like bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, moths, beetles, and hoverflies. A single milkweed produces up to 300 flowers over a summer and attracts more than 100 insect species. A single mountain mint plant supports over 40 species of native bees. A patch of goldenrod feeds 126 species of butterflies and moths. The numbers stack up fast when you consider an individual plant gets hundreds to thousands of pollinator visits across its bloom period. A million plants would produce hundreds of millions of pollinator visits across a single growing season. Bees feeding their young. Caterpillars completing their life cycles. Migrating monarchs refueling. Hummingbirds fattening up for the trip south. The pollinator collapse we keep reading about is real. It's also reversible, and the reversal doesn't require everyone to be an expert gardener or rip up their lawn. It requires enough yards to have one native flower in them. Plant one this spring. Native milkweed, mountain mint, bee balm, coneflower, goldenrod, aster, sunflower. Whichever fits where you live and what you have room for. Then leave the seed heads up through winter so the birds can pick at them and the next generation of pollinators can overwinter in the stems. The math of habitat doesn't require everyone. It needs enough of us. One plant per yard, multiplied by a million.