Critters and More, On-The-Go

11/03/2026

Looking so forward to being with the Joe Adair Center folks on Sat, Nov 14th! See flyer

10/29/2026

We still have vendor spots open! Scan the code or click here to sign up: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScRP42OXHBRPHKm-G3XRDxd26-swVicI3GgJV0A58SQqHB6ng/viewform?usp=preview

10/29/2026

If the garden feels quiet in late October, it's because a whole bumble bee family is gone. One member stays.

Late fall — the summer's colony finishes. The workers and the males are done; the newly mated queens head off alone to hibernate.

Winter — each queen sleeps close to the surface, in a small hollow just below the soil, or tucked into leaf litter, a wood pile, or another sheltered spot. Next year's entire colony is inside her.

Spring — she wakes hungry, feeds on the first flowers, finds a nest site, and lays the eggs of a brand-new colony. By herself.

Summer — her daughters do the special work. Bumble bees buzz-pollinate, gripping a flower and vibrating until the pollen shakes loose. It's why they pollinate most greenhouse tomatoes.

🐝 Getting her to spring:

- Fallen leaves stay in the garden beds — that's the quilt. Leaves smothering the lawn can be moved onto the beds
- Beds stay unraked and untilled until spring has truly arrived; timing varies by region, but mid-spring is usual
- A queen uncovered by accident gets tucked gently back in

One bee, asleep under the leaves, carrying next summer's whole colony. 🍂

10/29/2026

If you look high up at a Sourwood tree (Oxydendrum arboreum) this time of year, you might see its yellow fruit clusters contrasted against its red leaves. Winged seeds are released from woody capsules within each cluster. This native tree often retains these fruit clusters into the winter, but they eventually drop to the forest floor where they are easily found by hikers.

10/29/2026

📣 Meet our 2026–2027 Youth Ambassadors!

Selected from nearly 200 applicants across 23 counties, they’re organizing neighborhood cleanups, testing local rivers, speaking up at their town councils and the State House, and inspiring classmates to care for the places they love. Over the next year, they’ll lead cleanups, represent PalmettoPride at events across the state, and help their peers take pride in keeping South Carolina beautiful.

South Carolina gained more Gen Z residents than any other state in 2024, according to a recent analysis of Census data. The next generation is choosing to call this state home, and these 16 students are already showing what it looks like to take care of it.

Congratulations to: Natalie Abshire, Grace Brusky, Grayson Castle, William Cutshall, Hannah Dean, Safa El Kouch, Corrina Giacalone, Maeve Hardy, Emil Ince, Maddison McCree, Nathan Nguyen, Jurnee Rainey, Jamiya Smith, Mckenzy Stroede, Divija Viswabrahmana, and Olyvia Wall.

We’ll be introducing each ambassador in the coming weeks, so stay tuned to get to know them! Learn more about the program at the link in the comments.

10/29/2026

🌼 MUMS SALE ALERT! 🌼

Fall color is here, and now is the perfect time to spruce up your porch, patio, or entryway!

🍂 Buy 2 Mums, Get 1 FREE 🍂

Mix and match your favorites and bring home beautiful blooms for less. Don't miss out while supplies last!

📍 LushAcres Farm Market
⏰ Open Monday-Saturday, 9 AM-6 PM

10/29/2026

🐑🎵 Make plans to join us this Saturday! Matt Crisp is back on the LushAcres stage performing live, and Bill Colburn and his talented border collies will be showcasing herding demonstrations all day long. It's a day of great music, amazing dogs, and family fun you won't want to miss!

10/04/2026

Have you been seeing grasshoppers? 👀

If you have some around your garden, it might be this one - the Differential Grasshopper (Melanoplus differentialis). They’re found across most of the United States and can be particularly abundant in the Midwest. You can identify them from the black herringbone pattern on the femur of their hind legs.

You might wonder how a grasshopper could benefit you (OK, maybe you’re not wondering that, but play along!). These grasshoppers occur in fields and grassy waterways, where they can feed heavily on Giant Ragweed. Now that’s nothing to sneeze at! 🤧

07/30/2026

They are helpers!

In one Alabama study, nearly every fire ant mound on the research site showed evidence of an armadillo digging through it. The ants swarmed. The ants stung. The armadillo did not care. A 15-pound mammal wearing bony plates walks up to a colony of venomous insects that can send a grown adult to the emergency room, tears the mound open with claws built for excavation, shoves its long nose into the tunnels, and eats until it is done.

The red imported fire ant arrived in the United States through the port of Mobile, Alabama, sometime in the 1930s. It spread across the southern states and became one of the most destructive invasive insects on the continent. USDA estimates the economic damage at roughly $6 billion per year. A single colony can hold 200,000 to 500,000 workers. When the mound is disturbed, the workers pour out by the thousands, climb the nearest vertical surface, and sting simultaneously. Each sting injects a venom that produces a burning pustule. Enough stings at once can trigger anaphylaxis. People have died. Pets have died. Ground-nesting birds lose entire clutches. Most mammals that accidentally step on a fire ant mound learn the lesson and never step on one again.

The armadillo steps on them on purpose.

The nine-banded armadillo has a shell made of bony plates called osteoderms, overlapping scales of bone beneath a tough leathery hide that covers the animal from the top of the head to the base of the tail. The shell flexes at nine jointed bands across the midsection. It is not impenetrable. A determined coyote or a car tire will get through it. But fire ant mandibles and stingers cannot. A fire ant attacking the dorsal surface of an armadillo is biting bone through leather. The ant's venom, devastating to exposed human skin, does nothing to an animal wearing a suit of armor that evolved 55 million years ago.

The belly is unarmored. The legs have thin skin. The snout is exposed. The armadillo is not invulnerable. But the feeding posture minimizes every vulnerability. When an armadillo digs into a fire ant mound, its nose goes into the hole first. The armored back faces upward. The legs tuck close to the body. The shell takes the swarm while the tongue does the work. The tongue is long, sticky, and probes deep into the tunnels and brood chambers where fire ant larvae and pupae are packed together. The armadillo is not eating adult workers one at a time. It is eating the brood, the nursery, the next generation of the colony, by the mouthful.

The University of Georgia's Natural History Series on the nine-banded armadillo describes the Alabama finding plainly: nearly every fire ant mound on the study site showed evidence of disturbance by armadillos. They seem undeterred by the bite of the fire ant. The word undeterred is doing a lot of work in that sentence. It means the armadillos visited mound after mound across the entire study area and nothing the fire ants did changed the outcome.

The armadillo is not native to most of the territory it now occupies. It has expanded from Texas and Mexico across the entire Southeast over the past century, reaching as far north as southern Illinois and as far east as the Carolinas. It arrived in Alabama around the 1960s. The fire ant arrived in Alabama around the 1930s. The two invasions overlapped on the same landscape, and the armadillo found a food source that nothing else in the ecosystem was willing to touch.

Source: University of Georgia, Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources / National Wildlife Federation / USDA APHIS / Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission / Outdoor Alabama.