Bowne Park Civic Association

06/11/2026

06/07/2026

With Harvest Savvy – I just got recognized as one of their top fans! 🎉

06/06/2026

Immune to rabies? Not quite.

Highly resistant to rabies. Naturally resistant to pit viper venom. A skilled scavenger that's been around for roughly 70 million years.

Yet people still treat it like a pest.

Meet the opossum — one of the most misunderstood animals in your neighborhood.

# # 1️⃣ The Facts

→ North America's only marsupial, carrying its young in a pouch

→ Highly resistant to rabies because its body temperature makes infection less likely

→ Naturally resistant to the venom of many pit vipers, including rattlesnakes and copperheads

→ Eats insects, snails, slugs, rodents, carrion, and other small animals

→ Helps clean up organic waste and dead animals in the environment

→ "Playing possum" isn't an act — it's an involuntary response to extreme stress

# # 2️⃣ What Opossums Do for the Ecosystem

→ Help control populations of insects and other small pests

→ Remove carrion that could otherwise attract disease-spreading scavengers

→ Consume a wide variety of nuisance animals and organic waste

→ Contribute to a healthier, more balanced local ecosystem

Quietly. Every night.

# # 3️⃣ The Problem

→ Frequently struck by vehicles because they are slow-moving and mostly active at night

→ Often killed by dogs or people who mistakenly view them as dangerous

→ Young are commonly orphaned when mothers are killed on roads

→ Frequently confused with rats, even though they are not rodents

# # 4️⃣ If You See One

→ Leave it alone — it's probably doing more good than harm

→ If it's injured, contact a licensed wildlife rehabilitator rather than animal control

→ If babies are attached to a deceased mother, call a wildlife rehabilitator immediately

→ Slow down on roads at night and watch for wildlife crossings

# # 5️⃣ The Bottom Line

For millions of years, opossums have quietly cleaned up waste, consumed pests, and helped maintain healthy ecosystems.

They aren't aggressive. They aren't giant rats. And they aren't looking for trouble.

They're just doing their job.

Maybe the next time you see an opossum, give it a little more respect.

06/01/2026

Half the bugs people panic over and spray are the ones doing the pest control for free.
Each of these is a predator or a parasite of the pests that actually damage your plants. A garden full of them needs almost no spray — because the spray is what wipes them out first.

- Ladybug — Adult and Larva Both Hunt
The adult eats aphids. The spiny black-and-orange larva eats MORE aphids — up to 200 before it pupates. Also eats mites and soft scale. The larva looks like a tiny alligator and most people kill it because they don't recognize it. Learn what it looks like.

- Green Lacewing — The Aphid Lion
The adult is a delicate green insect attracted to porch lights. The larva is the weapon — called an "aphid lion," it clears aphids, mites, and pest eggs by the hundreds. One larva eats 200+ aphids before pupating. The adult drinks nectar. The larva does the killing.

- Hoverfly — Pollinator and Predator in One Lifecycle
The adult looks like a small bee but doesn't sting — a harmless mimic that pollinates your flowers. The larva is a translucent slug-like creature that eats entire aphid colonies overnight. Two jobs from one insect, split between life stages.

- Parasitic Wasp — Tiny, Harmless to You, Devastating to Pests
Most are smaller than a grain of rice. They lay eggs inside caterpillars, aphids, and whiteflies. The larvae consume the host from within. The white cocoons on a hornworm's back are parasitic wasp pupae — the wasp already won. Never kill a parasitized caterpillar.

- Ground Beetle — The Night Shift
Works after dark when you're inside. Patrols the soil surface eating slugs, cutworms, and root maggots. You rarely see them because they hide under mulch and debris during the day. A garden with ground beetles has fewer slug problems without a single pellet of bait.

- Soldier Beetle — The Soft Red-and-Black One
Soft wing covers, typically orange-red and black. Eats aphids on your flower heads while simultaneously pollinating. Harmless. Abundant in late summer on goldenrod and yarrow. People swat them thinking they're pests. They're not.

- Minute Pirate Bug — The Speck-Sized Assassin
Two to three millimeters long. Barely visible. Destroys thrips, spider mites, and pest eggs — the tiny pests that are nearly impossible to control with sprays. Commercial greenhouses BUY these. Your garden can grow them for free if you stop spraying.

Before you reach for a bottle, look closer. Some of those bugs are the reason you don't have more.

06/01/2026

Before you plant a single seed this spring, pick one up and give it a gentle squeeze. If it feels firm and resists the pressure, the little embryo inside is likely safe and sound. If it crumbles or feels hollow between your fingertips, that seed dried out long before you opened the packet. That quick check takes just two seconds. Want to be absolutely sure your seeds are ready to grow? Here are three more simple tests you can do for free.

The water float test.
Drop your seeds into a glass of water and let them sit for an hour or two. This works wonderfully for larger seeds like beans, peas, and squash. The seeds that sink to the bottom are dense, healthy, and ready to sprout. The ones that remain floating at the top are likely hollow or no longer viable. You can easily skim off the floaters and plant the sinkers with absolute confidence.

The sniff test.
Open your seed packet and take a quick breath in. Healthy seeds should smell like almost nothing at all, perhaps just faintly earthy. Seeds with a higher oil content, like sunflowers and pumpkins, can actually go rancid as they age. If the packet smells slightly sour, sharp, or stale, the natural oils have broken down, and your germination rates will likely be very poor.

The paper towel test.
This is the ultimate way to settle any doubts. Lay ten seeds out on a damp paper towel, fold it over carefully, and slide it into an unsealed plastic bag. Place it somewhere warm and check back in seven to ten days. When you count the sprouts, eight or more means your seed packet is still in excellent shape. If you only see five or fewer sprouts, it is probably time to compost the rest and treat yourself to some fresh seeds.

All of these simple tricks reveal the exact same truth about gardening. A seed viability depends much less on the expiration date printed on the packet and much more on how it was stored. A cool, dark, and dry spot will keep most seed varieties alive and kicking for years. On the other hand, leaving them in a sweltering garage or a humid shed can ruin them in a single season. The seed itself has not changed, just the environment around it.

With just a little bit of water and a paper towel from your kitchen, you can easily find out exactly what is ready to thrive in your garden this year.

06/01/2026

Imagine planting basil, rosemary, and cilantro in the exact same pot in April. By June, the cilantro is completely dead, the basil is thriving, and the rosemary looks like it has not grown at all.

The cilantro did not fail you. It just finished its natural life cycle.

These plants run on completely different biological clocks. Cilantro and basil are both annuals, but they prefer very different weather. Cilantro thrives in the cool spring and quickly finishes its life cycle, while basil loves the summer heat. Meanwhile, rosemary is a perennial that spends its first year building a strong root system underground. Mixing them in one container guarantees one plant is dying out while another is just getting started.

The secret to a thriving container garden is grouping your plants by their growing needs and lifespans, rather than what sounds good together in a recipe.

Keep your fast growing annuals in their own separate pots. Plants like basil, cilantro, and dill are meant to be harvested heavily and replaced. Since cilantro and dill prefer cooler weather and basil loves the heat, you can rotate them through the seasons. When your spring cilantro finishes, a heat loving basil plant is the perfect replacement to take over the container.

Group your woody Mediterranean perennials together. Rosemary, thyme, oregano, and sage make perfect pot mates. They are slow growing, long lasting, and prefer the same well draining soil and infrequent watering. Harvest them lightly at first, and watch them come back bigger and better each year.

Always give mint its very own pot. It is a highly vigorous grower that will quickly take over and crowd out any other herbs planted nearby.

Parsley also deserves a pot of its own. It is a biennial, meaning it takes two full years to complete its life cycle. You will enjoy a wonderful leafy harvest the first year, and it will produce flowers and seeds the second year. When your parsley finally goes to seed in year two, it is not stressed out. Its job is simply done.

An herb that dies exactly on schedule is never a failure. A single pot that mixes entirely different lifespans and environments definitely is.