Bringing back a savanna means getting rid of the damn planted pines & black cherries smothering the white oaks & plants beneath. It's also a good cure for cabin fever, & it feels good to work with fellow citizens to make the place where we live better. It's possible to sweat when it's ten degrees.

I wrote about my childhood friend Alexi Pretti. Please read it and share it and remember him as a human being. @theverge.com

What Senate #Democrats don't seam to grasp is how incensed their constituents are. We demand to see them LEADING on the moral authority of the moment. If complete resistance means hardship, bring it. We'll support each other. We are eager to sacrifice in order to build a free society.

At my location it gets this cold each winter. The warmest absolute min winter real temp I've experienced in the last 11 winters in my current location is -14F. Most have been -17F or colder. The coldest was -32F. Mornings like this ar rough, but at least it'll feel balmy when it gets back above 0F.

Even worse is knowing that there were no votes that were only no votes because they knew the bill would pass.

There is a lot of pearl-clutching over polling on #ICE and what to do. Do what is right. How do weakness, fecklessness, or lack of a coherent position poll? If the Administration can commit new egregious moral outrages each day and damn the polls, surely #Democrats can stand up for what's right.

May not happen. It's predicated on snowpack, but most eastern hardwoods--even those restricted to the South--can withstand brief bouts extreme cold, because it does happen. They just can't take deep ground freezes or weeks of temperatues like this.

My front right wheel came off going 75mph on I-70 just outside of Manhattan, Kansas. I managed to get over to the shoulder. A guy that saw it happen pulls up behind me and stuck around chatting, traffic speeding by, until my tow into town arrived.

Maybe the faintest and lamest phone-visible pink #aurora behind the cirrus at in Dousman, WI.

Livestock grazing is allowed across 240 million acres of federal land. Our investigation revealed the subsidies propping up ranching, its impact on the environment and the politics underpinning the system.

They seam really upset by this. It is upsetting. They seam upset. Perplexed. 🤷

Amanda Gorman wrote this poem for Renee Good and that’s it for me tonight.

Chuck Schumer would never do this, which is how I know this is the right reaction.

I live in a maybe, but if I think of this as though I were looking for a fresh start.

The brewery that finally offers a barleywine for the first time but it’s aged in bourbon barrels.

Tough year, but a great weekend for fascists getting punched in the face. Happy Holidays!

Upper 40s dewpoints and some rain can erode the snow cover rather quickly. The NWS Milwaukee-Sullivan office tower cam: www.weather.gov/mkx/mkx-towe...

There is a re-awakening occurring in at least some corners of the conservation community with respect to Midwestern oak woodlands. This is a post I had missed and find fascinating: woodsandprairie.blogspot.com/2015/01/re-d...

@biologicaldiversity.org is doing important work. Speaking up. Not backing down. They'll have a monthly transfer from my checking account. I should have done it long ago, but late is better than never.

Apparently parents in my school district are offended that red oaks are monecious--they have both male and female reproductive organs. Wishtree was assigned to all students and their families to read together. #Wishtree #bookbans #oak #Kettlemoraine #Wisconsin #Waukesha

It is the ecological and ritual season of burning. The most salubrious time to burn. Coarse stems--even seeds--stand. Terricolous lichens and bryophytes survive. Larvae rest cosy in their galls. The stage is set for next season's abundance. #Prairie #Savanna #RxFire #MukwonagoRiverOakBarrens

You mean to tell me that bird friendly certified consumer products aren't cutting it?

So they are getting nothing of substance. The vote on ACA subsidies is theater. We all know it won't pass, and that people will suffer. The calculus is that GOP members will be forced to vote no, but that's not going make any difference in peoples' lives, let alone elections. Weak. Lame. Shameful.

And this is the best prairie research I've seen in a few years. This is exactly how to investigate fire effects, because not all fires are equal. Annual fires are more variable in their effects and generally less intense than less frequent fires. #prairie onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

More evidence dispelling the seed bank myth that falsely leads practioners to believe that it's an insurance policy against distruptive disturbances to old-growth communities--disturbances that often deliberately prescribed. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

From where I stand, beef and dairy production (all or mostly on grass) has basically become the big swinging 🍆 of grassland conservation. There's *almost* no space left that matters for those of us that question it.

I don’t know if people realize that farmers are still receiving crop insurance subsidies, commodity payments, some conservation money, and access to loans & disaster payments, but everyone should know this and act accordingly. Agricultural exceptionalism is alive and well in Amurika still.

Herbicide that breaks down to PFAS may be coming to millions of acres surrounding your water supply.

Very small burns, but if we remove buckthorn (glossy and common here) and there is enough fuel to burn in fall, we do, and then we augmentively seed in late fall with species that were likely once present but extirpated by fire exclusion / shade / litter / past grazing / etc.

My happy place these days. Fall colors and textures. Home to many beings. #MukwonagoRiverOakBarenns #ThePrairieEnthusiasts #Savanna #Prairie

Last Friday during a volunteer work party at the Mukwonago River Oak Barrens we found this blue spotted salamander in a piece of partially burried rotten wood. We were physically pulling invading glossy buckthorn. ...another reason why I favor slower approaches to big machines with grindy bits.

The first hard freeze was last night. We burned some sedge meadow today.

More greenwashing. Cattle have NO business on a savanna preserve in SE Iowa. #prairie nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

Photos coming out of Western AK are devastating. Hardest hit are indigenous villages off road system, many miles by air from supplies. Most built on river deltas w/ no high ground to which to escape. Cuts to NASA/NOAA mean worse weather data. Cuts to EPA mean no grants for erosion control. Etc.

Oh well.

This is the kind of greenwashing that people literally eat up.

My native state simply sucks. It’s run by cowards and sell-outs on one hand and sell-outs and bigots on the other.

“How could he amount to anything if he did not use loaded dice? How has he used loaded dice with you? The laws that say he can fire anybody who stands up for the rights of workers—those are loaded dice. The policemen who protect his property rights but not your human rights—those are loaded dice."

Ordered Symphyotrichum ericoides. Received mix of S. erioides and S. pilosum. Booooo. It's a nursury that produces excellent plants that I've had good experience with, so we'll see what they say. #nativeplants

At least the escalator did not comply. ...unlike Congress, university presidents and admins, MSM, corporate executives....

A quick comment on #climate #resilient #landscapes. The #Driftless Area of Wisconsin is considered have some inbuilt resilience owing to its varied aspects, slopes, and soils. Perhaps as it warms more xerophytic vegetation (prairie, oak savanna, oak woods) on S and SW aspects can expand. 1/4

Our words are more powerful than our firearms. That's precisely why they exalt guns and come for our speech. Without speech there can be no coordinated defense of freedom by any means.

BAD photos, but first time for me coming across Bartonia virginica, here in moist, sandy area under white oak...more specifically in a little clearing among royal fern, huckleberry, velvet-leaf blueberry, a bristly dewberry. Not a common thing in SE WI.

I wonder who made these galls on Symphyotrichum ericoides? #nativeplants #prairie

I MISS MY FRIEND! Damn it.

At 16.5 or 17 years of age it's come time to say goodbye to Thistle. With us always through good and bad, milestones, transitions, and the mundane. A very good dog, friend, member of the family. Lots of short sunny walks today and tomorrow, and the best bits, which are all she'll eat.

This led me to Parks et al. (2025, www.nature.com/articles/s41...). which in turn led me to this figure, which is brilliant and on the money.