If you care for wildlife - Do not book with Marriott hotels. They built a luxury hotel in Masai Mara National Park on a known migration corridor and it is now blocking the path of migrating wildlife. The videos online are so distressing. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/t...

"Whales may possess a communication system more intricate than our own, one that possibly predates human language by tens of millions of years." And AI has helped scientists figure this out. #nature #whales #wildlife #oceans Gift www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/o...

Great piece by @billmckibben.bsky.social today. "We have watched over the years as rightwing evangelical churches turned the Jesus we grew up with into exactly the opposite of who we understood him to be." #christianity #evangelical #Jesus #bible www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

I wish we could return to the era when #Halloween waited until October and #Christmas waited until after #Thanksgiving. In my parents' day the tree went up on Christmas Eve and remained until #Epiphany (Jan 6). All these ads and holiday displays make me sick of it all by Christmas! #toxiccapitalism

Lettuce in our garden is still outgrowing bugs and slugs despite the ideal slug weather, but must be floated in water before eating. (Slug poop.) Surprised to find a few coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea) still blooming inside the fence. Dry heads already being devoured by birds, earlier than usual. 🌱

I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. There’s no vote required if he wants to release them! The only reason the house was voting was because he refused. This is an obviously cynical ploy and major news outlets are running whole pieces without pointing this out. He could release them tonight.

8 years on, and I'm still relieved by the #nature we see from our bedroom here in the middle of #Bellingham, compared to the view from our last home in the middle of #Seattle. Did what I could to green things up there, but built is built, I guess. Crows were the only birds we could attract. #habitat

Gosh, why and how could that be? Such an enigma!

Steller’s Jay enjoys a morning shower #birds #corvid #jay #stellersjay #birding

This may be Trump's perfect social media post. A true work of art. He confirms: ✅He personally directs criminal investigations. ✅He is targeting opponents. ✅Epstein "records" exist and he knows the contents. Bonus points for connecting it to investigation of his fondness for Putin.👀

Our loaded flowering crabapple (malus 'Adirondack') today. Planted as a small sapling in 2019, and selected because #birds like its fruit. (Not all crabapples are palatable to birds. These need to be sweetened by a hard freeze.) Robins cleaned them off in Jan '24, but nobody ate them in '25. 🌱

Did you know corals time their spawning perfectly with a particular moon phase? They wait for a few days after a full moon, in the dark of the night before spawning. Light pollution can have huge consequences for our coral reefs, and with coastal artificial light increasing, it’s a serious issue

I did not know this. How smart of them! #lightpollution #LAN #shoreline #ocean

Dreary if badly needed November rain has set in here in the #PacificNorthwest. It has its charms, but does kinda squelch hiking and gardening (for me, anyhow). Here's a reminder that summer is just around the corner😊 🌱 #wildlife #habitat #gardening

Elon Musk’s new pay package would feed all forty million Americans on SNAP for the next ten years. He wouldn’t notice the difference but the country would.

A man collapsed in the Oval Office yesterday. The internet got the story wrong. My experience struggling to correct the record — including on Bluesky! — and the warning signs as AI, aggregation, and social media increasingly drive our news consumption.

Here's another bit of conventional wisdom Zohran completely blew away: His speech was at well above a 10th-grade level. It was complex, erudite, punctuated by deep and fluent references. You don't have to condescend to voters with baby talk! Part of re-establishing norms is speaking like an adult.

This is what they did at one of my mother's dementia facilities, so that residents are less likely to get lost.

Bat and Moon — Yamada Hōgyoku, c. 1830

Here she is in evening light just now. 🌱 #PNW #Bellingham #fallcolor

Time for Seiryu maple (Acer palmatum dissectum 'Seiryu') to shine. Just getting going, now that the neighboring dogwood has lost most of its leaves. We're in a lull between storms, and flocks of bushtits have been visiting Seiryu daily, feeding on something. Not sure what. 🌱 #Japanesemaples #PNW

I was wrong. That wasn't peak color yet. Maybe this is 🌱

Graduate seminar did a deep dive on Thomas Paine’s Common Sense yesterday. At the line, “in America the law is king,” they (14 students from 6 countries) burst out laughing. I've been doing this for 35 years and this is the first time that was a laugh line.

Bellingham has been trying to encourage folks to plant Garry oak, even providing young saplings, but reportedly without much success. One tip: when young, it needs more summer water than you might think. 🌱 #nativeplants #habitatrestoration See realgardensgrownatives.com?p=1897

Garry oak (Quercus garryana) aka Oregon white oak, prime #native #habitat, used to be common in #westernWA, but the usual culprits nearly eliminated it. Some remain in San Juan Islands, eg Turtleback Mountain Preserve on Orcas, where oak seedlings are protected from deer to assist #restoration.

Another small series from our main back slope #restoration, from 9-17-23, 11-9-24, 2-15-25, and yesterday 10-17-25. The big hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla) straddles the line between our property and a City of Bellingham greenspace that includes a branch of Whatcom Creek below. 🌱 #nativeplants

Back from two days on gorgeous Orcas Island with its spectacular views from Mt Constitution summit, our inn on Eastsound, various trails on protected Turtleback mountain, but there's no place like home. That's Satomi dogwood (Cornus kousa 'Satomi') at peak color on our #PacificRim side. 🌱

Since I'm in the Pacific time zone, I'm posting a video for #FlyDay a bit early. Here are some Snow Geese flying, in a somewhat organized manner, to join others for a break in Richmond, BC, Canada, along the Pacific Flyway on their migration journey south. #birds #photography #EastCoastKin

Memo to Future Historians: This Is Fascism, and Millions of Us See It newrepublic.com/post/201625/... via @newrepublic.com

Decided I needed something for fall pollinators, so I added 8 Hall's asters (Symphotricum hallii) and 6 Douglas asters (Symphotricum subspicatum). Instant buzz of little native bees. I really do think our #nativeplantrestoration of the back #lawn is finished now, except for growing! 🌱

Much as I am appalled by the outrageous abuse that ICE goons attempt to justify by dehumanizing their victims, I have to ask: Why is it OK to do this sort of thing to animals? "They're animals" just doesn't cut it with me. @christinewebb.bsky.social #animalrights #humanrights #civilrights

Be Brave. newsday.com/matt

She also loved her kids, and Hitler loved his dog, until they killed them in the Führerbunker.

💯

Chinese pink celery planted in the ground here in #Bellingham on April 27. Ready to start harvesting today. Despite its need for wet conditions, it doesn't seem to attract slugs 😊 🌱 #PNW #growingvegetables

Abuse Of Power. Newsday.com/matt

Every once in a while, I'll glance out the window and see a nice set of antlers in our back yard. Today's blacktail bucks bent, browsed, and broke the heck out of our osoberry (Oemleria cerasiformis), but actually I believe they improved it, lol! 🌱 #nativeplants #PNW #Bellingham #wildlife

NEW -- Exactly 10 days after taking the oath early this year, Donald Trump nearly drowned dozens, potentially hundreds, of his own citizens in California’s Central Valley. Why? Because he is one of the most ignorant people you will ever meet. www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-...

The party that claims to care about law and order sends the military to pick up trash in DC but has nothing to say about the regular massacre of children in schools under than ‘thoughts and prayers.’

Reup: One thing many are missing abt Social Security whistleblower complaint is this: DOGE--including Big Balls, who has ties to criminal hackers--put ALL American Social Security data on an insecure AWS site AFTER SCOTUS GOPers intervened and let them do that. www.emptywheel.net/2025/08/26/a...

Anybody recognize this flowering quince (Chaenomeles) cultivar? Sold here in #BellinghamWA as 'Cameo' in Oct 2017, when we were rushing to stabilize a neglected slope. Definitely not double peach-colored Cameo. (We loved our Cameo in Seattle.) Now ~ 7' tall by > 10' wide, after repeated pruning. 🌱

Slug not seen at 7 AM, chowing down on squash blossom at 8 AM. Yuck! Invasive European garden slug, scourge of #PNW gardens. We have both red (Arion rufus) and black (Arion ater). Yesterday one ate to the ground all five of my covered 3" endive seedlings. (Photo below is from 2022, but same idea.) 🌱

Comments on this post are priceless. Gloves? Night? Tunnels? #Trump #southernborder #idiocy