- Good afternoon. Welcome to the Bloomington Rotary Club's week of celebration of service. I'm Steve Wicks.
- I'm honored to serve as your president this year. Thank you for fighting parking today. Lots of us made
- it. Few people are still coming in, so thanks for your patience there. Please silence your electronic
- devices. On this day in history, June 2nd, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Snyder Act.
- also known as the Indian Citizenship Act, declaring all Native Americans as U.S. citizens. However,
- the legislation did not include voting rights, and it would be decades before all 50 states guaranteed
- Native Americans the right to vote. Hank Walter will share his reflection today.
- So, every once in a while, the last two or three years, I've had the opportunity to stand up and talk
- a little bit about the art in the Union, which I know some of you are very fond of. And we have a new
- piece coming, which I have very little to do with.
- Dr. Bill Yarbers, who some of you may know, who has spearheaded this initiative. You can see Bill is
- a very well-regarded scientist in his field. Not only is he senior director, but he's the founder of
- the Rural Center for AIDS and STD Prevention at IU. And if you spend much time in the Union or the Starbucks
- on Indiana Avenue, you will run into Bill Yarber. Yep, very friendly, chatty.
- man. But if you'll allow me to kind of meander to the point here, it really has to do with Ryan White,
- who many of you are probably who I'm sure are familiar with. But just to do a brief recap, I had to
- had to refresh my memory on some pieces of this. Ryan was born in Indiana,
- childhood in much of it in Kokomo, but was born with hemophilia and contracted AIDS through a contaminated
- blood because he was a hemophiliac and had to get transfusions. And as many of you remember, it was
- a while before science figured out exactly how AIDS was contracted and passed. And so people often thought
- that it could be, maybe it could be contracted through
- through the air, for instance. They just didn't know. And because it seemed like—well, and then you
- would—you would throw into the fact that a number of the people who got it early on were gay, and
- so you had some homophobia going in there as well, as well as drug users. And so there was a lot of
- what I might call victim blaming going on at the time.
- Ryan was banned from school in Kokomo and, in fact, harassed to the level where, in fact, there were
- gunshots fired through his family home just trying to discourage them from being even around.
- But they moved to Cicero, Indiana, where both the principal of the school and the student council president
- became a good friend of his, really did a good job before he got to school, educating everyone about
- that. And he was welcomed there. Ryan also then became sort of a national spokesperson and a face put
- to the AIDS epidemic. The Ryan White
- Comprehensive AIDS Resource Emergency Act really was one of those bipartisan things that we don't see
- very often these days, but signed by both President Bush's and reauthorization's Clinton and Obama,
- passed by congresses that were majority either or both sides of the political spectrum, etc.
- And Ryan also has some connections to IU. In fact, it was his intention to come here to go to college.
- Unfortunately, he passed away during his senior year of high school, in April of his senior year.
- His friend, Jill Stewart, that student council president who played a role in educating the school and
- other students about AIDS and Ryan's condition, came here and actually started the IU Dance Marathon
- in his honor.
- which has raised millions for Riley Children's Hospital over the years. It raises a few million every
- year these days. And it's still—his name is still associated with it, as is at Riley the Ryan White
- Center for Infectious Disease and Research. The IU Rural Center for AIDS and STD Prevention that
- Bill Yarber founded and gives out a Ryan White Award every year. You may be familiar with some of the
- award winners by name. A number of the former Surgeon Generals, David Satcher, Everett Koop, as well
- as Anthony Fauci, Greg Louganis have all received the award and spoken at the dinner. And so Bill Yarber
- came up with the idea of
- Ryan White could never come to IU, but to an extent, let's bring him as we can. And so he developed
- this and worked with a faculty member in the Eskenazi School of Art and Design to develop this sculpture
- or this bust of Ryan. It's called Keep Going because that was part of his
- mantra, so to speak, and his mother still talks about that. And so there's actually, it hopefully looks
- a little bit like he's moving, like there's some sense of motion and action to it. There'll be an unveiling
- next Wednesday, a week from tomorrow in Alumni Hall, if you're interested, from 2.45 to 4 o'clock. And
- then it will go to the South Lounge.
- where it will be housed. We've got a few other sculptures of famous people, all with connections to
- IU, Wendell Wilkie, McNutt are a couple of them. A former Civil War Confederate prison camp commandant
- who went on to be the first president of some little school up in West Lafayette, some things like that.
- So one of the interesting things and you can see I think on that in the photo one of the interesting
- things about the sculpture will be not only is it kind of hang off one end to create hopefully that
- sense of motion and activity but they wanted to the sculptor wanted to also think about how could we
- make it interactive and so they'll be in the in the pedestal that it sits on they'll be
- some explanation of IU Dance Marathon working with Union Board will have some cards there that students
- can write notes on. How do you keep going? How do you with advice or other comments for students? How
- do you keep going through challenging academic times or other times like that? And then I UDM will kind
- of collect those periodically and post them on Instagram on a special account for that. So I really
- like the way of
- and it was IUDM and Union Board who came up with how do we do this, but like the way of trying to get
- that message and keep it as more than just a sculpture that you walk by, but a way for it to be interactive.
- So just wanted to share that info with you. If you have any questions or comments, let me know.
- Thank you, Hank. You said the unveiling was this Wednesday, is that correct? Yep. A week from tomorrow.
- Okay, excellent. Markay Winston will share or rather introduce our guests today. Good afternoon, everyone.
- It's great to see you all. It's a beautiful, beautiful summer day, beginning of summer.
- So we have four guests that we'd like to recognize today. Zoe Roman is the guest of Leslie Kutsenko.
- Welcome. Ed Ryan is the guest of Steve Engel. Hello, Ed. Carolyn Play is the guest of Andrea Murray.
- Hello, Carolyn. And last but not least, Connie Griffith.
- is the guest of Hank Walter. Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Dr. Winston. Peggy,
- do we have any online guests? Peggy's muted. Peggy, do we have any online guests?
- I don't believe so. Thank you. Thank you very much. Guests, if you'd like to learn anything about Rotary,
- please ask a Rotarian at your table. Number of birthdays to celebrate. Jim Bright has a birthday on
- the 5th of June. Jeff McKim on the 11th of June. Steve Engel, a birthday on the 11th of June. Maria
- Carrasquillo on the 12th of June. And Liz Fiddle on the 14th of June.
- We have four anniversary days to observe. A week ago, Sally Gaskell asked me when her anniversary was.
- She thought it was coming up. Um, but she's listed in, in the program as June 3rd and she will observe
- 23 years with the club and 27 years overall as a Rotarian. Uh, on the 9th, Raj Shadawi, six years with
- our club, eight years total as a Rotarian.
- On the 11th, Cindy Brumbarger, two years, and on the 13th, Jim Sims, seven years. Tyler, will you go
- ahead and put up my PowerPoint? Okay, number of announcements today.
- I covered this last week. I'll just touch on it this week. Remember, if you're here at the meeting,
- make sure you initial that you're here. And then if you're not eating, go ahead and circle your name
- or your number. We use this document, one, to keep track of attendance long term. It's also what we
- use. We're on the honor system with IU Dining. So it's what we use to make sure that we pay them what
- we should pay.
- A reminder, I put out an email about this a week ago. Total club dues will increase $2.25 effective
- July 1st. We're still accepting applications for the club executive assistant position. We have a number
- received already. We hope to begin interviews in the coming week. Still have a few weekly meeting rolls
- to fill during the month of June. The link is in the roundabout each week.
- And then the sign up for the next quarter will be coming out probably later this week. And
- then President-elect Tracy busy lining up committee chairs. You can see some of the chairs she's lined
- up for next year. I'm sorry, that was a bad joke. However, we do need a roundabout co-chair to work
- with Marilyn.
- Person would be responsible for editing the roundabout during some weeks of the year. So if
- you're interested, talk to Marilyn to get a feel for what the job entails or talk to Tracy. Celebration
- of service. So we did another project with Meals on Wheels on Friday, some meal kit preparation. Diana
- Hoffman organized it again and Jim Harvey, Sarah Laughlin and Winston Schindel put together the meal kits.
- And while I'm on Meals on Wheels, they're looking for lots of volunteers, particularly drivers. I think
- Diana put out flyers on each table. If you have any questions, Diana is sitting at that table back there
- and she can answer them. Okay, now we'll touch upon next week. So next week is one of the weeks when
- the union is booked with other groups. So we find another place for our meeting.
- And we will be meeting at the Neal Marshall Black Culture Center on 275 North Eagleson Avenue. 1145
- will serve lunch. Program begins at noon. There will not be a Zoom next week. And then we'll have a
- shortened program and then we'll have a tour at 1230 and we'll be done at 1.
- There'll be quite a bit of walking throughout, we'll go throughout the building, but there will be no
- stairs. We'll use the elevator to get up and down. So if you're limited mobility, ask me questions,
- but I think you'll be able to join us. Parking, it's always a popular subject. So there's a really nice
- parking area on the northeast side of the Neil Marshall building at Eagleson and Seventh. And you go
- in and you go past the theater entrance and there's a smaller elevator and you go down one floor to
- the Grand Hall.
- You should be able to park for free at the IMU lot. However, next week is mini-university, so it might
- be crowded. If you do that, walk past the south side of the auditorium, enter Neal Marshall at the southwest
- door. You go down one floor to the Grand Hall. You can pay for parking at the IU East Garage. On the
- upper deck, there's a designated area. It's Cross Eagleson from the Delta Gamma House. So you would
- walk and enter Neal Marshall via the southeast door.
- And for those of you who like to live dangerously, if you can get past the guard shack getting up towards
- Showalter, you can possibly park along the south side of the auditorium. Your car may not be there at
- the end of the gathering. But if you want to live dangerously, that's the way to go. Here is a very
- crude map. You can see my scribbled NM. But it's really, it's probably a five minute walk from here.
- Um, and the grand hall is on the south side of the building. And if you like a satellite view here is
- the same with the satellite view down on the bottom, right? You can see the Henderson, the East, the
- East garage, um, not Henderson where parking, I think it's $3 an hour.
- Are there any questions about next week's meeting? I'll go ahead and take them there. If you have a
- question, put up your hand. Or if you have a question online, let Peggy know. I'll try to repeat the
- question and then answer it as best I can. Tim? The question is, is a meeting about the Neal Marshall
- Center? And the answer is yes. Center Director Dr. Gloria Howell will be our host.
- and she'll take about 15 minutes to provide us with some background information, and then Dr. Al and
- her assistant will give us the tours. Show of hands, how many people think they might be at the meeting
- next week? Okay. All right, excellent. Any other questions?
- Okay, moving on, Beacon organizational member, their solidarity sleep outs coming up Friday, June 5th,
- the Saturday, June 6th. They'd like you to go and sign up at sleep out, sleep out, excuse me.
- And unfortunately, I can't read it because it's covered, sleepout.info. And it's at the First United
- Methodist Church, green space. So please do that if you can.
- Teachers Warehouse Supply Drive, the sign-up sheet is now out. Remember that's our biggest volunteer
- event of the year. This sign-up sheet link should be in the roundabout this week. If you save the dates.
- Club Picnic at Bryan Park will be meeting at the Woodlawn Shelter. That's on Tuesday, June 23rd. That
- will be in lieu of a regular meeting.
- The Chamber Business After Hours is on the 24th, 530 to 730 at Harris Services. Let's see, the Rotary
- Book Club, July 8th. Do I have the dates right? Sally and Judy, yes, okay. Home of Cindy and Dave, 3000
- East Winston Street. There is information on the book that's going to be read. Sally Gaskell is sitting
- over there if you're interested, and then Judy Schroeder can probably help you if you have questions.
- And then November 6th, the Rotary Toast at Ivy Tech. The Rotary Toast website is selling tables. So
- if you have any interest in buying a table, go there and go for it. Rotary seminary is a focus. And
- we're now in the month of June. June designation is Rotary Fellowships Month. And what binds Rotarians
- together is a unity of desire, unity of purpose to serve society and to serve mankind, a unity in diversity.
- And remember, as Rotarians, we believe in service above self. And May-June Happy Dollars will be donated
- to the Rotary Foundation to fight polio, undertake service projects around the world. We're running
- a little bit behind schedule, so we won't do Happy Dollars today. So at this point, Connie, can you
- come up and introduce our speaker for today?
- This is probably the last time I'll say this. Thank you, President Steve. Bill Daniels has degrees in
- musical theater, theology and health science. Bill retired in 2019 from a work life spent primarily
- in horticulture and as an environmental health and safety professional. When he retired,
- Bill has been focusing on projects that enable networks of amateur and professional plant growers. He
- hopes they will work together regionally to obtain and propagate native plant seeds. The goal is more
- ecologically appropriate native plants in all of our landscapes. A master gardener, and that's a big
- deal. Are there any other master gardeners here? Yeah, that is super hard to become.
- A master gardener, Bill is the program leader for Native Seed Communities, a project of the Indiana
- Native Plant Society, a grower and organizer for MC Iris' Fall Native Plant Sale, and volunteer co-leader
- for Sycamore Land Trust's Native Plant Conservation Nursery. I met Bill because we sang together in
- the UU Choir, and I must tell you that Bill is also a performer.
- He sings beautifully. I give you Bill Daniels. Thank you, Connie. Is this doing okay? All right. Thanks
- so much, Connie, for that kind introduction. And hi, everyone. This is my second Rotary presentation.
- The first one was in
- Probably mid-80s, 1980, that is. And it was at Rotary International. And I was in a musical group, and
- we performed. And I honestly don't remember which year or whatever. But anyway, it's good to be here.
- I've got a very different topic.
- As Connie said, I'm representing a few different organizations, MCIRIS, the Indiana Native Plant Society,
- which specifically is the program Native Seed Communities, which I'm the program leader, and then she
- already said Master Gardeners. So today, if we could move my slide, please. Or I do that, don't I? There we go.
- Thank you. First off, are many of you familiar with native plants and the benefits of? I figured probably
- so. But I thought it would just, for those that may not have that understanding. So native plants are
- ones that have grown in a particular environment, a particular ecosystem.
- Over time, these plants have evolved and adapted to the soils, to the climate, as well as other native
- plants and animals. So, let me... So, some of the benefits of the native plants are really to hit the
- ecosystem services. One of the main ones is, at least that I focus on, is food for wildlife.
- Whether it's seeds, nectar, leaves, insects, and then the birds are the, and into the mammals. The native
- plants are really the foundation of our ecosystems. They are the base of all of our food webs. And one
- thing that a lot of people may not realize is that the majority of our insects are specialists.
- And when I say a specialist, they can only eat certain plants. So there are host plants that allow them
- to survive. And if we have a lot of plants from Asia, from Europe, et cetera, in our yards and our parks
- and everything, well, our insects can't eat those.
- It's a myth that most of our insects are generalists. Sometimes in our gardens, it appears that,
- you know, everybody can eat our plants. But really, it's really a rare thing. And I know many of you
- are very familiar with the relationship of a monarch butterfly. It's caterpillar to milkweed.
- and uh... but that's just one of thousands and hundreds of thousands i would imagine so anyway habitat
- and shelter pollinator support many of our pollinators too can only
- pollinate very specific flowers, genuses of plants. And not only can, you know, as far as the eating
- part, eating of the leaves and everything, the nectar and the pollen as well can be a challenge. Soil,
- water health, flood, climate reliance, then again, biodiversity boost, and then carbon storage. So,
- what I do,
- My thing is growing natives from seed. And one of my—one of the people that inspired me the most was—it
- is Heather McCargo. And she started the Wild Seed Project out of Maine. And in one of her presentations,
- she had the quote that our native plants are losing their place in our world. We need both
- from seed. So anyway, I was already doing a lot of this. I was studying how to propagate our native
- plants. One of the things about our native plants, like our garden, regular garden plants, is that our
- native plants are
- The majority, over 80%, need a cold, moist period for our region. Not surprisingly, they need winter
- before they can properly germinate. But there are a lot of other needs if we want to have consistent
- and timely germination, things that we can do. And I've got a lot of tools up here and equipment on my table.
- that I may point to, and Michael may come up with the camera and take some pictures for those of you
- online. But I probably won't be doing a lot of demo, that's usually a longer presentation. So, but anyway,
- so there are two main methods. Container, on the left hand, the left hand picture there, that's our
- property in Brown County,
- where I had lots of plants all over the place, tried to put them in places deer wouldn't get to. And
- then there's also the direct seeding of seeds. And this is just a 14 and a half ounce bean can that's
- been burned. And the acorns are put down and then the can is tapped down into the ground. And have any
- of you heard of Ray Major?
- Yes, Amy has. But anyway, Ray Major from Trees from Seed. He's also a local musician, harmonica player,
- and everything. But anyway, I'll let Ray come sometime to do that presentation. But we've got a lot
- of stuff going on here from a standpoint of growing natives from Seed. The upper left-hand corner, that's
- a city event collecting in Miller Showers Park.
- I've done gobs of presentations at churches and for garden clubs and for Native Plant Society chapters.
- The Sycamore Land Trust, the middle picture there at the top, collecting at the Sam Schein Foundation
- seeds. MC Iris, I think you had Mary Reardon here.
- Not too long ago talking about invasive plants. Well, I I help out with the replacing those invasives
- with with natives so in in and we're just We're taking some of these some of ceilings that we've germinated
- we've propagated and we're putting them in individual pots for the
- for the upcoming, for the fall sale. A workshop on building a germination station, which I've got a
- kind of a fancy example of that up here. And then other pictures of sales and sewing events. So we've
- got a lot going on here from that standpoint. So anyway, as far as this whole process, you gotta get
- some seed.
- You can go out and collect it on your own. We've got a lot of resources on how to do that. And some
- of those pictures reflect that. The lower left-hand corner shows just a picture of the Indiana Native
- Plant Society. We have a major seed swap at our annual conference. Over on the right-hand side, the little
- It looks like a little library box. That's a little native seed library box, Johnson County, Blair Beavers.
- They've got a project there that all the gardens that they've got throughout the city in Franklin, they
- collect the seed and then they provide those seeds to the visitors.
- So, but our Monroe County downtown library, we've got a native seed swap there as well as a library
- there as well. And other groups around town do that, have swaps. So these are just some of the tools.
- I'm not gonna go into them a lot. I've got a number of them up here.
- uh... upon how to collect seeds uh... let's see and and when we we collect the seeds unlike the seeds
- that you buy from maize or wherever you get them uh... those are live pure seed they've been really
- cleaned and everything but when we when we trade seeds when we collect the seeds uh... they've they've got
- all this other material with them. So we've got to, we want to get to down as close as we can to what
- the seed is. And that way, then we're going to have a more consistent germination, et cetera.
- Now in nature, the seeds drop and they, it may take two, two years, three years before they actually
- break down and are able to germinate. So, so we've got different tools. We've got seeds. We've got, um, um,
- Even some of the hard coats, a lot of our legumes, we have sandpaper that we thin the coats so that
- they'll readily germinate the next year. Otherwise, it may take two, four years, whatever,
- for many of them. So we've got just a number of tools like this. I will show you this. We use a lot
- of sieves.
- ones that I've bought. My dad was a, he bought boats and I've bought sieves. This whole set costs about
- $300, but they're really worth it. And then from Goodwill, I just found a basting pan and it works perfect
- on the bottom. But you can, you don't have to spend that much. You can actually
- You can get graduated sieves to take out all the vegetative matter. And I just got those from Goodwill.
- But anyway, we've got a lot of tools that can be used for cleaning that seed, getting it ready.
- All right, and then the sewing, we want to sew the seed.
- We need pots, we need soil. One of the things that can be important is that many of the soil mixes that
- you buy, there's not a lot of food to them. They're very sterile. And so one thing that Heather McCargo
- teaches is it's good to get a good compost-based soil mix.
- when you're doing this. And I have really seen a difference between using it, just a basic soil mix
- and a compost base. You need some seed, that's the top, the picture, second from the right. We use sand.
- I've got some up here, a coarse sand to cover many of the seeds. Not all seeds should be covered, but
- many of them do require it. Labels, pencil,
- You need to water it in and then provide some kind of protection. And that's just some hardware cloth
- there. So here's the process. Fill the pot to the rim and press soil down so that it's firm. Get all
- the air pockets out of it.
- then we would sprinkle the seed on top. It's okay to be generous with the seed. Our native plants, if
- you look at the, if you look at road sides, there's not a lot of space in between the seeds. They are,
- they're all growing together, elbow to elbow. So you can do that as well, and I kind of demo that here.
- This is kind of a neat one. It's American wisteria. So it's not the Asian one that's taking over
- some of our woodlands. It is the American. It's less aggressive, but you still may not want to put it
- on an eighth of an acre yard. But anyway, you can put those closely together. Many of them, I had mentioned,
- you cover with a coarse layer of sand to the depth of the thickness of the seed itself. You want to
- label it. Every year, I forget to label something.
- And so you want to make sure you label it. I've got one at home. It's beautiful, but I just, I've tried
- a lot of new things this year and I'm not sure what it is. So anyway, provide protection and then again,
- and I'll let you all come up and look at this, but we just make a germination station. Many of these seeds are
- not only valuable to us, but they're especially valuable to rodents and squirrels, and even if they
- don't go for the seed, they just like to dig in, you know, and can really mess things up. And then you
- simply, at least in this process, and by the way, this is done the sowing late fall, early winter, and
- then I had mentioned earlier that 80%
- of our native plants do require some kind of winter. And so you just put them outside. And even if they
- don't require it, it's okay. And let nature do its thing. Let it go through the winter. All right,
- and then, so here are just some pictures, April, May,
- June, so late June, and since a lot of the stuff that I grow and the organizations that I help out with,
- grow, they're for sales, they're fundraisers. Sycamore we raised so far, I think it was about $18,500
- and that will go specifically to our native plant nursery. Has anybody ever been to like the Sycamore
- sale at Blooming Foods? There's Amy and yeah, and Connie. So, and then we have the really big one as well.
- at Switchyard Park in the maintenance building. So anyway, so we take them like, we take it like this,
- we just then turn it over, we empty it out, and then we delicately pull the plants apart, and then we
- replant those in typically just what's called a plug pot, a two-inch pot, thank you, Michael, two-inch pot,
- And then we put them in the pots, and we put them in a flat. And then on the very right-hand side, that
- picture, it just shows, when I do this for myself, I don't put them in individual pots. I put them in
- clump pots. And then by the fall, they're,
- They get pretty nice and big, and I often just either plant them as a clump or I pull them apart and
- plant two or three together, because that's kind of what nature does. And then we've got a lot of resources.
- This is in the Indiana Native Plant Society's website. We have a whole section under seeds. It talks about
- how to grow from seeds, talks a little bit about the project, native seed communities, and then Ray
- Major has a section on there as well for growing trees from seed. All right, and then we've got a Trello
- board. We've done 21 presentations on how to do this at different organizations. Any of you know Jillian
- Field? Yeah, so.
- A lot of people know Jillian with MCIris and with the city. She does incredible work with working with
- invasives, pollinator support, et cetera, pollinator partnership activities and Bee City stuff and all.
- And then we've got a YouTube channel as well. All righty.
- Questions, kind of short and sweet, but I think that's, yes sir. So we'll have to wait till Michael
- gets to you. Thank you for your presentation. You're welcome. I'm not a very smart botanist, but I'm
- not sure what seeds you're talking about. You've not mentioned the names of the plants that are endemic
- to this area. Okay, well I
- Just an example, this is the spotted bee ball. And let's see, it's Menardia punctata, that's right.
- And so it is, it's one of, it's one of the mints. That's an example. I talked about wisteria. Joe pieweed
- is, hollow Joe pieweed is a really common seed. So there are,
- There are the native plants that you would see in the woods. It could be trees. In fact, I've got some
- seedlings right now growing on a property that I planted, this large oak, the acorns of this large oak
- down below, many of you below here. Are you familiar with that? I think it's Big Burrow. Yeah. So anyway,
- it could be those kinds of seeds.
- I can name you others, but does that give you an idea? Okay, excellent. Yes. The whole can example with
- a, can you elaborate more on that and like which ones you can do it for and which ones you can, because
- that's the first time I've ever heard of burying a can. So what that is is it's just a little vegetable can.
- bean can, and you take that, and how Ray does it, he puts it in a, he starts a fire, maybe illegal,
- but he starts a fire, and then he burns off the coating on the can, and then, so he'll take three or
- four, I mean, he'll wheel, I've done it too, you take three or four acorns, and you sew those acorns,
- and then you take the can, you turn it upside down. Well, first you poke holes in it with a piece of
- rebar is one of the easiest things, and you poke three or four holes in it, and then you tap it down
- over those acorns, and then the squirrels and, or chipmunks, et cetera, they can't get to it, so it
- protects it. And then when they actually germinate, those,
- those seedlings find those holes and they grow up. And then within the first year, seedlings for an
- oak are about this big probably. And then by the time they start really going the second year, the can
- disintegrates. Yeah. So it rusts away. So it's a Droste can. The person that kind of invented that is
- his last name is Droste.
- and Ray knew him. But there were other methods to protect, but those, the acorns are just so valuable
- to wildlife. Even our buckeyes or anything, I had a buckeye. I'd sown some buckeyes and within a couple
- hours, the buckeyes were gone. In fact, those oaks I was mentioning, I went to the backyard to get some
- bricks I was going to
- put them around the edge of a little cage that I had for it, a wire cage. And I see this chipmunk going
- down the road and it had its cheeks full. And it had already gotten my acorns. So it was watching me.
- I swear. I swear. Yeah. So anyway, they're high value.
- When you were introduced, she said that you had studied theology. You also were a member of the UU choir.
- So I'm going to be bold to ask this question. I look around this audience, I see several people that
- have studied theology. And I know my seminary in Princeton, New Jersey, has a farminary now. And the
- students just love to go out there and work with plants and learn about it. What is your theology of
- the earth from these studies and your experiments?
- Okay. Well, you know, honestly, I've not really delved into that a whole lot. I'm sorry. I've been more
- practical. My theology was from many years ago. And so, right now, I'm a UU person and I'm
- kind of free-spiriting, you know, when it comes that way.
- Sorry, I don't know. Maybe you have some thoughts. Would you like to talk about it a bit? Anyway. Anybody
- else? Yes, Amy. So people like to have pretty yards and it's really tempting to plant non-native species
- Why is it not necessarily a good idea or if you have to plant non-native species to make sure they're
- not invasive? Why is it a good idea not to plant them? Say that again. Why would we not necessarily
- want to plant non-native species or especially invasive species and how do those affect native species
- of plants and animals? We already talked about the
- the ability of our insects are not able to eat those. So they, yeah, they're beautiful for us. We like
- pretty flowers and everything, but they really don't add a lot to the environment. And then invasive,
- why not evasives too? Okay, and then the invasives, well, I think you can look at,
- many of the open areas, especially like on 69 and the second street out in that area, and the Bradford
- pair is just taking over those open areas and just filling it in. I know the new Monroe County Park
- out off of 446,
- It's got a terrible infestation of Bradford pear out there. So anyway, a lot of those aggressives, well,
- I talked about, hopefully this is what you're getting at, Amy, but wisteria in Brown County, my neighbors
- had five acres along Salt Creek, and it was completely covered with the Asian wisteria.
- they just take over and they choke everything else out. Some of them have allopathic, they've got results
- where they've got a chemical that actually keeps other plants from growing around them. So anyway, is
- that okay? Oh, okay, that's great. So you can,
- We've got a lot of resources on the Indiana Native Plant Society's website. If you're on Facebook, the
- Indiana Native Plant Society has a lot of information there. But our local organization, MCIRIS, and
- you already had Mary Reardon here, on that website, it actually shares the list of state-regulated
- plants. It shares a lot of the other plants as well that are invasive to our area. So thank you. As
- somebody that grows plants, there's some that are particularly satisfying to do. Are there some that
- you like, wow, when I get that to grow, I'm really happy? Is there anything like that? You know what?
- Well, I actually
- Actually, there is. One of the most wanted plants is our orange milkweed, all of a sudden. Butterfly
- milkweed. And for some reason, it alludes me
- time and again.
- We would stop and dig them up. They've got a very long taproot. I've got a picture of showing the seedling
- this big. And even then, it really goes this deep. And so they're very hard to transplant. And so, anyway.
- So this is more of a comment about the invasive plants. I didn't know this before I kind of got into
- the environmental realm.
- The state-regulated list is very short, and it takes a lot to get on it. So you will find invasive plants
- being sold in Indiana that are not on the list. So you want to check the... Yeah, for instance,
- Bradford pear. Right. So you want to actually check other lists that even things for sale are not necessarily
- not invasive. Yeah, that's great. Thank you.
- I think you just covered this a moment ago, but to help Craig, did Craig leave? Oh, no, Craig left?
- Well, anyhow, could you talk a little bit more about the variety of milkweeds? There are so many more
- than I realized. Yeah, yeah. Well, for our area,
- We've got the butterfly milkweed. We've got our common milkweed. A lot of people avoid that because
- it can really escape from the gardens, but they're beautiful. In fact, somebody said, what is that beautiful
- big pink bloom flower that I've got? And it's like, well, that's common milkweed. There's also the,
- let's see, swamp milkweed, thank you,
- The common name is swamp, but it grows really well in just normal soils and normal moisture soils. Those
- are the three main ones that are grown here. Any others that people would recommend? Yeah. I think right
- now blooming is the exulta.
- the, can't think of the common name. But anyway, it's got four leaves and, but anyway, I saw it in the
- woods just a few days ago. Can't think of the common name of it, but it's not normally grown in our
- gardens and stuff. A pokemill milkweed? Oh, pokeweed is, yeah. Pokeweed is, yeah, native, yeah. It's
- a great one, but a lot of people don't like it.
- So, I've got it growing on my property. Well, I think the berries are kind of messy. It can really pop
- up in a lot of places. Anybody else? Why not poke milkweed? Well, it is toxic, but you can eat it. Yeah,
- yeah. Yeah, you got to boil it and everything, yeah.
- So can you tell us some of the best native bushes, plants, or whatever that produce a good return to
- attract birds? Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, a lot of our herbaceous, a lot of our native forbs
- they do feed caterpillars. And our birds, even though they may eat primarily seeds as adults, over 96%
- of our birds feed their young, especially highly valued caterpillars. And so the caterpillars, so I'm
- gonna first start there because
- Caterpillars are very nutritious. They're soft. And if you've ever seen mothers feeding their young,
- they just ram the insects down the mouths. So they don't do a lot of harm. They only do good. The best
- tree for that is our oaks. A lot of research has been done on various
- trees that are really good. If you're not familiar with Doug Tallamy, I highly recommend that you read
- some of Doug's books. And he goes into this quite a bit. So, our wild cherry tree is a fantastic tree
- to have, not only for the fruit, but also for the leaves.
- It's like number two in supporting the Lepidoptera or the caterpillars of moths and butterflies. Yes,
- and then not everybody likes goldenrod, but goldenrod is a very good one for feeding insects.
- And there are some that are not clump forming. We're very familiar with the Canadian goldenrod that
- just, you've got one, one year, and then it fills in the whole front yard. But there are really some
- good clump formings like stiff goldenrod, et cetera. But anyway, this goes into a lot of this. As far
- as fruits, I already mentioned
- the cherry tree, their shrubs, the gray dogwoods, many of the dogwoods, the viburnums, primary serviceberry,
- they're marvelous. And those are good to eat too, but the birds get them as soon as they get ripe.
- So anyway, hopefully that's how. All right, thank you, it's a pleasure.
- Bill, thank you. So you appeared before Rotary International in the 80s. Now you're with us in the 20s.
- That would put you on track to visit again in the 2060s. But I think we'd like to have you back before
- then. So thank you very much. You will
- happy to know that here a few weeks ago is one of our service projects working with Michelle Cohen and
- the Lake Monroe Water Fund. We were out planting native trees and it was really interesting to hear
- the naturalists tell us okay you're planting this tree for this reason and that tree for that reason.
- So anyway thank you so much for your talk today. On of your talk a donation will be made this quarter
- to Wheeler Mission. I want to
- Apologize to everyone for all the flickering and the jackhammers. Nothing came through the ceiling,
- so we're good to go. I'd like to thank today's volunteers. Remember, don't come here next week. So our
- next meeting will be in the Grand Hall, the Neal Marshall Black Culture Center on June 9th.
- We'll have an abbreviated meeting featuring center director, Gloria Howell. Dr. Howell and her assistant
- will then take us on a 30 minute tour of the center. Be no zoom access next week. So please join us
- at the Neil Marshall. I will need about three or four volunteers to get there a little bit early and
- to help me get things set up a little bit and maybe with attendance and greeting and some directionals.
- So if you can do that, please see me after this meeting.
- So Tyler, if you could share the graphic for the four-way test, please stand if you're able. Of the
- things we think, say or do, first, is it the truth? Second, is it fair to all concerned? Third, will
- it build goodwill and better friendships? Fourth, will it be beneficial to all concerned? And fifth,
- is it fun?