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?