Linda Burgess – Page 2 – Nature Along the El Camino Real

by Linda Burgess

We have met several times at Bird and Bee Farm to harvest seeds for our newest El Camino Real Master Naturalist project.

Yesterday, November 26th, we met at the Cameron Public Library to start packaging the seeds. Our project has been embraced by Elena Berkes, the library’s Director. She even joined us yesterday!

Elena is letting us use the beautiful card catalog cabinets at the library to store our seeds and make them available to the public.

We made 275 seed packets yesterday! I was thrilled! I want to thank all the volunteers who have come to harvest seeds and those who came yesterday to package the seeds.

This will be an ongoing project and you will receive volunteer hours under Community Outreach- Indirect, as well as travel time.

I would love for you to collect seeds, native and adapted, to contribute. Just put your seeds in a brown paper bag or envelope, the name of the plant, and the date you collected the seeds.

I would like to say special thanks to Catherine Johnson (an expert in native and adapted plants)! She has helped me immensely.🎉

Come join us at our next gathering to package seeds, which will be on Tuesday, December 17th, at the Cameron Public Library.

by Catherine Johnson

Today we met with Linda Burgess, coordinator of the new Little Free Seed Library project (here’s a link to an article explaining how they work and an article from Mother Earth News). This project involves creating nice boxes for storing labeled native seeds that can be shared and exchanged. We hope to have more than one location in Milam County. The Wildscape will provide many native seeds for the project, as will members of our chapter.

Check the blog for updates on this project as we build it out. Share any ideas you may have for locations for the seed libraries.

Johnson Homestead Wildlife Update

At my house we are winding down the nature events. The Barn Swallow colony expanded this year, and there have been a record number of toads and frogs. I allowed a family of mice to live in a small section of my kitchen then successfully trapped and relocated them. We found them after they ate my daughter’s chocolate bars.

We are rehabbing another leopard frog that was hit by a weedeater. One foot had to be removed, so he is learning to swim again. When it is cold, I will put him in the yard next to our other frogs.

The picture with chairs, fans, etc., was an attempt to protect and keep cool a second batch of wrens at the house.

We had few snakes but an over-abundance of fire ants. Lessons were learned for next year.

Tag: Linda Burgess

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