University Place

All right, just want to welcome you to the August meeting of the Dodge County Master Gardener Association. Tonight, our speaker is Donna VanBuecken, who is the Charter President of the Wild Ones of Fox Valley and Outagamie County. She's going to be speaking about landscaping with natural plants. She has a construction background and she is a long-time gardening enthusiast. She and her husband maintain a small restored prairie and a restored woodland on their property. They also have mature bur oaks and hickories as part of their landscaping. She and her brothers also own an 80-acre cedar swamp in the town of Seneca. She's been a member of Wild Ones since 1986, and currently serves as the Executive Director of the National Wild Ones Natural Landscapers Limited, which has grown to over 50 chapters and 4,000 households. She's a graduate of UW-Green Bay, with a degree in organizational management. Please welcome Donna. (applause) Thank you, Carol. How many of you have native plants in your gardens? Oh. Do the rest of you understand what a native plant is, as opposed to a non-native plant? A native plant are the plants that grew in various regions throughout an area before a settlement came in. And here in North America, we say before the European settlement came in. And we define those regions as ecoregions. An ecoregion is made up of similar climate, geology, and soils in that area. And within that ecoregion are ecosystems. Ecosystems are made up of the plants and animals and various organisms that grow in that area. There could be a number of ecosystems within an ecoregion. This is an example of an ecoregion map. Here in the state of Wisconsin, this is the way our ecoregions looked pre-settlement. It's primarily woodland, as you can see by the definition. There's a little bit of grassland brush area down in the lower areas and there's some wetland vegetation, which is the blue. The blue areas. The grassland brush are the little dots of red that you see here and there. You as Master Gardeners probably refer to the Hardiness Zone Map most frequently when you're planning your gardening and your landscaping. But I wanted to point out to you what the difference is between an ecoregions map and a Hardiness Zone Map, just in case you don't know. A Hardiness Zone Map is typically based on the average temperature within that location that they're describing as a zone. But an ecoregion is based not only on temperature, but the amount of sunlight, the type of soil, the amount of moisture in that soil, pH, and a variety of other things that go into defining that ecoregion. And then you pick the right plant for that ecoregion. Why do you think we pick the right plant for that ecoregion versus just picking a plant and putting it into an hardiness zone? -

Woman

You want it to stay living. -

Donna

That's right, you want it to stay living. If you put a non-native plant or a plant that's out of place in an ecoregion, you're going to have to provide the tender, loving care that it requires to be a successfully growing plant. You might have to add water, you might have to provide nutrients, lime, acid, whatever the plant needs. And maybe you'll have to even use an insecticide in order to keep the insects from eating it and destroying the plant. But, if you use ecoregions, you don't have to. And you can see there's quite a difference in the number of ecoregions as compared to the Hardiness Zone. I mentioned ecosystems earlier when I was talking about ecoregions. An ecosystem is made up of the plants, animals, and insects and the various organisms within a confined area. And then, those areas generally kind of repeat themselves in an ecoregion, but they're genetically different. Their ecotypes are just a bit different as they adjust to the various organisms, the little differences in the soil, or whatever the differences in that geological area might be. So why am I suggesting we use native plants? And these are the four reasons that we typically use. It creates a living landscape. And why does it create a living landscape? Because it's very personal to us. It gives us a sense of place, it's how we all evolved - plants, animals, humans. It provides a sanctuary for wildlife and allows us to be in that circle of life with the wildlife because they, too evolve with the native plants. There's the biodiversity which makes up all living organisms. It's not just the plants and the animals; it's the fungus in the soil, it's the cells in our bodies. That's biodiversity, it's all that genetic makeup. And sustainable. That's the very important thing that we all are talking about these days, going green, being sustainable, making it easier for us to reduce climate change, or slow it down, I should say. Sustainability is very important and can be more easily attained through the use of native plants than non-native plants, where you have to introduce the herbicides, the insecticides, you have to waste potable water. And I could go on, but I won't. So I want to give you some examples of what I'm talking about. Wouldn't you rather enjoy being in a park that's filled with native plants like this, than one that's filled with turf grass. I know you need turf grass for playing baseball, but if you're just going to be strolling in a passive green space of a park, wouldn't it be more appealing, more inviting, more satisfying to you as a person, to have beautiful flowers that are relatively maintenance-free because they are native plants? Or the beauty of it. The beauty of the fall flowers or fall leaves of the trees. Or the marsh marigolds in the early spring of the year. And who can resist a bloodroot and the first few flowers that come up in the spring. On the right we have prairie dropseed and pale purple coneflower, a beautiful edge plant or ornamental in any garden. These are all native plants. And isn't this a wonderful, glorious feeling, a fantastic sense of place, just to see the sun rise early in the morning through an oak grove? So, we covered personal, now I want to talk a little bit about wildlife. In an ecosystem, as I mentioned earlier, there are plants, animals, birds, and insects. They all interact together. Insects depend on plants, plants depend on insects, animals depend upon plants, plants depend upon birds, birds depend upon plants, and humans depend upon all of them because they're all part of the circle of life. And so it's important for us to provide habitat for insects and animals. Just think how many seeds get spread around from a herd of buffalo with the seeds hanging on their coats. Birds, we know about the bird droppings that go everywhere. Whether you're using native or non-native plants, you're going to have plants spring up wherever you don't want them just because the birds drop the seed. And of course, then there's the human participants in the circle of life. And since I've been talking about the circle of life, I just wanted to introduce you to this little diagram here. It's the perfect solar system, in case you haven't thought about it that way. But through photosynthesis, the plants make oxygen for the... herbivores and the carnivores to eat. The herbivores eat the plants, the carnivores eat the herbivores through decay from death or droppings from their fecal matter. There's the decomposers who make the soil rich from the nutrients from the decomposition. And then this starts of the cycle of life over again, with the plants absorbing the nutrients from the decomposition that's going into the soil, the fungus that has broken down the nutrients. I know you can't read this slide, it appeared in the Wild Ones Journal. And it's also a download on the Wild Ones website, so you're free to go to it and download it. Doug Tallamy is a well-known botanist here in North America, and he's done a number of studies on caterpillars, moths, and butterflies. And his notes indicate that an oak tree provides sustenance in some way for 557 moths or caterpillars. But, a Norway maple doesn't provide any. A lilac provides sustenance for 40 caterpillars and moths. Again, the oak provides 557. So you can see there's a difference. A lilac is not a native plant, a Norway maple is not a native plant, but the oaks are native to North America. I like this picture, and you're going to see it again later because it's one of my favorite pictures, but chickadees require 300 caterpillars per day to feed their young when they're nesting. That's barely one oak tree in order to feed their young. And everybody loves the chickadee, the way they fly and their darling song. So, if we didn't have native trees to provide the caterpillars for birds like the chickadees, we wouldn't be able to see them very much longer.

Here's an example of what I was talking about

the sugar maple versus the Norway maple, which I've already mentioned. The sugar maple supports 300 species of caterpillars. Besides that, it also produces pollen, seeds, food for the birds, pollen for the pollinators, nesting and roosting areas for birds, bees, butterflies, bats, and then the leaves fall and decompose and enrich the soil. So we've got that whole circle going on, and it's because it's a native plant. The last item I talked about earlier was sutainability. This picture just always blows me away because of the beautiful color, it looks like a patchwork quilt. Isn't this lovely? And these are all native plants. And I should just mention that native plants are the first plants, the true species. Your non-native plants come from native plants. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't use non-native plants, I'm just trying to encourage you-- I'm trying to get you to understand the difference between the two and why one is, perhaps, better than the other. But you can always use both at the same time. We want you to encourage a habitat for the pollinators and the animals and the wildlife, and for you to enjoy yourself. Today's lawns look like this. And they're very high-maintenance. They use precious drinking water. We have to fertilizer, fertilize them and typically add pesticides and more chemicals that then lead to polluting the waterways, contributing to global warming because we're using lawnmowers that spew fossil fuel fumes. And so the contamination goes on. This is a graph that shows how many billion pounds of chemicals are used... here in North America. Wouldn't it make more sense to have the plants get their fertilizer from the soil, from the nutrients in the soil, rather than dumping it on the surface and then watering it, and washing it away? It just seems like it would make a whole lot more sense, and certainly much more sustainable to not have to use chemicals... to feed our lawns. If you feel that you need to have lawns, we recommend that you try a no-mow lawn. No-mow lawns are made up of non-native fescue grass, but they also have some native grasses in them. They typically only grow about 12 inches per year. You can mow them to keep them short, like a turf grass lawn, but you need only to mow them about once a month. Which cuts down on the fossil fuels being spewed from the mowers and you don't typically have to provide all the water and the chemicals that you would with a Kentucky turf, uh, Kentucky Bluegrass lawn. Here's just a couple examples of it being used. Here's an edging on a garden. I like to use this one because in the background you see the typical mowed lawn. Here's another one, it's just a fall scene but you can see how it looks late in fall when you might typically mow your grass very, very short. So we're talking about sustainability. If you use native plants, because they evolved with everything else, since pre-settlement times, you're going to find that they require no watering, fertilizer, or pesticides. Insects aren't going to eat the entire plant because they evolved together. They depend upon one another, and so they're not going to eat the plant to such a degree that it's going to kill it off. That would be very unproductive. It reduces maintenance because you're not doing all the mowing that you would before. And once the planting is mature, you're going to find that you're not going to be weeding and doing some of those other tender loving care responsibilities that you've had with non-native plants. It reduces pollution, and I'll show you why in just a few minutes, and because it reduces pollution and because of the way it reduces pollution, it will also reduce erosion. And then, of course, it provides food and shelter for wildlife and reconnects us with nature as I have been trying to point out all along.

Here is why it reduces pollution and erosion

it takes in carbon dioxide. It uses that during photosynthesis. It then grows these huge roots, we're talking here about prairie plants, I'm not going to go into the root system of shade plants. But we're talking here about prairie plants. They have these huge roots. The plant that is circled in green is a prairie dock. A prairie dock flower stalk can grow anywhere from 10 to 12 feet tall, so you can see how much longer those roots are. They've measured some of those roots to go down to 30 feet. But, all those roots absorb all the nutrients that they need from the soil. They absorb all the water that they need from the soil, and as I've mentioned before, insects won't kill them off because then they won't have that plant for their own sustenance as the evolution goes round and round. Then, each year as these plants die back and go dormant, all the little feeder roots die off. They slough off, and next year they grow new feeder roots. And where those little feeder roots slough off is where the water percolates into the soil. So when you have a huge rainstorm, all the water actually goes into the soil, trickles down through all the openings that the little feeder roots have made, and goes deep into the soil and into the water table. That's how it helps prevent erosion. Now, look at the roots of the Kentucky Bluegrass. Quite a difference. Now, if you would allow the Kentucky Bluegrass to grow a little bit longer, my husband and I leave ours grow to three inches, the roots would probably be three inches long versus what's shown here, but they're not going to be 30 feet long or even ten feet long as shown for the prairie plants. And so that's why you're always having to add water, the fertilizer, and maybe be concerned about insects. I'm going to go through these kind of quickly, I may not even make some comments on some of them, but these are some examples of landscapes using native plants. And they're going to look just like the landscapes that you have using non-native plants. Or incorporating native and non-native plants. Isn't this lovely? That rock really sets off the greenery. Pale Purple Coneflower. Beautiful Black-eyed Susans. Indian Plaintain. I love the colors in this one, Cardinal flower. Some more... is that the same picture? Here I'm going to show you some woodland scenes. This is one of my favorite pictures because I happen to like trains very much, but this is Sweet Black-eyed Susan. And you'll notice there's grass. I'm allowing grass in my photos. Doesn't this look like an inviting path to walk down? This is an early picture from probably 10 years ago. It's a little woodland that my husband and I restored in our yard. We created this by dumping leaves and mulch and stuff into this area where there were some existing trees, and then we added more trees to make it a woodland. You can see that I have them covered against the deer, because we have deer damage. But I take off the covers in the wintertime. Or in the summertime. But you can see how the plants come up in the spring and it gets very, very full. You can't even see the mulch or the dead leaves when the plants are all in bloom. But in contrast, look at the beautiful color I have in the fall. That birch tree in the background with thimbleweed in the front and wild geranium. The colors of the white and the red and the bronzes of the leaves I think are the most beautiful colors you could ever imagine. And who could deny the beautiful presence of this-- the dimensions within this scene are just extraordinary, and the birds flock to it all year long because, or all winter long, because of all the seed in the Purple Coneflower. And look at the dimension in this shot from a winter scene. That's a children's hutch there in the front. How many of you have rain gardens? Oh, we have a few here. Do you all know what a rain garden is? Here's two examples of a rain garden, which is a basin that just collects the water from runoff, and the flowers that you use in it are ones that can handle some water, we call it, they can have wet feet, or their roots can tolerate some water for periods of time while the water percolates into the soil. One of the gardens is collecting runoff from the lawn, this one on the right, the other one actually has the runoff from the roof piped underground and is entering into the basin. So both of them look very similar, but they both get their runoff from two different ways. The one on the left here is a very small one that was made by one of our members, and she's amazed as to how much runoff it does gather. It's a rather deep basin, and so that's why it's able to hold so much water. The one on the right is from Prairie Crossings in Grayslake, Illinois. It's a community, a residential community that requires all of the residents to have at least 60 percent native landscaping. And then all the storm sewers that run between the houses all are native landscaped as well. And all that water runs into lakes, and the lakes are so crystal pure that the state uses, the state DNR department uses their lakes to breed endangered species. So you can just see from what they've done here just by using native plants, how it filters the water and how it can improve the habitat, not only for wildlife but also for humans. I like to use this example. It's not really a rain garden. What it is, is a septic system. This is an open septic system. It runs into, yes it does have a regular septic tank. But instead of having a drain field, it's an open area where the gray water runs into. Right here in the city of Chicago. Isn't that beautiful? This is my backyard, my rain garden. This is a rain garden over at Mosquito Hill. I don't know, that's over in Outagamie County, but it's a nature center, it's in the New London area. If you ever get over there, it's a beautiful, beautiful, they have a beautiful prairie and lots of natural landscaping. And, of course, this is a natural rain garden. The marsh that I showed earlier. And for those of you who aren't familiar with rain gardens, UW-Extension has this wonderful how-to book. I believe that you can download it for free off the website. If you buy a hard copy it might cost you a couple of bucks. But it will tell you exactly how to build your rain garden, how big to make it based on the square footage of your roof, and other considerations. So, I'd encourage you to check it out. Now that I've shown you some examples of landscaping, I'm going to show you just some pretty pictures. And I think you will be amazed as to how similar native plants are to non-native plants. Prairie Smoke. That's the seed heads of the Prairie Smoke, the flowers are really the little pink heads towards the bottom. Pale Purple Coneflower. Rough Blazingstar. Bee Balm, Wild Bergamot. Harebell. White Wild Indigo, is a very bushy, shrubby looking plant. Dies back entirely in the fall. Gray-headed Coneflower, some people call it Yellow Coneflower. Culver's Root, looks like a little fairy castle. Prairie Dropseed. Butterfly Weed. Big Bluestem. Little Bluestem. Look at the pretty bronze color from the fall. And this is the way it looks in the winter. How beautiful can that be? And how much seed does that feed to the birds. Here's some shade species. Shooting Star. Wild Geranium. Trilliums. Mayapple. Blood Root. Cinnamon Fern. Everybody has Columbine, I'm sure. Only the pink one is native. The yellow and the orange and the blues, those are all non-native. Bottlebrush Grass. The White and Red Baneberry. Serviceberry, from shrubs. Elderberry, great wine. And I want to mention to you that, because I just talked about the, I forgot what I talked-- Columbine. The birds and the bees, the insects that have evolved with the native plants are attracted to those native plants. The likelihood that you will have as many birds, bees, and other insects attracted to a non-native blue or yellow Columbine is very unlikely. You might have a few stop and visit, or you might have a non-native insect stop and visit, but by and large the native insects are going to go to the native Columbine. That's the reason we encourage you to use the native plants versus the non-native. Wetlands plants, or rain garden plants, Blue Flag Iris, Joe Pye-weed, Cardinal Flower, everybody loves Cardinal Flower. Swamp Milkweed. So, if you plant all these native plants that I've been talking about, you're going to see a lot of activity in your yard. And if you're a wildlife watcher, you're going to have a really good time watching. Sphynx Moth. Have you ever seen a monarch emerge from a chrysalis or watch the caterpillars as they grow from one stage to the next? It's just an amazing... thing to watch. Jewel Weed has been prolific this year, I have it all over my yard. Hummingbirds love it. Here's a male Bobolink. That was on a fall, or a winter, coneflower. A monarch, the wild petunia. Do any of you grow wild petunias? I find that the bunnies munch them off and they just keep blooming and blooming and blooming, I am just... it is such a hearty plant, I just can't believe it. It's become one of my favorite plants. Male Dickcissel, again this is a fall plant, fall photo. Bluebirds. American Cranberry. You can't see the full Cupplant here, but... Goldfinch, they love it because of the water. Do you all now how a Cupplant got its name? Cupplant has leaves that cup the stem, kind of like this, and so the water from the dew drips into those little cups and the insects and the birds all visit that plant in the morning, they gather. That's where they get their moisture from, because of the dew that gathers in those little cups. And you will see the finches on it now, already, because they're starting to go to seed, and they are in it all the time. Cardinal on Spruce. Screach Owl, Hickory. Some young goldfinches. Eastern Kingbird on a bur oak. A bunch of fall asters, I know you can't see all the butterflies and bees and stuff in here, but it is just buzzing, I'll tell ya. Young hawk searching for prey. And this is that same prairie we saw earlier, and look at that raptor that's flying over. Are any of you Wild Ones members? Oh, thank you. Wild Ones was... the founding of Wild Ones was inspired by Lorrie Otto, she passed away several years ago. But this was one of the things she always said, and I like to use it because it's so meaningful. "If suburbia were landscaped with meadows, "prairies, thickets or forest, or with "combinations of these, then the water would sparkle, "fish would be good to eat again, "birds would sing and human spirits would soar." Those are the four elements that we were talking about. So, we're talking about wildlife, we're talking about polinators, here's my little bird again, and we're talking about children. You know, we're going to leave polluted water and eroded earth for our children if we don't think about what we are doing and how we treat our soil and our Earth. I love this one. And for the monarchs. I want to take a few minutes to talk about the monarch butterfly, because it is very, it's a very important species for us and it draws attention to the fact that we need to be more cognizant of what we are doing to our Earth. Here's a picture of a monarch laying an egg, and I hope you all realize that monarchs only lay their eggs on milkweed, native milkweed, and their preference is common milkweed. There's like, six species of milkweed, native milkweed here in Wisconsin, and I encourage you to grow as much as you can. I think you all know that the monarch population has dwindled substantially, and I'll show you a graph which shows that. So we need to do what we can to provide habitat for them, because they will only lay their eggs on milkweed plants, and they have to be native milkweed plants. They also require nectar plants, this is an example of a milkweed. This is the swamp milkweed, but they will nectar on a variety of native and non-native plants, actually, when there aren't any native around. And why are monarchs important? A monarch is not a pollinator, it's just a beautiful butterfly. But it's important because so many people love it, so many people recognize it, and we can use it as a harbinger of things to come. It's an important token for us to use as an example of what's happening, because we are hurting our Earth so much by dumping all the chemicals on it that we do. Here is an example, or not an example, but a graph, that shows the monarch population. And you can see it's gone up and down and up and down, but its ups and downs are getting smaller and smaller. 2013,'14 was the lowest population of monarchs that we've ever had. Thankfully, it doubled this past year, but that doubling didn't provide very many as far as a total population is concerned. So, we need... if we're going to keep the monarch migration that comes through our area, we're going to have to do something about it and one of the things is to provide habitat. The other thing is to cut back on pesticides, the use of pesticides. You can see here by this chart, again, how much the use of pesticides has grown over the years. And here, it shows that growth of the pesticides and the decline of the monarchs. Pretty scary. This is even worse. This is a milkweed plant that one of our Wild Ones members bought. She talked to the nursery she bought it from, and they assured her that they did not use water that was laced with pesticides in watering their plants. And yes, they didn't, but the grower that they got the plant from did. And this is what happened. Monarchs cannot handle the pesticides that are on the plants that they eat. And I'm sure a lot of other insects can't, either. In fact, I should say probably all other insects cannot. So we are gradually killing off all the insects-- not all the insects-- but we are gradually killing off the native insects that we require to keep that circle of life going that I talked about earlier. In particular, you've been probably hearing about the neonicotinoids, which are... which have been so deadly to some of our bees. One of the chemicals used in the neonics is this word up there, imidacloprid, and it has a half-life of over 1000 days, which means that a growing season is shorter than the half-life of this insecticide. Which also means that that chemical is leaching into our groundwater, even after the crops have been grown and taken off the field. That leaching into our groundwater, then, is contaminating our groundwater and it's being used by us. That's our potable water. And so we are getting the leftover chemicals that are being sprayed on the fields, even though we might not be using the grain or the fruits or vegetables that are coming off the fields. This is from 2013, but it's one of the things that started the concern about the death of bees. Very well-intentioned applicators sprayed some linden trees, thinking he was killing off the aphids, which he did, but the linden trees were blossoming so he killed off all the bees and other pollinators that were on that tree, those trees as well. So, this past spring, President Obama issued a memo, called the National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators. In this memo, amongst other things, was some funding for research and... other... assistance for organizations that are doing what they can to provide more habitat and increase the welfare of the bees, the pollinators, bees and bumblebees and butterflies and other insects. But it also includes the order that the federal buildlings, the federal grounds, also start using more sustainable practices and building habitat for butterflies, insects, birds, and other pollinators. Along with that, the Pollinator Garden network... to which we belong, started a campaign to register a million pollinator gardens. They don't have to be native gardens, they can be non-native gardens, as long as they attract pollinators. So I encourage you to go to the Million Pollinator Garden website, if you want, or you can go to our website and work your way through to it. If you register your garden with Wild Ones, you'll automatically be registered for the Million Pollinator Garden challenge. So, hopefully I've convinced you that you should put some native plants in your gardens or your landscapes. So, where do you get them from, then? It says buy from reputable local nurseries, so where do you find reputable local nurseries?

You can Google them

Native plants, Appleton Wisconsin. Or you can go to our website. We have a listing of reputable native plant nurseries there. But you always want to ask for straight species. Nativars is not a straight species. Cultivar is not a straight species. Neither of them are true native plants. They've been modified by humans, and so they are no longer a native plant. You can mail order plants. Prairie Nursery over in Westfield probably isn't too far from you here, has wonderful native plants. And there are other nurseries in Wisconsin that do have native plants, so we are very fortunate here. If you can, select only local native species. I would encourage you to do so. Living here in Wisconsin, you certainly wouldn't want to order a plant from Florida, for example, or even Montana because that's not the same local genotype, and the conditions in the ecoranges are going to be really different. And in order to keep them alive, you'd have to provide the same tender, loving care that you would a non-native plant. Have any of you ever bought "Wildflowers in the can" or "Wildflowers in the bag?" Oh, okay.

chuckles

You can Google them

We have found that most of the seed in those packages is non-native or annual seed. Won't come back the second year. Usually about six percent is native, once in a while you'll find a purple coneflower or some short grass, Little Bluestem Grass in it, but typically you're going to get things like Bachelor Buttons and Cosmos and Baby's Breath, which by the way, is an invasive species. So, if you see in a hardware store or a Menard's or somewhere that they have "Wildflowers in a Can" or "Wildflowers in a Bag," just because it says wildflowers doesn't mean it's native. It just means its a flower that grows wild. So please don't pick that up, you're going to just waste your money. And, by all means, don't dig a plant from the wild unless you're going on a plant rescue. Plants growing in the wild are there because that soil is specific to them, or the sunlight that's there or the moisture that's there is specific to them, and unless you can provide those exact same circumstances, that plant likely will not live in your yard. I don't know if you had a chance to read our mission statement in my first slide, but we want to help you learn about native plants, natural landscaping, and why it's important to have native plants and natural landscaping. And if you join us, we'll help you learn. Some of the handouts I gave you show you some of the things that we can share with you. How are we doing on time? I have just a couple slides left, and the reason I want to share this with you is because I'm pretty proud of it. I was able to purchase, well we were able to purchase, through my efforts, our headquarters. It's a permanent headquarters, it's located in Neenah. Carol mentioned that Wild Ones is a national organization, but we have our national headquarters right here in Neenah, Wisconsin. And this is our headquarters. And it's located off Little Lake Butte des Morts, right off from Highway 41 and BB, Country Road BB. We have sixteen and a half acres, much of it is marsh, but we have some upland and some riparian woodland. This is our backyard. We have three rain gardens in the backyard that filter the water from our roof and from the sloping yard before it gets into the riparian woodland and into the marsh. And the entrance garden that was on the first slide is also a rain garden. And this is our prairie. This is early spring, so you're not seeing too much color, but I wanted you to see the counsel ring that's there in the middle. We have the best of all worlds. This is the marsh. And we are trying to do the very things through our national headquarters that we are hoping and trying very hard to teach the members of Wild Ones, or those who stop and visit with us just like your people did, your visitors did at the fair, for example, and your other little festivals that you participate in. Sharing the word about what's the best thing to do is the way we help people learn. We have lots of volunteers, too. You're kind of far away. But that's it. Thank you very much. You've been a wonderful audience. And if you do have some questions, I'd be happy to answer them for you. (applause)