A Little History of the Kayak
December 22, 2020 10:30 pm 2 CommentsMuch of what we know today about the history of the American kayak we owe to two people: Edwin T.... Read More →
Author Archives for Lon Drake
About Lon Drake
This old guy's favorite large-scale conservation projects include integrating soils, water, plants, and animals, especially native species. I still bike through my South Sycamore stormwater management system from 2001.
A Winter Project: Build a Recycled Kayak
December 16, 2020 10:30 pm Leave your thoughtsIn 2014, Judy Joyce was creating Seize The Carp Day, proposed as an annual summer event to encourage people to... Read More →
Quaking Aspen
November 23, 2020 11:24 pm Leave your thoughtsThere are two species of aspen in North America and both of them live in eastern Iowa. The two are... Read More →
Aversive Conditioning in Conservation
November 14, 2020 1:17 am Leave your thoughtsField observations, similar to those examples mentioned in my last blog, show that aversive conditioning is pervasive throughout the natural... Read More →
Aversive Conditioning in the Natural World
November 2, 2020 9:56 pm Leave your thoughtsEveryone knows that monarch butterflies are protected from birds to some extent by the toxic chemistry they inherit from caterpillars... Read More →
Sassafras: A Unique Native
October 23, 2020 7:55 pm 3 CommentsBack on Dec. 1, 2016, I offered you a story about the historical medicinal aspects of sassafras and its role... Read More →
Drug Wars In Nature: The Ephedra Gang
October 16, 2020 10:02 pm Leave your thoughtsIn the arid American West, there resides a genus of bushes, which by Midwestern standards appear hardly alive. The half-dozen... Read More →
Hummingbird Heaven, Hummingbird Hell
October 12, 2020 6:46 pm Leave your thoughtsLongtime readers may recall that five years ago I built a 1 1/2 story trellis which runs 50 feet, the... Read More →
Coumarin – A Pleasant Plant Poison
October 1, 2020 9:52 pm Leave your thoughtsThis is a story about our love affair with coumarin, a chemical produced by many members of the plant kingdom.... Read More →
Plants are the Master Chemists
September 24, 2020 7:45 pm 1 CommentRhododendrons in bloom on a mountaintop along the Blue Ridge Parkway, western Virginia and North Carolina. Photo from Encyclopedia Britannica.... Read More →
