Monarchs mating now produce generation that goes to Mexico in October

http://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/monarch/AboutFall.html
Monarchs migrate south in fall


Please don't mow or cut your milkweed. If the leaves are being eaten away, that means that a new generation of monarch butterflies will be appearing in time to migrate to Mexico in October and return in spring to produce next year's monarchs. Their caterpillars must have some species of milkweed to survive on!


PLEASE CLICK on image to ENLARGE photo of a pair of monarch butterflies mating in the Town Branch neighborhood on August 26, 2008. The flower is a rose of sharon bush, a favorite of many pollinators and, when allowed to grow strong and at least 6 feet tall provides nesting habitat for cardinals and other species of songbirds in Northwest Arkansas. Although nonnative, it is a valuable and harmless species, especially outside a bathroom or kitchen window because bird nests in these bushes may be easy to watch from indoors without disturbing parents or baby birds This plant is on Don Hoodenpyle's property and is only 150 feet from the stream. Hoodenpyle has a south American native milkweed in the vicinity and the caterpillars resulting from the mating of these two monarchs are likely to eat the leaves of the milkweed and be ready to head southwest in October.

Free weekly cover and story and photos on Town Branch neighborhood's 2004 effort to protect watershed

Please click on image to ENLARGE and read.

Links to learn about and discuss Jim McGinty's candidacy for Fayetteville board of education at-large seat

James McGinty's campaign for school board Web site
A site for discussion of James McGinty's campaign for school board Web site

Ward One meeting views project planning in Beaver Lake watershed

The desiginated Fayette Junction area is south of the Town Branch neighborhood starting at 15th Street. Old maps actually show Fayette Junction as including the southwest portion of the Town Branch neighborhood along the railroads that historically joined in that area.

Please click on images to ENLARGE:

In the top photo, the Stonebridge Meadows project is shown with north to the right and west at the top. The project is near the West Fork of the White River and drains to the stream.
In the second photo, developer Hank Broyles has turned the concept drawing to put north at the top. Dead Horse Mountain Road runs north and south along the left side in this photo.
Fayetteville City Council members Adella Gray (left) and Brenda Thiel listen to presentations by the developer after hearing an explanation of the city planning division's rationale for its proposed master plan for the Fayette Junction area of south Fayetteville in the third photo. A series of meetings has been scheduled in south Fayetteville to familiarize residents with the concept and to hear public comment.

Ward One meeting at 6:30 p.m. Monday, August 18, 2008

Please click on image to ENLARGE.

There will be a Ward 1 Meeting - Monday, August 18, 2008
6:30 PM Room 326, City Administration Building

The Fayette Junction Complete Neighborhood Plan will be discussed as well as any other issues regarding Ward 1.

Julie McQuade
Neighborhood Coordinator
City of Fayetteville
Planning Division
479-575-8253
125 W. Mountain Street
Fayetteville AR 72701
www.accessfayetteville.org

Fayette Junction master plan material on city Web site.

Why isn't this a rain garden instead of a raised garden?

Please click on IMAGE to ENLARGE view of a raised island flower garden with rain water standing around it. There are thousands of such expensive, wasteful "unsustainable" put-and-take flower gardens in Northwest Arkansas. City planning regulations should FORBID such abominations.

A raingarden in the same spot would be created BEFORE the lot was covered with red dirt for paving, using the natural soil found in all the former prairie areas such as along Fayetteville's Martin Luther King Boulevard. Paving would be sloped to allow water to flow into these gardens instead of into storm drains. This would allow these original-soil patches to harbor native species of grass and wildflowers that would NEVER require watering. The excess water could soak through to the natural aquifer and be cleansed by the soil and plants. In dry periods, the plants would become dormant but revive when moisture returns. Landscape architects and planners know how to do these things. Why are they not required by law?
Someone might suggest that cars would drive into the ground-level or depressed garden spots. But a simple barrier a few inches off the ground instead of a concrete curb would prevent this and would not cost any more than a curb.

Monarch butterflies visit World Peace Wetland Prairie to lay eggs on milkweed so that caterpillars can eat and grow

Please click on image to ENLARGE photo of monarch butterfly August 10, 2008, on World Peace Wetland Prairie.


Please click on link to ENLARGE tall-green milkweed, Asclepias hirtella, at World Peace Wetland Prairie on August 10, 2008.

Zinnea with bee on World Peace Wetland Prairie eastside peace circle garden

Please click on image to ENLARGE photo of bee on zinnea at World Peace Wetland Prairie on August 7, 2008.

Sustainable yard committee offers sanity to code-enforcement decisions

The Morning News

Local News for Northwest Arkansas


Fayetteville Wants Neat Yards, Sort Of
http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2008/08/05/news/080608fzsustainableyards.txt
By Skip Descant
The Morning News
FAYETTEVILLE - The finer points of lawn maintenance, such as hairstyles or fashion, is anything but cut and dry.

Which is why one of Fayetteville's newest city-organized committees - the Sustainable Yard Maintenance Committee - is working to draft an ordinance to give the code enforcement department clearer direction regarding which front yards need a visit from the lawn mower and which ones can remain somewhat unkempt.

"Some of those naturalized landscapes look very nice and we don't want to prohibit that," said Bernie Kurz, who works with the Washington County Extension office and serves on the sustainable yard committee.

"Some people have really nice vegetable gardens in their front yards - not a lot - but a few," said Lisa Netherland, who serves on the committee. "And then other people will have these beautiful English cottage gardens."

City code doesn't particularly allow for some of these natural landscape schemes. Once grass gets taller than eight inches, property owners can be cited by the city, said John Coleman, Fayetteville sustainability coordinator, and the Sustainable Yard Maintenance Committee chairman.

But with the committee in the early stages - Tuesday was its third meeting - a large part of the work involves sifting through and defining the proposed ordinance language.

For example, what's the difference between "noxious plants" and "evasive plants." Luckily, half of that job has already been done. State law identifies the following non-native plants as noxious and are banned: purple loosestrife, giant salvia, water Hyacinth and Japanese blood grass.

Clearly defining what qualifies as controlled nature and what's simply neglect will be up to the committee as it slogs through these types of discussions in the coming weeks before the draft gets legal review and ultimately hits the front steps of the city council.

"That's how this all started," said Coleman. "We don't have solid language of what constitutes a managed yard."

Neighborhood's namesake stream offers relief from 100-degree heat

Please click on link to Enlarge photos of boys enjoying city stream about 200 yards south of Sixth Street, the Martin Luther King Boulevard, which is adjacent to the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville, Arkansas, on August 3, 2008.