Mistakes, Marvels and a Mascot.

I'm joined today by my unofficial collab team, and I haven't even asked them whether I'm allowed to call them that.

But here's Tena Van Andel and Pat Concessi joining me again.

And you've heard, you've already heard episodes from both of them.

But today I really just want to know, it's December 1st.

0:16

Are you guys still out in your gardens?

And what are you doing?

Let's just start with that.

Pat, you sent me some pictures on the weekend and I'm like, Oh my gosh.

She's cleaning all of her seed pots.

0:33

She's getting all her seed ready and prepared.

I thought we were going to do that in January together.

So what are you up?

To well, I'm still collecting seed.

And I said to myself as I went out the back door yesterday afternoon, I would always tell someone you have to collect seed on a dry sunny day.

0:52

You don't want to be bringing wet seed in.

But my heart leaf asters bloomed so late that the seeds have just got that little hairy tuft on them now.

And I say, OK, now they're they're ready to be harvested.

And I'm afraid if I leave them out there, they'll be buried in snow.

1:10

So I'm still collecting seed in my garden.

That's that's great.

OK.

And then how come you had all those copious amount of yogurt containers?

Tell me about that.

What are you doing there?

I'm doing winter seeds showing activity with all four of the grade six classes at the school down the street in two weeks.

1:31

So I'm preparing packages to show them the seed heads and packages with the seed in them.

So they don't put, you know, 200 aster seeds in one container.

But I really want them to see where the seeds come from.

So I want to show them seed heads to break that feeling of if you need plant seeds, you have to go to the store because if you want client seeds, you need to ask a gardener, can you give me some plant seed?

1:57

Wow, they're lucky to have you down the road, I'll tell you that much.

When I'm lucky to have them, they're agree.

Bunch of kids.

OK, you're going, you're going to have to follow up with us on that because I want to hear how that project goes.

And Tena, I know you're still giving presentations and you're out and in the community.

2:13

What's going on with?

You So I'm doing the same thing when I'm giving presentations on winter sewing.

I'm going out to the garden the night before and harvesting seed, so I still have some.

There's a couple of plants, There's one plant in my garden and it's a native Ontario plant, but it's called Sweet Cecily and it's really not, not many people know about it.

2:33

It's like a, you're not going to make me say it in Latin, but something like Ozma, riza, claytonia or something like that.

And it's got a beautiful crop of seeds this year.

They're like the like a black little hook.

And I want to get those winter sold so I can do a lot more of them because it's a perfect shade plant.

2:52

It's really pretty.

It's got kind of a ferny leaf in a way, and then a white spray of flowers.

It kind of looks like Virginia waterleaf in a way.

Waterleaf.

Is that right?

So there are some seeds I would like to get winter sown before I lose the seat altogether.

3:09

So, OK, say that name again.

Did you say sweet?

What?

Sweet Cecily.

Yes, a lot.

Name is Oz.

Mariza Lake honey.

OK, OK, we're going to have to look that one up.

I've never heard that before.

Have you ever tried to?

Have you ever tried to collect seeds from that one?

3:25

Before find last year it's got one of those long taproots so it's really hard to transplant but I transplanted one in the garden and I only got like 3 seeds off of it so they nothing happened to them at all.

I didn't get anything.

But this year the plant came back full force.

3:42

And I'm really curious too, because it was a plant that was in my backyard that was never planted.

So I'm wondering if it is naturally native there, like if it's been native there forever and.

Just disappeared.

OK, someone's gonna have to research that one.

3:58

Like you just reminded me about a plant that you gave me.

And it's a native who cry, I think.

And it's commonly known as alum root.

So it's a it's a beautiful.

It took, it took the second year to establish.

4:13

And it has one beautiful seed head.

And I collected it and drawing it right now.

But I wanted to know whether you had any left in your garden?

I do.

I do.

It was fairly easy to come from seed.

I think the common name is like American Heuchera.

OK, OK.

4:28

Yeah.

And I'm not sure that it's native to Toronto.

I think it's more northeastern United States.

But yeah, I never thought to collect the seat from that, but I could.

Yeah, because it's.

Another get a lot of flour.

Yeah, it's a great shade plant and it's really big and established now in two years.

4:45

So and a late, a late bloomer.

So shade and a late bloomer.

It's really, super pretty.

I really, really love it.

Good thing to take your hostage, put those in.

OK, so let's move on.

So 2025 is basically over for our gardens.

5:00

And I want to hear what everyone's mistakes were.

Your biggest mistake that you made in your garden that you'd like to tell our listeners so that maybe they won't be making the same mistake, right?

Because we're supposed to share.

We're a community of like minded people.

So who wants to go first?

5:16

I'll go first.

OK, go ahead.

Yeah.

So my big mistake isn't one that I made this year.

I made it a couple of years ago, but I'm, I'm still looking at it every time I walk through my front garden.

A couple of years ago, I put in nine bar and I was new to native plants.

5:33

It was the beginning of my shift from traditional to native plant gardening.

And when I went to the plant nursery, the suggestion was made.

I, I said I would like a small plant because as you know, my yard is very small.

And so I had a recommendation for a, a dwarf 9 bark.

5:51

And then the advice was, what about planting a purple plant because it adds depth to the garden, It sort of makes the plant receipt.

And I've always loved different colours of foliage.

So I put in a purple dwarf Nine bark.

And to make it even better, it's called tiny wine and I'm kind of a sucker for a nice cultivar name.

6:11

And the next winter I read Doug Tallamy saying that purple leaf plants are sometimes unpalatable to the insects that we're trying to attract with them.

So I've left it for a couple of years.

I call it my teaching moment.

Give me a chance to talk to that with other people.

6:29

But really the bigger lesson that I've learned is to really stop and do a bit of research before I select and plant a cultivar.

Now Tena, you know I'm the biggest fan of Purple Dome, which is a dwarf New England aster and I've bred.

6:45

Tell me saying that dwarf, just shortening that the nodal internodal distances often doesn't impact insect attractiveness to the plant and it'll still flower and it'll still bear fruit, but the change in blossom colour and the change in foliage colour can have a bigger impact.

7:05

So I am now stopping going home, doing a bit of research on how was this cultivar created and what are the consequences.

Before I jump in and buy a plant that I'm going to live with for the next 20 years and that purple 9 bark won't be around for 20 years, I'm going to do something.

7:22

Different there.

OK, so.

Consolation though, Pat, that because I have dwarf ninebark as well from the leaf and I know the caterpillars don't like it, but it's full of flowers and the bees absolutely adore it.

So I'm kind of, I'm OK with it because the bees are getting certainly what they would get from a nine bark, even though the caterpillars aren't eating the leaves.

7:45

So is that, yeah, consolation?

Well, I'm I'm reminded of your comment about moving a shrub over 4 inches.

This plant is also too close to a hedge of beach that's along the West side of my yard, and I'm going to give it one more year to see if it blooms beautifully.

8:03

But it's one of those shrubs that's leaning entirely in One Direction, which sort of bothers the engineer in me.

I'd like myself a little metrical and in the backyard, I don't care.

They take whatever shape depending on the light that they get.

8:19

But I, I, I'm going to wait until spring and see if it blooms this year because that is good advice.

If the bees love it, that should be enough.

OK.

So Patch is for our listeners, cultivar versus the wild species.

Now I know you've done a lot of research into this, so.

8:35

You're looking for the species plant.

You're looking for the the 9 bark without a name in parentheses after the species name of the plant.

Cultivars are are plants that have been created by botanists or found in the field by a botanist, but they have characteristics that humans value above the characteristics of the native species.

9:00

The other thing that sometimes gives me pause is that once that attractive cultivar is found, it's often propagated clonally.

So it isn't grown from seed, it's it's grown by cloning that one plant.

So every cultivar is genetically exactly the same plant, right?

9:21

And in addition to having a diversity of species in my yard, I like to think about am I also providing genetic diversity so that the gene pool of the seeds is maintained?

OK, you said simple.

OK.

And.

That's OK because that could be a whole episode, which you just gave me an idea for 2026.

9:41

But generally speaking, I really like to recommend native plant growers nurseries as opposed to going to the big box stores and picking up cultivars with those, like you said, name in single parentheses.

The other one that you mentioned was your Aster or was it Solidago Fireworks?

9:59

Which one?

I always get that one confused.

Fireworks.

Which is an Aster or Solidago?

I think it's Solidago rigida, but I'm I'm never and I haven't been able to find it.

I can find a seed, but I'm a little hesitant about buying seed because you never really sure where it's coming from.

10:2e

I just saw that plant down at the Music Garden and it was spectacular.

Yeah, OK, good.

Tena, your turn.Well, I am suffering from mistakes I've made in the past.

Trees and stuff that were not supposed to get so big have gotten much bigger.

10:36

So I've had to do some moving of trees in my wheelbarrow garden.

But I think the biggest thing that I had this year that was kind of maybe disappointing or maybe shocking was did take an area of my garden and totally transition it to native plants.

10:53

And I had a whole bunch of different variety of them.

And I think because the soil was so rich, it was a, a raised bed that I had added that I'd started from scratch with all sorts of, you know, composts and, and organic matter and anything that would, I thought, you know, we used to think would be helpful for plants growing and they absolutely went crazy.

11:14

So I found out since that native plants really don't need a rich soil and that they react in an almost like they're on drugs so that it's not something you really want to do.

And suggestions I've had is that you should really plant when you're transitioning.

11:31

You should plant a lot of annuals because the annuals will use up the nutrition and the soil and then you end up with a more balanced native native garden.

So I don't know what next year I'll do.

I guess I'll just pull out some of the ones that just went crazy.

There were 4 feet tall and they were supposed to be two feet tall.

11:49

Give me give me an example of one that went crazy.

The anise hyssop.

OK, yeah, absolutely crazy.

If it went through the whole garden bed and that would be like 1 plant.

I think the trunk was, you know, bigger than the size of a loony.

It was unbelievable.

12:05

And I had planted other ones I had, I had tried to do thin leaf, narrow leaf generation.

I never saw it.

I don't know if it's still alive.

The Pearly Everlasting got bombarded.

I had some obedient plant, believe it or not, it come bombarded.

12:21

So next year I'm going to do a little bit of thinning and plant some annuals in there and try and move some of the the Wilder ones to a bigger area.

Yeah, I mean, I think we talk a lot about common milkweed and and goldenrod, right, being aggressive in our gardens and not we don't really recommend them for an urban garden that is small 100%.

12:45

We recommend them if you have space because there's such important keystone plants and we do talk about cultivating a little bit through the season, right, And doing our Chelsea Chop maybe.

Would that help?

I've never done that on a on some of those species, but where have you ever tried doing a Chelsea chop on some of them?

13:03

Would that help?

Easy gardener that I didn't even think about it, but yeah, that might help.

True.

Like end of June, July is when you do it.

Yeah, for sure, right.

I do it with my iron weed because it's so gorgeous, but it definitely gets out of control height wise.

13:20

And I just, I just don't need anything that big in my garden like that tall in my little Meadow.

But I know, Pat, you've done it a lot with asters, right?

I do it with all of my New England asters to keep them as much as the height.

It's to keep them from getting the full width of my back garden because when they when they flop out.

13:40

Yeah.

And I think it's such a change from the way we have traditionally gardened because we always used to talk about enhancing the soil and adding compost.

And now I find when I go out to talk to gardeners and they say I'm going to plant a native bed, but the soil so poor I have to enhance it first, I'm going to add.

14:02

And I say no, just that right in there, that's what it wants.

But it's a real change from what we've done historically.

It really is.

There's and there's a product that some horticulturalists are talking about that my sister actually tried.

14:17

I mean, I have never seen shrubs grow native for shrubs grow so fast.

So it's a product that is horse manure mixed with wood shavings.

If I talk to you guys about this before.

Yeah.

The garden is gorgeous and she is probably about five years on the shift.

14:33

My sister and every time I go for a gosh, you must get a lot of sun or something like your plants are so OK and then all of a sudden we're thinking about it and I'm like, did you put that composted mulch again on your property?

She goes, yeah, I've done it twice now.

I'm like, I think that's what's doing it right.

14:48

I think it's all the you know, she's getting these fragrant sumacs.

Mine are like a third of the size of hers, you know, and she's like, are yours out of control?

I'm like, no, we're not out of control at all.

Right.

So I think I think it's that enrichment of in the soil.

15:04

I know you, you told me Tena, when you were doing your research on composting and amend amending is that we really I think are over subscribing to that in terms of add compost every year to your garden.

I think in terms of, of everything, even our house plants were over fertilizing everything.

15:22

And I think they're discovering more and more that you, if you are going to fertilize, it should just be a basic, no fancy extra phosphorus, extra whatever.

It should just be, you know, your, your compost and your organic matter, leave the leaves, that kind of thing.

15:38

But we are definitely over fertilizing everything.

Yeah.

OK.

So Full disclosure, I made a huge mistake with all my little seedlings.

We all grow plants.

We do workshops, we give plants away in our group and give them to our friends and stuffs.

15:56

And in July, I, I still had probably, I don't know, couple dozen, maybe more plants.

And I know Tena, you always say to me, put them in the ground.

That's where they want to be.

They want to be in the ground.

While I kind of missed the spring window to put them in the ground.

And there I was putting them in the ground the end of July.

16:12

And of course, we go into this serious route and what am I doing every morning?

I'm out there babying them and sending them and watering them and thinking, Oh my gosh, maybe you need some shade.

Anyways, I probably lost 3/4 of them, so that was my big learning curve there.

16:29

So get them in the ground early in the spring, or keep them in your containers.

Grow them on, you know, somewhere shaded close to the house, and put them in the ground in the fall when things start getting, you know, a little cooler and a little wetter, right?

So I heard an interesting webinar with Larry Weiner, who's done a lot of meadows and fields and natural plantings.

16:51

And he told the story of one of the places that he planted.

It was a huge acreage, and he put all of the native, I think, part seedling and part seed, and it didn't rain from like June all the way through till September.

17:06

And he thought, OK, this is a waste of time or whatever.

But in the end, they survived.

They didn't grow big, but they survived.

And his conclusion was if he had tried to water them and they were expecting to be watered on a regular basis or whatever, that they would not have survived.

17:24

But because they weren't watered at all, they kind of went into survival mode and that's what kept them till they could get water in the fall or the next season or whatever.

So that was really interesting.

Mistake on my part that just left them to their own devices.

17:40

No.

OK, that's good to know.

OK, let's go on to some good news.

Now, should we talk about some marbles in our garden and what we're proud of?

Pat do want to start.

OK, You know, they say the first year a garden sleeps, the second year it creeps and the third year it leaps.

17:56

And I'm somewhere in my third or fourth year in the backyard, and things have really taken off this year.

Now, I know van andel, you're going to laugh at this, but one of my marvels was starting to watch clients moving around the garden on their own, like, not me moving them somewhere.

18:13

And the one that most showed up was the, is it great blue lobelia or giant blue lobelia, whatever the blue lobelia.

And it popped up in probably four or five different parts of the garden.

And the fabulous thing about it was if it was a plant coming back again, it bloomed fairly early in the summer and the blooms, and it's probably my garden soil.

18:37

They were sort of three or three and a half feet all but the ones that were this year seedlings while they were blooming in October.

So I had these spikes of bright blue here and there around the yard through the whole summer.

And it isn't just the blue lobelia, it's the zigzag goldenrod is moving wherever it wants.

18:55

And it seems like wherever it goes, it forms a nice clump.

So you get a nice clump of ground cover and then the nice yellow blooms as the fall comes and my asterisk moving all over the place.

So it's very different from traditional gardening where you knew where plants would be and because you were cultivating and weeding, you didn't get surprises.

19:16

Because with with the ecological gardening, I'm constantly being surprised and then seeing the juncos feeding in the zigzag goldenrod and and the butterflies enjoying the plants as well.

So that plants beginning to move and see where they want to be in the garden has been the marvel that I've really enjoyed this summer.

19:37

OK, you better explain that a little bit more because it's it might not be clear to new gardeners.

How are they moving?

Well, most of them are moving by seed, yes.

But before I say that, when the zigzag goldenrod form clumps, I at the beginning of the summer I was saying to friends, oh, I've got some zigzag goldenrod, I'll give it to you.

19:55

And I when I went to get one of the nice good sized plants, it turned out those ones had spread, I'm going to say via rise ones, but they, they had been vegetatively spreading and I wasn't going to cut that plant off because I didn't know whether it would survive.

20:10

On its own root system or whether it was still borrowing the parent root system.

But yeah, the the birds move them around, the wind moves them around, probably I move them around.

So those, those surprises are what I've really been enjoying.

Yeah, and I'm looking forward to the spring because I'm watching my bloodroot show up all throughout my garden, moving, moved around by ants apparently.

20:34

Yeah.

So that is just the first surprise of spring, seeing that little blood root come up, such a beautiful native ephemeral.

Yeah, that's great.

How about you, Tena?

Kind of as Pat was saying, this is the second or third year for some of the natives that I've started from seed that actually flowered for the first time.

20:56

So I had one called Showy Tick Trefoil and it's loud.

I was walking and I looked, what is that?

It was just absolutely amazing.

Kind of looks like a Lupin in a way, but pink like a darker pink and must be in a legume family because the leaves are legume like.

21:14

Yes.

So that was nice.

And I actually had some bottle brush seed germinate.

I have a terrible time germinating grasses.

I have no luck with them whatsoever.

But this year I actually got a few bottle brush.

So were you doing that as indoor sewing or would you do with?

21:30

That that was winter's.

Winter.

OK, that's great.

And then it was nice, too.

Up, up at the farm I was, I discovered a whole bunch of plants that I never even knew existed.

Leather leaf, grape Fern.

It was just so unusual that it was I.

21:47

And then when I look at the field that I've left at the front to kind of naturalize, there was like 20 of them.

It was unbelievable.

Is that an actual firm letter?

What did you say?

Leather.

Leather Leather Leaf Grape.

Fern, wow, how were you ID in those with an AH?

22:05

The plant up, Yeah, yeah.

Plant ID or I?

Naturalist.

So sorry, it's leathery grape.

Fern.

Wow, leathery grape.

Never heard of that one.

I never had heard it or seen anything like it.

It was really interesting.

22:21

I wonder if finding.

I wonder if it's an Evergreen.

You should see if it's still around.

I don't think so.

I think it's one of the ones where the like the flower spike comes up first and then nothing.

Like there's comes in stages, but I don't think Evergreen.

You know, I didn't, I haven't asked you guys about your favorite wildlife sighting yet in your gardens, but I know you all have different things going on, some Wilder than others depending on which garden we're talking about.

22:48

But I think I've talked about before on the podcast, my Jacobia moth sighting, which everyone's really sick of hearing about.

But like it just, it was just six hours of, Oh my gosh, I'm all I'm going to do is sit outside and watch this moth.

And then to find out that it's only gonna live for probably 2 weeks before and it's only, it's not going to eat, it's not going to do anything.

23:10

It's just going to try to mate.

And then that's it.

End of story.

So I had to give it my full attention and it appeared on oak leaf hydrangea right outside my living room window.

And it was just like, this is a sign.

I don't know what it means, but it's a sign from the universe.

23:27

So that was definitely my marvel.

I know you get a lot of wildlife, you know, we've talked about that before, but anything spectacular and butterflies or moths that you've seen in the city.

That I've seen in the city.

I did have the caterpillars on the Pearly Everlasting that I had another section of it that didn't get land based by the anise hyssop, and there's a particular Caterpillar for those.

23:51

I forget what it is, but that was interesting.

There was a bunch of them, kind of a perfect example of if you plant it, they will come.

And I'm starting to notice moths more, how many different kinds there are, and trying to identify those because there's a bazillion of them.

24:07

But so pretty, very pretty.

We ignore the memory for the butterflies.

Yeah, yeah.

I want to get better on my moth identification.

Well, and my butterfly, to tell you the truth.

Yeah.

How about you?

Had anything exciting?Well, I saw more swallow tail butterflies this year than I have ever had before and I saw them both in the garden where I volunteer garden and at home.

24:30

I always have a parsley plant in the summer just to bring into the kitchen and I had two caterpillars, swallowtail caterpillars on that parsley and then there were also some on the parsley plant down at the school.

They seem to ignore my Golden Alexander, which is the native plant that they have traditionally fed on.

24:52

But I I need the parsley and I'm happy to have it there and happy to find swallow tails in it as well so that they always feel special to me.

They have such a floppy way of flying with their wings bending in the middle.

And if you want to hear more about that, Pat and I talked about that and then earlier so, so you can find that if you go back a little bit in in the archive of the episodes.

25:16

I don't know if I told you, Pat, but you're our conversation about asters and goldenrods has the most views of all the episodes.

So there you go.

I've turned into the biggest Aster fan.

I really enjoyed watching the juncos.

25:31

I can see them out my out my back window and they really like the zigzag goldenrod.

So we have a bird feeder, but the juncos would rather feed on the zigzag goldenrod, so that's really nice to watch.

Yeah, it's exciting.

And Tena, my son was so happy to hear you say that.25:49

He didn't have to do anything in his garden other than just go outside and take a glass of wine and enjoy the cooler weather.

So there's lots of takeaways from from all of our episodes and they're definitely worth listening to more than once.

Hey, have you guys ever wondered why I used a salamander as my podcast animal?

26:10

You have wondered.

You might know though, because I do go on about salamander findings.

So I'm not going to tell you because this episode is closing with a really interesting little conversation I had with David Laurie from the Toronto Region Conservation Authority.

26:32

And he is the lead researcher and scientist on the Jefferson Forest salamander.

And I happened to live very close to the Jefferson Forest.

So you can see where this is going, but you'll have to listen to the up at the end of this episode when it when it airs.

26:48

I'm going to add that lip from David.

It's a really interesting project that TRCA has been doing to give safe passage to the salamander.

I want to thank you guys for joining and you are definitely going to be on my call list for 2026.

27:04

So thanks so much and happy holidays.

Happy holidays.

You too, Tina.

Happy holidays.

Thanks for joining Tena, Pat and I from Mistakes and Marvels of Ecological Gardening.

27:24

Now for my mascot.

I know you're all curious about the critter on my podcast cover, so spend a few more minutes listening to Toronto Region and Conservation Authority researcher David Lowry speak about the Jefferson Salamander.

I think you will be happy you did.

27:41

After all, the monarch butterfly doesn't always need to be the main attraction.

Enjoy and until 2026, take good care and remember nature needs more guardians.

Hi David, thanks for dropping into The Garden Shift.

28:02

It seems that salamanders have been dropping into my backyard for the last 10 years, so I decided to reach out to someone who knows what's going on with this population.

I was outside one day, I saw someone walking down the street and they had information about the safe passage that's going on on Stouffville Road.

28:21

When I looked on your information site on the TRC A, I noticed that in less than 10 years the Jefferson Salamander has gone from threatened to endangered.

So I'm concerned.

Can you bring us up to speed on this population?

28:37

I mean, this was actually a population initially found by a local resident.

So it was a part of the Richmond Hill Naturalist when they were doing the Bayview extension to the north of that.

That was back in like 2000.

28:53

So this is not, I mean there's been a population that's been known about it for a long time, but not really long time.

So when you look at the literature, when you have a population that has to cross a major road. there's a breeding habitat on one side of the road and there's a pond that they breathe in on the other side of the road.

29:14

And generally the tend to extinction for that population is around 20 years.

So we're at that 20 year mark now.

We were considering because we've been kind of anecdotally seeing decline and we had, we had done some previous studies in the early 2000s that showed that there was a tremendous amount of road mortality year.

29:39

We then followed that up with some other work for a broader study on road ecology in 2015 and we had picked the site for that reason, just deleted the road and back to this location we found there's way more mortality than we had even thought for the initial work.

30:01

So we then did another several years of study and this location had helped refine the lover of the impact that we so we're seeing on the road from the the mortality aspects from wildlife and those tremendously high.

30:19

So the next thing we were undertaking was you know that the salamanders move.

We know where their habitats are, but we want to know a little bit more about where they move and why they move.

So we actually tagged a whole bunch of salmon they're with or we did them what's called a Avi tag.

30:43

It's like a lot of tattoo injecting them inside and we track when they moved and in this area, we found that they're really liking the lever on the hilltops of this running forest and in the hemlock Garrison in particular in there really, particularly fond of ferns.

31:06

So lot of people thinking that laws are really important for them, but in this case there's they're tied to Fern in this case, and we suspect that a lot of the firms are in this location are often the Christmas Fern, which are evergreens for botanical friends are green evergreen and they survived them through the winter and early spring would really important for a lot of other wildlife because the friends because they are evergreens and and they really dense offer love birds and mammals love habitat protection.

31:42

They will nest near them or under them and so we assume that a lot of these small male Muslims in the area who then camera trapping as well to define what other fawn or moving through the area.

31:58

And we have lost them all members of the board and screws and mice and they do a lot of digging and burrowing.

Some just don't really Burrow on their own because they have really tiny arms.

They're pretty weak and then don't claws.

32:15

So what do you do?

They use other animal Burrows and in this case the ferns actors in attracting for those animals to come for under their ferns and then once the Tums are made.

So I'm gonna assume to use those as over when they're homeless.

32:32

So they go within the winner and they stay there until the springtime sound like early March or start.

And when they come this Saturday, March to the pond over the snow.

So that's what we see so far.

So are they going?

32:48

They're going to water to lay their eggs.

From movement standpoint in the spring or the adults are gorgeous upon their breed.

OK.

How, how did you find residence with your program when you're closing off roads and stuff like that?

33:03

Did you find general acceptance?

How are humans behaving with this?

Well, I mean we, so when we started this study, we actually broadcast all the information and the surrounding neighborhoods.

We put up Flyers, we offered web webcast and webinar for one that was interested.

33:24

So we had either no response or some small number of positive responses, people that were actually going to help, a very small number of people that were pretty heavily answered.

You were telling me earlier too that you had some kind landscapers who were attentive to this plight of the salamander.

33:46

So one of our neighbors that was helping us and giving them the acceptor probably do some survey work was fiction turn and very informed about salamanders.

And she had been instructing her own landscapers for years, not to well, not not to blow the loose, but to be very careful when they do raking or blowing because there were some guns on their property.

34:11

And they we actually ran into a bunch of them and they were all well aware of salamanders and they had risked a whole bunch of them.

So that was really a beneficial thing because again, in the early spring and fall, they're often stay under leaf letter.

34:28

And so the hydrogen, the migration so they don't make the entire journey money they made stopping him hanging in a good spot that looks moist and dark.

So when you mow your lawn in the early spring, you might be booms and salamanders as well.

34:45

So it is really helpful that she had that instructed her landscapers to Qi.

So that's great.

So is the Jefferson Forest part of the Oak Ridges Moraine?

Oak Ridges Morraine itself and it's part of so some of the land that we're studying as a part of the tier she a land holding and then a part of the what was the old Ontario land holding of the law so owned by the problem.

35:18

And then this species of salamander, have you monitored it anywhere else in Ontario?

Keep an eye on them and a couple of their spots and there are jurisdictions.

So we're only operating within our own boundaries.

35:34

But there's other groups in other counties that also do some tracking and monitoring them.

But they're not doing them as and intends as steady as we had done.

And then suddenly others see conservation authorities have been doing some general monitoring of water pond just to keep my an eye on whether there's EGMA has how many rolls of egg masses there are.

36:04

So can I just get back to the evergreen ferns?

Is there a special relationship with the Fern, or is it just because it provides that habitat, because it's Evergreen and there's somewhere to hide?

We really think it's related to like it's almost like a secondary effect that the furniture trucked all the mammals that created the towels that then the thumb and were used as home when there have been.

36:29

So there's not anything about the ferns.eIt's just the habitat that provides increased the attraction that allows all the mammals to come in you that area and then dig the hole.

This salamander need like that's only here we found that I'm seeing in the credit value that is a population up on the escarpment on the Niagara Schement and they seem to be using that how much the ferns, but these seem to be using the shale.

37:01

So their shell rock is fractured and layers.

They seem to use that that all those crevices to get into and and that case right here.

We don't shell, but we have a lot of members that they tell.

Great.

So just in closing, as ecological gardeners, when we find an amphibian in our backyard, should we just leave it or do we need to do something?

37:25

Should we be attentive?

What should we we'd be looking for?

For the most part you should leave them because they're all generally fine on their own.

So I mean there's only if you have a pool.

So like I often they're tractor in the water so they make the odd mistaken going to a pool and you going to rescue them from your pool skimmer.

37:47

But then in the backyard, unless there's a an immediate risk of being lawn mowed or eaten by a pet or something, then going there they find it.

Though generally they're fine.

And some of the amphibians have quite poor skin, so if you're handling them and you got some chemicals on your hand like bug spray or sunscreen, I can get in into their tissues and cause them.

38:15

Some LSO generally safer delayed them alone and let them be in.

Take a photo on your iPhone and save that for your memory.

We want to thank you for the work you do and I think it really speaks to how much nature needs humans like you doing the good work and gardeners like us to try to do better and, and create habitat for her, not only insects, but amphibians too.

38:42

Again, thank you so much for coming on today.

And I'll post some of those videos.

I found them on the TRC A because they're really interesting to watch the work you're doing.

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