Cambrian Park UMC

03/11/2026

This is a wonderful project

There are people in California who remember driving through certain valleys in October and having to pull over just to take it in.
Monarch butterflies by the millions, moving south. Filling trees in coastal groves so densely the branches sagged. The air shimmering with orange wings. People who saw it describe it as one of those experiences that makes you feel genuinely lucky to be alive on a planet where something like that exists.
Recent winter population counts for western monarchs have come in around 20,000 to 30,000 individuals. That's not a typo. From millions to tens of thousands — a collapse of roughly 99% within living memory.
The causes are the same ones driving declines across the insect world: habitat loss, pesticide exposure, climate disruption. But for monarchs specifically, the destruction of milkw**d has been devastating in a very direct way. Milkw**d is the only plant monarch caterpillars can eat. It's not a preference or a tendency. It's a biological requirement. No milkw**d means no caterpillars means no next generation. Decades of herbicide use in agricultural areas eliminated milkw**d from millions of acres that monarchs once moved through.
California's response is the largest monarch recovery initiative the western United States has ever seen: 15 million milkw**d plants, to be established along a single connected migration corridor by 2030.
The corridor design is the key detail. Scattered patches of milkw**d help but they don't solve the core problem, which is fragmentation. A butterfly navigating hundreds of miles of migration needs reliable habitat at regular intervals. Break that chain too many times and the journey becomes impossible. The goal here is to rebuild a continuous route — to stitch back together what was severed.
Conservation scientists are careful with optimism when species have fallen this far. But 15 million plants along one corridor is the kind of commitment that says: we believe there is still time. We believe this population can recover if we give it something to come back to.
The monarchs that remain are still making the journey. California is trying to make sure it's worth completing.

03/11/2026

03/11/2026

Giving Gods critters a chance.

Lawn spray season starts this week. And March is the worst possible timing for everything living in the soil.

Ground-nesting bees are active right now — mining bees and sweat bees that nest in bare soil patches between grass blades. They make up the majority of native bee species. A lawn treatment in March hits them during their most exposed period, when they're nesting at the surface.

Firefly larvae are in the top few inches of soil right now, where they've been developing for a year or more. They won't become the fireflies you see in June for another few months. A March application reaches them at a stage you can't see and won't connect to the missing lightshow in summer.

Earthworms are migrating upward through the thaw line this week. They're at peak density in the top layer of soil — exactly where the treatment lands. The same earthworms that aerate your soil and feed the robins nesting in your yard.

Robin pairs nesting near untreated lawns consistently fledge more chicks than pairs near treated ones. The difference comes down to food supply — nestlings eat almost exclusively soil invertebrates for the first two weeks of life. Fewer worms and larvae in the soil means fewer surviving chicks.

The lawn can handle a few w**ds in March. The soil biology that supports everything above it handles the chemicals much less well.

🌿 How to get the timing right:

- Push the first lawn treatment back to late April or May — by then ground-nesting bees have finished their early cycle, earthworms have dispersed deeper, and firefly larvae are less concentrated at the surface
- Spot-treat problem areas instead of broadcasting across the full lawn — most of the yard doesn't need it
- Mow at three and a half inches — taller grass shades out most w**d seedlings naturally without chemicals
- If you use a lawn service, call this week and ask what they're applying and when. You have the right to adjust the schedule
- An untreated lawn with healthy soil biology often looks better by midsummer than a treated one — the earthworms, fungi, and microbes that chemicals remove are the same organisms that build the root structure your grass depends on

One timing change protects the soil biology that makes the lawn work in the first place 🌿