Volunteering at the Library

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I helped set up the used book sale at one of our county libraries last Friday. It was different than last year because the room was in use until 5 PM so our set up was delayed until after that. In addition, it was raining all afternoon. I wondered if there were going to be a lot of wet boxes.

I got there about 10 minutes before the allotted time and there were indeed people in the room, so I worked on a jigsaw puzzle that the library had set up near a window while I waited. Other volunteers were arriving too – some with a load of book boxes in their cars (since it was raining – enclosed vehicles were required…the usual pickups could not be used).

After helping stack chairs and move tables to the periphery of the room, I got started on the children’s books like what I did last year. There was a table and a cart. The differences from last year were 1) more helpers and 2) less books (we estimated what we needed for the sale based on what happened last year). I had two helpers that loaded the bottom shelf of the cart, so I didn’t have any backache from this set up! We were done in less than an hour.

Ten Little Celebrations – June 2025

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Butterflies and birds…visiting a prairie and the place I spent some formative years….lot to celebrate in June.

Butterfly Festival. I volunteered at the Master Naturalist booth for the Butterfly Festival at the Springfield Botanical Garden. It was very well attended, and people seemed to be enjoying filling in the butterfly passport; I began to feel like a recording talking about the spicebush swallowtail as I handed out stickers…but kept going because the children’s excitement was contagious!

1st graders in the Caterpillar Café. 80 first graders and chaperones. I was glad the cabbages had caterpillars on them! The big message of the game I played with them was that most caterpillars don’t survive (i.e. they get eaten…baby birds need them!). I was glad I had prepared well enough that none of them cried!

Morning in the Butterfly House. I always choose the 10 AM to 12:30 PM shift in the butterfly house because it is the coolest time of the day…and, so far, every shift has been something to celebrate…and there are lots of aspects to celebrate: quiet time with butterflies/moths, watching caterpillars munching on leaves (or deciding to go walkabout), the development of fruit on the pawpaw trees, people (local and from around the world) enjoying the place.  

Luna moth caterpillars. This celebration is ongoing because the caterpillars are still growing. I celebrate every time I count and realize that the numbers munching is staying about the same (i.e. not much mortality). Every time they shed their skin and are noticeably bigger, I celebrate their survival and realize that I will have to ramp up the amount of leaves I provide.

Magnolia petals as seasoning. I celebrated my daughter’s introducing me to magnolia petals. I tried slivers in salad and a stir fry. I liked them best in the stir fry (a little strong raw). My son-in-law made kombucha with them…and I am looking forward to trying it.

Schuette prairie. My fourth prairie walk…and probably my last until it begins to cool down. I celebrated that I could identify some of the plants I’d seen on other prairies and saw bunchflower for the first time.

River Bend Nature Center. I visited Wichita Falls – where I attended grades K-10 in the 1960s - and celebrated the new-to-me River Bend Nature Center that is just the kind of place I would like to volunteer. There are aspects of our formative years that we seek to replicate in our lives….but this was an instance where I felt the place was still attuned to what I need now more than 50 years later.

Juvenile robins. I celebrated that the robins seem to spend more time in our yard…and the juvenile robins seemed to congregate in my shade garden. Maybe not using chemicals on the yard and leaving the leaves on the backyard through the winter has made a positive difference!

Missouri evening primrose. I celebrated the large yellow flowers of the native evening primrose I bought last month. It started blooming soon after I planted it and kept getting new buds.  

Hummingbird at our feeder. There is a female hummingbird that comes to the feeder on my office window multiple times a day. She gets a good long drink and seems to look at me before she flies way! I wonder if she is raising young birds nearby. Celebrating a relationship with a bird!

Roston Butterfly House

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The seasonal Roston Native Butterfly House at the Springfield MO Botanical Gardens opened in mid-May and I have enjoyed my initial shifts. It will be my primary volunteer activity until September! The mornings are still cool enough that sometimes the butterflies are not as active when my shift starts at 10…. they warm up and are more active before the shift ends at 12:30 PM. I signed up for mornings-only from the beginning but have already learned that in May, the temperature for any of the shifts would not be problematic!

It is easy to get pictures with my phone!

I find myself enjoying being in the butterfly house just as I did in Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy in Maryland (pre-Covid). There is something magical about so many butterflies in a confined space. The Roston Butterfly House is only native species so there no biological containment requirement…which makes it less stressful for volunteers!

Volunteering – April 2025

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April was a month of volunteering and training for some new activities in the upcoming months. I was glad to use my tree materials again at the Scouting event, find 23 puzzles for my dad as I volunteered twice with Friends of the Library (at a used book sale and sorting books for the next sale), talk to people visiting Nature Touch Tables as part of Earth Day, and do another month of Feeder Watch (citizen science). I also worked on the programs (planning, prep, and follow-up) for the Master Naturalist Chapter. I am looking forward to Butterfly House related volunteering beginning in May.

I am thinking about my motivations in volunteering. After I retired more than a decade ago, volunteer activities became one of the best sources of interaction with a broader range of people. That is still the case. I chose to become a Maryland Master Naturalist since I also wanted at least some of the volunteer work to be outdoors; becoming a Missouri Master Naturalist is the same. In Maryland, the reactions of school groups on field trip hikes, conversations with other volunteers before and afterward, and positive feedback from non-profits that organized the events were the appreciation/acknowledgment that what I was doing mattered. In Missouri, it is the same although there is the added dimension of the Master Naturalist Chapter. I’m not sure what I expect….it could just be more ‘icing on the cake’!

Volunteering is good for my community and for me too!

Zooming – April 2025

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Springtime photography….is April the best month? It seems like that might be true this year. The photographs were taken at the Springfield Botanical Gardens, my yard, the Missouri State University Campus, my daughter’s yard, Onondaga Cave, and 2 volunteer activities. There were so many images to choose from; I selected 23. I used three different cameras – iPhone 15 Pro Max, Canon Powershot SX730 HS, and Nikon Coolpix P950. Enjoy the slideshow!

Training and Volunteering in Lebanon MO

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I had responded to a request from a fellow Missouri Master Naturalist for a program last weekend – a little bit of training and volunteering about an hour from where I live. There was heavy rain for the drive there – but it was weekend and the traffic was not as heavy as usual on the interstate. Fortunately, the first part was training so I could destress after the drive. I wandered around the Route 66 museum that is housed in the same building with the library. It was interesting – lots of items specific to Lebanon and then more broadly to Route 66. Much was before my memories began so I would have appreciated a few more dates for the pictures and newspaper articles. I enjoyed seeing the displays….glad I don’t have to drive over any ‘bone-jarring Ozark rock roads’!

I do vaguely remember one of my grandmothers having a wringer washing machine in the barn in the early 60s so that was something in the museum that looked familiar.

Then I had a brief training on the nature touch tables set up in the foyer of the library/museum. There were skulls and rocks and pelts and snake models/skins/id puzzles and pictures of caves and wildlife there – a bat preserved in acrylic. Handouts for each topic from Missouri Department of Conservation were available and many people took at least one. The snake booklets were probably the most popular.

I’m learning a lot about different parts of Missouri through Missouri Master Naturalist volunteering…I like feeling more familiar with the state where I now live and interacting with people!

Butterfly House Training

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My plan is to do a lot of volunteering to support the Roston Native Butterfly House during its May – September season. The training for new docents was this month – 1.5 hours on a Saturday morning. The training was held at the Springfield Botanical Center. I arrived a little early and took some pictures of plants near the entrance as I walked in. The spring bulbs are almost done…but there are a few that are still beautiful.

There will be an orientation in the butterfly house itself in the days before the opening to the public and new docents are paired with experienced ones as the season starts. There might be some additional volunteer roles helping with school tours to the butterfly house. I am confident that it will be a rewarding experience – maybe my volunteer gig for summers for the next several years at least.

The session was well organized with folders of information for everyone, a signup sheet to get t-shirts, and forms to fill out. Their goal was to have 60 volunteer docents to keep the butterfly house running smoothly. They had that many last year and hopefully the new volunteers, like me, will make up for any attrition.

There are similarities and differences between the volunteering I did in Maryland at Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy. I am relieved that the containment requirements at this butterfly house are much easier since the butterflies are all natives! As far as interacting with visitors, I am anticipating that it will be very similar and something I will enjoy.

Used Puzzles!

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This is my second year to volunteer with the used book sale held by my local Friends of the Library. This year the first set up day was raining so transporting boxes of books from the storage area to the location of the sale was a bit more challenging. I helped set up tables to load with the books and then to unpacked boxes. We had to get everything off the floor before we were left since the building has sometimes gotten flooded in the past; the rain had stopped…but the nearby river might not have crested.

I volunteered again on the first day of the sale – the ‘members only’ afternoon and evening. The building had not flooded so the second day of set up had gotten everything in place and ready for people to buy books.

There was a rack that was great for displaying puzzles that was brought in on that second day of set up that was new this year; there was also a table full of puzzles.

I bought 20 300-piece puzzles for my dad! They are quite a bargain at $2 each. I will take them 4-5 at a time when I make my monthly trip to Dallas!

Another Event about Trees

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Last week I was one of 4 tables for a Scouting event (the other tables were about bears, skulls, and tracks). I used materials I have been collecting and used since last fall. It was the first time with small groups coming to the table and talking about trees for 10 minutes…then doing it all over again. I expected to be limited to one table but I had 2 – plenty of room to spread out.

The groups were K-4th grade…3-6 in each group. I was surprised at how many recognized the thorn (or pods) of honey locust, knew that trees produced oxygen, and knew that counting trees rings is a way to tell how old the tree was (even though most of them had never really tried to do it before)!

I had a slide show that emphasized things to notice about a tree if you want to identify the type of tree it is.

The different sizes of pinecones were fun….and the difference between the pinecones and the cone from a spruce was new to them. We talked a bit about escaped Bradford pears that we see blooming all over our area right now…and the redbuds that are also in bloom and are native. My white oak seedling was a good conversation starter too; one of the scouts had an acorn that had a root (so far) and was trying to figure out what to do with it next. It is probably one of the red oaks since they tend to sprout in the spring.

The pictures are from the end of the sessions…rearranged considerably from when I started!

Ten Little Celebrations – March 2025

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Lots of early spring celebrations in March!

Trout Lilies. One of the high points of our hike at Cedar Gap Conservation area was seeing trout lilies blooming down by the stream…as celebration of the new season.

Bald Eagles. The serendipity of seeing two bald eagles soaring over Springfield was another celebration of our Cedar Gap field trip. They seemed to be heading north so might have been migrating through as eagles do in the spring.

Tenure. My son-in-law was granted tenure at Missouri State University. It’s a major milestone to celebrate.

Pinecones. The wind caused pinecones to fall from our shortleaf pine and I picked up a bag of them for my sister. We both celebrated in anticipation of the fun projects she’ll do with her grandson.

Redcedar. I transplanted a small eastern redcedar that came up in my flowerbed to the place in my yard that I want it grow….and celebrated that it stayed upright even with the high winds that came along in March. It will make a great addition to the bird habitat near our patio!

Physical therapy. I celebrated that the physical therapy my dad is doing seem to be helping him recover his mobility after an illness in February.

Covid booster. My husband and I both got a booster in March…celebrated how easy it is to do at our pharmacy. We both have managed to never have Covid.

Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge. Celebrating snow geese and swans…and all the other birds at the refuge.

Orchids. The Missouri Botanical Gardens (St. Louis) Orchid Show is quite a celebration of flowers. It will probably become an early spring tradition for us from now on!

Volunteer opportunities. I am celebrating that there are so many great volunteer opportunities…lots of variety which I will continue to explore this year.

Volunteering – March 2025

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Am I settling into my post-covid level of volunteering? I’m not sure. I’m still changing…I’m discovering that some of the activities at did pre-Covid are either not readily available here or I prefer different things.

I am enjoying the Friends of the Library used book volunteering once a month and then helping with the used book sales. Sometimes I can find used puzzles for my dad in the piles of donated books! On the downside, moving boxes of books is harder for me now; I am going to start loading books into boxes already on the stack rather than having to lift them after they are loaded!

The bulk of my volunteer time is as a Missouri Master Naturalist. There is a lot of variety in types of activities: chairing the programs committee (speakers for the monthly chapter meeting), volunteering with local stewardship non-profits like James River Basin Partnership, nature programs for elementary aged children (Cedar County Libraries) and citizen science (Feeder Watch). I am thinking a bit about the seasons of this type of volunteering. Feeder Watch is from October to April, for example. I am anticipating a few more nature programs this spring but the dominate volunteering over the summer might be the Butterfly House at the Springfield Botanical Garden that opens in mid-May. I’ve established a goal for myself to volunteer 250 hours in 2025 and, so far, that goal seems achievable!

Volunteering at a Watershed Festival

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I volunteered for a James River Basin Partnership Watershed Festival at a public school about 10 minutes from my house. There were about 250 5th graders that participated over a 4-hour period (fortunately we had a lunch break in the middle). For the first sessions we were in a classroom because it was quite cold outside, and the school grounds were muddy from recent rain/snow. In the afternoon we were in an outdoor classroom – out of the mud and enjoying the sunshine and warm enough temperatures. It was an exhilarating day!

A partner and I led a game from Project Wet called The Incredible Journey where every student becomes a drop a water and they move through the 9 stations (clouds, plants, animals, rivers, oceans, lakes, groundwater, soil, and glaciers) based on a role of a dice at each stop. With 25 students moving around the space, it sometimes appeared chaotic, but every session was a success. Some students/drops-of-water got stuck in the ocean…some alternated between clouds and other stations. A few spent significant time as plants! It was a fun activity…and hopefully a learning experience too.

As we packed up everything in the plastic bin at the end of the day – the dice taking up most of the space – I realized that it had been an exhausting day. In the flurry of activity during the sessions, it was easy to be so engaged with the students enjoying the game that it was easy to just keep going.

Missouri Trees

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The topic of the session at the two libraries in a nearby county was Missouri trees. Since it was the fourth (and last) event for our 3-person team of Missouri Master Naturalists, we managed to gracefully recover when one of us (the one bringing some small redcedar branches) had a tire emergency on the way to the first library. She managed to get there a few minutes before the children arrived, but we had already implemented a backup plan by cutting a few low branches from another tree! We were ready to go when the first 15 students (and 6 parents) arrived!

There were four activities:

Examining small branches of trees (river birch, redbud, maple, redcedar, shortleaf pine and eastern white pine). There were some extras that aren’t native to our area but are native to North America and that thrive planted in yards and gardens that we showed too (Southern Magnolia and Eastern Hemlock…the tiny cones on the hemlock fascinated the whole group).

Examining things left from last fall: glycerin and plastic sleeve preserved leaves, seed and seed pods, pine cones, and a white oak seedling.

Counting tree rings (everyone with their own tree cookie) along with some pictures that showed that the rings are not always neat concentric circles.

Looking forward to spring and the state tree – the Flowering Dogwood…with a pattern art project. The picture is of some samples I made beforehand, but the students did beautiful work on their pages…and were very focused (and quiet) while they worked.

The session was a great finally for our series!

Ten Little Celebrations – February 2025

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February was busier than usual this year – a combination of a class, a new role for me in the Missouri Master Naturalist chapter, and some significant volunteer hours. It all made for plenty of little celebrations.

Owl Pellets. Having 28 children busily dissecting owl pellets – finding and identifying tiny bones. I celebrated that we picked something they all seemed to enjoy doing all the way to the end of our time (and a little beyond).

A new protein drink. Another whey-based protein drink that already has lactase added…worth celebrating for the convenience (and also because it is not as thick or expensive as the one I had been buying).

Niece going to have another baby. My sisters and I celebrated that there will be another baby in the family next fall. My sister that is the grandmother shared the news with us almost as soon as she found out.

Snowy Feeder Watch day. I celebrated the extra birds that came to our feeders when snow was on the ground.

Seeing lots of Northern Harriers. I celebrated seeing Northern Harriers on our field trip to Lockwood MO. We’d seen them before in New Mexico but not as many…and it’s thrilling to see them closer to where we live.

Lunch with my daughter. My daughter and I have been meeting for lunch a Student Union dining room after my geology class. It feels celebratory every time we meet (and we generally have dessert too).

Finding witch hazel. I celebrated when I found a witch hazel in bloom at the Springfield Botanical Garden…even though I was hoping to see more of them.

Grandniece and grandnephew. I celebrated seeing my sister’s grandchildren when I went to Dallas to visit my father. One is just learning to crawl, and the other is reasonably adept at recognizing/saying colors.

Snow day. A day of staying indoors due to weather – always a time to celebrate. The day seems like a serendipity block of time that I had not anticipated.

Soup. Soup is my favorite meal on cold days. I celebrated finding a quick and tasty one made from ingredients in my freezer: turkey meatballs, corn, broccoli, and edamame….a little seasoning and sometimes left over spaghetti sauce…delicious.  

Owl Pellets!

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The topic of the session at the two libraries in a nearby county was owls. Since it was the third event for our 3-person team of Missouri Master Naturalists, we were beginning to get better at it…although it was still hectic. This time we had a mounted owl and wing,

handouts,

a display on the wall showing the wingspan of various owls (click on the right image to see the list of owls by wing span), and

the equipment (tweezers, picks, plates, gloves, identification sheets, containers for bones) to dissect owl pellets).

And then the first group of children arrived at the library. There were 28 students and 12 parents. We had a short lecture that included listening to the sounds of the 8 owls of Missouri (4 year-round and 4 more in winter). One student had a Great Horned Owl near where they live. Then the fun began as we handed out equipment and foil wrapped pellets. The students thoroughly enjoyed teasing apart the pellets and finding bones – mostly rodents.

We packed up everything and left the room as we found it…and went to the second library…to set up a second time. It was disappointing that only 3 students came for that session. But we made the best of it and dissected pellets ourselves sitting across from the students.

These are the bones from my pellet!

We have one more session in our series for the library. They’ve been a learning experience for me as a volunteer. I am realizing that the volunteering I did in Maryland was skewed toward the actual event (rather than prep) because others had done the preparation and the audience from multiple schools rotated through experiencing the same program. It was easy to get very polished at presenting the program and the number of students reached was quite large. I’d like to find volunteer opportunities like that here in Missouri, but I am not sure they exist.

Winter Seed Sowing

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I assisted one of my fellow Missouri Master Naturalists with a program for her county’s libraries – planting seeds in plastic jugs for planting in gardens next spring. There were about 50 participants (plus parents) that participated across the two sessions. The set up included lots of plastic jugs (saved from distilled water purchased for humidifiers), soil, gloves, tarps to protect the carpet of the library meeting rooms, scissors, and seeds. I took pictures of the brief calm between set up and the chaos of everyone getting dirt and planting their seeds.  

The battery powered drill was used to make holes in the bottom of the jugs and marker holes to cut the top part almost off…leaving a 1-2 inch hinge. Most of the children were young enough that we recruited parents to make holes in the jugs.

Several of the older children mixed the soil with water in big buckets for everything else to use. We had native wildflower seeds but almost half the children chose to plant vegetables. An older lady chose to plant common milkweed in her jug…and she is going to plant the seedlings near some buckeyes in her yard in the spring.

Each hour-long session was a whirlwind of activity. We managed to contain the mess with the tarps on the floor, so cleanup was not bad. I was grateful that we had some extra help from some local Master Gardeners and the parents of the children jumped in to help too.

Volunteering – January 2025

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It has been a busy month for volunteering – all Missouri Master Naturalist but quite a variety.

Citizen science. Project Feeder Watch is something I do looking through a window of my home to my bird feeders for 2 hours per week (4 30-minute observation times). My husband does it with me and I record the maximum numbers of individuals we see of each species. It is a great way to enjoy the outdoors when the weather is too cold or wet for being outdoors! And 2 hours a week from November to April will add quite a few volunteer hours to my Missouri Master Naturalist total!

Educational presentations at Cedar County Libraries. The presentations themselves are only an hour each but there is a lot of preparation for them…and there is travel time for me (over an hour each way from where I live). I have enjoyed the interactions and am relieved that my partner is taking the lead on half of them. This is the biggest chunk of volunteer hours recently and we still have 2 to go in February – and I am leading the last of those sessions.

Program Chairperson for the master naturalist chapter (i.e. supporting administration of the chapter). The job requires snippets of time so far….but they do add up. I have presentations set for February and March….with many ideas at various stages of development for future programs. Some have been tentatively set for a particular month. I want to be 2-3 months ahead speakers that have committed to speak.

Thinking ahead…I will probably trend toward citizen science volunteering with occasional outreach and educational presentations. This is a reversal from the volunteering I did in Maryland. I haven’t found an organization that has themed-hike leader volunteer opportunities like Howard County Conservancy did in Maryland. There is a butterfly house in Springfield that seems to need volunteers similar to Brookside Gardens did for their Wings of Fancy (pre-pandemic). That will be an outreach/educational type of volunteering I can do in the warmer months and I am looking forward to getting linked up to do that in the spring.

Missouri Giant Traveling Map

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Doing a program for 7-13 years old students with the 17 feet x 21 feet Missouri Giant Traveling Map at a nearby county library was a learning experience for me as a Master Naturalist (and my partners too). For one session we had 18 students and the other one 4. The groups were enthusiastic to be out and about after a snowstorm had kept them inside for a few days. They enjoyed taking their shoes off and walking around on the map…so much that they sometimes started sliding on the plastic a little too much.

That age group has had some great outdoor experiences in the state – but they don’t necessarily know where they went unless it is associated with a city. Fortunately - one of the fathers took off his shoes and stepped on the map to show his daughter where the river they had floated down was on the map.

The students also were able to look at rivers in Missouri that flow into the Mississippi River directly…ones that flow into the Missouri River and then the Mississippi…and those that flow south into Arkansas and the rivers there before eventually flowing into the Mississippi.

We noted the grayish areas on the map…where the terrain is very hilly…and other areas that were not. I suggested that they look at roadcuts when they are out and about in the state (that it is a safe thing to do since they are not driving!)…and notice that not all of the layers of rock are horizonal…and think about how the layers can become the way they are.

We have 3 more topics we are presenting in upcoming library sessions and we learned: to have a better idea of how many people we expect and be more assertive when some of the students are disruptive. We also realized that it was fortunate that our subsequent sessions are more hands-on active rather than simply walking around and looking. We’ll get better with each one!

Different in 2025

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What am I anticipating being different in 2025?

It is a better thought process for me than making a list of resolutions…even though to make some of the ‘anticipations’ become reality it will take some intentional action on my part which might be very much like the focus a resolution can have. But I am noticing that what I have on my list this year are things that have been available in some form to me before; I am simply making the decision to follow through…and enjoy the ride.

Last year I enjoyed the Missouri Master Naturalist (MMN) training and in 2025 I am going to explore the opportunities associated with being an MMN. I’ll be organizing the monthly programs for the chapter and ramping up my volunteering. At the end of 2024 it appeared that 20 hours of volunteering per month would be feasible…and I might discover that I can do more during some months of the year.

My husband has pointed out that the local Audubon Society chapter has great field trips and we are already planning to go to 2 in early 2025….and more of those will probably become our norm.

I initiated some Missouri geology themed day trips in December (1st one was to the Joplin History and Mineral Museum and Grand Falls) and want to do more in 2025. We’re planning to go to Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge in February for birding….but there will be geology there too (it in the part of the state that was glaciated)! Maybe I will make a day trip to the Ed Clark Museum of Missouri Geology in Rolla in January. I’ve always wanted to take a basic geology class but never could fit it into my schedule back when I was in college…so I am registering for one during the 2025 spring semester at Missouri State University; maybe they will have a field trip or two.

I hope I can finally renew my friendship with a childhood friend (we’ve been exchanging Christmas cards for years but haven’t seen each other since we were in our teens). We have been communicating via text over the past year but then events in our families made it challenging to reconnect in person. Maybe it will happen in 2025.

The physical therapy I am getting now is beginning to yield positive results and I am anticipating that a lot of the activities I want to do are going to be easier for me physically…so I am very motivated to do what they tell me and continue a routine of exercises that will sustain the improvement.

I am looking forward to the differences from 2024 that I am anticipating!

Milestones

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Last week marked two ‘milestones’ in my Missouri Master Naturalist (MMN) volunteering:

My tree educational trunk capstone project (part of the MMN training) is finished (or at least at a good stopping place). I had intended to leave it at the Springfield Missouri Department of Conservation for storage…and I savored the fall foliage from my car when I got there. The fall has lingered this year without a hard frost to hurry the end. By the end of the morning, I was taking the trunk home along with some additional educational materials since there is a plan to use the trunk for outreach sessions in January and maybe the Osage orange would be dry enough to add to it by then. I’m still thinking about it as ‘finished.’

I also started a new project: creating a collection of soft pith stems in a bucket (suggestion from Wild Bee Lab Facebook Page). I’ll check it periodically to see if any bees use the stems for nests. My initial collection includes pokeweed, forsythia, bush honeysuckle, and goldenrod. Yes – some are non-native but if the bees use them, I’ll be even more vigorous in getting rid of the non-natives around my yard and doing this with the stems rather than burning them in my chiminea.