psyspoop

Didn't read the whole article, but the whole thing reads as very anthropocentric to me. It seems that the entire discussion is around human/Native relationships to trees and whether we've grieved/learned our lesson enough. Which put humans entirely at the center of the narrative, when the narrative should primarily be around the tree's ecological relationships to all of nature. Hell, the article even mentions moth species that have gone extinct due to the downfall of the tree but fails to recognize that maybe humans shouldn't be the center or the universe in this narrative.

I haven't tested/verified this myself but I've heard that mycelium grows particularly well on millet and rye berries. Might be a couple to add into your experimenting.

Where I'm at, we're actually getting a decent amount of solar, but unfortunately the power district is building the solar fields over some remnant tallgrass prairie, probably since it's cheaper than buying agricultural or residential land. This sucks since we've destroyed 98% of all the tallgrass prairie in the US, which makes it one of the most endangered biomes in the world, which is extra sucky since tallgrass prairie is one the most effective biomes at sequestering carbon, much more than even forests/woodlands.

Yes, most wasp species are good pollinators since adults are generally nectar feeders. They're not as efficient as bees since they're not as hairy, but they pollinate a lot nonetheless. Some wasps are actually specialist pollinators for certain plants (see figs and fig wasps). Wasps also serve other important roles, including population control for other arthropods since they hunt and parasitize them.
Wasps are also generally very non-aggressive. Hornets, yellowjackets, and paper wasps give the rest of the wasps a bad name, but a large amount of wasps can't even sting, and another very large amount can sting but are very non-aggresive (solitary hunting wasps are a good example of this). I'd say even paper wasps are really non-aggressive unless you get too close to the nest, and they just tend to make their nests close to where people often go near.

I've been trying to get a photo of this wasp for a while. Glad I finally got lucky enough for it to stay still for a bit.

Amazing. Any ideas on fungal species? Maybe Beauveria?

Insect was inside a decayed hardwood log. Unsure of insect species but IIRC tenuipes usually attacks Lepidopterans

May have triple posted this due to some issues on KBin, I tried deleting the other two.

One of the eastern North American Destroying Angel species. Found on a ridge in a hickory-oak woodland in southeast Nebraska.

We've got a vegetable garden going with tomatoes, pepper, kale, cabbage, onions, and eggplants.
Also got a new pollinator garden bed started this year with Butterfly milkweed, a few different species of aster, sunflowers, blanket flower, rattlesnake master, goldenrod, purple prairie clover, Mexican hat coneflower, and some blazing star. Also scattered some sage and prairie clover seeds in a few other spots on our property. I've been sitting out documenting the various wasps and bees that visit us. We're also planning on harvesting seeds from stuff and giving them away/starting plants from them next spring to give away.
Got some logs from our neighbors that I'll drill some holes in for the mason bees.
We've got some old furniture that we don't want anymore that I'm trying to touch up a bit before giving it away to a local charity that gives people coming out of the foster system stuff like furniture and appliances to help them land on their feet.

In my experience, with both coding and natural sciences, a slightly incorrect answer that you attempt to apply, realize is wrong in some way during initial testing/analysis, then you tweak until it's correct, is very useful, especially compared to not receiving any answer or being ridiculed by internet randos.

Nothing on bugguide so far except confirming it's in Sesiidae. On my iNat record, I had a Sesiidae expert ID it as Vitacea polistiformis