All right let's go ahead and get started. Welcome everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for today's community conversation. My name is Marina Bach. I'm the communications manager here at Sierra Club Maine and I'll be facilitating today's webinar. These conversations have been a really great way for us to come together virtually and hear from some really wonderful organizations in our community. Today we're really excited to have Anna Fyalkov of the Wild Seed Project join us. Before we get started I just want to go over some zoom logistics with you all. I'm sure you're pros by now but we do ask that you please keep your microphone on mute to help with any background noise.  The webinar is being recorded so if you wish to not be seen feel free to turn your video off and lastly we invite you to put any questions in the chat. I'll be monitoring the chat throughout Anna's presentation and we'll have some time at the end for some Q&A. I'd also like to take a moment to just acknowledge the land that we're on here in Maine so Sierra Club Maine acknowledges Indigenous land and sovereignty. We are in the homeland of the Wabanaki, the people of the dawn. We extend our respect and gratitude to the many Indigenous people and their ancestors whose rich histories and vibrant communities include the Abinaki, Malaseed, Mic Mac, Pasamaquoddy, and Penobscot nations, and all of the native communities who have lived here for thousands of generations in what is known today as Maine, New England, and the Canadian Maritimes. Sierra Club Maine is honored to collaborate with the Wabanaki as they share their stories and we thank the Abbey Museum for their leadership and decolonization efforts in Maine. And without further ado I'd love to introduce our guest speaker Anna Fyalkoff as program manager at Wild Seed Project. Anna works to further the organization's educational programming, deepen relationships with partner organizations, and catalyze a movement to Rewild Maine. Before joining Wild Seed Project Anna was most recently Senior Horticulturist at Native Plant Trust Garden in the woods in Framingham, Massachusetts, where she designed and installed native plant gardens, managed interns and volunteers, and taught the public ways to incorporate native plants in their own gardens. Anna brings with her a deep knowledge of native plant ecology, horticulture, conservation, and ecological landscape design. She holds a BA in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic and an MS in Ecological Design from the Conway School. So welcome Anna, we're honored to have you with us here today and without further ado I will hand it over to you to get started. Thank you very much Marina and I especially really appreciated the land acknowledgement that you did at the end of your piece. I think that's really important to be thinking about that we are on Wabanaki homeland. So I will get started with my presentation now as does everybody see my screen okay? Okay. And if you're not familiar with Wild Seed Project I just want to get you acquainted with us. So we are a small nonprofit based out of Portland, Maine, small but growing, and we sell seeds of native plants. That's one of the primary things that we do. We also strive to educate people and make people aware of the value of native plants. The Wild Seed Project was started in 2014 by our founder Heather McCargo and she saw a real need for more native plant education as well as supply of native plants in local nurseries in northern New England and especially in Maine. And since then we have raised awareness and now the demand for native plants is growing. The supply is working to keep up. So we actually put out an annual publication. We've had kind of a magazine in the past that is filled with lots of wonderful articles by people from the conservation and ecology world as well as gardening and native plant worlds with articles but also photographs and lovely illustrations. And our most recent publication is a native tree guide going in a kind of a different direction from our magazines. That's more of a how to resource for people on native trees. So today I really want to be talking to you about rewilding and what it means to rewild and giving you these 10 actionable steps that you can take in your own landscapes to rewild. These 10 steps are not necessarily needing to go in order but I kind of placed them in order of importance in my opinion and it doesn't mean that you have to start with one or another. I think anything you do out of these 10 steps is a really big step forward. So just to give you a sense of the background of what rewilding is all about. Many of you might be familiar with keystone species the word at least keystone species and that's derived from conservation where it's kind of a tool to think about the way that we can help conserve different habitats and the most biodiversity possible. I think the species like wolves and other kind of more charismatic megafauna have been emphasized as keystone species for a long time because the wolf for instance in Yellowstone National Park with its reintroduction in the 80s you really did see start to see a huge change in the landscape when the wolves were reintroduced because they were over you know over grazed and not very much vegetation was thriving in much of Yellowstone National Park and then when the wolves came they kept a lot of the elk and deer populations in check and then the you know the vegetation began to be able to kind of come back and a lot of other kind of trickle down effects happens from there so yes well our keystone species might be something like the wolf we also at Wild Seed Project want to think about keystone species as plants. Some plant species can be considered these because we also consider plants the basis of our food webs and without our native plants we start to see them unravel. So Doug Tellamy has done a lot of work in researching he's an entomologist at the University of Delaware and he's done a lot of work in researching insect and plant relationships especially those of moths and butterflies and plants and native plants because it's their caterpillars that so in in that one part of their life cycle earlier on in their life cycle the caterpillars actually rely on native plants their their leaves of many trees and herbaceous plants and alike to feed themselves and then in turn songbirds especially in spring rely on that protein rich diet of caterpillars to feed their young they also rely on other insects throughout throughout their whole lives but and as well as berries and fruits and nuts of native trees and other plants but it's those insects especially those caterpillars that are extremely important for them birds are actually kind of thought to be the bell weather of ecological health and well-being and so if we can create healthier insect and bird populations I think that will be better off overall in this time we've actually started to see quite a bit of a an insect and bird Armageddon populations of insects have dropped and in turn populations of migrating birds have dropped throughout the world so Doug Tellamy's research does point to this kind of threshold of 70% native plant biomass that's needed to keep these food webs intact and if you haven't I also actually before I leave this slide I want to just say that if you haven't had a chance to it would be great to read something by Doug was telling me so one of his more recent books is nature's best hope and it outlines a lot of what I'm talking about in this presentation different action steps that you can take to rewild your landscape he might frame it in a slightly different way but a lot of our rewilding movement is based off of what of Doug Tellamy's research so I encourage you to read any of his books nature's best hope bringing nature home or the nature of oaks so rewilding at wild sea project really mean you know we use it as a verb it really means to us something kind of threefold it's not just about restoring native plants to our landscapes but it is a big portion of it if we can restore native plants and the natural processes where we live not just out in national parks or large conservation areas actually where we live where we have our homes and our businesses where our communities thrive then this is going to reverse habitat loss and support biodiversity we also need to think about what we do in the landscape not just what we plant but if we shift from harmful habits to more mindful practices that benefit wildlife in the planet's health then we're going to have a much bigger impact and then finally we all really need to come together and join forces with others whether it be our neighbors or family friends or larger community to connect these fragmented habitats that have been fragmented by development and become an advocate for native plants in our landscapes so all of the 10 action steps actually hone in on all these different pieces of what rewilding means and how to do it the first action step is to think about getting as many of those trees into the landscape that are keystone plants and the keystone plants idea these five native trees has really come from a lot of Doug Tellamy's research because he's discovered through his research that oaks willows and cherries and also plums and birches and poplars are you know host to more biodiversity more caterpillars of mobs and butterflies than any other native plants so starting by planting this kind of infrastructure into your landscape is a good idea it doesn't mean that you shouldn't also plant other genre of native plants but these are really important ones to start with and then you can kind of fill in from there with more diversity so the oaks for instance you know they host at least 400 to 500 species of mobs and butterflies depending on where you live so maybe in Delaware it's closer to 500 plus and in Maine it's a little bit more close to 400 plus but it's still significant I like I'd like to give you an example here of a tree that is one of these keystone plants and the life cycle of one of the mobs that it supports so I was a horticulturist at native plant trust before I started a wild seed project and I really enjoyed getting to firsthand do some moth rearing and butterfly rearing I raised them and got to see their whole life cycles so the sycropia silk moth was one of the ones that we were most successful with we raised broods of sycropia silk moths we raised we started with their cocoons they would over winter in a cage to kind of keep them safe from predators over the winter and then we'd put them in these pairing cages which are kind of like a netted cage with a little window that you open at night because the the mobs once they hatch out of their cocoons are enclosed from their cocoons they come out they they you know pump their the their wings to kind of get everything flowing into their wings and then they emerge at night the males fly out and find a female you know up to a couple miles away and then they mate and it might take a couple days for this process to happen and then the males will pretty much go off and pass away and then the females will lay their eggs and then they'll die after a couple days too so they're they're time as adults the winged adult stage which is so beautiful they're about the size of a small bird is very very short and they spend most of their lives as caterpillars feeding on the leaves of their host plants like black cherry is one of the preferred host plants of the sycropia silk moth and then over wintering as cocoons now the sycropia silk moth actually will hang on a branch late in the season around august and start spinning its cocoon pupating and then over winter hanging on that branch well there's many other moth species that actually drop down from the native trees and over winter in the leaf litter that's kind of a precursor to what's coming next so like the luna moth is a really good example its host plants are usually trees in the walnut family and and a few others but it actually will drop down from the leaves and pupate and its cocoon will will over winter in the leaf litter until it's ready to close that the following spring cherries also you know provide much other wildlife value too to bees and other pollinators with their flowers in spring and then later to birds and mammal small mammals with their heavy fruit set cherries are actually edible to us as well so then the wild black cherry but it does vary like tree to individual tree to tree can be really either tasty or bitter or a little too tart and astringent so it's really kind of funny how that varies but for most mammals they don't seem to really mind one tree or another I think for us our palate might be a little bit more refined in that way so planting native trees doesn't just involve planting a singular tree in the ground in a sea of lawn I really hope that when we do plant native trees we kind of step away from this more park like look that has is this is you know going on and in this kind of planting is going on in many of our commercial landscapes and our parks and our burrida but it's not necessarily going to create the health of a forest when you plant a native tree so if you don't have leaves under that tree then you don't have opportunities for those different caterpillars or of moths and butterflies to drop down and over winter in the leaf litter or spend some sort of part of their life in the leaf litter so this native black gum is a wonderful native tree to plant it's a slow-growing plant that can stay small and kind of conical shaped for much of its life and then when it gets bigger it does create more of an irregular canopy and it's absolutely gorgeous with its fall color it also hosts a lot of life from its berries to its fruit to its leaves it hosts has lots of opportunities for being a wildlife magnet and it can be used as a street tree it's a really great tree but I would encourage us all to kind of think about when possible planting native trees in more of a forest like setting and mimicking the forest layers so I really like this example here at Garden in the Woods in Framingham, Massachusetts there's a flowering dogwood it that's even not the full canopy tree there's oaks that you can't quite see as well in this picture that are in the canopy and then the flowering dog dogwood is in kind of the sub canopy then there are trees and shrubs smaller trees and shrubs like rhododendrons azaleas that are even lower down and then may apples and ferns and merry bells which are the ground covers the herbaceous ground covers and all those layers in the forest play a function the canopy trees shelter and shade the forest floor many of the small trees are flowering trees providing lots of pollinator opportunities and the same with the shrubs many of the herbaceous plants do that as well but also if they create a ground cover they keep the soil from eroding keep moisture retained in the soil and create kind of a green mulch below that if you can leave the leaves that is a great thing to do for wildlife so native street trees are also important to think about you know they don't have to be a large tree necessarily but I think something like a beach plum which I think it's classified in with the cherries is one of the keystone trees is a great thing to plant if you have a small space so the beach plum you know bear really tasty fruits they're about the size of a cherry but they're they taste just like plums because they are plums and they're flowers bloom in spring providing lots of pollinator options and they also you know our host plant to moths and butterflies and you know I encourage you to take a look at that recent publication that we put out native trees for northeast landscapes because we actually have about 31 species of small medium and large native trees that would work well in a variety of different landscapes and we have a couple different nice plant lists one is street trees a native street cheese and then another one is the a list of plant guilds so thinking about the trees the shrubs the herbaceous plants that all work together that grow in similar growing conditions that you can plant in your backyard so it's a nice kind of cheat instead of having to create your own plant list to look at what we have in that plant list but yeah beach plums are some of my favorite native small trees to plant they can actually become a little bit more like a scrubby shrub if you don't kind of prune them like a tree so if you prune them more like a tree it's just a matter of when you grow them at a smaller stage when they're a young whip or something like that you prune out the smaller start by pruning out the smaller kind of leafier branches lower down and allow for maybe one to three major stems that end up becoming kind of the leaders and if you prune the leafy leafy branches out above your at around eye height or a little above then that gives it also more of a tree-like look and a tree-like feel this one is kind of being grown and being pruned so that it can stay kind of more a little bit more on one plane in this small garden bed up against a road or a driveway and I think that's another nice way to have them too. The second rewilding action step is to think about shrinking your lawn so many of us might know the detriment of lawns but lawns are really not healthy landscapes for a number of reasons for one they're practically sterile they don't actually have many opportunities for wildlife value and there's in most of our lawns you know the single species Kentucky bluegrass lawn that often many of us are trying to maintain to look clean and well taken care of it's actually sprayed with lots of fertilizers and pesticides and those can become major pollutants in water bodies and also become a detrimental to many of our pollinators and then you know we mow our lawns and in order to keep them at a certain height we have to mow them over and over again throughout the season and that create puts a lot of fossil fuels into the air if you do have an electric mower that's great but it still requires energy to mow and then not to mention that lawns are actually the second most irrigated crop in the US if you kind of take a minute and think about that why are we putting so much of our our precious water resources into lawns when they often are just the default in our landscape and not really are not really doing a lot for us um I think you know lawns do have a place they're important places for outdoor rooms um and you know places for gathering and recreation we need something to place soccer on in the backyard throw frisbee on and has pathways that convey us through the landscape but otherwise you know all the lawn that's left over in our suburban and urban areas could be taken away um all of that that's not being utilized so why not stop mowing a good portion of your lawn and maybe leave the outside frame of the outdoor rooms and pathways unmowed for places for pollinators and other wildlife to find forage and cover and shelter um you can do a couple different things to shrink your lawn you can either stop mowing which is actually a slightly more advanced technique and I don't recommend it for the beginner because you'll see especially if you're in an urban or suburban area or an agricultural area that's surrounded by a lot of invasive species and weeds you'll have a lot of that coming up and it's a lot to manage especially if you're unfamiliar with the species that might be coming up in your lawn but it is doable um some if you do have an area that um has a lot of native species already present then it might be more doable for you um but you can theoretically stop mowing and allow what um you know the plants that you find beneficial to keep reproducing and then kind of discourage the plants that are weedy or invasive to not keep reproducing and that can be by a number of techniques including mowing and smothering or mowing certain areas that are um that are you know full of the non desirable plants or smothering certain areas that are you know filled with invasive species manually removing them making sure to cut those plants back before they have a chance to go to seed is essentially what you want to do for the plants that you don't want there and allowing the plants that you do want there to go to seed but i'm not going to go into a huge depth um on this method today because it's a little too complicated to talk about in a short amount of time another way that you can reduce your lawn is to think about um starting over and adding new plants into it so that might involve sheet mulching the lawn which is a really great method to get rid of your lawn excuse me there's a big motorcycle going by my window right now um but so if you sheet mulch that means you can put down cardboard um and maybe make sure it's nice and overlapping and either spring or fall and then put mulch on top of that and that mulch can be aged bark mulch or aged leaf mold um and you can find those either locally um at your um you know local landscaping business or find a good business that that does it well um and let those age for a good three months or so so if you're putting it down in the spring let that age for the full growing season and break down and add organic matter to the soil and smother the grass below and then plant into it in the fall or if you put it down in the fall plant into it in the spring so one of the interns at um native plant trust's nasami farm which is their plug nursery decided to convert uh as her intern project um this big lawn parking lot island into native lawn alternatives and she actually put down um sheet mulch in the spring and then planted into it later in her internship a couple a couple months after she put down the sheet mulch she put down lots of great lawn alternatives like the pennsylvania sedge which is a grass-like plant it's not a true grass but it doesn't require as much mowing and inputs and water is a lot of native or as a lot of non-native grasses require and she put down um foam flower she also planted three-toothed sink foil and pussy toes which are great for the drier and well-drained sunny spots in the lawn and this whole network of um native lawn alternatives was kind of a trial to see how each one would do and eventually they all started to knit together and some would do especially well in the spots that they were most well suited to while maybe others that were not as well suited to an area would fade out and get taken over by another so it was kind of a nice experiment to see how that worked out and I think it was very successful another way you can think about shrinking your lawn is not necessarily by doing a giant project all at once because I knew that can be very overwhelming but to think about kind of hemming it in each year just by a little bit so you can put down your cardboard on just the edge of a garden bed kind of thinking about edging that garden bed in the way that you'd like and then put down your mulch on top of that and then plant into it in a couple months and that will create a nice new edge of your garden bed kind of extending it out and if you can think about instead of just planting long alternatives maybe lawn alternatives are great for certain areas that you would like a lawn like look or would like lawn in but you want something different than Kentucky bluegrass that's great but if you can put multi-layered plantings into the areas that you can change from lawn that's actually even better so this is brings me to my next action step which is to fill every open niche in the landscape and so if you can have as many layers in your landscape as possible or if you're like me and an apartment dweller and don't have many places to plant natives you can do things like put them in pots put them on window boxes I actually put the center bottom photo is my apartment and this is where I've actually put in a lot of native plants and pots like cardinal flower and iris and blue Lobelia and Virginia creeper all sorts of lovely natives that do well in pots and many many do and it's a great way to experiment with what you have I also think it's important to think about filling every niche of the landscape by encouraging vines like I love this native vine on the upper left that's called coral honeysuckle or trumpet honeysuckle both the same same plant but different common names that actually attracts many pollinators including hummingbirds and it creates a really nice dense kind of almost shrub-like structure where I actually think it provides a lot of cover for birds so this was a vine that was outside of the or it still is outside of the horticulture building at garden in the woods and that used to be my office and whenever we'd open the door throughout the growing season we'd we'd hear a bird fly out and I think we realized over time that there was a nest of robins inside this this really densely growing trumpet honeysuckle and what was great about it is the trumpet honeysuckle is not one of the more kind of aggressive vines it stays in in one central place and it's just a lovely one for any sunny average soil spot. You can also think about planting natives into what's called the hell strip or that space between the sidewalk and the road where it's a really tough place for a lot of things to grow usually especially around portland a lot of those hell strips are filled with grasses that have just kind of seeded themselves in non-native grasses or lawn or they're just empty dirt pockets sometimes they have trees growing out of them but nothing else sometimes I see people plant like a ring of native or non-native but of annuals into those hell strips and I think there's a lot of opportunity to do if you have a hell strip in front of your house to you know plant native plants in like cone flowers and I love the idea of the prickly pear cactus it'll keep dogs out of it as well as the Carolina Rose with their armored foliage and prickles so that's a really great way to think about adding more natives into every little spot in your landscape that you can get them and you can take it even further if you do have some yard you can cram as much as you can those layers that I've been talking about stack pack and layer things you can add more containers that add some really lovely seasonal interest when things are not in bloom if they have are colored and glazed terracotta or things that don't fit in your landscape like maybe a small shrub that wouldn't be able to fit into this small garden bed here the small shrub that's in the corner is actually a aromatic sumac that turns lovely colors in the fall and I love just the way that this little courtyard informal courtyard is is planted with trees and shrubs and vines asters and golden rods and cone flowers and all sorts of things that are filling every little niche and actually a lot is in bloom in this fall landscape it's quite beautiful another way that you can think about filling every open niche is thinking about urban areas again and taking cues from the myawaki mini forest movement so myawaki was or is a japanese man who brought over the idea of planting many many small native seedlings and saplings into a small area and kind of mimicking a mini forest they actually have shown research has shown that these mini forests will actually grow into the layers and biodiversity that a more mature forest can hold in about two to five years versus you know 50 to hundreds of years for a regular forest so this is a really great way to add biodiversity into an area that that isn't very wild it it might look a little bit more wild it's a great way to take like an abandoned lot or you can do this in a much more kind of neat and gardeny way but this is sort of a more wild looking one it's actually been something that's this is a movement that's been taking hold across europe and the uk for instance has planted at least 150 of these tiny forests across their cities so i think we can take cues from what's happening around the world and do it in the us and do it in portland main or other cities and towns in main if we can our next action step is to think about targeting certain pollinators to support in our landscapes so we can do that by planting those keystone plants and i want to highlight a few other keystone plants like the the goldenrods and the asters as well as combflowers and other plants in the aster family are considered also keystone plants because they host hundreds and hundreds of moth and butterfly caterpillars um on their leaves asters and goldenrods are also really essential plants for late season foraging nectar of nectar and pollen for bees and wasps so if you can plant an astra or goldenrod in any new planting that you put in and there is one suited for at least one suited for any new garden that you put in i think all gardens should have them so the candidate goldenrod is one that is gets gives a lot of our goldenrods a more of a reputation for being weedy um and creating kind of large swabs of just one plant because they are a little bit more aggressive but there's actually a lot more um garden worthy goldenrods that we can look to at a plant instead like the wreath goldenrod or another name for it is the bluestem goldenrod the downy goldenrod and the zigzag goldenrod and those are those three species are available on our seed sale and then there's so many asters as well for different conditions and that are garden friendly like the bluewood aster the whitewood aster the flaxleaf stiff aster that's more for sunny spots um and i encourage you to just take a look at all the diversity of asters and goldenrods that we do have and think about finding one that can work for your site another way you can look at targeting certain pollinators to support is to look at one pollinator maybe that you would like to support in your landscape and trace its life cycle and find out what it requires and then you can actually manage your landscape accordingly and plant accordingly so the baltimore checker spot butterfly for instance if i wanted to support that one it is in decline in much of its range and its range actually its native range does reach um up to southern new england not as much into main but i think with climate change we could start expanding its range and including also bringing its numbers back up where it is so um i think we could you know plant more of its host plant which is the white turtle head that's one of its main host plants at least um and it leaves its or it lays its eggs on the undersides of the white turtle head in spring um when its eggs hatch the larvae come out and they go through different instar stages like any other insect um they um that means that as they get bigger they shed their skin and um take on kind of a slightly different look with each instar stage but they stay together they're a little different from a lot of caterpillars they're gregarious so they form a protective webbing around them um to protect protect them from birds and other predators and they use this webbing actually to make little bridges from one branch to another when they've eaten all from one they can go to a fresh branch um then they crawl down to the leaf litter they actually take two uh years to complete their life cycle so they crawl down to the leaf litter at the end of the growing season and overwinter in the leaf litter as caterpillars leaving them extremely vulnerable to any disturbance in the leaf litter then they crawl up and eat more for the rest of the next growing season and then pupate um into these gorgeous chrysalises starting the cycle over again so what does that mean it means that we need to think about planting more of its host plant in um its native range as well as as um leaving the leaves when possible so that they have a chance to reproduce year after year so um that brings me to the next action step for rewilding which is changing your management regimen and that includes leaving those leaves I know that's a hard thing to for a lot of us to kind of wrap our heads around with different gardens that we might have or different landscapes for instance if you do live in an area with a lot of black top and lawn um it's definitely tricky to figure out where all those leaves do go if you're gonna leave all of them on your garden beds I know that um it can be tricky to you know think about you know the new emergence coming up through them the next year is it gonna smother the lawn is it gonna smother my plantings those are all things that go through a lot of our heads and so to mitigate that we're often mowing and blowing and carrying our leaves off-site rather than keeping this precious resource on site um to add to our garden beds and yes there are often too many leaves so one thing that you can think about is to reduce your lawn like in the earlier action step and that will provide more um planting bed spaces for the leaves to go um or to consolidate your leaves by either composting them in a compost pile or shredding them but shredding them can be detrimental to those pollinators that overwinter in them as well you can also think about cutting back our you know certain standing vegetation but leaving others up um so over the winter I like to make sure that I don't cut back every bit of standing vegetation especially things with with important seed heads that will be forage for birds over the winter or grasses places for birds to find cover in any of my nice structural plants that look nice I'll keep up and then sometimes I actually will cut back in the spring those pithy or hollow stemmed plants like common elder and joe pieweed cone flowers etc flowering raspberry for instance um in order to open up the chambers for some of our native bees to lay their eggs in so those pithy or hollow stemmed plants provide a lot of opportunity for both hibernating bees as well as um young larval larvae of bees for them to lay their eggs in and and for them to overwinter in so um another thing that you can do you know is leave those pollen sticks and branches in the landscape and you can clean up to some degree without cleaning up too much so re or think about reorganizing I guess instead of cleaning up it can be a great creative opportunity to do things like create a beautiful fallen log sculpture in your yard or wood lot or pile up sticks that have fallen instead of you know taking away all the messy sticks and putting them in the compost or burning them or making a leaf column or different debris fence that organizes your materials and helps break down your leaves a little faster eventually some of those leaf fences actually become living fences as the bottom layer breaks down pretty quickly and becomes compost and a lot of native plants in your garden might start to seed into them like the wood poppy in this picture um also there's other ways that you can add wildlife value to your site without doing the gardening things but thinking about other things in your landscape like um having some sort of water feature could be a bubbler or just a bird bath or even a waterfall or taking some storm water infrastructure like in this photo um the gutter that's come off the roof goes into a really um neatly crafted storm water plan where it goes into an old satellite dish and then that tips into another um gutter that goes into a retention pond there's some really fun things that you can do that running water sound is actually going to bring migrating birds in the fall closer to your property and if you have native plants there um to feed them with nuts and berries and insects then you're going to have all the more reason for those birds to stop um on your site also lowering the lights that you have on your site or making sure that their lights are not pointed upwards or having motion sensor lights is important for moths because they move around a lot of the time at night to find their partners to reproduce and they can get kind of caught by lights they're attracted to lights and never finish their what they set out to do other things like having bird boxes and be bat boxes and things like that I know that um bee hotels have become pretty popular lately but I actually unless you're there used as an educational tool for kids I don't think that they're actually always the best because um those do need to be cleaned out pretty frequently so that diseases don't spread um among bee populations so I think if you can leave those pithy or hollow stemmed plants in your garden leave open spots of soil especially sandy soil for certain ground nesting bees and leave logs and things like that for any bees that nest in the hollow chambers of logs in old woodpecker holes and things like that those are all going to be better and more kind of long-term solutions for creating bee habitat next I think we can think about stop stopping fertilizing and using pesticides in our landscapes these two things are not really necessary for beautiful and healthy gardens or plantings and um I'll go over a few reasons why and how you can reduce these things in your landscape first of all I think fertilizers are really I think you know leftover from more traditional ornamental horticulture where you're often um trying to amend the soil to meet your the plant's needs when you plant something from another continent or a lot of veggie gardens need richer soil but a lot of our native plants some native plants need rich soil and some native plants need poor soil some need well drained soil some need high pH some need low pH and so if you can find the plant that's best suited to the conditions that you have the light and the soil conditions then you're going to have a much more sustainable landscape than um having to constantly you know take soil tests and add amendments um to your soil to make it better suited for the plants that you plant um pesticides are also not really necessary for beautiful and healthy gardens um and so I encourage you to all think about stopping these practices because these do become major pollutants and contribute to things like colony collapse um which is something that European honeybees have gone through but a lot of our native bees are actually um you know eating and consuming a lot of the leaves of plants that are treated with pesticides and that's detrimental to them too so this can carry into where you buy your plants from so becoming a wise consumer is important and the things that you need to think about are buying plants that haven't been grown with pesticides if possible and most native nursery I mean sorry most nurseries in general do um actually grow their plants with pesticides these days um and it's a real problem so you can do things like call your local nursery that you want to buy plants from and ask them if they use things like neonicotinoids um and ask them to stop using them or say you know tell them that you're going to go to a different nursery that doesn't use them and the consumers will drive the demand for these organically grown plants just like um we have done for lots of our food organic food products um or you can also grow your own native plants if you grow them from seed even better because those plants will be more genetically have more genetic genetic variation and be better adapted to potential futures like stressors from climate change the drought and flooding and periods of heat um and you'll have they'll be cheaper and you'll have a lot more fun doing this at home how the seed sowing calendar works is that you actually for native seeds you actually sow them in late fall through early winter and so you get to do some gardening when nobody else is out and about in their garden you can do this inside though you can sow them in pots cover them with sand then you put them outside with some screen to protect them from rodents and let them over winter in the spring they should start germinating for most species and then you can grow them on for that growing season then plant them the following fall so it's a really fun way to kind of get out and do your own gardening and reduce the cost of plants um as well because I know that it can be overwhelming to think about how many plants you need to buy to replace your lawn and getting towards the end here um another thing you can think about with rewilding is removing invasive plants and I know this can be an overwhelming thing to do um I think if we can think about it more as a community effort we're going to be better off um so in our public places we can think about getting groups of people together like the rewilding main movement actually it's a separate movement separate rewilding movement from the wild seed project rewilding movement it was started before wild seed projects rewilding movement it's a group that actually hopes to spread awareness and education about um certain skills and things you know different techniques that are nature based and based on a lot of times traditional knowledge or um or you know skills that have been lost so things like basket making and things like that and sometimes they have different kinds of workshops where they remove an invasive species like the asian bittersweet and then do basket making with those stems afterwards because it's a nice flexible um vine and I really like the idea of kind of creating more movements like this as well as you could gather friends if on your property and work on an invasive pullout or at your local school kids love to do stuff like this um it's very empowering to do it with a group of people and see how much you get accomplished and then after you've removed your invasive plants definitely make sure to replant with rugged native plants we have a great plant list on on the wild seed project website um that goes over all the different native plants for different conditions that you might want to replant after removing an invasive because otherwise those invasive plants could come roaring back and so once you've removed an invasive plant that's not the end of it you do have to think about care for that area and tending it for several years afterwards at least and if you plant with native plants that will fill the void um and get that those plants established to kind of battle battle it out with any new sprouts of invasive plants that might be coming back so with all of that being said those are all different kind of actions that you could take on your own or with a group of people but I think it's best if we can join forces with others to um spread the message about rewilding and what we can do to support more life life in our landscapes that can involve putting out a yard sign for you know that might show people why you're not mowing a certain section of your yard or a leave the leaves sign um that explains why you're leaving the leaves that you're not just neglecting your site you're actually doing something intentional and giving people those cues to care um so that it doesn't look just kind of like a wild unintentional landscape you can also with these yard signs really um kind of reach out to people in a non-confrontational way so you might get neighbors or passersby asking you about your yard signs and what you're doing and this could spark some really good conversation rather than kind of you know grumbling at your neighbors next door that they're mowing too much or fertilizing too much or that they should do this or that this allows them to come to you um and ask questions instead and get curious and um you can also do things like use the hashtag pledge to rewild we're trying to encourage people to use a hashtag for their neighborhood too so it might be pledged to rewild portland main for their city or pledge to rewild longfellow square that's where I live um to show that you're actually doing this in a specific area and then you can link up with other people that are doing this somewhere else you can use the next door app um and the next thing that we're working on with at wild seed project is figuring out ways to get people to connect with each other and share their rewilding together so that they can also connect habitat they can both join forces to spread this message but they can think about their neighborhood as maybe a connected wildlife corridor that they're creating so maybe multiple neighbors in a neighborhood are doing this and when you have more native plants it's going to attract more um more pollinators so maybe in an area that's isolated you might have a new native planting um without any other native plants around and you you actually could see um not very many pollinators at first but if you get more and more habitat in your area um then you're going to have a larger area to attract the pollinators and allow them places to migrate through and you can think about educating the wider community around you um so using something like our resources at Wild Tea Project we have a couple of great resources on our website that you can use to educate um the wider community and that might be the Portland Pollinator Vision Plan this was actually a project done by students from the Conway School in Massachusetts and they put together this plan looking at all the different places that they could add while a pollinator habitat in the city of Portland it could be you know public places could be neighborhoods businesses parks um that would be plantable and potentially where you could get landowners to come together and create these corridors um so this is one way to look at it and we really hope to flesh this out over time and start reaching out to um different municipalities to get this message spread even further. Also we have a great resource called the Maine DOT Roadside Guide on our website too so this is something we actually worked with Maine DOT to create a guide for um helping sustain populations of native plants along our roadsides and our median strips and on the edges of the highways and roads throughout Maine and this involves both a different kind of management regimen or mowing regimen for the roadsides not mowing during the growing season and then doing more um seed collection and allowing as much um as many native plants to kind of populate the roadsides as possible while also maybe in removing invasive species in favor of native plant habitat and maybe doing some restorations in certain areas. So this is another resource that we'd love to be spread far and wide and both of these are available on our website for free to look at. So thank you everyone I hope this inspired you to take the Pledge to Rewild and when you do take the pledge it's actually um you're going to get all these free resources it doesn't cost anything to take the pledge to Rewild we just want to inspire people to take action and plant natives in their own yards and so you also while you get something out of this you get free tools and resources and guidance and these 10 action actionable steps and links to articles and all sorts of how-to information you also get to show our collective impact so you get put on a map that shows all the pledge to Rewilders in the U.S. So I hope that you can join us in this movement thank you and I'll I'll leave you when we we do a Q&A after this I'll leave you with some resource slides so I'll go through them kind of slowly so you can take a picture if you need so thank you again and I'm open to Q&A now. Thank you so much Anna that was really awesome so much helpful information and I know I'm going to take the pledge and I look forward to slowly trying to figure out how I will Rewild my space so thank you. I'd love to take any questions for Anna you can put them in the chat um and I can read them to her one question I had Anna I was wondering about the leave your leaves sign I love the idea of that and kind of starting a conversation with your neighbors is that sign something that we can get from the Wild Seed project or where would we find something like that? It sure is it's actually on our website we have a shop page on our website so if you go to the main website wildseedproject.net up in the navigation bar the shop is right up there and you'll see that you can buy native seeds you can buy yard signs and other merch like t-shirts and aprons and hats and things like that but those two yard signs the do not mow native habitat sign and the leave sign are both available on our website and we hope to actually come out with more native sign or native habitat and rewilding signs soon that have other kinds of things written on them or a more general one for rewilding to say that I took the pledge so the look for those coming out soon we'll announce it in our newsletters and on our website and everything but keep an eye out. Awesome we do have one question from the chat can you incorporate vegetables into your native garden? Yeah of course so I gave that kind of rough 70% native plant biomass goal and if we can strive for that in our landscapes I think that's great if you want to do 100% that's awesome but if you feel like you also want to have a vegetable garden or integrate a productive edible and or medicinal or herbal plants into your landscape some native some not I think that's great too I don't think we have to kind of go all or nothing and it's definitely not a purist approach so you know whatever you can do to incorporate natives there are actually a lot of great native edibles so if you do have an interest in that I recommend you also take a look at our our some of our different blogs on our website because we have a couple of them dedicated to native edibles too. Awesome thank you one other question when you stratify seeds to sow in spring can you do this at the beginning of winter and dry them again? Let's see so stratification is the process that keeps the seed it brings the seed from its kind of dormant phase where it's not going to sprout into the sprouting phase that germination phase and it's it's going to be a process that helps break that hard seed coat and allows it to germinate so that means it might be adding moisture and cold to the seed or scraping it down or going through if it goes through the digestive system of a of an animal that's a form of stratification for many different native seeds and each native plant has a different type of stratification that it requires so once you do that you probably don't want to dry out the seed because usually most stratification includes moistening the seed to help break its hard seed coat and once you do that it's already kind of off on that trajectory to germinate so you probably wouldn't want to dry it out after that. All right good to know another question here so someone is wondering if Wild Seed Project is involved with schools in terms of native seeding as classroom projects anything like that? Yes we are we we actually offer we have a program where we offer teachers in schools a couple of free seed packets each year and so we usually send out a call to teachers in one of our newsletters in the fall to let them know that we want to do that. We want to add on to our programming for schools and teachers because we do think reaching out to youth is really essential getting them excited about plants and learning about the life cycles of plants and their pollinators is wonderful so we have a couple of different projects that it we're working on but we haven't finished any of those yet so look out in the next year or two for different local Portland schools that we'll be working with. Also we do have a really nice resource on our website for it's a it's a plant list for people who want to think about native plants that would work really well for schoolyards so definitely check that out if you're interested in planting some native plants in a schoolyard because there's some plants that are just great plants for kids that are kind of more whimsical or edible or medicinal and would work well in a schoolyard. Awesome that's great to know that you're involved in schools and I love the idea of planting in schoolyards that's awesome. Patricia says that I actually bought some seeds from the wild seed project last fall and started them in pots as suggested but I left them out too long and ended up with a mess of roots to disentangle. When is the best time to transplant them and would you pot them on or move them directly to the garden? We get that question a lot that's a good one and I don't think you waited too long I think you could plant that whole pot in the ground just as a big mass of little seedlings and that's okay too actually that's one of the methods we suggest and you could do that in the coming spring I think right now it might be a little bit late for planting because when you plant you want to allow though fall is a good time to plant I'd say that's more like the end of August through September and then maybe early October but fall can be a little you can get a little late if you're not giving that plant enough time for its roots to start anchoring into the ground and keeping the plant from heaving over the winter with the freeze and thaw so that's something to consider you could plant it next spring or next fall and if you want to learn more tips and tricks or just get some questions you know questions answered about your property or your plantings feel free to become a member and then you get access to these monthly Q&A sessions that our founder Heather McCargo and I lead and we answer people's questions for a whole hour over Zoom so it's a really great way to you know learn from other people's question and answer and then hear your own answered with the group of people on the Zoom call. Oh that's awesome I'm sure that's super helpful that sounds great yeah I apologize for the drilling that's happening outside of my house it's really loud but oh no problem you can barely hear it are there any other questions for Anna one last question I had you mentioned a lot of removing invasive plants do you have any tips or tricks on identifying what is invasive and what might we want to keep yeah I think invasives are are most of the invasives are really easy to identify compared to a lot of other plants and that's because they're ubiquitous in the landscape they're everywhere so what I would do is when you're when you're in doubt about a plant that's coming up in your on your site let it come up and maybe go to flower and when a plant's in flower that's usually most of our resource guides and our field guides are geared to identifying plants when they're in flower that's a real important tool in identification and you can you can look at things like there's some field guides that I really like that are handheld that you can take with you like Peterson's field guide I also really like wildflowers of New England by Ted Elliman that has photos of our native plants and naturalized and invasive plants I also like Nukem's wildflower guide that's one of my absolute favorites for apps I think iNaturalist is the is the best there's also things like flower checker but unfortunately those use algorithms of photos so you could have some wrong answers from something like flower checker or picture this because it's not going through the real process of elimination with identifying your plants I also really like Go Botany that's an online key and that's that they have a simple key that's made for beginners as well and then if you look at let's see the main natural resources council website that will have lots of information on main invasive plants and it'll have photos and identification guides and a little bit of information on how to remove them as well so that's a nice thing to do if you if you think you might have an invasive plant it'll it'll show you you know the top invasive plants to look for awesome thank you that's helpful and I've seen the apps on phones and stuff so i'll check those out and the guidebooks thanks so much we have someone wondering if they could be added to the email list so what would be the easiest way to be added to the wild seeds email list yeah so if you want to be on our newsletter list you can go to our website and you'll if it's the first time visiting the website you should get a pop-up that asks you if you want to join the newsletter and just follow the prompts otherwise you can go to the bottom of the page and there's a little button for that there too great thank you all right any other questions for Anna all right well with that i'm just going to share my screen one more time what's that there i stopped sharing oh thank you all right well i just wanted to thank everyone so much for joining us today and a special thank you to Anna for sharing so much knowledge and awesome action steps and things we can do at home to better our environment thank you Anna it's been really been a pleasure to have you um and i will send everyone the recording of this presentation and also some follow-up steps and links that Anna has sent me so that you can get more involved and as far as sierra club we invite you to follow us on social media to stay updated on our work you can also subscribe to our newsletter there and then before we take off i just want to invite everyone to our next community conversation which is next tuesday october 19th at noon so a cross-sector collaboration is working together to understand the ecological benefits and community benefits of oyster reef restoration specifically to phippsburg main so i hope you join us we can learn about oyster restoration and the collaborative community-based approach to addressing the rapid changing coast that we have here in main and i'll actually put a link in the chat where you can register to that and i hope to see you there and thank you so much again Anna it's been awesome learning about all of this thank you everyone thanks for having me all right have a good rest of your day everybody thank you bye


My manager doesn't like me. It's a horrible feeling to have. Having at least a reasonable relationship with your manager is so important for so many things. Firstly, your happiness at work. Secondly, what work and projects you get involved with. Third, your career development. Fourth, your promotion and bonus prospects to name a few.  We're covering there is a lot you can do to quickly and practically change how much your boss likes you. As harsh as it sounds, don't expect your manager to change. Work on what you can do to change how you view and approach this important relationship. Throughout this video I'm sharing practical tips that really do influence how much a manager likes you. I've used each of these for decades with a massive range of managers and they do work. My name is Jess Coles and I've had a 25 year management career in corporate and household names through to SMEs and I've had several challenging managers with whom I had to build a professional relationship. Keep trying different approaches and don't give up and 95% of the time you will get there. I get a good working relationship with your manager and if you're new to this channel enhance.training shares, business and people management expertise to help you improve your performance and that of your team and business. And if you like this video please give it a thumbs up and subscribe. First let's go through 10 of the more common signs giving you a reason to think my manager doesn't like me. These include firstly you don't get any feedback, secondly you can't get your manager's time, thirdly you're being micromanaged and are shown very little trust by your boss, fourth you're left out of important meetings or important information is not shared with you, fifth you only get negative comments or criticism from your manager, sixth you are treated differently from others in the team, seventh your overlook for interesting projects or opportunities to build your skills, eighth your manager doesn't want to get to know you or doesn't appear to be interested in you on a personal level, ninth your manager doesn't appear to be interested in your career development and tenth you get low bonuses or are not considered for promotion. You may be working for a difficult manager or even worse a toxic manager in which case your colleagues would also be experiencing many of these signs. Take a look at our videos on both of these situations for more help. If you're experiencing several or many of the signs we've just been through and these are not being experienced by your colleagues then you are probably right to be thinking my manager doesn't like me. Although it may sound harsh it remains a fact it is your responsibility to improve the relationship with your manager and it would be nice if your manager also worked on improving the relationship but you shouldn't count on this.  Their career might be inconvenienced at worst by a team member not liking them. Because of this big imbalance take ownership of the relationship it is a hundred percent in your best interest to do so. So let's look at what you can proactively and practically do. The first action to take when you're thinking my manager doesn't like me is to build a professional relationship first.  If you don't like or at least appreciate your boss it will show. Most people don't like other people who don't like them. Mentally focus on what your boss does well rather than what they don't. Keep reminding yourself of their positive attributes. Keep a positive attitude towards them and I appreciate this can be really hard to do when you feel your boss doesn't like you. Focus on building a professional relationship first rather than a friendly relationship which will give you confidence and take some of the hurt, annoyance and stress out of the situation. Three good starting points to build a professional relationship with your manager are firstly to ensure that you're doing at least an average job preferably a good job more on this in a sec. Secondly you're displaying a positive attitude and you're focused on helping the team. And third you go out of your way to actually support your manager. If you're not doing at least these then building a professional relationship is going to be hard. Your mindset and attitude are huge factors which impact how you do everything at work. Work at building a positive approach and mindset first and foremost. Your mindset is entirely within your control. And I do appreciate that it's not easy if you're constantly getting the feeling my manager doesn't like me or worse they are being a difficult manager too. Do whatever you can to develop a positive mindset and keep working at displaying this with your manager and with your colleagues it will pay off. Five good signs of a professional relationship include firstly you trust each other and work to support each other and the team. Secondly you respect each other your respective strengths and abilities and what each of you brings to the team. Third both parties are self aware and work to keep the relationship strong and productive. Fourth you have open communication i.e. share information views and opinions anything that will help the other person do their role well. And fifth honesty both parties are honest with each other providing useful feedback ideas and suggestions to improve what the team does. Take the lead with your manager and work on each of these from your side regardless of what your boss does. Keep at it and your manager will find it very hard not to reciprocate with similar behaviours. The second action to take when you're thinking my manager doesn't like me is be good at what you do. Doing the best job you can is a massive part of your manager liking you. The better the job you do the less your manager has to do themselves and the less they have to worry about. It is hard to dislike or be difficult towards a person who is doing a good job and doing it in the right way. Work hard to do the best job you can. Here are 8 actions for you to focus on to do a good job. Firstly make sure the quality of your work is to a good enough standard or better. Secondly pay attention to the details of your work which is a good way to move your output from okay to good. Third meet the deadlines agreed to deliver your work on time. Fourth manage expectations of your manager carefully and keep them informed of where your work is and let them know well in advance of problems or challenges to when you can deliver the work. Fifth find out from your manager exactly what their expectations are of you. You know the tasks and the projects as well as how they should be done i.e. your approach and behaviours. Sixth look out for problems and issues within the team and think through at least one practical solution and then make sure your manager is aware of the issue and your suggested solution. Seventh help your team members to meet their deadlines after of course meeting your own. Eighth ask your manager if you can take some of the tasks they don't like doing away from them. If you're not doing at least a reasonable job you're going to be causing a headache and problems for your manager. If this is you it should not be a surprise you feel my manager doesn't like me. Do the best job you can and work to be good at what you do while supporting your manager and the team around you. The third action to take when you are thinking my manager doesn't like me is to make sure you are not the problem. When you are annoyed frustrated angry worried etc and you have an external reason for those feelings it is really easy to ignore what you might be doing to create or make worse the feeling that my boss doesn't like me. Take an honest look in the mirror think about your actions and behaviours towards and around your manager. Early in my career I had a terrible manager. I didn't know what to do about it and so I did nothing. I didn't communicate with my manager much and I concentrated on doing my job hoping the problem would go away. It didn't and my actions or lack of actions made the situation much worse than it needed to be. Don't make my mistake. A checklist of things to avoid doing include firstly not proactively keeping your manager informed about what you're doing. Secondly doing a bad job you know making mistakes missing deadlines so missing poor quality work etc. Third you complain publicly or privately a lot or only state the negative side of the situation.  Fifth not creating excuses to meet your manager or pop by their desk. You know you can't build a better relationship if you don't meet with them face to face. Sixth having a negative mindset towards your manager or you catch yourself criticising them or talking negatively about them to others. Seventh you only bring up problems with your manager and expect them to provide you with a solution. Eight you don't visibly support your manager achieving their objectives or the team's objectives. Ninth you haven't thought about what you can do to reduce your manager's workload. If any of this list applies to you change your behaviour as quickly as possible. Tackle any of these issues proactively. Look for the positives. Bring solutions with the problems. Compliment your manager and team members for the work well done. There is lots you can do very quickly to change your own actions. Make sure you are not the problem or the reason why your boss doesn't like you. The fourth action to take when you're thinking my manager doesn't like me is to help your manager to success. You might be thinking why do I want to make my manager look good or be more successful when I don't like my manager. Helping your manager be successful and look good in front of their peers or their manager is a great way of getting into their good books. I mean who doesn't like a person who's helping them look good. Find out what success means for your manager. Look up what the team goals are and work out how you can improve the results delivered against target for one or more of these objectives. Ask your manager what their objectives are so you understand these as well as the team objectives. Think about how you can help your manager achieve their objectives. You might be able to do this directly or you might be able to help colleagues deliver so are you doing it indirectly. Thus helping the team and your manager. What problems is the team or your manager facing? How can you help come up with solutions and or help implement those solutions? When you start thinking and asking around there'll be loads of opportunities for you to help. And very important make sure your manager knows how you have been contributing. You know send them an email showcasing what you've achieved. Tell them in your next one-on-one meeting. Marketing your efforts with your manager is important too so they know you have been helping. Helping to support your manager is a must.  This reduces the risk that your manager might be threatened by you and dislikes you as a result. Remember it is very hard to dislike a person that's been helping you be successful. The fifth action to take when you're thinking my manager doesn't like me is to be a problem solver. Bring solutions. Every manager likes a team member that is a problem solver. If you are solving problems there are less problems for the manager to solve. As a manager is nothing worse than an employee always bringing problems without any attempt to think about a solution. This dumps another problem in the manager's lap. Every time you spot a problem spend time working out at least one sensible solution. Then take the problem and the solution to your manager. As a manager this is great. The team member has taken ownership and responsibility to come up with a solution. Whether the proposed solution is the final one used or not doesn't really matter. The manager has one less problem to deal with and they have a team member proactively solving problems. This is brilliant. This approach also gives you practice at solving problems which is great for your own career development. Pay attention to the actual solution decided on by your manager if it's different from the one you proposed. Ask them to take you through their thought process if appropriate so you can learn. To be even more likable organize the implementation of the solution with your team members or implement the solution yourself. This further reduces what the manager needs to do. Be a problem solver and make your manager's life a lot easier. Managers will love you for it and it won't be long before even the toughest most difficult manager starts liking you a lot more. So in summary we have gone through 10 signs your manager may not like you and five really important actions to take to improve that feeling you have of my manager doesn't like me. It does take confidence to start each of these actions. If you're struggling with your confidence please start one action and work on that. Doing this will give you some confidence then add another action and so on. Each of these actions work. I've used each of them for over 20 years on a massive range of personalities and with over 30 different managers they work. Enjoy a better relationship with your manager. If you have any questions please leave them in the comment section below and I'll get back to you. Thanks very much for watching and I look forward to seeing you again soon.


Katharine Coleman had a dream in which three men were kneeling before the Lord as he passed them by. The first man Jesus held. The second man Jesus touched. The third man Jesus passed. What did her dream mean? Did the Lord love the first man more than the others? The last man less than the others? When Miss Coleman asked the Lord for the interpretation, the Lord clarified. The first man was weak. The second man was discouraged. The third man was strong. Of course, this doesn't mean that the Lord abandons us when we are in seasons of spiritual strength. What this means is that the Lord gives more to those who at the time needed. Perhaps you feel distant from the Lord because you don't feel him like you used to. Remember, the stronger you become in faith, the less you rely upon feelings.


Thank you Chris for the kind introduction and thank you all for coming and thanks to the KCA for putting that together this conference So you heard from dr. Yonash about the different therapies that are at the up who for kidney cancer those drugs are approved based on The most common type of kidney cancer, and that's clear cell RCC I can tell you in a word about the non-clear cell histologies in a word. There's really no established Agent we use these drugs that dr. Yonash talked about the different Tyrosine kinase inhibitors or anti-vegeft therapies the mTOR inhibitors, but really We do not consider any of these as a standard of care because there has not been this large face-to-retrile Comparing one of these agents with something else to show that these drugs are really Beneficial so what are these different? histological sub types that we refer to as non-clear cell ryansoccasinoma, so You see the list here Apillary type 1 and type 2 ryansoccasinoma Chromophob there is a rare tumor called collecting duct or Bellini's tumor There is also another even more rare tumor that is Called renal medallary carcinoma that afflicts mostly in the u.s. African-American young patients who have sickle cell trait There is a rare tumor that's called translocation ryansoccasinoma or XP 11.2 That afflicts younger people as well mostly females and when we do not really know what the This disease is we refer to it as unclassified. That's really a reflection of our still You know lack of knowledge about the molecular aspect of this subtype of RCC so we Dump it into an unclassified basket and there are even some more rare tumors such as MTS or Mucinus tubular and spindle cell carcinoma and then some case reports have surfaced with even even rarer tumors now uncle Cytoma is a Benign tumor of the kidney rarely becomes aggressive and metastasizes And for all practical purposes, it's cured patients with this disease with this tumor are cured with surgery now with each one of these tumors Including the clear cell the most common type as well as the non-clear cell. I just listed There is also an added feature that can make the disease even more aggressive I Describe this as you know having a turbo charge on your vehicle makes it even more aggressive So that's the sarcoma to it the differentiation So there is a plethora of genetic alterations Interpining each one of these tumors And as I said, you know the non-clear cell basket of diverse histologies represents about 25% of all kidney cancers Populating type 1 and type 2 and the chromophobes are the most common subtypes with varying prognosis So you heard from dr. Nosh about the prognostic models that have been established And that's basically looking at patients with who have You know different performance status how they function how active they are how a how they're able to perform activities of daily living We look at the time of initial diagnosis of their kidney cancer and when they develop metastatic disease and require initiation of systemic therapy and we look also at laboratory parameters such as you know Hemoglobin, you know anemia whether they're anemic or not and whether they have high calcium in their serum and other laboratory abnormalities now, this is a model that is now frequently used Established by the international metastatic the answer calcium and that a consortium and they looked at these The patients who have the clear cell the most common type of reassurances and those who have the non-clear cell that I showed you earlier in the slide and what they found was Patients who have a non-clear cell rears or casinoma subtype are usually younger have more anemia and have usually a higher neutrophil count that's a form of a white blood cell count and There is this, you know their outcome is Worse and in that study again, this is a retrospective review of a large database the median survival of patients with Non-clear cell histology was about one year compared to about two years for patients with clear cell histology Now there have been some retrospective studies, you know several years ago now Published looking at the role of TKI is what you heard earlier These tyrosine cameos inhibitors in retrospective studies What's their role? What's the outcome of patients with these non-clear cell histologies when they were treated with these TKI's and as you see here in the slide the bottom line is that the Median progression free survival that basically Reflects the time from initiation of the drug until the disease progresses or unfortunately the patient dies and these Median progression free survival are short. They're shorter compared to what we observe In patients with the most common type of rensococcinoma the clear cell time Also, when you look at the response rate That is also a definition how much did the tumor shrink when except for chromophob, which in one study The retrospective study a small number of patients was associated with a 25% response rate When you look at the other the response rates are really low much lower than what we see in patients with clear cell RCC Now what about some of these earlier trials with synitinib in non-clear cell RCCs? Here is a list of four of them The largest was a study that we conducted here at MD Anderson and published four years ago and The bottom line here except for the Korean study and by Lee et al. here that yielded a response rate of 36 percent and 26 percent in the papillary histology the other trials show that the response rate in these tumors is Really low and again when you look at that median PFS It is about six months or less and when you look at survival in these two studies up here This one conducted at Memorial Sloan Kettering and this was a French study when you look at The survival it's it's really disappointing that the median survival of patients with metastatic non-clear cell RCC Treated with synitinib which is certainly a standard of care in the clear cell histology and one of the Earlier drugs if they approve more than ten years ago the survival of these patients is disappointing in that it is About 18 months or so So what about looking at mTOR you heard about the phase three trial of TEMS Rolomus versus interferon This is the only phase three trial that recruited patients with non-clear cell histologies About 20% of the patients who were enrolled on this trial had the non-clear cell histologies again the Median OS When you compare non-clear cell versus clear cell was comparable with TEMS Rolomus again better than what you see what you see with Interferon alpha which was used as comparator the French conducted a phase two trial with Everimus in pepillary RCC called the raptor trial and their primary endpoint of that trial was progression free survival rate at six months And here the data is median duration of exposure meaning use of everolimus in study was less than five months By investigated the patient the physicians treating those patients median progression free survival was about seven months And about half the patients a little over half had progression for word progression free at six months So really nothing really to write home about or be excited about What about another drug? This is a another tyrosine kinase inhibitor, but that blocks eGFR Epidermal growth factor receptor a drug that's approved for lung cancer adenocarcinoma of the lung. This was a small study conducted many years ago by the Southwest oncology group and in a 45 Patient trial the seven of those were in the miserable The response rate was 11% The Estimated six months overall survival was 87% and the estimated median overall survival was 27 months again the FDA did not approve this agent even though there was some promising activity in Pepillary RCC because of lack of a large Properly powered phase three trial The you heard from Dr. Raj about the Cabo Zantanib. This is actually a drug that was tested in Pepillary RCC Before Cabo Zantanib. It's a cousin to Cabo Zantanib. It is a drug that was manufactured by Exalixus the maker of Cabo Zantanib and it was tested in patients with Pepillary RCC Using two different dosing schemas either daily dosing or Intermittently five days every two weeks and the primary endpoints were objective response rate and the secondary endpoints Progressive free survival and overall survival 74 patients were recruited to the study and here are the the two cohorts with What the one with intermittent dosing and one with the daily dosing and then here when you look at overall response rate 13.5 percent and when you look at the median PFS about nine months interesting, but then you look at the biomarker results of this study, which is the most interesting part of the trial about 50% of the patients so five out of ten patients who had germline mutation of med that basically they have the inherited syndrome of Pepillary type 1 RCC and the Response rate was 50% when you look at the others patients who had the somatic mutation that is they did not inherited the germline mutation, but their tumor showed mutation in that Met oncogene one responded out of Five and that's basically 20% and then there were again low responses So the take-home message from this trial was yes There was some activity, but it appeared that the patients that benefited the most from this C-met inhibitor were patients who had the inherited Pepillary type 1 syndrome But the trial was not developed any further and we still are looking for a an agent that is Effective in Pepillary RCC. This is a sequel trial to the one I showed you earlier that we published four years ago and this trial we published just last year. This was a Collaborative study that we led here at MD Anderson Comparing two agents or FD approval for this cohort or this diverse group of non-clean cell histologies So we dubbed this trial the ESPN trial. It's everolimus Versus synitinib prospective evaluation in metastatic non-clean cell RCC so the Goal of the strategy the study was to compare synitinib and everolimus in these patients with the different histologies and We looked at for primary end point progression free survival in the first line. We did allow crossover at the time of Progressive disease with the first line agent Secondary end points were survival objective response rate PFS or progressive survival in the second line objective response rate in the second line But the main goal of this trial the main objective In addition to the clinical parameters We just our end points we talked about was to really understand the biology of these different histological and to create a biorepository Where we collect tissue from nephrectomy and biopsies on these patients as well as blood to really understand more About these diverse histological sub tabs of RCC. So here was the treat. Here's the treatment schema patients who with non-clean cell histologies Were randomized one-to-one to receive either everolimus or synitinib and at crossover take the other agent if they wish to do So and their condition permitted The trial what we was stopped earlier than the target goal of 108 patients because the data safety monitoring body looked at the results and at preliminary analysis found that Patients who were treated with synitinib had actually better Outcome than patients who were treated with everolimus So this was counterintuitive because we were thinking that for patients with non-clean cell histologies. They would be benefited more by The mTOR inhibitor everolimus based on that phase three trial that I showed you the term serolimus versus interferon trial so we Stopped the trial after 73 patients were in were recruited and Here are the results about a three quarters of the patients had prior nephrectomy About two-thirds had crossed over to the other agent and unfortunately over 50 percent of the patient had died But when you look at the responses Here you see that the response rate is very low less than 10 percent So less than 10 percent of patients receiving synitinib or everolimus in first line Responded had significant shrinkage of their tumors that we arbitrarily take a car off at 30 percent So that's really disappointing compared to what we normally expect to see with these agents Especially synitinib for example in patients with clear cell RCC So again, the results were disappointing in the first line and in the second line Interesting and you have the asterix there the patients who benefited the most from either drug Were patients with chromophob RCC, which is a rare Tumor that about five percent of patients with RCC will have And here are, you know, you saw similar data. I don't want to dwell on it The red curve represents base treated with synitinib the green curve patients Treated with everolimus and of course the curve that's on top looks like it's better But this was not statistically statistically significant so our Hypothesis initially that patients with these rare non-cluosal histologies will be best served best treated with better outcome When they would when they receive everolimus did not pan out so summary of that trial was Both agents everolimus and synitinib yielded modest efficacy in place with metastatic non-cluosal RCC There were trends for longer progression free survival in first line and longer overall survival with synitinib but this came at a cost of higher rates of Toxicity with synitinib compared to everolimus Chromophob RCC showed higher objective response rate longer progression free survival and longer overall survival compared with the other non-cluosal RCC sub types the Duke Center led a similar study in 19 at 19 sites in three different continents In three different countries basically U.S. Canada and the UK and they had Identical design of randomization That's a random allocation or assignment of therapy to everolimus or synitinib, but there were some differences in the eligibility criteria They did not include patients who had Sarcoma toyed clear cell who had sarcoma toyed De-differentiation or features and they did not allow as we did in our trial to allow pace to cross over After daily they have progressed disease with the first line but their Results were very similar again. You see here the couple of my curves You know the patients treated with synitinib are represented on the blue curve here and the everolimus on the red curve and pace is treated with synitinib had a better progression free survival longer Than pace to treat with everolimus Same thing with overall survival results again Consistent with what we saw in our trial So somebody for the aspen trial led by duke synitinib yielded a significantly longer progression free survival than everolimus And the benefit with synitinib was noted in patients with good and intermediate risk disease Peppillary and the unclassified subtypes. However, everolimus did Have good results in pace with poor risk disease Which is not surprising considering that mTOR inhibitors especially The study with them so all of us showed improvement in poor risk disease And then the chroma hope subtype as already alluded to now We are doing extensive molecular analysis on these tumor subtypes and it appears that patients with chromophobic histologies have a Higher than what is expected of TSC one mutation a mutation in the gene That's that's called tuberous sclerosis complex gene one and that makes these tumors chromophobic Sensitive to blockade by the mTOR co1 times Ramos or everolimus But both these agents result in short progressive survival times and low response rates and that basically Underline the importance of continuing research to find more effective therapies for these patients with non-cliosal histologies But this has to be based on a better understanding of the biology of these Tumor tops. Now, what about some of the ongoing clinical trials for pepillary RCC here? I list several for you This is a trial finished by swag looking at a semit inhibitor here with Erlotinib and the trial was negative In a couple interesting trials Conducted being conducted right now at the at the NCI This agent van detenib plus metformin and then be versus a map plus a lot of it in the Heritory Lyoma riansoccasinoma type. This is that those are the patients who have the inherited syndrome that leads to Development of a very aggressive popular type to RCC But this trial is also for patients who don't have the inherited syndrome They have sporadic popular RCC there have been some interesting results with this combination and I think this seems to be something that we need to validate and Moving forward conduct a larger trial to really see if this would be a standard of care in the future for patients with pepillary RCC An interesting trial that that was led or sponsored by AstraZeneca and was conducted in multiple sites here and in Europe Used a pure semit inhibitor for patients with pepillary RCC. This was a single-arm study of a 90 patient trial We await the results of this that a lot of tissue based Essays looking at the semit alteration and the impact of this agent. It's a pure semit inhibitor To see if we can identify a subgroup of patients with pepillary RCC that benefit the most from semit blockade What about ongoing clinical trials in not just pepillary but the non-clear cell in general and Here are some of these trials. This is being conducted at Memorial Combining the Vasusimab the anti-VAGF plus everolimus The core and there is if a Korean study as well as a study at Mayo Looking at Pesopony in this diverse Histological group and I think you know here. I'd like to pause and and emphasize a couple important Studies that we are conducting In patients with original medallion carcinoma. I mentioned to you earlier that this is a rare tumor. That's devastating unfortunately that afflicts Young people with sickle cell trait in the U.S. These are African American But we have seen some patients are actually Caucasian who have sickle cell trait who also can develop this devastating disease So until recently there was never a trial for these rare tumors and for in particular Carcinoma. So now we have two trials at MD Anderson one using a an easy H2 inhibitor This is the name of the drug. It's from a company Epizyme and we are conducting this trial in patients with metastatic rheumatoid carcinoma and we have seen already some interesting some promising Results two of the six patients. We have enrolled have actually responded to this agent So there is hope that hopefully as we continue developing this drug as we treat more patients that we will see we will see consistent result with activity of this agent in Patients with their mother carcinoma, but we know that from previous experience that there is no one drug That's gonna cure kidney cancer So we are working to combine an agent such as taste metastatic the easy H2 inhibitor with immune therapy So this is another trial that we have at MD Anderson here that we are conducting in RMC patients Using a PD1 antibody this agent from Merck in patients with RMC and there are some other Drugs that we have set our sight on to try to test in this disease So the last two three slides. I want to just tell you how I treat my patients with non-creasile RCC So for chromophobic RCC Those patients have usually a more indolent course They do live longer even without treatment But obviously the disease is not curable When it is in the metastatic setting but any VHF RTKI as you know the experience with synitinib and Pazopanib have Led us to believe that there is some activity with the VHF RTKI But these are patients as I said because of the TSC1 Mutation these are patients who are most likely Will respond to an mTOR inhibitor such as everolimus. I mentioned about RMC How would you how we treat patients with RMC? chemotherapy has been the mainstay and this is the same chemotherapy we we use for to treat patients with bladder cancer Some of the old cytotoxic agents have helped some patients But unfortunately the vast vast majority of these patients will have them progressive disease because they develop resistance and We know that chemotherapy is not a corrective therapy for these patients So a circum what about sarcoma toad this is a very aggressive disease And it can occur with any of these sub types How our approach to treat those patients have been to use a combination of cytotoxic chemotherapy plus tyrosine kinase inhibitors But this is a situation and opportunity where we could use an immune checkpoint inhibitor In this disease and and this is based on some observations in patients treated with these immune checkpoint inhibitors particularly the PD1 inhibitors where we've seen patients who have sarcoma toad The differentiation differentiation and more than 90% of their tumors respond dramatically. So there is hope that Immune checkpoint inhibitors will will hopefully once for all change the outcome of this dismal disease for all other Sub types it's clean clinical trials clinical trials and clinical trials. So my conclusions There is no established standard of care for patients with monthly cell RCC as I mentioned at the outset The anti-veg FTK is are less effective in monthly cell RCC than clear cell RCC Temtheromas which is a standard of care for poor risk disease is a poor standard of care for patients with non-clear cell RCC There may be a role for CMAT inhibitors in patients with germline mutation of CMAT in papillary RCC The role of cytroductive nephrectomy as Dr. Karam earlier alluded to is not Established is not defined yet for non-clear cell as it has been in patients with clear cell All patients with metastatic non-clear cell RCC should be referred in my opinion for enrollment on clinical trials There are data now that are available from the TCGA To develop rational targeted therapies based on relevant targets in chromophobic and papillary RCC But it's only through transformative biology driven trials that we can hope to Make a dent in this disease and improve clinical outcome trials with immune checkpoint inhibitors are planned And I thank you very much


Hello, this is Nick from Laptop Media, and today we will show you how to open the Acer Nitro 16, AN-1641. To gain access to the internals, you have to unscrew 11 Phillips head screws. You can easily pop up the bottom panel by carefully lifting it, while holding firmly the two plastic exhausts on the back. Please remember, it would be of great help to us if you just hit the like button and subscribe to our channel. That would motivate us to make even more and better videos for you. The battery is a 90.61 watt hour model. To remove it, you have to detach the connector from the motherboard. The battery isn't fixed to the chassis with screws. There is a dedicated socket for it with soft padding on the inside of the bottom plate that keeps the battery in place. The capacity lasts for 12 hours and 30 minutes of web browsing or 11 hours and 7 minutes of video playback. To achieve that, you have to apply the balanced preset in the Windows power and battery menu and select the balanced mode in the Acer Nitro Sense app. For memory upgrades, you get two sow dims for up to 32GB of DDR5, 5600 MHz RAM in dual channel mode. The memory stick is additionally cooled by a dedicated thermal pad. Storage wise, there are two M.2 slots for 2280 Gen4 SSDs. The cooling system looks massive with its two fans and a pair of heat pipes, shared between the CPU and the GPU. There are two additional ones for the video card and another pipe for the CPU. We can also see four heat sinks and a duo of big and thick metal plates.