When My Heart Breaks

... I gave tours of my garden with a large map outlining all its contents posted on the patio.  The certified wildlife garden signs were secured on a tall post facing the street with a small overhang that sheltered the laminated map of the front garden, labeling all its contents.

It was also home for an outdoor brochure holder that once held quarterly

handmade newsletters on wildlife gardening, free for the taking.  After a few years, it became home to a colony of ants.  Need I say more.

So, what really matters?

The indifference to our environmental problems seems to be overwhelming where I live.  Maybe I’m a little unfair, but if you say you are worried about the environment, then you had better be someone who has started the change in your own yard or balcony.

Protecting invertebrates and their ecosystems is becoming a passion with me.  Big word for all those small  creatures without a backbone. Without all these creatures;  spiders, worms, snails, lobsters, crabs, and insects like butterflies, fireflies, hover flies, bees, dragonflies, lacewings, ambush bugs, and much more, our environment would most likely collapse.

Much misguided hatred against the unpretty of these creatures of our world.  One would think they were cousins of the sharks.  Powerful feeling isn't it, spraying that bug spray and your problem is solved; but, of course, it isn't in the bigger picture.

Everything has its good side.

Ants:  eat tiny and larger than themselves insects, aerate the soil with their tunnels,  fertilizee the soil with their stored food - 

Cockroaches: are food for many species, but also eat what other organisms leave laying, breaking it down and increasing the amount of nitrogen in the soil.   -

Spiders:  primary controllers of insect, are successful at eating many different types of insects-

Flies:   act as scavengers consuming rotting organic matter to get rid of rubbish and dead animal carrcasses - 

They all have purposes we don't always understand.

And, after you spray...

Those pretty insects you don't mind living with, that are also beneficial to plants and wildlife.  The tiny ones not noticed, the ones hiding, the ones hunting for prey, the ones resting, unseen, and the ones that came by later before the spray had dried... 

Dead.

One could go on, but why bother.

Not many seem to want any individual responsibility in the transition to environmental sustainability, where humans and nature exist in harmony to support their well-being. 

Sad, that many have fallen prey to the hypnotic persuation created by pesticide manufacturers proclaiming these so called pests our enemy.  I was surprised to find one exterminator's ad proclaiming hover flies as pests.  So rediculous, but I imagine many people are not even acquainted with hover flies.

So... spray that pesticide, SPRAY!  Yah!!!  Kill them little buggers, because you refuse to think they are here for any other reason than to torment you.

I'm here with my own little monster, which I was told is a cat; but, you know... I'm beginning to have my doubts.

On to our garden, where we provide equal opportunities for all invertebrates who chose to come by for a visit or stay.  You matter, as our helpers to create a beneficial ecosystem, but if a cockroach tresspasses into this person's house, we usually don't catch them in a glass and release back outside.  Sorry.  (not really)  

I guess both of these are Dryope flaveola, 

even though they look different from each other.

 Echinacea purpurea, Eastern Purple Coneflower

Common Grackle in tall Juniper tree.

Joe Pye Weed leaves unfurling and flower buds being exposed.

Clematis viorna - host to Plebian Schinx Moth

Hibiscus moscheutos, Swamp Rose-mallow flower buds'

Plants are grown in 20" diameter pots on patio.

Clethra alnifolia, Summersweet

Spider Daylily, "Aabachee"

Callicarpa americana, American Beautyberry flowers

Wild Petunia amongst Lyre-Leaf Sage seed heads -

Below it is Euphorbia cyathophora, Wild Poinsettia,

an annual wildflower.

New Jersey Tea (Ceanothus americanus) 

The last one in the garden, planted approximately 30 years ago.  

The ones that received part shade and more water grew huge, 

but eventually the ash tree shaded them too much and they died.

Grey squirrel heading towards the bird feeder pole.

Bombus griseocollis, the brown-belted bumblebee

on Echinacea purpurea, Eastern Purple Coneflower

Shrubby St John's Wort, Hypericum prolificum

Yellow flower amd brown dried flowers ready to fall to the ground, 

leaving the seed pods.

Phlox paniculata ‘Jeana’

Planthopper

Monarda fistulosa, Wild Bergamot

It’s been a long June month filled with heat and humidity.  One rarely goes into the garden in the afternoon these days.  This early evening, as it nears closer to dusk, the heavens rumbled with steady thunder, and rain fell to cool the earth.  A nice way to end the day.

We scheduled an early visit with the manager of the company that works with our trees, to discuss our white ash tree.  There was a time before the Asian emerald ash borer appeared in the United States, when our ash tree supported many insects and their young, and the spiders that moved into the tree canopy to take advantage of this food supply.

It was mesmerizing to shine a flashlight into the ash tree canopy at nighttime, to discover what seemed like thousand of spider webs glistening in the beamed light.  It wasn’t always that way, though.  In the beginning of our time here, we had lots of green inch worms dropping down by silk threads from the canopy like Christmas tree ornaments, after they had chewed their fill of leaves to pupate. 

It was not a balance ecosystem, so I mail ordered thousands of Lacewing larvae, and placed them on all the leaves on the bottom branches of the ash tree.  Several years later, the inch worms on silk threads were few, and those pale green ethereal beauties, Lacewings, were seen often in the garden.

It’s been a beautiful love affair with this ash tree, but the garden around it holds no insect life these days.  Every other year, poison is injected into the trunk to poison the sap to kill the emerald ash borer.  The process has also carried the poison to the leaves, so anything that eats the leaves dies.  As the leaves fall to the ground and compost, the poison is transferred to the soil.

It’s a terrible price to pay for keeping an ash tree alive.  We are having ours removed later this summer at quite a hefty price tag.  I will miss it greatly, but it is time to let it go.  The empty space it will leave, well… I don’t even want to think about it.  No doubt the dogwood will die, and the wild garden beneath it that holds the trilliums and other spring ephemerals will suffer.

The stump cannot be ground, because of all that is in the area, but we have been assured that if we can find a space between the tree roots to plant another type of tree, it should do fine.  Hopefully I can find a space big enough for at least a gallon size.  We shall see next year.  One must not dwell on the negative when it comes to these matters.

I’ve had a rough day, decision-wise, and would like to drift without a thought for the rest of the evening.  I plan to chill with the air conditioner upped a notch until I am freezing, then back down a notch as I climb into bed and bundle up tight.

I'm tired—

Tired as the lazy stones

That are always sitting down,

Most tired as the sky

That stays up all night and day

Whether it's early with spider-vines

Or late with frogs singing.

~Gertrude Louise Cheney, "Drowsyheads"

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