Bees knees

I just finished eating a delicious plum that I bought from our local fruit stand (a co-op outfit). It was incredibly sweet, and probably nutritious. It reminded me of the day I bought it, when I saw a halved water melon on the table which was generously feeding about six or seven bees, arranged in a neat circle, as if the bees were having a meeting.

There was a time, when I was a mere lad, that I might have shooshed the bees away from the melon, or at least resented them for alighting on a melon meant for humans.


Not this time. I was glad to see them there. I have since learned that bees are such an important part of our food system that if they go extinct, so do we. We depend so much on their pollinating behavior.

It brought to mind the diseases that are threatening bees, though that isn't as dire as it appeared to be a couple of years ago. But I worry sometimes about the genetic engineering going on these days. They have potatoes that produce their own bt, an organic pesticide used by organic farmers. They produced corn a few years ago that unexpectedly proved deadly to passing monarch butterflies. Sure, they're a little more careful after that wake up call, but when you mess with DNA and such, trying to improve the plant, sometimes you get good results and sometimes you get surprises. They should be especially careful about trying to develop plants that are toxic to insects, seems to me, since insects are also our friends.

I read a book recently (The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan) that compares our current obsession with the Russet Burbank potato - the one that we like to bake and make long pretty french fries from - with the potatoes grown in Ireland in the 1800's. It was the Lumper, a nice potato that they reproduced solely by cutting the pieces and putting them in the ground, thus guaranteeing the same potato, genetically speaking, as all the years before. Meanwhile, a fungus evolved called the Phytophthora infestans which the potato had no resistance to. And since the good people of Ireland were only growing the one kind of potato, the result was a famine. No variety in the gene pool, you see.

I probably shouldn't worry so much, since there's not much I can do about it, and also since these things rarely go as predicted anyway. But I sure appreciated those bees, and I didn't mind at all that they were having their board meeting on that melon.

Of course, it wasn't my melon.

My little yard and its friends

Oh, the joys of Midland.

One of the joys of living here in Midland is that I put a pond and stream in my backyard. Each day we have squirrels, pigeons, blue jays and other of God's creatures visiting us for a drink at harB's friendly oasis. There are other visitors - we have seen yellow tanagers, hummers, and once we had a hawk land for a drink briefly. He didn't leave a tip, but then hawks are known to be predators, and predators are by nature selfish.

Today we had about seven grackles. GA calls them Wal-Mart™ birds, because they like to hang around parking lots and feed on dropped food. You've seen these scavengers - they're not afraid of people or cars, and they stay just out of reach, hopping around looking for pizza crumbs. They're large and black, and they have an annoying "song," which I guess could be compared to heavy metal or something. Grackles are not my favored birds, because they poop on the bridge that spans the stream, and when they wash, they get oil in the water which clogs the filter. But birds are birds, and you can't be selective about who visits your water feature. That's nature. But at least they don't hang around long; they just come for a quick drink and a bath, and then go back to America's store.

Outside the fence is a large bed of harvester ants, sometimes known as Texas Red Ants. I leave them alone, because Midland is on the edge of fire ant territory, and the two species are battling for the turf. You can easily see a harvester ant bed, while a fire ant bed can sneak up on you when you're pulling weeds, and besides, fire ants hurt more and they're considerably more aggressive, so I favor the harvester ant any day. But the clincher is that the harvester ant is the only food source for the Texas horned lizard (or the "horny toad," to use the technical term) - when the harvester ants are driven out, the lizard disappears. They are already completely gone in the more rainy climates, such as Wichita county where I grew up. They used to be as common as tax increases in a non-election year.

I'm pretty much "green" and organic, but I make two exceptions: I will use fire ant bait, albeit sparingly, and I will use Roundup™ to control weeds. I'm told that Roundup goes inert when it hits the ground, and doesn't affect the soil, which is important to me. I feel bad about the fire ant bait, but you have to do what you have to do.