State of the Garden


Spotted in my backyard in the last month (in no particular order): carpenter bees (concentrated wintergreen oil spray works to get them out of the deck; no need to use chemicals), yellow jackets, wasps, mosquitoes, house flies, aphids, sparrows, pigeons, morning doves, starlings, cardinals, robin redbreasts, mocking birds, gnats, earthworms, cabbage butterflies, slugs. I have invited in praying mantis (hoping for the best). I choose to trap the rats and monitor for termites (or I would be seeing them). The ants are late this year.
Teeming with life or full of unwanted pests? It’s all a matter of perspective. What I do know is that the beings whose presence I welcome and enjoy would not be there if I just had a pesticide-laden chunk of concrete.
When I decided to make strawberry towers part of the new sleeping porch garden extension, Niraj Ray of Cultivate the City told me to remove all of the flowers until mid-May to allow the plants to develop leaves large enough to support sizable and sweet berries. He also suggested feeding them every time I water.
It has been a pleasure nurturing the plants and finally watching plump, juicy berries redden in the sun outside my study window.
Might this delicious lesson in the benefits of being patient be a lesson applicable to how and when and why to re-emerge post vaccination, but before the end of the pandemic?
