“Summertime, and the living is easy./ Fish are jumping and the cotton is high.”--George Gershwin
“Summertime, time, time child, the living’s easy./ Fish are jumping and the cotton, Lord, the cotton’s high.”-- Janis Joplin
Yes, summertime. Life feels easier. I have no cotton growing in my garden but sunflowers are growing high and the fish in Ashfield Lake sometimes are jumping. In the garden there are other animals, denizens and visitors; some welcome, some unwanted.
Down in the dirt, the lowly earthworms aerate the soil and fertilize with their castings. Slugs are not a welcome sight. Like slippery snails without shells, slugs munch away on leaves and fruit leaving a slimy trail. I once began to eat a bowl of fresh salad greens when I noticed a slug gliding along the rim of the bowl. In the garden, saucers of beer set on the ground are effective slug traps where bloated bodies will await the gardener in the morning. Crushed seashells or diatomaceous earth composed of tiny sharp-edged particles, circled around plants are said to be too uncomfortable to slug bellies and keeps them away.
One of my favorite small creatures down on the ground is the newt or red eft. This amphibian, in its terrestrial phase, is a beautiful soft orange with brighter orange dots along its sides. When I see one, usually after a rain, it looks to me like a vignette from prehistoric times, a descendent of the dinosaurs trundling along.
Leopard frogs, wood frogs, and toads hide under leaves and are beneficial for eating insects. When disturbed, the frogs take long leaps; the toads short hops. Recent studies suggest that our frog and toad populations are in peril and odd deformations are occurring. I haven’t noticed any abnormalities but sightings are less frequent.
Snakes frighten people. The suddenness of movement, the flickering tongues, the coiling, the legless slithering all freak humans out. I know some whose first instinct is to chop off the snake’s head. I do jump back when a snake appears. My most memorable snake encounter happened while I was pushing a lawnmower while barefoot. I saw a small black racer snake ahead of me and slowed to let it escape, and then felt something on my feet and looked down to see the big mama snake sliding across my toes. I left the mower and ran off. But snakes are good for the garden. When big enough, like mama snake, they can swallow some pesky rodents, such as mice, voles, and shrews; maybe even chipmunks.
Oh the pesky rodents. Let the snakes take them. The moles don’t damage the plants but make the tunnels to get to worms and grubs. The voles and shrews use the tunnels to reach bulbs and plant roots. I’ve seen voles pulling plants down the holes after chewing off the roots. I’ve found nests of baby voles in the masticated roots of Siberian irises. Chipmunks and squirrels are famous for digging up and eating bulbs; tulips and crocuses being their favorites. They also love fruit. One year chipmunks ate every berry in my strawberry patch before they could ripen. Blueberry bushes can be stripped as well, and squirrels climb fruit trees to decimate crops. Bring on the snakes.
“To me nature is… spiders and bugs, and big fish eating little fish, and plants eating plants… it’s like an enormous restaurant.”--Woody Allen
Winged visitors are a delight. Everyone knows bees are instrumental in pollination. Getting close and watching bees collect pollen from flowers is entertaining. Butterflies and dragonflies amaze. The silent fluttering from flower to flower of these luminescent, colorful beings makes you wonder if evolution is enough to explain their beauty. I know the little white cabbage butterfly is responsible for laying its eggs which produce the disgusting green caterpillars that get cooked with the broccoli, but it’s okay by me.
“Hey farmer, farmer put away that DDT now,/ Give me spots on my apples, but leave me the birds and the bees, please.”--Joni Mitchell
One of the greatest joys of summer is being in the garden with some of the most magical beings, the hummingbirds. The hum, the buzz of their wings, and the occasional quiet chirp alert one to a visitation. Planting their favorite flowers -- beebalm, salvia, agastache, cardinal vine -- will ensure their appearance. It is enchanting to watch hummingbirds sipping nectar from the tubular blooms.
The birds of summer are everywhere. Their songs begin before sunrise and serenade all day. I don’t even need to see the birds; their music is enough to soothe. Turkeys don’t have much of a singing voice, but they are welcome. A sure sign of spring is the strutting, fan-tailed tom turkeys. In summer, it is the hens and babies. Two years ago, I was on my knees weeding when outside the fence a turkey and two babies walked up and began feeding a foot away. I watched, amazed; then left to get a camera. All three allowed me to get close, but then were scared by a cat and flew into the trees. Twenty minutes later, the young who were still calling for their mother came down from the trees and started to follow me in the garden. Their mother never returned. For a week, I was adopted by two young turkeys. They roosted in the barn at night and followed me by day. Unfortunately, they both mysteriously died, and I buried their bodies in the compost pile.
The bigger wildlife is mostly in the garden to eat the garden. Woodchucks are the bane of a gardener’s existence. Porcupines are my big problem. They love to eat the leaves of raspberries and pears and break the canes and branches in the process. One year I saw a porcupine in the act. I grabbed a shovel, scooped up the porcupine, dumped it in a wheelbarrow, dumped that into my pickup and drove it far away. The next morning, I repeated the illegal act with its baby.
Another year it was a bear in the raspberries, but this big brute was very careful, picking the berries one by one with its mouth while it sat on its haunches and the sun glistened off its black fur.
I have a domestic companion in the garden as well. Thomas, my big orange cat, follows me down the stone steps, through the garden gate, and back again. When the sun is too hot he takes to the shade under the wheelbarrow.
“The butterfly counts not months but moments and has time enough.”--Rabindranath Tagore
And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.”--Joni Mitchell
July, 2017