every day is a good day
It’s a time of firsts. Two nights ago we heard the frogs for the first time this year. From now until they tire of love-making in mid June, the night air will fill with the hum and crescendo with their love songs.
The first tulip leaves have popped out of the ground, and today, in the cool, misty spring air, the first daffodils are unfolding their beauty.
The rhubarb are pushing out of the ground. Their wrinkled, leaf embryos look hot to the touch, but are as cold as the ground. Their new leaves and bulbs are so red, you think they would bleed if you cut into them. I’ve never met a rhubarb, a person with the name Rhubarb that is. I’ve met a Daisy, a Violet, a Daphne, even someone called Oak, but no one called Rhubarb, unless Barb counts.
Why is that? Rhubarbs have admirable qualities. They are among the first to stir in the spring, the first vegetable you can harvest in northern climates, and they produce well into summer. They are strong, sturdy, look magnificent when their expansive leaves unfurl. You could say someone is as trustworthy as a rhubarb, as faithful as one, as productive as one, as sweet as one, and on and on. So all you expectant parents out there, you have my permission to name your child, Rhubarb. And if you do, introduce me to them someday so I can say, “I’ve met a Rhubarb!”
Pink is a dominant color these days. The blushing flowers seem embarrassed to have opened too soon. It’s too cool yet for bees to come flirting, and so the blossoms hover delicately, waiting and waiting for love to come their way.
Blooming witch-hazel mark the end of winter and the beginning of spring. These beguiling flowers remind me of colorful spiders. A few days after they open, their spicy fragrance makes you close your eyes and have pleasant dreams.
The “witch” in witch-hazel has nothing to do with the spell these flowers cast. It comes from the Old English “wice” which means that the plants are pliable.
The young chicks are ever so curious. I’m watching them eat. They are watching me, wondering what I am. Humans and dogs often tilt their heads when they are trying to figure out something. Chickens turn their head, first looking at you with one eye, and then the other.
On Tuesday I attended a webinar on Providing Habitat for Wild Bees on Organic Farms put on by eOrganic on extension.org. They are a great resource for learning about all sorts of organic farming practices. Recently they had a webinar on managing striped cucumber beetles in organic cucurbits, and another on the management of spotted wing drosophila. Such fun and exciting topics. They also have a handy YouTube Channel with videos of many of their webinars.
With this week’s snow melting quickly, I dream of warmer days when bees by the thousands fill the spring air with their constant buzzing. The pictures of bees in this post are of bees in my gardens from springs and summers past. According to the presenters of the webinar, the best things you can do to encourage bees is having a large variety of flowers, especially flowers native to your area, in bloom through spring, summer, and fall. And since most bees, more than 70%, nest in the ground, make sure you have plenty of undisturbed ground and rockeries for them to nest.
I was disappointed to learn that identifying bees down to their specific species is difficult. It usually requires examining them under a microscope, which means catching and killing them. For example, according to Joseph S. Wilson & Olivia Messinger Carril in their detailed guide to North American bees, The Bees In Your Backyard, one of the key features for identifying Andreninae bees are the two sutures at the base of their antennae, but you need a microscope to clearly see them. My best hope at identifying the bees I see is to take close-up photos of the bees, not always easy as they don’t like to sit still for me, and examining the photos later.
A nightmarish creature I learned about in The Bees In Your Backyard are Twisted-Wing Insects, Strepsiptera. The females of these insects live in the backs of bees (and other hapless insects), with only a bit of their head exposed. They have no legs, no wings, and no eyes. Males fly about for just a few hours and when they spot a bee with a Strepsiptera female head sticking out of its body, they will mate with it by stabbing through the back of it’s head and injecting semen into her body. The semen flows through her body, eventually finds her ovaries, and fertilizes her eggs. The eggs hatch and survive by eating their mother. After they gobble her up, the tiny grubs emerge from the bee, and look for a new bee or insect to attack.
Strepsiptera are a good reason not to be religious. I don’t think you want to count on the mercy of a diety who conjures up such frightening creatures.
We woke up yesterday to a soft, downy, blanket of white covering everything. Is this winter’s last icy breath? The dogs are hoping not. They played for hours in the powdery puff, snow so light and soft it practically floated away.
It’s hard to believe that this white expanse turns into a vegetable paradise starting in just a month or so. By mid July beans and corn will reach for the sky, potatoes will fatten in the warm earth, tomatoes will bulge with sweet juice, and countless bees will buzz from dawn to dusk. Few things in life bring happiness as sticking your fingers into the soft earth and feeling the swelling of a big potato. It’s hard to believe the earth will one day warm my toes instead of freezing them off.
The daffodil buds, turning yellow, promise that this too will pass. Enjoy the white. Once the sun has melted it for good, I’ll have to wait many a month to see such beauty again.