6 Generations: The Drama of Pollinators

Friday, July 29, 2016

The Drama of Pollinators

When we last lived in Louisiana , I began to pay attention to pollinators, taking photos of what tiny creatures inhabited or visited my mountain mint or aster patch. I really enjoyed stalking bees and butterflies in my garden, and the pollinators were prolific. Here in Arizona, I have noticed fewer pollinators, maybe because I have been paying more attention to planting than to those visiting the plants, as the yard and gardens of the place we bought had been neglected. But soon after we moved into our home--before I got busy with picking up trash, re-purposing what was left behind by the previous owners, and weeding the flower beds and garden area that had been abandoned--I took some photos of pollinators that visited the surviving plants of a gardener two owners back, someone who had lovingly planted daisies, echinacea, daylilies, hollyhocks, roses, Russian sage, lamb's ear, garlic chives.

The following are photos I took last year, not long after we moved into our new home at 7200 feet above sea level near the White Mountains of Arizona. This year I have been too busy cleaning up the yard and garden, experimenting with what will grow in a climate that gets about 10 inches of rain annually (as compared to the annual average of 60 inches of rain in Louisiana, where we lived 35 ft. above sea level) to pay as much attention to the visitors to my plants. Next year, with a new camera and macro lens, perhaps I'll have more time to return to watching the pollinators I have come to love.

It's easy, though, to overlook the tiny creatures that visit flowers, but when the flowers of our vegetables and fruit fail to produce, we start paying attention. We need these little creatures. And so I am hoping that some pollinator will find attractive the flowers of the Armenian cucumber plants that I planted in our Arizona garden this year.