After the Rain

rain-soaked bee recovering after a storm

Yesterday afternoon a tremendous thunderstorm swept through the area, with numerous lightening strikes very close to our house and over an inch of rain. After the storm was over, I wandered around  the yard, assessing the damage, staking with bamboo poles eight- and ten-foot tall Maximilian sunflower plants and four-foot zinnia plants which had toppled in the rain and wind. While doing this, I spied a drenched bee clinging to the back of a zinnia flower. At first, I thought it was dead, perhaps killed by large rain drops, but over the next hour, as I checked periodically, it began to groom itself, and finally, after about an hour, it disappeared. I hope it made its way safely back to its hive.

Where do bees go when it rains?, I wondered. I turned to Google for the answer. The best answers I could find were provided by bee keepers in bee and garden forums. Most of the replies suggested that bees remain in or near their hives when it rains, and if they are out and about during a storm, they are in danger of being killed by raindrops that can overwhelm and drown them. What impressed me most about this bee was that as soon as he could move, he immediately went about trying to collect pollen. The instinctual drive to do their work must be very strong in bees.

drenched bee trying to collect pollen

another drenched bee drying out in the mountain mint patch after a storm

I then became interested in seeing the actions of other garden visitors after this rather severe storm, and I noticed that not long after the rain ceased falling and the sun started showing through the clouds, pollinators had returned to the garden. My mountain mint patch continues to provide opportunities for seeing the most creatures going about their business of survival. The tiny anole was out catching bugs. I have yet to catch him in the act, but I saw him smacking his chops as if ruminating over a fine meal.

tiny anole peeking out from under a mountain mint leaf

I also noticed other tiny bugs that I would not have seen had I not been looking more closely for storm effects: a tiny red and black grasshopper- or cricket-like creature, a black shield bug with white markings, another Delta Flower Scarab that flew away before I could take a photo, several wasp-like bees, a very tiny iridescent blue fly, and the rather odd behavior of a large bee that clung for some time on the side of my garden shed. This bee kept sticking out its proboscis, as if it were tasting the side of the shed--or testing its tongue in some way. The repetitive nature of the bee's sticking out its proboscis suggested some kind of damage to me, but then the bee flew away and acted quite normally. But, really, what do I know is normal to a bee?

a tiny cricket-like bug on a mountain mint leaf

extremely tiny iridescent fly on a mountain mint leaf

bee on garden shed, sticking out its proboscis

It's not just the presence of these creatures that I find amazing; I have an artistic and scientific interest as well. I am enthralled with their beauty, with the color and variation of their markings and with how those markings have evolved as protection or warning. For instance, I often see in the mountain mint a fly with bee-like markings. Is this a bee or a fly? Do the colors warn or fool predators?

fly with bee-like orange and black markings

bee-like fly collecting pollen

As the afternoon faded into evening, I had more questions than answers, and I could hear Tom rattling around in the kitchen, preparing a dinner of tomato and cucumber salad, with vegetables fresh from our garden. But as I took one last turn around the garden, I noticed a bee either settling in for the night or resting before a long flight back to its hive or hole. Or maybe it was just trying to avoid me and my camera.

bee under an althea leaf

Then, while walking up the sidewalk to our patio, I noticed something buzzing around a lily bloom. Of course, I leaned closer to inspect and thus saw for the first time another interesting pollinator, a multi-colored fly-like bee or wasp.

fly-like bee or wasp on a lily

fly-like bee or wasp on lily (taken with a flash)

fly-like wasp or bee on lily (taken with a flash)

Until I started paying attention to pollinators, I had little idea of the diversity of creatures so small we barely notice their existence--unless we deliberately pay attention. Too often our attention is caught only after we begin to suffer the consequences of their diminishing presence.

A Bug and its Shadow

the only snapshot I could get of a Monarch butterfly in the backyard yesterday

It's one of those days in southeast Louisiana when just standing still outside causes one to sweat profusely. I know... because sweat poured down my face as I cut the branches from some bamboo poles I planned to use as stakes for some large, flopped-over zinnia plants and an eight-foot tall Maximilian sunflower. Here in mid-afternoon, the temperature is at 92^oF, and the humidity is 73%. Soon Tom will be delivering a truckload of horse manure for me to amend the soil in several new flower beds I'm working on.

Meanwhile, I've been thinking of how important our backyard visitors--such as bees, butterflies, and other pollinators--are to the health of our gardens and to the continuation of life as we know it. These little creatures cast a long shadow. According to Sam Droege, with the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, without bees, "somewhere between 30 percent and 60 percent of our plants would ultimately disappear because they require bees or other kinds of insects, but primarily bees, to do their pollination" (interview with Sam Droege, at "Bees are not Optional," USGS website). As of today, there are "4,500 species [of bees] in North America."

Many bees, especially honeybees, are finally showing up in our garden.  I have seen perhaps 4 or 5 species of bees on the mountain mint at various times of the day. I suspect there is a honeybee colony somewhere near by. The flowers of our herbs (especially the basil) and vegetables (such as the tomatillos and tomatoes) attract pollinators, too. Butterflies home in on the lantana and zinnias. Maybe the word is finally getting around that there is food in the Dugat-Greene garden for the diligent pollinator.

I was especially pleased to get a couple of halfway decent photos of this very tiny wasp-like bee on a portulaca flower. The creature is so tiny that most likely I would have never noticed it if I hadn't been stalking the pollinators in this particular flower and herb bed. The flower is about an inch and a bit in diameter, and from a sight distance of five-and-a-half feet, the bee seems to be just a little speck. The close-up photo below provides a better view of this very tiny bee.

It is amazing to me that the beauty (and food) I take for granted is made possible by the work of such overlooked and underestimated creatures. We are seduced by the beauty of butterflies, not knowing that a tiny Cyrano is there, too, translating all the glory of flowers for the next generation of seed.

The swallowtail butterflies love lantana.

Other creatures hang out in the mountain mint patch as well as bees. A couple of Carolina anoles hide there among the leaves, the tiniest one being just a little over two inches long from nose to tail. 

Some weeks ago I took a photo there of an assassin bug nymph; that nymph is now an adult and can occasionally be seen in the mountain mint patch, scuttling quickly under a leaf at the slightest threat, such as an obtrusive camera lens. After several days of trying to get a photo of him, I was finally successful this morning.

adult assassin bug and its shadow

 

adult assassin bug

Another bug I've tried several times unsuccessfully to photograph is a tiny iridescent fly, one of several that I see among the mountain mint and other herbs. Yesterday I managed to get about three decent snapshots. The one below is the best of them, I think. Doesn't he seem to have a tiny goatee?

a very tiny fly and its shadow on a mountain mint leaf

skipper butterfly on mountain mint

My garden is a source of endless amusement. . . . and hard work.

Beetle and Flower

Every day I check our patch of mountain mint to see if any unusual pollinators are visiting the area. As I have mentioned in previous posts, our first encounter with mountain mint was with a pot of the native plant given to us by our friend and horticultural professor, Mack Thetford, when we were living in Waverly Hall, Georgia. We planted the stuff, which spread quickly. To our amazement, the plants attracted the most diverse pollinators, various colored wasps that we had never encountered before. When we moved back to Georgia (after a three-year sojourn in our home state of Texas) in 2007, I bought a pot of mountain mint from Georgia Perimeter College's Native Plant Botanical Garden and planted it in the back yard of our new home in Decatur, GA. I brought some of that plant to southeast Louisiana, where we live now.

So far, the plant seems to attract bees primarily, though occasionally I will see an unusual spider or an assassin beetle hiding among the foliage. Yesterday, I saw what I first thought was a very large mosquito and then thought must be some kind of crane fly.

may be a crane fly

 I wanted to get another, and perhaps better photo of it, but it disappeared after my first snap.

Tom then came home and noticed a beautiful little beetle on one of the mountain mint plants, and I began taking photos. One of the most interesting details about this beetle is how it used its two hind legs. Sometimes the beetle would lift them high in the air, and as it plunged its head into a tiny flower, I was reminded of an overly refined lady lifting her pinkie as she takes a sip of tea from a china tea cup. Those hind legs also helped steady it as it moved from flower to flower.

Here are a series of photos in which I tried to capture the beautiful coloration of the beetle. To get an idea of the size of the beetle, the entire flower head of the mountain mint, with all its tiny inflorescences, is only about 1/2-inch across. Notice, also, the heart-shaped design on its pronotum. The beetle, I discovered, is a Delta Flower Scarab. It gets its name from that delta-shaped design on its pronotum, a design which on this beetle is more heart-shaped.

Here are some links that might provide more useful information on beetles:

• North American Beetles at www.insectidentification.org

•  "Insects: Introduction to Beetle", at Animal Planet.

 And here is some more information on Delta Flower Scarabs:

• Species Trigonopeltastes delta--Delta Flower Scarab, at bugguide.net

The Midsummer Garden

This little spider was on a zinnia flower in a bouquet I had set out on the patio.

Because we have been traveling back and forth between Louisiana, Georgia, and Texas during the month of June, we have somewhat neglected our gardens. Between trips, I've managed to mow the grass but have not stayed home long enough to enjoy its neat appearance. Each time we returned home, the grass was in need of mowing again. After this last five-day trip, there were waist-high weeds in one of my 8'X8' herb beds (pigweed that had been hiding among the basil). I quickly pulled them and began the process of cleaning up the midsummer garden.

One of the weeds I hate the most, Phyllanthus urinaria, took full advantage of our absence from the gardens. With just a little neglect, this plant can blanket a once well-weeded area. My emotional response to this weed, however, illustrates the complexity of our relationships to plants. Evidently, Phyllanthus urinaria has medicinal uses.  Also known as chamber bitter or gripe weed (the latter being my favorite, as it perfectly captures my attitude toward the plant), this plant "is an important medicinal herb in tropical Asia, where it is used to treat kidney stones, gallstones, liver diseases, and viral infections. Modern clinical studies have found it to be promising in the treatment of various tumors." Online at the U. S. Library of Medicine, one can find a number of research publications suggesting the possible medicinal capabilities of the plant. Nonetheless, I try diligently to eradicate Phyllanthus urinaria from my gardens. Its prolific growth will provide researchers with enough material without my help.

Yesterday I dug some forgotten garlic out of one of my 8'X8' foot raised beds. By the time I thought of doing this, the leaves of the plants had turned brown and disappeared into the soil or on the grass which I had mowed recently, so with my garden-gloved hand, I had to poke deeply into the soil to find the bulbs of garlic. I left some cloves behind for resprouting. In early June, Tom and I harvested the garlic which Tom had planted in the big garden, and we hung the garlic in our garden shed to dry.

immediately after harvest in early June

garlic drying in our garden shed

Yesterday I was happy to see many honeybees buzzing and collecting nectar from our mountain mint. I counted at least twenty bees on the plants. Because there were so few pollinators early in the summer, I was particularly glad to see these bees, though I am disappointed over the lack of diversity among the pollinators. A few swallowtail butterflies and a little skipper or two have shown up briefly to check out the flowering zinnias.

All the basil is in full bloom and setting seed, the tomatillo plants are full of their papery green balloons, and the heirloom tomato plants are heavy with tomatoes. These indeterminate heirlooms ripen slowly, so we plan to can a few pints at a time, as we gather the ripening tomatoes, trying to beat the bugs and birds to the succulent flesh.

I finally decided to pull up all the strawberry plants we had planted in a bed along our patio. Although I hated to compost the plants, we just don't have another garden area ready for planting strawberries. In addition, this particular variety did not deliver the strawberries we had hoped. Quinault strawberries are evidently a popular variety; Tom bought the original plants at a local hardware store, the only variety available there. However, the plants did not produce many berries, and the berries they did produce were few, small and disfigured. As I dug up the plants, however, I noticed that the ground was hard and dry, even though we had added compost to the area when we planted the berries. Previous owners of this house and property parked their vehicles immediately behind this house, near the edge of the patio. The former driveway came in from a paved road to the back of the house where we have created herb and flower beds. We have tried to overcome the consequences of that vehicular traffic by digging deep and adding lots of compost to the garden areas, but I think the patio area needs more work.

And so I have my work cut out for the rest of the week and into next week as I dig up the soil around the aloe veras I have already planted there and add a lot more composted horse manure. Eventually, we will create a raised bed just for strawberries, in an area away from the house. I am thinking of planting verbenas in the area vacated by the strawberries. Those flowers require little care, and I won't care so much that the cats love to bed down in that area among the plants. Also, verbenas remind me of my childhood, especially the purple ones. I remember my mother had one little round bed of  purple verbenas at a rent house we lived in until I was about five years old. My grandmother Margaret Cole Dugat also grew verbenas in her flower beds in Old River, Texas. Purple verbenas and purple-globed amaranths--these are plants I particularly associate with my grandmother--those and red cockscombs.

We have much to do in our midsummer garden.

This variegated ginger plant is thriving where I have transplanted it.

One Tomato, Two Tomato...

We're finally harvesting some ripe tomatoes, but the numbers are disappointing. I wrote earlier that pollinators are curiously absent from our garden this year, and we were hitting the tomato stakes to loosen the pollen so our 56 tomatoes could self-pollinate. A few bees have arrived since but not enough to make a big difference to our garden, so we continue to try imitating the vibrations of wind or of bees by tapping those tomato poles. 

The tomato in the photo is probably from one of our German Johnson plants. We ate two tomatoes last night--our first harvest--sliced and lightly salted. Tom also picked some lemon basil for the marinara sauce I made to serve with pasta. I had to use canned tomatoes and tomato paste for the marinara sauce, as we don't have enough ripened tomatoes for more than a sandwich or two.

But the garden delivers other delights, as the photos below illustrate.

Green spider with prey--This is probably the same spider I photographed previously on the mountain mint.

I think this is an assassin bug. It was trying to hide from me, with its catch, under a leaf. I've turned the photo horizontally.

Purple hyacinth beans and morning glories now cover the bamboo trellis I built.

The blue-black salvia is blooming profusely.

Prison Labor Then and Now

Yesterday I read an article about United States federal prisoners who make parts for Patriot Missiles. These prisoners are

paid $0.23 an hour to start, and can work their way up to a maximum of $1.15 to manufacture electronics that go into the propulsion, guidance, and targeting systems of Lockheed Martin’s (LMT) PAC-3 guided missile, originally made famous in the first Persian Gulf conflict. (source: "Why are Prisoners Building Patriot Missiles?," by Justin Rohrlich, Minyanville, March 7, 2011.)

I had located the article about this prison labor via a link in another recent article in The Atlantic about a Sesame Street feature titled "Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration." This latter article reveals that the feature's main sponsor is BAE Systems , "[t]he British contractor, whose U.S. subsidiary is one of the largest suppliers to the Department of Defense, [and who] depends — like many other defense contractors — on the low-overhead labor of prisoners incarcerated at for-profit facilities." Now, I have no issue with BAE Systems' sponsoring a Sesame Street feature that is directed toward children who have a parent in prison, but the article reminded me of how huge our prison-industrial complex is and how much money corporations such as BAE Systems can make by hiring poorly paid prison labor. For-profit prison corporations have increased exponentially over the last ten years (See Appendix Table 2 in the Bureau of Justice Statistics' report of December 2011). These for-profit prison corporations lobby against reducing penalties in order to keep their prisons full and profitable (See "War on Drugs: How Private Prisons are Using the Drug War to Generate More Inmates"). It doesn't take too great a leap to see how for-profit prison corporations and corporations looking for cheap labor might have some common goals, however unacknowledged and disputed.

Since reading about black prison labor in the South in the early twentieth century, described so thoroughly in Douglas Blackmon's book Slavery by Another Name, I have been particularly interested in this issue of prison labor and its opportunities for corruption.

Under Jim Crow laws in the South, black men could be arrested for a number of reasons, for behavior that today we are appalled (one hopes) was ever considered criminal in this United States. Among these was the law against "vagrancy," a law so "vaguely defin[ed] ... that virtually any freed slave not under protection of a white man could be arrested for the crime" (Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name, p. 53). At the close of the Civil War, Mississippi immediately passed a law requiring African Americans "to enter into labor contracts with white farmers by January 1 of every year or risk arrest." Other states began to pass similar laws.  African Americans in the South were not free to seek employment wherever they wished, whenever they wished. They could not leave employment without permission from their employer. If they were caught without a signed discharge paper, they could be arrested.

And they were arrested. No black man walking alone without employment papers was beyond fear of being arrested, imprisoned, and fined for any number of reasons, fines that enriched local law enforcement and prevented prisoners from being released to freedom--because they were unable to pay the fines. Then local sheriffs began loaning prisoners to mining companies or brick-making companies or turpentine camps, where the living conditions were abysmal, even though on paper companies were required to provide the prisoners with adequate food, clothing, and living quarters. For instance: 

In the first two years that Alabama leased its prisoners, nearly 20 percent of them died. In the following year, mortality rose to 35 percent. In the fourth, nearly 45 percent were killed. (Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name, p. 57).

Many whites profited from black prison labor:  local law enforcement receiving payment for the loans of prisoners, companies that profited hugely by having virtually free labor, and Southern families whose names are still among those of the elite. For example, the success of Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad was due largely to prison labor. In 1907, that company was acquired by U. S. Steel, whose founding chairman, Elbert H. Gary, was "quoted as saying he was outraged when he learned that the mines he acquired in Alabama in 1907 were using slave labor" (Blackmon,  p. 335). Gary thought to abolish such slave labor, but for four more years, deep in the mines of Alabama, slave labor for U. S. Steel continued:

[I]n correspondence between company executives and state officials, U. S. Steel made it clear that despite the chairman's discomfort with the system, it realized the benefits of a captive labor workforce, particularly in thwarting efforts to unionize local labor. It was in no rush to give up the prisoners under its control. (Blackmon, p. 336).

Joel Hurt, the very successful Atlanta businessman, well-known even today for his "signature developments" in Atlanta, such as the High Victorian Inman Park and Druid Hills and the firm he hired to complete these developments, the firm of Frederick Law Olmsted, greatly profited from forced prison labor. Finally,  public outrage over the horrible conditions in Hurt's brick-making business, Chattahoochee Brick, caused the all-white Georgia electorate to abolish the prison labor system in 1908. Other Southern states followed suit. However, across the South, the prison labor system was just too profitable and resisted consistent and continued reform; it was revived by law again or morphed into the chain gang. In 1928, "the fee system and its profit motivation to encourage sheriffs to make as many arrests as possible remained in force" (Blackmon, p. 367). In Alabama, one state prison inspector wrote, "'Our jails are money-making machines,'"(Blackmon, p. 367). The profitability of prison labor and the occasions of prisoners arrested on the most trivial of charges to supply a labor need is clearly supported by records of the times:

Two Mississippi sheriffs reported making between $20,000 and $30,000 each during 1929 in extra compensation for procuring black laborers and selling them to local planters. After a plea for more cotton pickers in August 1932 [the year my father was born], police in Macon, Georgia, scoured the town's streets, arresting sixty black men on "vagrancy" charges and immediately turning them over to a plantation owner named J. H. Stroud. A year later, The New York Times reported a similar roundup in the cotton town of Helena, Arkansas. (Blackmon, p. 377)

It wasn't until the onset of World War II that the federal government made a really concerted effort to abolish the corrupt prison labor system in the South. Efforts had been made in the past, laws instituted, but the recalcitrance of Southern states stymied any real reform. After Pearl Harbor, the federal government was gearing up for mass mobilization of its citizens to the armed forces, and President Roosevelt "instinctively knew the second-class citizenship and violence imposed upon African Americans would be exploited by the enemies of the United States" (Blackmon, p. 377).  From Georgia and Alabama to Texas, the full weight of the federal government descended upon individuals and companies that profited from what the government finally officially called "Involuntary Servitude and Slavery."

It took almost 100 years after the Civil War for African Americans to be free of involuntary servitude, of "slavery by another name," despite the fact that over those years efforts were made again and again to reform the prison labor system. The history of that system makes me wary of our prison labor system today, from which companies such as Lockheed Martin profit. Law enforcement, too, has profited from our prison-industrial complex which has expanded exponentially since the onset of the so-called "War on Drugs."

The War on Drugs introduced new disparities between the arrests of whites and blacks and other minorities. Over the years, studies showed again and again that African Americans and other minorities used crack cocaine more than whites, and whites used powder cocaine more than African Americans.  In the 1980s, "federal penalties for crack were 100 times harsher than those for powder cocaine, with African Americans disproportionately sentenced to much lengthier terms" ("Race and the Drug War, www.drugpolicy.org). As the ACLU reports, "[o]n average, under the 100:1 regime, African Americans served virtually as much time in prison for non-violent drug offenses as whites did for violent offenses." In 2010, the so-called Fairness in Sentencing Act reduced the ratio of crack cocaine penalties versus powder cocaine penalties--18:1. 

Over the years, there was no lack of information concerning these disparities in arrests and incarceration. In 1995, the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the U. S. Department of Justice published a report that found a clear racial disparity in drug arrests:

Annually, the FBI compiles statistics on persons arrested for 'drug abuse violations,' a category consisting both of drug selling and drug possession,. To learn how many arrests there were for drug abuse violations, specially tabulated data were obtained from the FBI covering the three-year period 1991 to 1993. An annual average was then taken based on the three years. Based on these arrest records, blacks constituted an average of 40% of persons arrested nationwide per year for drug abuse violations. [my emphasis] (Patrick A. Langan, Ph.D., "The Racial Disparity in U. S. Drug Arrests," Bureau of Justice Statistics, U. S. Department of Justice, 1 October 1995)

Compare these statistics of drug arrests (40% African Americans) to the statistics of illicit drug use:

To learn how many people admitted to using selected categories of illicit drugs--drugs that, if possessed, potentially subject the person to risk of arrest--any time during the 12-months prior to their interview, specially tabulated national data were obtained from SAMHSA [Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration]. The data consist of annual averages based on three years of surveying households (1991-1993) [including college dormitories and homeless shelters]. These self-reports show that blacks constitute 13% of persons who admitted using (and therefore possessing) illicit drugs each year. [my emphasis] (Langan, "The Racial Disparity in U. S. Drug Arrests, 1995)

Eighteen years after Langan's Bureau of Drug Statistics report on racial disparity in drug arrests, the ACLU has published a report, titled "The War on Marijuana in Black in White," in which it claims that "a Black person is 3.73 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than a white person, even though Blacks and whites use marijuana at similar rates."  In 2009, Human Rights Watch released a report that concluded that "adult African Americans were arrested on drug charges at rates that were 2.8 to 5.5 times as high as those of white adults in every year from 1980 through 2007." In 2011, the U. S. Department of Justice released these statistics f0r 2010: 678 white people were incarcerated for every 100,000 U.S. residents;  4, 347 Blacks were incarcerated for every 100,000 U. S. residents ("Correctional Populations in the United States, 2010.") The Bureau of Justice Statistics "now estimates that one in three black men can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime." 

According to The Sentencing Project, "[m]ore than 60% of the people in prison are now racial and ethnic minorities. For Black males in their thirties, 1 in every 10 is in prison or jail on any given day. These trends have been intensified by the disproportionate impact of the "war on drugs," in which two-thirds of all persons in prison for drug offenses are people of color. ("Racial Disparity," The Sentencing Project)

These disparities in incarceration rates of blacks and other minorities and whites indicate a real lack of justice in our justice system. Michelle Alexander connects the dots for us in her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. This mass incarceration of African Americans is another way of controlling Black Americans, much as the old Jim Crow laws did in the years following the Civil War and into the twentieth century.  People incarcerated for a felony (such as marijuana possession) leave prison with their opportunities and civil rights vastly curtailed:

[I]n major cities wracked by the drug war, as many as 80 percent of young African American men now have criminal records and are thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives. These young men are part of a growing undercaste, permanently locked up and locked out of mainstream society. (Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow, p. 7)

Put together the disparity between arrests of blacks and whites in the Drug War, the rise of the prison population (and particularly the minority population) as a result of the Drug War, the rise of private prisons, and the use of prisoners for labor, and you have a recipe for corruption no less worrisome than prison labor during the Jim Crow years.
--------------------------------


Oh, the victims of federally legalized pot, courtesy of Brian McFadden

See also: "Louisiana Incarcerated: How We Built the World's Prison Capital, at www.nola.com.

The Bees are Back (sort of)

honeybee on tomatillo flower

Tom and I have both noticed an absence of pollinators in our garden this year, so I've been keeping a sharp eye out for bees and butterflies. Today I saw a gulf fritillary on some of my zinnias, but when I went for a closer look, it flew away. We noticed a number of bees today, maybe five or six, steadily gathering pollen from the corn tassels, the blue-black salvia, the tomatillo flowers, and orange California poppies. However, I am still surprised (worried?) that our garden is attracting so few pollinators. The mountain mint continues to be free of bees. That's one of my biggest disappointments, as I had hoped that the mint would attract the diversity of pollinators we had encountered ten years ago when we planted mountain mint in our yard in Harris County, Georgia.

Tom noticed that our tomatoes are beginning to set more fruit. Perhaps our tapping the tomato stakes to loosen the pollen from the flowers is working.

I pulled out of one of my 8'X8' beds lettuce that was going to seed and red poppies that were past their bloom. Then I added composted horse manure to the bed, being careful not to disturb the plants remaining--bird-eye pepper plants (chili pequins), serrano pepper plants, and a zinnia plant or two. After I had worked the compost into the soil, I planted a package of Genovese basil and lettuce leaf basil. Since I usually plant all my basil seeds earlier in the season, I will be especially interested to see these seeds germinate and grow.

The garden plants and flowers along the perimeter of our property (gardenias) are blooming, but few pollinators are visiting. I will continue to monitor the presence of pollinators in our garden.

First red salvia blooms

Green spider on mountain mint leaf

spider and egg sac on blue-black salvia blooms

probably a shield bug (stink bug)

Tom among the tomatoes

green tomato

Garden Visitors

One of the few visitors to my garden this year--is he eating a pollinator?!

As I've described in previous posts, pollinators are sadly missing from our garden this year. I have seen only the occasional bee, and the mountain mint, which attracted such a wonderfully diverse group of pollinators when we grew it ten years ago in Georgia, has abundant flowers but few visitors to those flowers. St. Tammany Parish has a mosquito spraying program; I hear the truck at night sometimes, going up and down the streets in our area, spraying pesticide. I wonder if the mosquito control program is affecting more than mosquitoes. We also had a late freeze in March.

I like to walk around my gardens to see what kinds of pollinators I can observe and photograph. The most I've seen so far this season are a few dragonflies, some unidentified spider-like creatures, a few pesky worms on my tomatoes, and the rare bee. I'll be recording my observations here in the months ahead.

I think this is a harlequin ladybird in its larval state. I discovered it skittering on a spade I had left on the patio.

What's It Worth?

A recent trip to Target with my daughter reminded me of how abysmal the retail shopping experience can be. My daughter had recently moved into another apartment and needed a toilet plunger. We quickly located the bathroom wares: there were two choices of plunger, all plastic or some kind of plastic-y material. None had the substantial wooden handles we had come to expect in a toilet plunger, and one choice of plunger, the laughingly named Evercare Toilet Plunger,  was like a cartoon idea of a plunger: the suction cup was flaccid, almost flat, with no suction strength at all. I laughed out loud when I picked it up, brandishing it like a [useless] weapon. Where was it made? In China. We chose the other one, the Clorox Bright Blue Toilet Plunger, made in Italy of Chinese components--or something like that. I'm still waiting to hear if the thing works.

More and more of the products displayed in our retail stores are crap [pardon the pun] like these plungers. Tom has frequently moaned about his inability to find a workable replacement for the blade in his bow saw. All the hardware stores now carry cheap, thin blades made in China. We have noticed over the years, also, how gardening tools have decreased in workmanship and quality.

Americans have become accustomed to cheap products made by poorly paid workers in Bangladesh or Sri Lanka who operate in appalling conditions. The availability of these products has affected our attitudes toward workmanship: we expect all products to be cheap and readily available, and we give little thought to the people slaving away in factories to provide us with those products. We have forgotten the time and effort that go into making things, especially those things that are hand made.

I have had first experience with this coarsened attitude toward hand made, crafted material. For a few years I have made things to sell at craft festivals, and I have had very different experiences. At some festivals, those attending seem to appreciate the time, effort, and creativity invested in a well-made item, and they are willing to pay appropriately. At other festivals, folks seem to think the hand-made items for sale should be as cheap as the products on the shelves in Walmart.

At one local festival, a man came by my booth to look at some scarves I had crocheted. Every scarf was different, and I had incorporated unique hand-stitched designs with buttons and felted wool in the one which interested him. He didn't purchase anything, but he returned to the booth hours later as we were packing up to leave. He picked up a scarf we had already taken down from display in order to pack it. He held up the scarf which had taken me hours (several days) to make and offered $20 for it. When I politely refused the offer, he threw the scarf down and stormed off angrily. "You could have made a sale," he sneered.

I later sold the scarf for $35-40 at another festival, in another state.

Of course, calculating the price of one's crafts by determining the hours one has spent making them is out of the question. I recently made some coasters out of beer bottle caps we had saved over a couple of years. I crocheted them together in a unique design. Perhaps someone else has come up with this same idea, but I haven't seen it. As the author of Ecclesiastes says, "There is no new thing under the sun"; crafters often come up with similar ideas independently.

Each of these coasters takes me hours to make. I first crochet around each of seven bottle caps, taking 30 minutes or more for each cap; the time depends on whether I am also watching programs on Netflix, which I often do while I am crocheting. I add a crocheted edging on the top of each cap. Then I crochet the bottle caps together. Finally, I glue a cork backing to each separate piece of the coaster. I estimate that it takes five or six hours to make each of these coasters. No one is going to pay me a minimum hourly rage to create these--the price would be exorbitant. I enjoyed making them because I get a real kick out of coming up with ways to recycle material that we usually throw away. Yet if I do try to sell these coasters at a festival, I will have to come up with a price that honors my work while also recognizing what a customer might be willing to pay. It's a delicate balance.

That balance is more difficult because we've all become used to cheap products at cheap prices--cheap products on which retailers can slap a big mark-up price because those companies aren't paying American minimum wages, aren't providing workplaces that follow OSHA regulations, and aren't paying for health insurance for their workers.

American workers' wages have remained stagnant for the past two decades, but cheap products have obscured that fact for many Americans.

Trouble in the Garden

flowering poppy in my garden

Last June (2012), my garden was being visited by a few pollinators--butterflies and bees, primarily--but I noted that the clover, the mountain mint, and my zinnias weren't attracting the pollinators I expected. Over the summer, I stalked the pollinators that appeared in my yard, taking photos to document their presence. This June, the garden is preternaturally silent of buzzing insects except the occasional wasp or tiny iridescent fly. The birds have been singing, but the pollinator harmony is missing.

Tom and I became especially aware of the absence of pollinators when the numerous flowers on our tomato plants didn't seem to be setting fruit. We were so excited that this year so many of the tomato seeds that Tom planted in February sprouted and thrived. We imagined a bountiful harvest, and Tom added composted horse manure to the garden to help the tomatoes continue to thrive. Many of the plants are now above my head in height. But the lovely growth will be for naught if no fruit result.

In all our years of gardening, we have not had such problems with barren tomato flowers--pests, of course, by the multitude. So I did a bit of quick internet research to find a remedy.

mountain mint--usually attracts a great diversity of pollinators

Tomatoes are self-pollinating but require some encouragement to shake that pollen loose. The vibration of bumblebees helps do that. The bees aren't required to spread the pollen around, just to loosen it. Wind will do, and also a little gentle shaking. One gardener describes using an old battery-powered toothbrush, held gently against the top of the flower to recreate the vibration of a honeybee. Some gardeners suggest transferring the pollen with a paintbrush; others say a gentle shaking will do.

Heat and humidity can be a problem, too. One website claims that daytime heat above 85⁰F can be a problem; another website sets the high at 90⁰F. Well, heat and humidity certainly are a faithful couple in southeast Louisiana in the summer. This has been an especially wet spring. The ground has stayed wet from February through this first week of June, and forecasts predict scattered thunderstorms for today.

Heirloom tomatoes, I've learned, can be especially problematic, some dropping their early flowers but setting fruit later in the season. One of the heirloom tomatoes we've planted, Brandywine, is among the varieties that takes the longest to mature, up to 90 days for fruit to ripen. I'm just hoping that later flowers will appear and produce. German Johnson, another heirloom tomato in our garden, is supposed to be more suitable to areas with high humidity, but its North Carolina "home" (where it was introduced by immigrants), surely doesn't hold a candle to southeast Louisiana when it comes to humidity.

Growing a garden reminds us that there still remains in Nature outcomes that we have little control over. I cannot keep the rain from falling or the heat from rising. I can plant flowers that encourage the presence of pollinators, but large scale destruction of habitat and agricultural industrial use of pesticides overpower my small efforts. Reducing the impact of habitat destruction and pesticide use calls for large-scale public push-back, and so far, the destroyers are winning--and not enough people seem to care.

banana flower in our garden

hydrangeas blooming now

For now, Tom and I are going through the garden, tapping on the tomato stakes in order to gently shake the pollen loose. We're still waiting for the pollinators to appear in larger numbers. This year, we may be even more disappointed than last year, as bumblebees and other wild and domesticated pollinators are declining in numbers across the globe.

In the May Garden

garden shed we started building last summer

We have had a wet and cool spring in southeast Louisiana. The ground was soggy so long that I couldn't weed or add compost as I had planned, but now I am catching up. Our little acre of land requires a lot more work than one might imagine. We have plans for a little pond surrounded by islands of native shrubs and flowers on the south side of our property, we just finished building and painting a garden shed, we have planted more citrus trees, and we sprouted more tomatoes than we had room in our big garden--sixty or so heirloom tomato plants altogether (German Johnson, Cherokee Purple, Brandywine, Black Krim). In order to get all those tomato plants in the ground, we planted tomatoes in beds in which I had planned to plant flowers, such as the circular bed I tilled and composted around our largest fig tree (planted two years ago, so still a young tree). We also planted tomatoes in an old compost pile, having removed most of the uncomposted vegetation to another area.

Many flower seeds I planted in the early spring didn't sprout, as we had too much rain. I had to reseed, and those seeds have sprouted and are growing. Today I planted more zinnia seeds, and if we have a sunny weekend, I'll be adding compost to many of my flower and herb beds and building up a bed that I have expanded near our patio. One of the photos below is of pine cones that I piled around our crepe myrtle trees. Our cats were sharpening their claws on the trunks of both trees, though one tree was bearing the brunt of the scratching. We were afraid that the cats might girdle the trees, so I placed pine cones at the base of both of the trees near our patio to discourage the cats. This seems to have worked. However, I noticed recent cat scratches on our newly painted garden shed, on the door frame!

Gardening is my refuge from the insanity of American politics and the madness of the world.

Looking for love (on a sage flower)

very tiny pollinator on a dill flower

tomatoes planted around fig tree

California poppies and basil

pine cones around crepe myrtle trunk

tomatoes in the big garden