Diario de sarahwilson1
Went out yesterday evening around 6 PM with camera in hand. Most of the bees and wasps had already headed in for the night so either this is a time flies are out or I could pick them out more readily with fewer insects around, regardless, I saw three new-to-me species of flies. FWIW.
It's easy to be outraged by pictures of smoke in the Amazon -- literally easy. We can shake our heads and talk about how short-sighted "those" people are without actually having to do a single thing differently in our own lives.
But what if conservation started at home - at each of our homes. What if we actively sought native plants to replace the plants we've grown up thinking were pretty but are as useful for our local life as wax fruit is to a hungry child.
When I moved into my home 8 years ago, I planted 3 Bradford pears before I knew that they were invasive (why can nurseries sell invasive species??). Last year, I cut them all down - replacing them with serviceberry and a native red cedar.
For years, I hauled daylilies with me from home to home - long my favorite plant. Now I am slowly digging up my massive clumps - replacing them with species Hyssop and Penstemon.
As I learn more, my tastes change. Now when I see the Amazon burning, I turn to my own yard and ask myself: what can I do today to make life better for some struggling life here? I find there is always something.
Yesterday, I watched my young neighbor walking up and down his driveway sprayer in hand, drenching the divides between his concrete squares with herbicide. He knows not that he risks so much else, too. I look at his still-life of a home -- every non-native, big-box-store plant, which is all he has, is trimmed and tidy and life-less. Makes me sad.
But I am sure he looks over at my home, with my eclectic, not-the-least-bit-"carpet"-like lawn and the "weeds" peeking up in my drive, and it makes him sad. Possibly angry. Certainly a head shaker.
It is too soon for me to speak. I need to find a way in, a connection point, a common thread. I know the man loves his home and probably recycles with the best of us. Until I can find a kind point of connection, any comment I would make would only hammer at the silent divide that already exists. That's not a way forward.
If I see a bumble bee at 6 AM, it's going to be a Brown-Belted. I was just out in my sanctuary garden. It's almost 6 PM, overcast with a light rain starting to fall. My fleabane is shaking with the activity of 3 workers and I check to make sure but I don't really need to. I know who it is.
With my purple coneflower tall behind my second-year blueberry bushes, I am hidden from recognizable view by the wild that uses the space I have built for them. Yesterday, in a few minutes of pausing, I watched a rabbit slip through my fence to roll in a sun-lit patch of dust and an adult robin delivering a blueberry to their demanding fledgling. All as various pollinators I am growing familiar with work the species yarrow just in front of me. It feels like I have grown a patch of Eden in my yard.
