Ms. Renkl is an opinion writer covering the flora, fauna, politics, and culture of the southern United States.
Nashville-how ragged we are now, dragging summer behind us is like an old blanket that we can’t put down.The scorching heat of August has given way to the scorching heat of mid-September, but even so, we are over.Everyone is a cross, not just a person.
The impatient squirrel bit the green acorns and threw them to the ground.Immature, they are scattered under the white oak trees.The blue bird is no longer noticeably blue in the depths of the moult in the late summer.Soon they will grow a pair of brilliant new feathers, but now they are fluffy, and the red bird is even worse.A male cardinal is completely bald, his beak and eyes appear unnaturally large against the shriveled gray skin.If you have ever questioned the relationship between songbirds and dinosaurs, once you see a red bird molting, you will never doubt it again.
Spent a disturbing summer in the yard.I have a lot of passionflower, which is the host plant of the Gulf Fritillary butterfly, but this year there is not a caterpillar on my passionflower vine.The parsley I planted for the black swallowtail was not disturbed either.Throughout the summer, I only saw six butterflies.One is a female monarch butterfly, but she ignores all my milkweed plants, which is the only food that monarch caterpillars can eat.Wearing and fading, she only stayed long enough to eat zinnias.
What can explain the summer without butterflies?With the freezing of late spring, the habitat around me is decreasing, and my neighbors are becoming more and more dependent on pesticides?According to friends who have their own pollinator garden, butterflies in central Tennessee are generally a rare year, so perhaps this loss is due to all these reasons.I am tired of this summer without butterflies.
The morning is a gift.Cool and humid, they feel like part of a completely different ecosystem.If I wandered around in the garden early enough, I could spy on the cute bumblebee butt of all the bees sleeping deep in the bells of the balsam flower.One morning, I inadvertently wiped the balsamic stem, the sleeping bee came back from the bed, stood up, waved her little bumblebee arm at me, buzzing.
The night is also full of the charm of wings.I can’t see the migrating songbirds flying all over the sky, but sometimes I can hear them.I check the BirdCast predictions of the Cornell Ornithology Laboratory to know how many people fly high above our dark house every night.Tens of thousands, they passed above us and headed south.Their twitter made me cheer, and every sound belonged to a hollow flying miracle.
If I observe carefully, I will find that even the boring summer noon has its beauty.
The last group of bluebird babies in my nest box successfully grew out, although I was worried that the terrible heat would turn their boxes into a melting pot.Our resident broad-headed skink has returned from where she hid, because she is guarding her eggs.She now likes to doze off on the porch in front of our house in the hot afternoon, with her arms spread out and her fingers almost under her belly.My baby slept like this when he was young.
The mole in the front yard has moved its tunnel closer to the surface, where the soil is loose and rich in worms.My beagle wanted to catch a mole for himself, but I tied it on a leash to protect my old friend, he would eat the larvae that would harm our trees.I don’t like Mole’s tunnel, but the tunnel always refills in the end.
Every afternoon, our fledgling red-tailed eagle would return to the neighborhood and weep while flying.It has been crying for so long, at least one blue jay has learned to copy it.I have seen a blue bird use an eagle’s call to remove a competitor’s bird feeder, but I removed all my seed feeders a few weeks ago.The jay seemed to be mainly entertaining himself, crying desperately, just for fun.
I removed my feeders because they are not needed at this time of year.The used zinnias and cone flowers and black-eyed Susan provided a lot of seeds, and the beautiful berries, arrowberry and pokeweed berries are now ripe.They both feed our resident birds and any immigrants who shine in these trees during long trips.Soon acorns will mature, Eastern Red Cedar cones and American Holly berries-enough for squirrels and others to eat.
I especially like the pokeberries that I have not grown.Pokeweed seeds are planted by birds and fall into the soil with guano.I have two Phytolacca plants. They are spectacular, magenta in color and 10 feet tall.Pokeberries are attractive to chicks who have not yet fully mastered the techniques of catching insects, but almost all backyard songbirds will be self-sufficient from time to time, and hummingbirds who are fattening for their migration find that the pokeweed branches are a convenience above the nectar feeders. Habitat.
The autumn wild flowers have begun to bloom.A goldenrod throws yellow feathers into the air; purple fields and roadsides of iron grass and aster; snake roots covering the understory; octagonal hyssop and elephant foot flowers bees on the natural side of our yard.They all feed insects, which provide food for birds that need fuel to migrate or spend the winter at home.
Not everyone can survive.A cathedral weaving spider built her cathedral outside our front door.Her net was hit by rain again and again, but her pearl-like egg sacs, all strung together in a row, were safe.Every day I check whether they are sure, and every day their mother looks at me carefully when I check.
She will protect them faithfully until she dies, and the last thing she has to do is to ensure that they need to guide their pull cords when they crawl out of the bag next spring.I have never seen a translucent spider crawling out and running along those ropes to a safe shelter, but I will remain vigilant when appropriate.Always hope.
Opinion writer Margaret Renkl (Margaret Renkl) is the author of “Late Immigration: The Natural History of Love and Loss” and “The Last Place of Grace: Notes of Hope and Heartache in the Southern United States.”
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Post time: Jan-04-2022
