NASHVILLE — Though it is still more than three weeks from the summer solstice, Memorial Day is the unofficial first day of summer, and already it is hot here. Every day now, temperatures rise well into the 80s, sometimes as high as 90 degrees. At both a global and a local level, the life-obliterating fallout of excessive heat becomes clearer with every passing summer, but this is a wonderful, old-timey kind of summertime heat: soft and damp and breathing.
Butterflies and bees and wasps, who can’t fly when it’s chilly, are on the wing now, and reptiles are likewise swift again. The dearest baby gray rat snake was crossing our driveway the other day just as the dog and I were leaving for a walk. The tiny snake froze into that zigzagged tableau of fear so characteristic of rat snakes when they are afraid. It was holding so still I thought it was a windfall twig. Even Rascal walked right on by.
In the pollinator garden, new seedlings and perennials alike are bolting in this glorious heat. The passionflower vines alone put on several inches of growth every day. I am in love with passionflower. Its extravagant blossoms feed the bees and butterflies. Its leaves feed gulf fritillary caterpillars. Its fruit feeds everybody.
Last winter, we lost a lot of perennials to a brutal freeze that came suddenly on the heels of an unseasonable warm spell. Some of those plants have returned from the dead, but others are truly gone, and their loss has created a space for new life.
A lovely native grape has sprung up beside the pokeweed plants at the end of the privacy fence between our driveway and the driveway next door. The grapevines are running along the fence, curling among the blackberry canes and the passionflower vines. Our late neighbor installed the fence decades ago, and it isn’t much of a fence anymore. Only a few yards long, falling to ruin, it nevertheless sets a banquet every summer for wildlife. Long before the pears on the ancient backyard tree are ripe, long before the holly berries and the cedar drupes and the acorns are ready to eat, there are pokeberries and blackberries and passion fruit right beside our driveway. Soon there will be wild grapes, too.
Plants that show up on their own are called volunteers, but of course they don’t truly just show up on their own. The seeds are carried on the wind or in the bellies of birds or on the coats of animals. They take root wherever they find a welcome landing. The seed that grew into this grapevine, like the pokeweed plant it sprouted next to, came from a bird perching on that falling-down fence. When the seed landed, it found a sunny spot in a sheltered place beside a yard free from lawn poisons. My wild neighbors did the planting.
Perhaps my favorite volunteers this year are the pumpkin vines planted last fall by the thumbless hands of squirrels. Come fall, there will be pumpkins to feed the squirrels and the chipmunks and the raccoons and the foxes and the opossums who spent summer feasting on berries and grapes and passion fruit. All because we did nothing but let the wild world run wild in this half-acre patch of suburbia.
Out in the meadow where our yard used to be there is a beautiful new stand of bluestem goldenrod and another of tall ironweed, neither the result of my own toil. When the monarch butterflies are migrating south next fall, these splendid flowers, yellow and purple, will feed them on their journey.
I didn’t see any monarchs heading north this spring, but any stragglers who might yet arrive will find plenty of milkweed waiting for them. Monarch caterpillars can’t survive without milkweed, the only food they evolved to eat, and my pollinator garden offers three varieties. Their flowers will feed many pollinators even if monarchs never arrive.
For wildlife, the usual fervor of springtime has mostly settled down now. The broadhead skinks are still pairing off, but most of the squirrels and rabbits and songbirds who nest here have sent their first set of babies out into the world and are readying for round two. The female Eastern bluebird is brooding another clutch of five eggs in the nest box in the front yard, and the male American robins are back to their dueling ways. Leaping from the ground and crashing into one another, they are competing to claim this insect-buzzing territory for their own second brood.
The gentle Virginia opossum who comes out just past dark to nose around the yard is so large I think she must have a pouch full of babies. She has taken to sleeping the day away beneath our family room, tucked in tight between the floor joists and the concrete patio that the room was built on top of. For me, there is no sign of her when she is curled up in that perfect opossum-size hidey-hole, but several times a day Rascal will park himself directly above the place where she is sleeping. He barks and scratches at the floor until I manage to hush him. I was once the mother of tiny babies, too, and I want that poor mama possum to have some peace.
One night my husband heard a crash on our back deck, and he assumed the possum had climbed up to sniff around at human level. But when he turned on the light, an armadillo scurried behind a potted plant. When did an armadillo arrive in this yard? I have no idea. In 28 years of pondering the verdant life of this place, I’ve never seen one here before.
I am always watching and listening, but the more I learn about the creatures with whom I share this ecosystem, the more I understand how much I do not understand. Why is the tail of one squirrel completely bald? How has the white chipmunk, who has no camouflage at all, managed to escape the many predators here? Why has a different chipmunk started hanging out with the skinks on our front stoop? I don’t know, but there they are, afternoon after afternoon, dozing in the sun together. Their delight is my delight, too.
Margaret Renkl, a contributing Opinion writer, is the author of the books “Graceland, at Last” and “Late Migrations.” Her next book, “The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year,” will be published in October.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
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Home » Analysis & Comment » Opinion | Let the Wild World Run Wild
Opinion | Let the Wild World Run Wild
NASHVILLE — Though it is still more than three weeks from the summer solstice, Memorial Day is the unofficial first day of summer, and already it is hot here. Every day now, temperatures rise well into the 80s, sometimes as high as 90 degrees. At both a global and a local level, the life-obliterating fallout of excessive heat becomes clearer with every passing summer, but this is a wonderful, old-timey kind of summertime heat: soft and damp and breathing.
Butterflies and bees and wasps, who can’t fly when it’s chilly, are on the wing now, and reptiles are likewise swift again. The dearest baby gray rat snake was crossing our driveway the other day just as the dog and I were leaving for a walk. The tiny snake froze into that zigzagged tableau of fear so characteristic of rat snakes when they are afraid. It was holding so still I thought it was a windfall twig. Even Rascal walked right on by.
In the pollinator garden, new seedlings and perennials alike are bolting in this glorious heat. The passionflower vines alone put on several inches of growth every day. I am in love with passionflower. Its extravagant blossoms feed the bees and butterflies. Its leaves feed gulf fritillary caterpillars. Its fruit feeds everybody.
Last winter, we lost a lot of perennials to a brutal freeze that came suddenly on the heels of an unseasonable warm spell. Some of those plants have returned from the dead, but others are truly gone, and their loss has created a space for new life.
A lovely native grape has sprung up beside the pokeweed plants at the end of the privacy fence between our driveway and the driveway next door. The grapevines are running along the fence, curling among the blackberry canes and the passionflower vines. Our late neighbor installed the fence decades ago, and it isn’t much of a fence anymore. Only a few yards long, falling to ruin, it nevertheless sets a banquet every summer for wildlife. Long before the pears on the ancient backyard tree are ripe, long before the holly berries and the cedar drupes and the acorns are ready to eat, there are pokeberries and blackberries and passion fruit right beside our driveway. Soon there will be wild grapes, too.
Plants that show up on their own are called volunteers, but of course they don’t truly just show up on their own. The seeds are carried on the wind or in the bellies of birds or on the coats of animals. They take root wherever they find a welcome landing. The seed that grew into this grapevine, like the pokeweed plant it sprouted next to, came from a bird perching on that falling-down fence. When the seed landed, it found a sunny spot in a sheltered place beside a yard free from lawn poisons. My wild neighbors did the planting.
Perhaps my favorite volunteers this year are the pumpkin vines planted last fall by the thumbless hands of squirrels. Come fall, there will be pumpkins to feed the squirrels and the chipmunks and the raccoons and the foxes and the opossums who spent summer feasting on berries and grapes and passion fruit. All because we did nothing but let the wild world run wild in this half-acre patch of suburbia.
Out in the meadow where our yard used to be there is a beautiful new stand of bluestem goldenrod and another of tall ironweed, neither the result of my own toil. When the monarch butterflies are migrating south next fall, these splendid flowers, yellow and purple, will feed them on their journey.
I didn’t see any monarchs heading north this spring, but any stragglers who might yet arrive will find plenty of milkweed waiting for them. Monarch caterpillars can’t survive without milkweed, the only food they evolved to eat, and my pollinator garden offers three varieties. Their flowers will feed many pollinators even if monarchs never arrive.
For wildlife, the usual fervor of springtime has mostly settled down now. The broadhead skinks are still pairing off, but most of the squirrels and rabbits and songbirds who nest here have sent their first set of babies out into the world and are readying for round two. The female Eastern bluebird is brooding another clutch of five eggs in the nest box in the front yard, and the male American robins are back to their dueling ways. Leaping from the ground and crashing into one another, they are competing to claim this insect-buzzing territory for their own second brood.
The gentle Virginia opossum who comes out just past dark to nose around the yard is so large I think she must have a pouch full of babies. She has taken to sleeping the day away beneath our family room, tucked in tight between the floor joists and the concrete patio that the room was built on top of. For me, there is no sign of her when she is curled up in that perfect opossum-size hidey-hole, but several times a day Rascal will park himself directly above the place where she is sleeping. He barks and scratches at the floor until I manage to hush him. I was once the mother of tiny babies, too, and I want that poor mama possum to have some peace.
One night my husband heard a crash on our back deck, and he assumed the possum had climbed up to sniff around at human level. But when he turned on the light, an armadillo scurried behind a potted plant. When did an armadillo arrive in this yard? I have no idea. In 28 years of pondering the verdant life of this place, I’ve never seen one here before.
I am always watching and listening, but the more I learn about the creatures with whom I share this ecosystem, the more I understand how much I do not understand. Why is the tail of one squirrel completely bald? How has the white chipmunk, who has no camouflage at all, managed to escape the many predators here? Why has a different chipmunk started hanging out with the skinks on our front stoop? I don’t know, but there they are, afternoon after afternoon, dozing in the sun together. Their delight is my delight, too.
Margaret Renkl, a contributing Opinion writer, is the author of the books “Graceland, at Last” and “Late Migrations.” Her next book, “The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year,” will be published in October.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
Source: Read Full Article