Insects Garden Quotes

Winter garden, the moon thinned to a thread, insects singing.

She was gentle and sedate as usual, but evidently absent and preoccupied. Her eyes rested on the dew lying on the grass in the garden, and her ears were intent upon the melancholy singing of the autumn insects. It was as if we were in a real romance.

One of the maxims of the new field of conservation biological control is that to control insect herbivores, you must maintain populations of insect herbivores.

It is possible that these millions of suns, along with thousands of millions more we cannot see, make up altogether but a globule of blood or lymph in the veins of an animal, of a minute insect, hatched in a world of whose vastness we can frame no conception, but which nevertheless would itself, in proportion to some other world, be no more than a speck of dust.

Old people only say that life happens quickly to make themselves feel better. The truth is that it all happens in tiny increments like now now now now now now and it only takes twenty to thirty consecutive nows to realize that you’re aimed straight at a bench in Singleton Park. Fair play though, if I was old and had forgotten to do something worthwhile with my life, I would spend those final few years on a bench in the botanical gardens, convincing myself that time is so quick that even plants – who have no responsibilities whatsoever – hardly get a chance to do anything decent with their lives except, perhaps, produce one or two red or yellow flowers and, with a bit of luck and insects, reproduce. If the old man manages to get the words father and husband on his bench plaque then he thinks he can be reasonably proud of himself.

As soon as he had disappeared Deborah made for the trees fringing the lawn, and once in the shrouded wood felt herself safe. She walked softly along the alleyway to the pool. The late sun sent shafts of light between the trees and onto the alleyway, and a myriad insects webbed their way in the beams, ascending and descending like angels on Jacob's ladder. But were they insects, wondered Deborah, or particles of dust, or even split fragments of light itself, beaten out and scattered by the sun? It was very quiet. The woods were made for secrecy. They did not recognise her as the garden did. ("The Pool")

At first I couldn't see anything. I fumbled along the cobblestone street. I lit a cigarette. Suddenly the moon appeared from behind a black cloud, lighting a white wall that was crumbled in places. I stopped, blinded by such whiteness. Wind whistled slightly. I breathed the air of the tamarinds. The night hummed, full of leaves and insects. Crickets bivouacked in the tall grass. I raised my head: up there the stars too had set up camp. I thought that the universe was a vast system of signs, a conversation between giant beings. My actions, the cricket's saw, the star's blink, were nothing but pauses and syllables, scattered phrases from that dialogue. What word could it be, of which I was only a syllable? Who speaks the word? To whom is it spoken? I threw my cigarette down on the sidewalk. Falling, it drew a shining curve, shooting out brief sparks like a tiny comet. I walked a long time, slowly. I felt free, secure between the lips that were at that moment speaking me with such happiness. The night was a garden of eyes.

It's like the control insects at the Laboratory. Di d I ever tell you about them? Well, we keep a lot of insect colonies in big glass jars out there. Some of them have been breeding for twenty-five years. That's a thousand generations. All they know about life is what goes on inside their Jar. They haven't been exposed to pesticides or pollution, so they haven't developed immunities or evolved in any way. They stay the same, generation after generation. If we released them into the outside world, they'd die. I think something like that happens after seven generations in Savannah. Savannah gets to be the only place you can live. We're like bugs in a jar.

...it was my father who had taught me to love books for themselves, the smell of the vellum and paper, the rare authority of the pages. "Here, do you see this marvelous book, the skins of 182 sheep," he once pronounced as he slapped his hand down on the stamped leather cover boards. "The book is a flock, a jewel, a cemetery, a lantern, a garden, a piss pot; pigments ground of precious minerals, charred bone, lamp soot, rare plants and insects. Pigments formed at the corrosion of copper plates suspended above urine.

Your garden is a protest. It is a place of defiant compassion. It is a space to help sustain wildlife and ecosystem function while providing an aesthetic response that moves you. For you, beauty isn’t just petal-deep but goes down into the soil, farther down into the aquifer and back up into the air and for miles around on the backs and legs of insects. You don’t have to see microbes in action, birds eating seeds, butterflies laying eggs, ants farming aphids….Your garden is a protest for all the ways in which we deny our life by denying other lives. Plant some natives. Be defiantly compassionate.

In the warmer months of the year one or other of those nocturnal insects quite often strays indoors from the small garden behind my house. When I get up early in the morning, I find them clinging to the wall, motionless. I believe, said Austerlitz, they know they have lost their way, since if you do not put them out again carefully they will stay where they are, never moving, until the last breath is out of their bodies, and indeed they will remain in the place where they came to grief even after death, held fast by the tiny claws that stiffened in their last agony, until a draft of air detaches them and blows them into a dusty corner. Sometimes, seeing one of these moths that have met their end in my house, I wonder what kind of fear and pain they feel while they are lost.

While most of the flowers in the garden had rich scents and colors, we also had two magnolia trees, with huge but pale and scentless flowers. The magnolia flowers, when ripe, would be crawling with tiny insects, little beetles. Magnolias, my mother explained, were among the most ancient of flowering plants and had appeared nearly a hundred million years ago, at a time when “modern” insects like bees had not yet evolved, so they had to rely on a more ancient insect, a beetle, for pollination. Bees and butterflies, flowers with colors and scents, were not preordained, waiting in the wings—and they might never have appeared. They would develop together, in infinitesimal stages, over millions of years. The idea of a world without bees or butterflies, without scent or color, affected me with a sense of awe.

Twilight never lasts long in India, but its advent was like opening time at the pubs our rulers had left behind. The shadows fell and spirits rose; the sharp odour of quinine tonic, invented by lonely planters to drown and justify their solitary gins, mingled with the scent of frangipani from their leafy, insect-ridden gardens, and the soothing clink of ice against glass was only disturbed by the occasional slap of a frustrated palm against a reddening spot just vacated by an anglovorous mosquito.

I have always thought of urban gardens - most gardens - as islands, where we create our own kingdoms, acting out our need for land, nurture and nature. On this weekend all these tiny islands wake again, each one crammed with insects, birdsong (often far better in town than country) and slow-moving people emerging into this gift of extra light.

Outside, the garden shimmered with heat. She waded through the helleborine, its flowers leaving crimson smears on her dress. The air hummed with insects, the sun catching on the wings of a damselfly. Violet smiled, remembering the words from her mother's letter. Walls painted yellow as tansy flowers. It was as if she was reaching out to her from beyond the grave, guiding her. She found the plant under the sycamore, bobbing with yellow flowers, each one comprised of tiny buds clustered together like a beetle's eggs.

The noise of insects sizzled in the air, like fat in a smoking wok.

Somewhere in the inky garden the nocturnal insects rattled like white noise.

These sprays, dusts, and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forests, and homes - nonselective chemicals that have the power to kill every insect, the "good" and the "bad", to still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film, and to linger on in soil - all this though the intended target may be only a few weeds or insects. Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth with out making it unfit for all life? They should not be called "insecticides", but "biocides".

Peter became very clever at helping the birds to build their nests; soon he could build better than a wood-pigeon, and nearly as well as a blackbird, though never did he satisfy the finches, and he made nice little water-troughs near the nests and dug up worms for the young ones with his fingers. He also became very learned in bird-lore, and knew an east wind from a west wind by its smell, and he could see the grass growing and hear the insects walking about inside the tree-trunks.

A half-moon hung in the sky. Dozens of insects were chirping and buzzing in the garden. I'm so confused, I muttered, leaving Sensei's house. The air rising off the river carried a crisp hint of autumn. Good-night, Sensei. [...] Autumn is here, so at Satoru's place there will be warm things to eat while we drink. Turning in the direction of Sensei, who was now several hundred metres away, I kept speaking to him. I walked along by the river, as if I were having a conversation with the moon. I kept talking, as if for ever.

The end of this short story could be a rather disturbing thing, if it came true. I hope you like it, and if you do, be sure to COMMENT and SHARE. Paradoxes of Destiny? Dani! My boy! Are you all right? Where are you? Have you hurt yourself? Are you all right? Daniiii! Why won’t you answer? It’s so cold and dark here. I can’t see a thing… It’s so silent. Dani? Can you hear me? I shouldn’t have looked at that text message while I was driving… I shouldn’t have done it! I'm so stupid sometimes! Son, are you all right?... We really wrecked the car when we rolled it! I can’t see or hear a thing… Am I in hospital? Am I dead…? Dani? Your silence is killing me… Are you all right?! I can see a glimmer of light. I feel trapped. Dani, are you there? I can’t move. It’s like I’m wrapped in this mossy green translucent plastic. I have to get out of here. The light is getting more and more intense. I think I can tear the wrapping that’s holding me in. I'm almost out. The light is blinding me. What a strange place. I've never seen anything like it. It doesn’t look like Earth. Am I dead? On another planet? Oh God, look at those hideous monsters! They’re so creepy and disgusting! They look like extraterrestrials. They’re aliens! I'm on another planet! I can’t believe it. I need to get the hell out here. Those monsters are going to devour me. I have to get away. I’m so scared. Am I floating? Am I flying? I’m going to go higher to try to escape. I can’t see the aliens anymore and the landscape looks less terrifying. I think I've made it. It’s very windy. Is that a highway? I think I can see some vehicles down there. Could they be the extraterrestrials’ transport? I’m going to go down a bit. I see people! Am I on Earth? Could this be a parallel universe? Where could Dani be? I shouldn’t have looked at that text message while I was driving. I shouldn’t… That tower down there looks a lot like the water tank in my town… It’s identical. But the water tank in my town doesn’t have that huge tower block next to it. It all looks very similar to my neighborhood, but it isn’t exactly the same: there are a lot of tower blocks here. There’s the river… and the factory. It’s definitely my neighborhood, but it looks kind of different. I must be in a parallel universe… It’s amazing that I can float. People don’t seem to notice my presence. Am I a ghost? I have to get back home and see if Dani’s there. God, I hope he’s safe and sound. Gabriela must be out of her mind with the crash. There’s my house! Home sweet home. And whose are those cars? The front of the house has been painted a different color… This is all so strange! There’s someone in the garden… Those trees I planted in the spring have really grown. Is… is that… Dani? Yes, yes! It’s Dani. But he looks so different… He looks older, he looks… like a big boy! What’s important is that he’s OK. I need to hug him tight and tell him how much I love him. Can he see me if I’m a ghost? I'll go up to him slowly so I don’t scare him. I need to hold him tight. He can’t see me, I won’t get any closer. He moved his head, I think he’s started to realize I’m here… Wow I’m so hungry all of a sudden! I can’t stop! How are you doing, son?! It’s me! Your dad! My dear boy? I can’t stop! I'm too hungry! Ahhhh, so delicious! What a pleasure! Nooo Daniii! Nooooo!.... I’m your daaaad!... Splat!... “Mum, bring the insect repellent, the garden’s full of mosquitoes,” grunted Daniel as he wiped the blood from the palm of his hand on his trousers. Gabriela was just coming out. She did an about turn and went back into her house, and shouted “Darling, bring the insect repellent, it’s on the fireplace…” Absolute cold and silence… THE END (1) This note is for those who have read EQUINOX—WHISPERS OF DESTINY. This story is a spin-off of the novel EQUINOX—WHISPERS OF DESTINY and revolves around Letus’s curious theories about the possibility of animal reincarnation.

How will you know if your pollinator population isn't up to par? If you find cucumbers fat at one end and skinny at the other, baby summer squash that are rotting at the blossom end, blackberries with only a few plump lobes, or lop-sided apples with a big side and a little side, your garden isn't seeing proper pollination. In some cases, inadequate pollination can be due to bad weather during bloom time, but if you notice problems, your first step should be to ensure that you're providing the proper habitat for wild pollen movers. (There's not much you can do about a cold spring.)

declared you could see buds unsheath themselves. Also you could make the acquaintance of strange busy insect things running about on various unknown but evidently serious errands, sometimes carrying tiny scraps of straw or feather or food or climbing blades of grass as if they were trees from whose tops one could look out to explore the country.

An immaculate garden is a hostile place to most wildlife. Beautifully weeded borders, with every fallen leaf and twig gathered and disposed of, hedges kept constantly crisp and grass mown to within a fraction of its life may make a certain sort of gardener glow with pride but will provide little comfort for most of our birds, mammals and insects.

Boston. Fucking horrible. I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, "Well, I've had it with humanity." But I was wrong. I don't know what's going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths. But here's what I DO know. If it's one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we're lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they're pointed towards darkness. But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago. So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, "The good outnumber you, and we always will.

Fyodor, please help me, I have two big questions about God. You are college professor” (what?) “so perhaps you can answer for me. First question—” eyes meeting mine in the rear view mirror, holding up pointed finger—“does God have sense of humor? Second question: does God have cruel sense of humor? Such as: does God toy with us and torture us for His own amusement, like vicious child with garden insect?

The trouble is that we are seldom aware of the protection afforded by natural enemies until it fails. Most of us walk unseeing through the world, unaware alike of its beauties, its wonders, and the strange and sometimes terrible intensity of the lives that are being lived about us. So it is that the activities of the insect predators and parasites are known to few. Perhaps we may have noticed an oddly shaped insect of ferocious mien on a bush in the garden and been dimly aware that the praying mantis lives at the expense of other insects. But we see with understanding eye only if we have walked in the garden at night and here and there with a flashlight have glimpsed the mantis stealthily creeping upon her prey. Then we sense something of the drama of the hunter and the hunted. Then we begin to feel something of the relentlessly pressing force by which nature controls her own.

Left alone—and there’s the catch—left alone to the air and light and rain, each one might put on tens of thousands of pounds. Any one of his starts could grow for the next six hundred years and dwarf the largest factory chimney. It could play host to generations of voles that never go to ground and several dozen species of insects whose only desire is to strip their host bare. Could rain down ten million needles a year on its own lower branches, building up mats of soil that grow their own gardens high in the air.

Only God—” please, I thought, trying to keep a composed expression while gathering Popchyk in my lap, for fuck’s sake look at the road—“Fyodor, please help me, I have two big questions about God. You are college professor” (what?) “so perhaps you can answer for me. First question—” eyes meeting mine in the rear view mirror, holding up pointed finger—“does God have sense of humor? Second question: does God have cruel sense of humor? Such as: does God toy with us and torture us for His own amusement, like vicious child with garden insect?

They get to Marianne’s house at three, in baking afternoon heat. The undergrowth outside the gate hums with insects and a ginger cat is lying on the bonnet of a car across the street. Through the gate Connell can see the house, the same way it looks in the photographs she’s sent him, a stonework facade and white-shuttered windows. He sees the garden table with two cups left on its surface. Elaine rings the bell and after a few seconds someone appears from around the side of the house. It’s Peggy. Lately Connell has become convinced that Peggy doesn’t like him, and he finds himself watching her behavior for evidence.

Keep in mind a distinction that is being imported into more and more scientific thinking, that between ‘complicated’ and ‘complex’. ‘Complicated’ means a whole set of simple things working together to produce some effect, like a clock or an automobile: each of the components – brakes, engine, body-shell, steering – contributes to what the car does by doing its own thing, pretty well. There are some interactions, to be sure. When the engine is turning fast, it has a gyroscopic effect that makes the steering behave differently, and the gearbox affects how fast the engine is going at a particular car speed. To see human development as a kind of car assembly process, with the successive genetic blueprints ‘defining’ each new bit as we add them, is to see us as only complicated. A car being driven, however, is a complex system: each action it takes helps determine future actions and is dependent upon previous actions. It changes the rules for itself as it goes. So does a garden. As plants grow, they take nutrients from the soil, and this affects what else can grow there later. But they also rot down, adding nutrients, providing habitat for insects, grubs, hedgehogs … A mature garden has a very different dynamic from that of a new plot on a housing estate. Similarly, we change our own rules as we develop.

IT HAD NEVER been such a beautiful May. Every day the sky shone a peerless blue, untouched by cloud. Already, the gardens were crammed with lupins, roses, delphiniums, honeysuckle, and lime clouds of lady’s mantle. Insects cricked, hovered, bumbled, and whizzed. Harold passed fields of buttercups, poppies, ox-eye daisies, clover, vetch, and campion. The hedgerows were sweetly scented with bowing heads of elderflower, and wound through with wild clematis, hops, and dog roses. The allotments too were burgeoning. There were rows of lettuce, spinach, chard, beetroot, early new potatoes, and wigwams of peas. The first of the gooseberries hung like hairy green pods.

A neighbor had a banana tree that had grown so fulsomely that it extended onto Kunip’s property. Insects attached to the banana tree were infiltrating his house. This is where an American probably would have said to his neighbor, “Yo, do something about your frickin’ banana tree! I’ve got bugs in my house.” It’s what I would have said. But that’s not what Kunip did. He broke off a leaf of the banana tree, just one leaf, thus subtly signaling to his neighbor his displeasure. A few days later, the neighbor’s gardener showed up and pruned the banana tree. The conflict was resolved without a word being uttered. “The relationship always comes first. It is more important than the problem,” explains Kunip.

Never play the princess when you can be the queen: rule the kingdom, swing a scepter, wear a crown of gold. Don’t dance in glass slippers, crystal carving up your toes -- be a barefoot Amazon instead, for those shoes will surely shatter on your feet. Never wear only pink when you can strut in crimson red, sweat in heather grey, and shimmer in sky blue, claim the golden sun upon your hair. Colors are for everyone, boys and girls, men and women -- be a verdant garden, the landscape of Versailles, not a pale primrose blindly pushed aside. Chase green dragons and one-eyed zombies, fierce and fiery toothy monsters, not merely lazy butterflies, sweet and slow on summer days. For you can tame the most brutish beasts with your wily wits and charm, and lizard scales feel just as smooth as gossamer insect wings. Tramp muddy through the house in a purple tutu and cowboy boots. Have a tea party in your overalls. Build a fort of birch branches, a zoo of Legos, a rocketship of Queen Anne chairs and coverlets, first stop on the moon. Dream of dinosaurs and baby dolls, bold brontosaurus and bookish Belle, not Barbie on the runway or Disney damsels in distress -- you are much too strong to play the simpering waif. Don a baseball cap, dance with Daddy, paint your toenails, climb a cottonwood. Learn to speak with both your mind and heart. For the ground beneath will hold you, dear -- know that you are free. And never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.

Apart from such visits, for the first time in her life Eliza was truly alone. In the beginning, unfamiliar sounds, nocturnal sounds, disturbed her, but as the days passed she came to know them: soft-pawed animals under the eaves, the ticking of the warming range, floorboards shivering in the cooling nights. And their were unexpected benefits to her solitary life: alone in the cottage, Eliza discovered that the characters from her fairy tales became bolder. She found fairies playing in the spiders' webs, insects whispering incantations on the windowsills, fire sprites spitting and hissing in the range. Sometimes in the afternoons, Eliza would sit on the rocking chair listening to them. And late at night, when they were all asleep, she would spin their stories into her own tales.

Have you ever seen a hawk catch a bird in your back garden? I’ve not, but I know it’s happened. I’ve found evidence. Out on the patio flagstones, sometimes, tiny fragments: a little, insect-like songbird leg, with a foot clenched tight where the sinews have pulled it; or – even more gruesomely – a disarticulated beak, a house-sparrow beak top, or bottom, a little conical bead of blushed gunmetal, slightly translucent, with a few faint maxillary feathers adhering to it. But maybe you have: maybe you’ve glanced out of the window and seen there, on the lawn, a bloody great hawk murdering a pigeon, or a blackbird, or a magpie, and it looks the hugest, most impressive piece of wildness you’ve ever seen, like someone’s tipped a snow leopard into your kitchen and you find it eating the cat.

It seems to me just as imbecile, just as infernal, to have to go to the office on Monday,' said Jonathan, 'as it always has done and always will do. To spend all the best years of one's life sitting on a stool from nine to five, scratching in somebody's ledger! It's a queer use to make of one's...one and only life, isn't it? Or do I fondly dream?' He rolled over on the grass and looked up at Linda. 'Tell me, what is the difference between my life and that of an ordinary prisoner? The only difference I can see is that I put myself in jail and nobody's ever going to let me out. That's a more intolerable situation than the other. For if I'd been--pushed in, against my will--kicking, even--once the door was locked, or at any rate in five years or so, I might have accepted the fact and begun to take an interest in the flight of flies or counting the warder's steps along the passage with particular attention to variations of tread and so on. But as it is, I'm like an insect that's flown into a room of its own accord. I dash against the walls, dash against the windows, flop against the ceiling, do everything on God's earth, in fact, except fly out again. And all the while I'm thinking, like that moth, or that butterfly, or whatever it is, "The shortness of life! The shortness of life!" I've only one night or one day, and there's this vast dangerous garden, waiting out there, undiscovered, unexplored. [...] I'm exactly like that insect again. For some reason, it's not allowed, it's forbidden, it's against the insect law, to stop banging and flopping and crawling up the pane even for an instant.

That rim of blond cyprus wood had become a frontier where this world ended and another began. Since this ceremony during his fifteenth year was to determine his lifetime fortune, Kiyoaki felt as though his very soul, naked, had been set there on the wet grass. The wooden sides of the basin expressed his outer self; the disk of water, which they in turn defined, expressed his inner. Everyone was silent, so the sounds of insects throughout the garden filled his ears as never before. He gazed earnestly into the basin. The water within was dark at first, shadowed by clouds as thick as clustered seaweed. A moment later the seaweed seemed to wave and he thought he had seen a faint glow suffuse the water, but then it faded. He could not remember how long he had waited after that. Then all of a sudden the black water in the basin, which had seemed impenetrably obscure, cleared, and there directly in its center shone a tiny image of the full moon. Everyone broke into exclamations of pleasure, and his mother, rigid all this time, was greatly relieved and began to wave her fan to drive away the mosquitos swarming around her skirt.

A real house with a copper pot for making jam, and sugar cookies in a metal box hidden deep inside a dresser. A long farmhouse table, thick and homey, and cretonne curtains. She smiled. She had no idea what cretonne was, or even if she'd like it, but she liked the way the words went together: cretonne curtains. She'd have a guest room and- who knows- maybe even some guests. A well-kept little garden, hens who'd provide her with tasty boiled eggs, cats to chase after the field mice and dogs to chase after the cats. A little plot of aromatic herbs, a fireplace, sagging armchairs and books all around. White tablecloths, napkin rings unearthed at flea markets, some sort of device so she could listen to the same operas her father used to listen to, and a coal stove where she could let a rich beef-and-carrot stew simmer all morning along. A rich beef-and-carrot stew. What was she thinking. A little house like the ones that kids draw, with a door and two windows on either side. Old-fashioned, discreet, silent, overrun with Virginia creeper and climbing roses. A house with those little fire bugs on the porch, red and black insects scurrying everywhere in pairs. A warm porch where the heat of the day would linger and she could sit in the evening to watch for the return of the heron.

In the section with edible flowers I stopped short, a bright yellow-and-purple pansy in my hands, hearing my mother's voice from long ago. Pansies are the showgirls of the flower world, but they taste a little grassy, she'd confided to me once as we pulled the weeds in her herb and flower garden. I put a dozen pansies in my cart and moved on to carnations. Carnations are the candy of the flower world, but only the petals. The white base is bitter, she'd instructed, handing me one to try. In my young mind carnations had been in the same category as jelly beans and gumdrops. Treats to enjoy. "Impatiens." I browsed the aisles of Swansons, reading signs aloud. "Marigolds." Marigolds taste a little like citrus, and you can substitute them for saffron. My mother's face swam before my eyes, imparting her kitchen wisdom to little Lolly. It's a poor woman's saffron. Also insects hate them; they're a natural bug deterrent. I placed a dozen yellow-and-orange marigolds into my cart along with a couple different varieties of lavender and some particularly gorgeous begonias I couldn't resist. I had a sudden flash of memory: my mother's hand in her floral gardening glove plucking a tuberous begonia blossom and popping it in her mouth before offering me one. I was four or five years old. It tasted crunchy and sour, a little like a lemon Sour Patch Kid. I liked the flavor and sneaked a begonia flower every time I was in the garden for the rest of the summer.

He turned about to the orchard side of his garden and began to whistle—a low soft whistle. She could not understand how such a surly man could make such a coaxing sound. Almost the next moment a wonderful thing happened. She heard a soft little rushing flight through the air—and it was the bird with the red breast flying to them, and he actually alighted on the big clod of earth quite near to the gardener’s foot. “Here he is,” chuckled the old man, and then he spoke to the bird as if he were speaking to a child. “Where has tha’ been, tha’ cheeky little beggar?” he said. “I’ve not seen thee before today. Has tha begun tha’ courtin’ this early in th’ season? Tha’rt too forrad.” The bird put his tiny head on one side and looked up at him with his soft bright eye which was like a black dewdrop. He seemed quite familiar and not the least afraid. He hopped about and pecked the earth briskly, looking for seeds and insects. It actually gave Mary a queer feeling in her heart, because he was so pretty and cheerful and seemed so like a person. He had a tiny plump body and a delicate beak, and slender delicate legs. “Will he always come when you call him?” she asked almost in a whisper. “Aye, that he will. I’ve knowed him ever since he was a fledgling. He come out of th’ nest in th’ other garden an’ when first he flew over th’ wall he was too weak to fly back for a few days an’ we got friendly. When he went over th’ wall again th’ rest of th’ brood was gone an’ he was lonely an’ he come back to me.

Alice stopped walking as a dragonfly hovered close. 'Yellow-winged darter.' The name came to mind of its own accord. She watched as the insect flickered towards a nearby garden bed, a spectacular tangle of summer flowers, red, mauve, and brilliant orange. Gardens really were a balm. A bee vacillated between blooms and Alice experienced a sudden flash of all-body memory. They came often lately. She could 'feel' what it would be like to creep into that garden, her body lithe and ache-free, to snake beneath the cool foliage and lie on her back so that the sky broke into bright blue diamonds through the branches and her ears were filled with the choir of insect life.

Fertilizing Unless your soil is fabulously fertile, some supplemental fertilizer is very nice for your roses. It inspires robust growth and more flowers. Also, a well-nourished plant is healthier and is thus less likely to succumb to stress, disease, or insect attacks. Use an all-purpose garden fertilizer, because it has balanced amounts of N (nitrogen), P (phosphorus), and K (potassium). Fertilizers touted especially for roses — such as Rose Food — are fine but not mandatory. In spring, as the plant emerges from dormancy, you can water with a tablespoon of Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate) dissolved in a gallon of water to promote strong canes.

I know, Granddad, the woods are thick and I'm a city slicker, but Ash was with me, and it was just as well we went looking, because when we finally caught up with Ramsay he'd got himself stuck down a hole in an old jetty." "A jetty? In the woods?" "Not right in the woods, it was in a clearing, an estate. The jetty was by a lake in the middle of the most incredible overgrown garden. You'd have loved it. There were willows and massive hedges and I think it might once have been rather spectacular. There was a house, too. Abandoned." "The Edevane place," Louise said quietly. "Loeanneth." The name when spoken had that magical, whispering quality of so many Cornish words and Sadie couldn't help but remember the odd feeling the insects had given her, as if the house itself was alive. "Loeanneth," she repeated. "It means 'Lake House.

How to Plant a Container-Grown Fruit Tree or Shrub 1. Use a shovel or marking paint to mark the area for the hole. The planting hole should be at least twice as wide as the tree’s rootball. 2. Dig the planting hole. This hole should be just as deep as the rootball—no deeper! If you sharpen the spade before digging, this step will go faster. GROWING TIP Have you heard the saying, “plant ’em high”? Well, that refers to trees. Trees will settle a bit after planting. Always make sure that you finish the job with the top of the tree’s rootball about 3 inches above the soil line. If you plant a tree too deep, the place where the tree trunk and the tree roots meet can rot, which will kill the tree. 3. Set the tree in the planting hole to check the depth. If the top of the rootball is lower than the soil line around the edge of the planting hole, add some soil back into the hole, pull the tree out of the pot, and replace the tree in the hole. You never want the crown of the tree (the part where the tree trunk meets the tree roots) to be below the soil line. In clay soils, set the rootball so it is a few inches above the soil line. 4. Fill in around the tree with the same soil that you removed from the planting hole. Do not add fertilizer or new topsoil. Water will move more easily and the tree will root properly if the soil in and around the planting hole is the same. 5. Mulch around the tree, taking care to pull the mulch away from the tree trunk. Do not create a mulch “volcano” around the tree (by piling mulch up high around the trunk)—that just encourages insects and creatures that snack on tree bark to take up residence next to your delicious young tree. 6. Water the tree. Plan to water newly planted trees every three days (every other day if it is hot and dry). New trees don’t need to be staked unless they’re in areas prone to heavy rains and frequent winds. It can take a couple of years for newly planted trees to root into the surrounding soil, so continue to monitor your tree for signs that it needs water.

Apart from such visits, for the first time in her life Eliza was truly alone. In the beginning, unfamiliar sounds, nocturnal sounds, disturbed her, but as the days passed she came to know them: soft-pawed animals under the eaves, the ticking of the warming range, floorboards shivering in the cooling nights. And there were unexpected benefits to her solitary life: alone in the cottage, Eliza discovered that the characters from her fairy tales became bolder. She found fairies playing in the spiders' webs, insects whispering incantations on the windowsills, fire sprites spitting and hissing in the range. Sometimes in the afternoons, Eliza would sit on the rocking chair listening to them. And late at night, when they were all asleep, she would spin their stories into her own tales.

Indeed, social media, represent a global garden, where one can actualize various flowers, with its fragrances. However, one cannot exclude the thorns, dry petals and insects in several dimensions; otherwise, it may feel an awkward feeling.

Dierdre was one of a pair of enormous common toads that I had found, tamed with comparative ease, and established in the tiny walled garden below the veranda. Here they lived a blameless life among the geraniums and tangerine trees, venturing up onto the veranda when the lights were lit to take their share of the insect life.

they liked to listen to the kids who played in the backyard. The kids were always talking about how they had done this or that, or gone here or there, downtown. Wiggly knew that towns had parks and stores and restaurants and bakeries and places to get sweet treats. That sounded wonderful to him! “All we have here is plants,” he said to his friends. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if we had all kinds of special places to go, like the kids always talk about?” “I’d like that,” said Rattles. “Imagine a five-star restaurant where we could eat tasty little insects all day long. Except for mosquitoes, of course!” he added, glancing quickly at Munchy. Munchy laughed. “I’d like a soda fountain where we garden creatures could order sugar-water shakes and other yummy treats!” she chimed. “I’d like a park,” said Wiggly. “A beautiful park with a maze of fun tunnels to wiggle through.” Munchy’s eyes lit up. “Oh, that would be so much fun! What would you like, Snarky?

One of the main practices that helps me a lot in managing pests in my urban garden, but also helps to create symbiotic effects between the plants in my garden, is companion planting. This is when you grow specific plants close to each other with the idea that they will cooperate and thereby enhance each other’s growth, improve flavour, attract beneficial insects that help to pollinate each other and prey on pests, repel nasty pests and more. The first use of this technique is credited to the Native American Iroquois around 1600. They were planting corn using a three-sister farming method. Basically, this is when beans, corn and squash are planted together

Reconstructing family life amid the chaos of the cotton revolution was no easy matter. Under the best of circumstances, the slave family on the frontier was extraordinarily unstable because the frontier plantation was extraordinarily unstable. For every aspiring master who climbed into the planter class, dozens failed because of undercapitalization, unproductive land, insect infestation, bad weather, or sheer incompetence. Others, discouraged by low prices and disdainful of the primitive conditions, simply gave up and returned home. Those who succeeded often did so only after they had failed numerous times. Each failure or near-failure caused slaves to be sold, shattering families and scattering husbands and wives, parents and children. Success, moreover, was no guarantee of security for slaves. Disease and violence struck down some of the most successful planters. Not even longevity assured stability, as many successful planters looked west for still greater challenges. Whatever the source, the chronic volatility of the plantation took its toll on the domestic life of slaves. Despite these difficulties, the family became the center of slave life in the interior, as it was on the seaboard. From the slaves' perspective, the most important role they played was not that of field hand or mechanic but husband or wife, son or daughter - the precise opposite of their owners' calculation. As in Virginia and the Carolinas, the family became the locus of socialization, education, governance, and vocational training. Slave families guided courting patterns, marriage rituals, child-rearing practices, and the division of domestic labor in Alabama, Mississippi, and beyond. Sally Anne Chambers, who grew up in Louisiana, recalled how slaves turned to the business of family on Saturdays and Sundays. 'De women do dey own washing den. De menfolks tend to de gardens round dey own house. Dey raise some cotton and sell it to massa and git li'l money dat way.' As Sally Anne Chambers's memories reveal, the reconstructed slave family was more than a source of affection. It was a demanding institution that defined responsibilities and enforced obligations, even as it provided a source of succor. Parents taught their children that a careless word in the presence of the master or mistress could spell disaster. Children and the elderly, not yet or no longer laboring in the masters' fields, often worked in the slaves' gardens and grounds, as did new arrivals who might be placed in the household of an established family. Charles Ball, sold south from Maryland, was accepted into his new family but only when he agreed to contribute all of his overwork 'earnings into the family stock.' The 'family stock' reveals how the slaves' economy undergirded the slave family in the southern interior, just as it had on the seaboard. As slaves gained access to gardens and grounds, overwork, or the sale of handicraft, they began trading independently and accumulating property. The material linkages of sellers and buyers - the bartering of goods and labor among themselves - began to knit slaves together into working groups that were often based on familial connections. Before long, systems of ownership and inheritance emerged, joining men and women together on a foundation of need as well as affection.

The best use of time is to enjoy it, as I do when working in peaceful silence. I am surprised that anyone with a love for growing things will take up with artificial contrivances that come between him and nature, which break the spell woven by all the delicate garden influences, the songs of birds and insects, the sound of rustling leaves, the smell of freshly turned soil, the direct contact with the earth. What is he in the garden for?

Every time I am shown to an old, dimly lit, and, I would add, impeccably clean toilet in a Nara or Kyoto temple, I am impressed with the singular virtues of Japanese architecture. The parlor may have its charms, but the Japanese toilet is truly a place of spiritual repose. It always stands apart from the main building, at the end of a corridor, in a grove fragrant with leaves and moss. No words can describe that sensation as one sits in the dim light, basking in the faint glow reflected from the shoji, lost in meditation or gazing out at the garden. The novelist Natsume Sōseki counted his morning trips to the toilet a great pleasure, “a physiological delight” he called it. And surely there could be no better place to savor this pleasure than a Japanese toilet where, surrounded by tranquil walls and finely grained wood, one looks out upon blue skies and green leaves. As I have said there are certain prerequisites: a degree of dimness, absolute cleanliness, and quiet so complete one can hear the hum of a mosquito. I love to listen from such a toilet to the sound of softly falling rain, especially if it is a toilet of the Kantō region, with its long, narrow windows at floor level; there one can listen with such a sense of intimacy to the raindrops falling from the eaves and the trees, seeping into the earth as they wash over the base of a stone lantern and freshen the moss about the stepping stones. And the toilet is the perfect place to listen to the chirping of insects or the song of the birds, to view the moon, or to enjoy any of those poignant moments that mark the change of the seasons. Here, I suspect, is where haiku poets over the ages have come by a great many of their ideas. Indeed one could with some justice claim that of all the elements of Japanese architecture, the toilet is the most aesthetic. Our forebears, making poetry of everything in their lives, transformed what by rights should be the most unsanitary room in the house into a place of unsurpassed elegance, replete with fond associations with the beauties of nature.

A home gardener’s guide to saving the monarch butterfly By Adrian Higgins | 742 words The monarch butterfly has been likened to a featherweight piece of stained glass that through some miracle flits its way each year from Canada to Mexico. It is not the most endangered of our insects, but its plight — along with the ills of the honeybee — has made it perhaps the most visible symbol of the fragility of our natural world and our ability to mess it up. The eastern North American population overwinters in the oyamel forests of central Mexico, but its numbers have plummeted by 90 percent in recent years as a result of the loss of overwintering grounds as well as the widespread elimination of milkweed in the United States linked to increased use of herbicides by farmers. As the spring planting season continues, it’s nice to know that many biologists believe that home gardeners can play a vital role in sustaining the monarch

A gardener, whose attention is ever on the spontaneities of nature, acquires the gift of seeing differences, looks always for the merest changes in plant growth, or in the composition of the soil, the emerging populations of insects and earthworms. So will gardeners, as parents, see changes of the smallest subtlety in their children, or as teachers see the signs of an increasing skill, and possibly wisdom, in their students. A garden, a family, a classroom-any place of human gathering whatsoever-will offer no end of variations to be observed, each an arrow pointing toward yet more changes. But these observed changes are not theatrically amusing to genuine gardeners; they dramatically open themselves to a renewed future.

The end of this short story could be a rather disturbing thing, if it came true. I hope you like it, and if you do, be sure to COMMENT and SHARE. Paradoxes of Destiny? Dani! My boy! Are you all right? Where are you? Have you hurt yourself? Are you all right? Daniiii! Why won’t you answer? It’s so cold and dark here. I can’t see a thing… It’s so silent. Dani? Can you hear me? I shouldn’t have looked at that text message while I was driving… I shouldn’t have done it! I'm so stupid sometimes! Son, are you all right?... We really wrecked the car when we rolled it! I can’t see or hear a thing… Am I in hospital? Am I dead…? Dani? Your silence is killing me… Are you all right?! I can see a glimmer of light. I feel trapped. Dani, are you there? I can’t move. It’s like I’m wrapped in this mossy green translucent plastic. I have to get out of here. The light is getting more and more intense. I think I can tear the wrapping that’s holding me in. I'm almost out. The light is blinding me. What a strange place. I've never seen anything like it. It doesn’t look like Earth. Am I dead? On another planet? Oh God, look at those hideous monsters! They’re so creepy and disgusting! They look like extraterrestrials. They’re aliens! I'm on another planet! I can’t believe it. I need to get the hell out here. Those monsters are going to devour me. I have to get away. I’m so scared. Am I floating? Am I flying? I’m going to go higher to try to escape. I can’t see the aliens anymore and the landscape looks less terrifying. I think I've made it. It’s very windy. Is that a highway? I think I can see some vehicles down there. Could they be the extraterrestrials’ transport? I’m going to go down a bit. I see people! Am I on Earth? Could this be a parallel universe? Where could Dani be? I shouldn’t have looked at that text message while I was driving. I shouldn’t… That tower down there looks a lot like the water tank in my town… It’s identical. But the water tank in my town doesn’t have that huge tower block next to it. It all looks very similar to my neighborhood, but it isn’t exactly the same: there are a lot of tower blocks here. There’s the river… and the factory. It’s definitely my neighborhood, but it looks kind of different. I must be in a parallel universe… It’s amazing that I can float. People don’t seem to notice my presence. Am I a ghost? I have to get back home and see if Dani’s there. God, I hope he’s safe and sound. Gabriela must be out of her mind with the crash. There’s my house! Home sweet home. And whose are those cars? The front of the house has been painted a different color… This is all so strange! There’s someone in the garden… Those trees I planted in the spring have really grown. Is… is that… Dani? Yes, yes! It’s Dani. But he looks so different… He looks older, he looks… like a big boy! What’s important is that he’s OK. I need to hug him tight and tell him how much I love him. Can he see me if I’m a ghost? I'll go up to him slowly so I don’t scare him. I need to hold him tight. He can’t see me, I won’t get any closer. He moved his head, I think he’s started to realize I’m here… Wow I’m so hungry all of a sudden! I can’t stop! How are you doing, son?! It’s me! Your dad! My dear boy? I can’t stop! I'm too hungry! Ahhhh, so delicious! What a pleasure! Nooo Daniii! Nooooo!.... I’m your daaaad!... Splat!... “Mum, bring the insect repellent, the garden’s full of mosquitoes,” grunted Daniel as he wiped the blood from the palm of his hand on his trousers. Gabriela was just coming out. She did an about turn and went back into her house, and shouted “Darling, bring the insect repellent, it’s on the fireplace…” Absolute cold and silence… THE END (1) This note is for those who have read EQUINOX—WHISPERS OF DESTINY. This story is a spin-off of the novel EQUINOX—WHISPERS OF DESTINY and revolves around Letus’s curious theories about the possibility of animal reincarnation

Wiggly Worm lived in a backyard garden with his best friends, Snarky Snail, Rattles Snake, and Munchy Mosquito. As much as he loved wiggling around in the mud, Wiggly often wondered what it would be like to live in a town. Wiggly and his friends knew all about towns because they liked to listen to the kids who played in the backyard. The kids were always talking about how they had done this or that, or gone here or there, downtown. Wiggly knew that towns had parks and stores and restaurants and bakeries and places to get sweet treats. That sounded wonderful to him! “All we have here is plants,” he said to his friends. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if we had all kinds of special places to go, like the kids always talk about?” “I’d like that,” said Rattles. “Imagine a five-star restaurant where we could eat tasty little insects all day long. Except for mosquitoes, of course!” he added, glancing quickly at Munchy.

restaurant where we could eat tasty little insects all day long. Except for mosquitoes, of course!” he added, glancing quickly at Munchy. Munchy laughed. “I’d like a soda fountain where we garden creatures could order sugar-water shakes and other yummy treats!” she

Cass couldn’t deny it: she had been disturbed by the project. It wasn’t just the garage; she was up to her neck in climate change too. Looking at Instagram, eating an ice cream, switching on a light: her most casual act left a toxic trace behind – as if she had a marauding shadow-self that choked the very world she lived in. For weeks she had moped around, paralysed by the inescapability of her own evil. She would stand on the threshold of the back garden, looking at the flowers and grass and the trees in the distance, imagining everything turning black, the birds and the insects falling out of the sky. Even on good days, like when Elaine gave her a bracelet she had two of, she would remember suddenly all of the animals that were going extinct and how the earth was going to flood and everything was doomed – because of the Barnes family.

For example, long-distance migrating birds commonly eat more prior to their big flights. These birds become quite fat, which provides the energy they need to make the journey. The European garden warbler will risk crossing the Sahara Desert to its winter habitat in tropical Africa once it has enough fat stores. But the record breaker for distance is the bar-tailed godwit, a seashore bird that uses its long beak to probe sand or mud for insects and crustaceans and builds up fat stores in both its body and liver in late fall before migration. One godwit was documented to have flown seven thousand miles in an eight-day nonstop flight from Alaska to New Zealand.

It seems to me just as imbecile, just as infernal, to have to go to the office on Monday,’ said Jonathan, ‘as it always has done and always will do. To spend all the best years of one’s life sitting on a stool from nine to five, scratching in somebody’s ledger! It’s a queer use to make of one’s… one and only life, isn’t it? Or do I fondly dream?’ He rolled over on the grass and looked up at Linda. ‘Tell me, what is the difference between my life and that of an ordinary prisoner. The only difference I can see is that I put myself in jail and nobody’s ever going to let me out. That’s a more intolerable situation than the other. For if I’d been – pushed in, against my will – kicking, even – once the door was locked, or at any rate in five years or so, I might have accepted the fact and begun to take an interest in the flight of flies or counting the warder’s steps along the passage with particular attention to variations of tread and so on. But as it is, I’m like an insect that’ flown into a room of its own accord. I dash against the walls, dash against the windows, flop against the ceiling, do everything on God’s earth, in fact, except fly out again. And all the while I’m thinking, like that moth, or that butterfly, or whatever it is, ‘The shortness of life! The shortness of life! I’ve only one night or one day, and there’s this vast dangerous garden, waiting out there, undiscovered, unexplored.

went back out to the garden at the side of the cottage where she grew vegetables: peas, beans, and cabbages. As she dug at the sturdy deep roots of a dock leaf, her hens saw her, and came rushing up from the shoreline. They scratched companionably, looking for worms and little insects in the turned earth, clucking contentedly at Alinor, and she scolded them gently. “You go down to the shore, don’t you scrape up my plants.” One copper-brown hen pecked up a little worm and made a funny grunting noise of appreciation.

When I was ten we moved seven miles outside the city, out past the Christmas-tree farms and the hiking trails of Spencer Butte Park to a house in the woods. It sat on nearly five acres of land, where flocks of wild turkeys roamed picking for insects in the grass and my dad could drive his riding mower in the nude if he wanted to, shielded by thousands of ponderosa pines, no neighbors for miles. Out back, there was a clearing where my mother grew rhododendrons and kept the lawn kempt. Beyond it the land gave way to sloping hills of stiff grass and red clay. There was a man-made pond filled with muddy water and soft silt, and salamanders and frogs to chase after, catch, and release. Blackberry bramble grew wild and in the early summer, during the burning season, my father would take to it with a large pair of gardening shears and clear new pathways between the trees to form a circuit he could round on his dirt bike. Once a month he’d ignite the burn piles he’d gathered, letting me squeeze the lighter fluid onto their bases, and we’d admire his handiwork as the six-foot bonfires went up in flames.

As it turns out, this desire to be loved and to belong is not unique to emotionally needy writers spoiled by their parents. It is inherent to us all. It helps make us human. You'll find evidence of this in Brene Brown's research. She has spent the last twenty years studying the characteristics of people who, regardless of life circumstances, exhibit resilience. Using a qualitative research method known as grounded theory research, Brown conducted thousands of interviews with hundreds of people spanning all sorts of cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds to conclude that "a deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need for all women, men, and children." "We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong," Brown writes in The Gifts of Imperfection. "When those needs are not met, we don't function as we are meant to. We break. We fall apart. We hurt others. We get sick." Her research concluded that the key to connection is no mystery: "I realized that only one thing separated the men and women who felt a deep sense of love and belonging from the people who seemed to be struggling for it. That one thing was the belief in their worthiness. If we want to fully experience love and belonging, we must believe that we are worthy of love and belonging." In fact, Brown defines wholehearted living as "a way of engaging with the world from a place of worthiness." It's important to note that Brown uncovered these findings while researching the corrosive effects of shame. Shame is the ultimate connection killer, for it tells us that our flaws make us unworthy of love. Like many researchers and psychologists, Brown draws a distinction between shame and guilt, noting that the former focuses on being while the latter focuses on behavior. While guilt says, "I did something bad," shame says, "I am bad." Studies suggest a healthy dose of guilt can actually inspire us to make healthier choices, but shame, as a rule, proves counterproductive. For people of faith, and especially for Christians, this research raises some important questions. Does any claim to our inherent worthiness contradict religious teaching and the witness of our sacred texts? Can we deal honestly with our sins without internalizing shame? Does our belief system require that we see ourselves as nothing more than loathsome insects, deserving only to be swept by tsunami waves into the fires of hell? Or can we, too, engage the world from a place of worthiness? Many of us have been talked out of that hope by a parent, a Sunday school teacher, a pastor, or perhaps even our very own fragile selves. In some way or another, many of us have become convinced that we will never be worthy of love- because of our sin, because of our humanity, and because of something that happened in a mysterious garden a long time ago.

always talk about?” “I’d like that,” said Rattles. “Imagine a five-star restaurant where we could eat tasty little insects all day long. Except for mosquitoes, of course!” he added, glancing quickly at Munchy. Munchy laughed. “I’d like a soda fountain where we garden creatures could order sugar-water shakes and other yummy treats!” she chimed. “I’d like a park,” said Wiggly. “A beautiful park with a maze of fun tunnels to wiggle through.” Munchy’s eyes lit up. “Oh, that would be so much fun! What would you like, Snarky?” Snarky rolled his eyes. “That’s all fool’s talk,” he replied. “Garden folk like us can’t have towns, no matter how badly we want them.” Wiggly sighed. “But if we could have a town, what would you want in it?” he pressed. “A store, I suppose,” Snarky answered after a moment. “A store where I could sell pretty pebbles to customers.” Everyone knew that Snarky’s favorite hobby was collecting shiny pebbles. “That’s a great idea!” Wiggly told him. He sighed again. All of his friends had had great ideas. “There has to be some way…” he began slowly. “To build a town?” asked Munchy, finishing his thought. Wiggly grinned at her. “Exactly! We, the creatures of the garden, are going to build a town!” he declared suddenly. Snarky rolled his eyes and muttered some comment about how impossible that was going to be, but no one paid attention. They were determined to follow through with Wiggly’s plan. And so they did. Over the next several weeks, the garden friends collected trash that they found

china eyes and furry countenance confront the nymph’s large eyes—gray eyes that now are black, for she with controlled agitated glance explores the insect’s face and all’s a-quiver with significance. It is Goya’s scene of the tame magpie faced by crouching cats. Butterflies do not need home advice. As though the admiring nymph were patent-leather cricket singing loud or gnat-catching garden-toad, the swallow- tail bewitched and haughty,

One of Rhea’s cousins could call frogs, which wasn’t much good unless you had far too many insects in the garden, although she’d been a terror as a small child.

I turn to my right, to see a window. Outside, the world is a great white expanse. I climb up, clumsily, onto the window ledge. I peer up out and see that above me, the tower stretches up still further, but I can see its point. And below me, I can see the ground. I can see a garden of beautiful flowers. If I jump, my body will fall into that garden and decay. I will be eaten apart by worms and little insects. I will be fertiliser.

Gardeners, are, by their nature, people who believe in regeneration, as poet Laura Villareal points out. They understand that the broken world we inherit can also be amended, with compost, worms, and steady tending. They have seen that the tended earth, in turn, offers up radical abundance—not only of food, but of insects, birds, rhizomes, and soil. The garden surprises us in unexpected ways. Oregano winters over. Wild miner’s lettuce springs back. A volunteer pumpkin luxuriates near the compost bin. Suddenly met with abundance, we beg people to come help harvest our plums. We befriend a plot of earth, and it befriends us in return. By some powerful force, this friendship brings us into a fuller, more just communion with the human and nonhuman at once. Sometimes, in the face of huge pain, the things of the earth can help reroute any of us toward awe and fascination.

Because the farming ants have practiced the mutual co-adaptation model during millions of years of relentless natural selection on joint performance, they often surpass us in specific efficiency targets. Not only did ants in general evolve sperm banks at ambient temperature that last a queen’s potential life span of two to three decades (Den Boer et al. 2009), but they also somehow prevented the evolution of resistance by specialized Escovopsis garden pathogens against biocontrol compounds obtained from Actinobacteria that they rear on their cuticles (De Man et al. 2016; Holmes et al. 2016; Heine et al. 2018) (chapter 11, this volume). Recent work has further indicated that the fungus-growing termites are equally efficient in keeping their colonies as free from pathogens as the leaf-cutting ants appear to be (Otani et al. 2019; see also figure 5.1C, D, E). Relative to the extreme specialization of social insect farmers, human farmers are jacks of all trades in their interactions with domesticated crops, and we remain extremely vulnerable to endemic and epidemic diseases of our cultivars.

She had reached her special tree: a silver beech that Dinsdale, the gardener, said was hundreds of years old. Violet could hear it humming with life behind her: the weevils searching for its cool sap; the ladybug trembling on its leaves; the damselflies, moths, and finches flitting through its branches. She held out her hand and a damselfly came to rest on her palm, its wings glittering in the sunlight. Golden warmth spread through her.

-have our brains retained or even reinvented aesthetics that arose in other lines of life? If so, our convergence with insects is a mystery worthy of awe for the little elders at our feet and flitting among the the flowers of our gardens. Regardless of who gets our thanks for the honor, there is no more wondrous fact than that we are kin, bee and bird of paradise- and great elephant- stardust, all.

Clover (Trifolium species) has been called one of the best all-around feeds for animals because of the high nutrient value. And it also is a legume, so it fixes nitrogen in the soil naturally. Clover is also an important nectar source for bees and a host of other pollinating insects. There are several types of clovers, including white Dutch clover (Trifolium repens), which is low growing and requires less mowing than a conventional lawn, making it a great addition to eco-turf seed mixes. Clover is also good to use in seed mixtures with grain as a companion plant because it loosens subsoils and makes more nutrients available

A century after its introduction, Eucalyptus stelloleta, a tree planted worldwide for lumber and ornamental purposes, supports only one species in California but 48 species of insects in its Australian homeland according to D. Strong and colleagues.

While lawn is often an unnecessary element in many gardens, it is actually an important design element to consider for a garden with free-range chickens. Chickens and organically maintained lawns will have a good symbiotic relationship if they are managed well. Chickens graze on the grass blades as a choice food source for greens, which can also be collected and dried for food. Chickens will keep the lawn mowed, so to speak, because they will make the lawn a frequent stop in their daily foraging. Chickens will search out and eat insects in lawns, and leave behind their manure, which is an excellent fertilizer for lawns. The height of your lawn is critical: the blades need to be long enough to photosynthesize in order to be healthy and grow—3 inches is ideal; and chickens prefer a certain height of grass blade—5 to 6 inches is too tall for them to graze, and letting them graze below 2 inches can damage the grass. So for chicken foraging, it is best to keep your lawn about 3 to 4 inches, which may be a bit longer than you are used to cutting it, but the turf will be healthier and withstand the chicken’s grazing better.

As a boy, I was fascinated by speed, the wild range of speeds in the world around me. People moved at different speeds; animals much more so. The wings of insects moved too fast to see, though one could judge their frequency by the tone they emitted—a hateful noise, a high E, with mosquitoes, or a lovely bass hum with the fat bumblebees that flew around the hollyhocks each summer. Our pet tortoise, which could take an entire day to cross the lawn, seemed to live in a different time frame altogether. But what then of the movement of plants? I would come down to the garden in the morning and find the hollyhocks a little higher, the roses more entwined around their trellis, but, however patient I was, I could never catch them moving. Experiences like this played a part in turning me to photography, which allowed me to alter the rate of motion, speed it up, slow it down, so I could see, adjusted to a human perceptual rate, details of movement or change otherwise beyond the power of the eye to register. Being fond of microscopes and telescopes (my older brothers, medical students and bird-watchers, kept theirs in the house), I thought of the slowing down or the speeding up of motion as a sort of temporal equivalent: slow motion as an enlargement, a microscopy of time, and speeded-up motion as a foreshortening, a telescopy of time. I experimented with photographing plants. Ferns, in particular, had many attractions for me, not least in their tightly wound crosiers or fiddleheads, tense with contained time, like watch springs, with the future all rolled up in them. So I would set my camera on a tripod in the garden and take photographs of fiddleheads at hourly intervals; I would develop the negatives, print them up, and bind a dozen or so prints together in a little flickbook. And then, as if by magic, I could see the fiddleheads unfurl like the curled-up paper trumpets one blew into at parties, taking a second or two for what, in real time, took a couple of days.

Walking in an ancient forest or snorkeling in a coral reef, I have felt an aliveness, a sense of many interlocking pieces clicking together into a living and dynamic whole. These are places that naturally exude abundance. Sadly, this feeling was lacking in any human-made landscape I had experienced. Natural landscapes seem so rich; they seethe with activity; they hum with life in comparison to our own. Why is it that nature can splash riotous abundance across forest or prairie with careless grace, while we humans struggle to grow a few flowers? Why do our gardens offer so little to the rest of life? Our yards seem so one-dimensional, just simple places that offer a few vegetables or flowers, if that much. Yet nature can do a thousand things at once: feed insects and birds, snakes and deer, and offer them shelter; harvest, store, and purify water; renew and enrich the soil; clean the air and scent it with perfume; and on and on.

Ninety-six percent of songbirds have young that can only eat insects, and 90 percent of these insect species can only feed on native plants.

Native bees are more efficient pollinators, having a 91 to 72 percent advantage over honey bees…..We’ve been duped by ‘save the bee’ campaigns that show images of European honey bees or graphics of honeycomb. We don’t really need honey bees in North America for pollination. The primary group that needs honey bees is an industrial agriculture system that has come to depend on them; this insect species is one more cog in the industrialization of life that minimizes and destroys ecosystems for profit. We put great stress on these bees, shipping them around the nation, treating them like machine parts with dollar values as their primary worth.

It was a bright humid night in Chiang Mai. Sangris and I trotted toward the night bazaar, stepping over the basketfuls of fried red chili that the sellers had spread out on the streets like open bowls of flowers. Finding a canal on the fringes of the market, we fed enormous gold carp. They curled through the water like submerged flames beneath the heavy tropical-black sky. Acting innocent, I bought him orange juice and watched his face change when he realized that the sellers had filled it with salt. A trick to prevent dehydration, I explained, and ran off cackling before he could get revenge. I wanted to go into the orchid farms and the butterfly gardens, but they were closed, and I refused his offer to break in (of course Sangris had a way of assuming that rules didn't apply to him, but, I said, they applied to me), so we walked along a half-lit street instead, warm greenness and humming insects all around us, and spent hours trying to catch the guppies that swarmed in innumerable pots by the roadsides. I was better at it: I could lift my hands out of the green-tinted, plant-filled water slowly, without startling the fish, and show him the flashes of yellow and orange and violet and red guppies that flickered through the water cupped in my palms like a strange and magical treasure.

Much as the din and the feeling of being an unwilling insect carrier wore on my nerves, I still loved the Brood V hatch experience, the way I love big surf, thunderstorms, and oversized rat snakes. They're all reminders that nature is bigger, far bigger, and more powerful than we usually care to admit. Just as the hatch was starting, I stood in line at my favorite garden center behind a young man who was buying two gallons of a deadly liquid insecticide. He was hoping to stop the cicada hatch, to save his trees from what he was sure would be the death of them. The nursery manager rang up the sale, and his eyes met mine as the young man handed over his money. We shook our heads and smiled. I went home to watch the celebration.

Through my years of studying joy, I’ve noticed that people seem to have a natural attraction to things that float and fly. Most insects attract little interest, but when a butterfly appears and flits around the garden, it becomes a cherished visitor.

How many times have you bought a plant that is advertised as being “pest free”? A plant that is “pest free” is inherently unpalatable to insects and often is not susceptible to local diseases. Because such plants do not pass the energy they capture from the sun up the food chain, they do not become functioning members of the ecosystem in which they are planted.

As we passed through one of the gardens--most of the plants were held away from us by a mesh fence that had a current running through it, I noted--Yssa spoke from behind me, with a tone of controlled fear. “Pary.” I turned back to see a large beetle, almost as long as my palm, crawling on Akos’s cheek. Its wings had bright blue markings, and its antennae were bright, searching. There was another one on his throat, and a third on his arm. “Stay still,” Yssa told him. “Everyone else step back from him.” “Shit,” Pary said. “I take it these insects are poisonous,” Akos said. His Adam’s apple bobbed with a particularly hard swallow. “Very,” Yssa said. “We keep them here because they are very bright when they fly.” “And they avoid anything that is a particularly strong conduit for the current,” Pary added. “Like…people. Most people.” Akos’s eyes closed.

The Database of Insects and their Foodplants records three beetles, six bugs, twenty-four macro-moths and four miro-moths feeding on Nothofagus species, but none of those is confined to that genus. All the moths are common or fairly common polyphagous species that have spread to the alien trees, often being characteristic of native Fagaceae and recorded also from Sweet Chestnut. The latter species has been here for far longer and has accrued a longer list of feeders: 8, 25, 17 and 23, respectively for the above four insect groups. Figures for Sycamore (16, 25, 33 and 25 respectively) are even higher. One other genus of trees that is grown on small scale in forest plots, and as specimens in parks and gardens, is the gums (Eucalyptus). This, however, does not provide as much for our wildlife; no Lepidoptera have been found feeding on gums, and the only gall relates to a single record. Eucalyptus woodland is much more of a wildlife desert than the much-derided conifer plantations, and we are fortunate that it is scarcely suited to our climate.

AFTER THE NIGHT rain, a blue mist rose above the rolling green llanos from dawn until noon. A hundred miles in the distance, the high mountains were still hidden in clouds, and it had been easy for David to imagine he was Adam in the Garden. For as far as he could see to the south and the west, there were no jet vapor trails, no engine sounds, no glitter of metal or glass, no dogs barking, no human voice; only the insects whirring and the calls of birds.

Every summer Gloria gathered tiny gherkins from our garden and placed them in jars with vinegar, tarragon, cocktail onions, and black pepper, to be used throughout the year. She made an extraordinary strawberry jam that was “cooked” in the summer sun. The berries were added to a sugar syrup and boiled for a couple of minutes, then the whole mixture was poured into a roasting pan, covered with a screen to keep out insects, and left in the sun for several days until the moisture evaporated and the berries reached an almost candied state.

EXEUNT THE VIOLS Listen: even the ocean mourns the passage of voices so pure and penetrant, that insect hum. Who discovered usefulness? Who forgot how to sing, simply? (Magnificence spoke up briefly, followed by the race boat’s break-neck dazzle.)…their last chord a breath drawn deep in a garden maze, there near the statue smiling under the stars.

Garlic, leeks, shallots, and onions are great container plants. They don’t have much in the way of insect or disease problems, and they don’t need a deep container due to their shallow roots. The same goes for beets, radishes, and carrots.

Eventually, she held up the page, satisfied. It depicted Yalb and the porter in detail, with hints of the busy city behind. She’d gotten their eyes right. That was the most important. Each of the Ten Essences had an analogous part of the human body—blood for liquid, hair for wood, and so forth. The eyes were associated with crystal and glass. The windows into a person’s mind and spirit. She set the page aside. Some men collected trophies. Others collected weapons or shields. Many collected spheres. Shallan collected people. People, and interesting creatures. Perhaps it was because she’d spent so much of her youth in a virtual prison. She’d developed the habit of memorizing faces, then drawing them later, after her father had discovered her sketching the gardeners. His daughter? Drawing pictures of darkeyes? He’d been furious with her—one of the infrequent times he’d directed his infamous temper at his daughter. After that, she’d done drawings of people only when in private, instead using her open drawing times to sketch the insects, crustaceans, and plants of the manor gardens. Her father hadn’t minded this—zoology and botany were proper feminine pursuits—and had encouraged her to choose natural history as her Calling. She took out a third blank sheet. It seemed to beg her to fill it. A blank page was nothing but potential, pointless until it was used. Like a fully infused sphere cloistered inside a pouch, prevented from making its light useful. Fill me. The creationspren gathered around the page. They were still, as if curious, anticipatory. Shallan closed her eyes and imagined Jasnah Kholin, standing before the blocked door, the Soulcaster glowing on her hand. The hallway hushed, save for a child’s sniffles. Attendants holding their breath. An anxious king. A still reverence. Shallan opened her eyes and began to draw with vigor, intentionally losing herself. The less she was in the now and the more she was in the then, the better the sketch would be. The other two pictures had been warm-ups; this was the day’s masterpiece. With the paper bound onto the board—safehand holding that—her freehand flew across the page, occasionally switching to other pencils. Soft charcoal for deep, thick blackness, like Jasnah’s beautiful hair. Hard charcoal for light greys, like the powerful waves of light coming from the Soulcaster’s gems. For a few extended moments, Shallan was back in that hallway again, watching something that should not be: a heretic wielding one of the most sacred powers in all the world. The power of change itself, the power by which the Almighty had created Roshar. He had another name, allowed to pass only the lips of ardents. Elithanathile. He Who Transforms. Shallan could smell the musty hallway. She could hear the child whimpering. She could feel her own heart beating in anticipation. The boulder would soon change. Sucking away the Stormlight in Jasnah’s gemstone, it would give up its essence, becoming something new. Shallan’s breath caught in her throat. And then the memory faded, returning her to the quiet, dim alcove. The page now held a perfect rendition of the scene, worked in blacks and greys. The princess’s proud figure regarded the fallen stone, demanding that it give way before her will. It was her. Shallan knew, with the intuitive certainty of an artist, that this was one of the finest pieces she had ever done. In a very small way, she had captured Jasnah Kholin, something the devotaries had never managed. That gave her a euphoric thrill. Even if this woman rejected Shallan again, one fact would not change. Jasnah Kholin had joined Shallan’s collection.

many of the alien plants that have succeeded in North America are not a random sample of all plants that evolved elsewhere, but rather are a subset that were imported specifically because of their unpalatability to insects

BIBLIOGRAPHY Often the question of which books were used for research in the Merry series is asked. So, here is a list (in no particular order). While not comprehensive, it contains the major sources. An Encyclopedia of Faeries by Katharine Briggs Faeries by Brian Froud and Alan Lee Dictionary of Celtic Myth and Legend by Miranda J. Green Celtic Goddesses by Miranda J. Green Dictionary of Celtic Mythology by Peter Berresford Ellis Goddesses in World Mythology by Martha Ann and Dorothy Myers Imel A Witches’ Bible by Janet and Stewart Farrar The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. Evans-Wentz Pagan Celtic Britain by Anne Ross The Ancient British Goddesses by Kathy Jones Fairy Tradition in Britain by Lewis Spense One Hundred Old Roses for the American Garden by Clair G. Martin Taylor’s Guide to Roses Pendragon by Steve Blake and Scott Lloyd Kings and Queens from Collins Gem Butterflies of Europe: A Princeton Guide by Tom Tolman and Richard Lewington Butterflies and Moths of Missouri by J. Richard and Joan E. Heitzman Dorling Kindersly Handbook: Butterflies and Moths by David Carter The Natural World of Bugs and Insects by Ken and Rod Preston Mafham Big Cats: Kingdom of Might by Tom Brakefield Just Cats by Karen Anderson Wild Cats of the World by Art Wolfe and Barbara Sleeper Beauty and the Beast translated by Jack Zipes The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm translated by Jack Zipes Grimms’ Tales for Young and Old by Ralph Manheim Complete Guide to Cats by the ASPCA Field Guide to Insects and Spiders from the National Audubon Society Mammals of Europe by David W. MacDonald Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner by Scott Cunningham Northern Mysteries and Magick by Freya Aswym Cabbages and Kings by Jonathan Roberts Gaelic: A Complete Guide for Beginners The Norse Myths by Kevin Crossley Holland The Penguin Companion to Food by Alan Davidson

When he turned the handle of the gate, he stood, transfixed, as it opened like the cover of a book onto a scene that seemed too perfect to be real. An effusive garden grew between the flagstone path and the house, foxgloves waving brightly in the breeze, daisies and violets chattering over the edges of the paving stones. The jasmine that covered the garden wall continued its spread across the front of the house, surrounding the multipaned windows to tangle with the voracious red flowers of the honeysuckle creeper as it clambered over the roof of the entry alcove. The garden was alive with insects and birds, which made the house seem still and silent, like a Sleeping Beauty house. Leonard had felt, as he took his first step onto the path, as if he were walking back through time; he could almost see Radcliffe and his friends with their paints and easels set up on the lawn beyond the blackberry bramble...

and retreat from the busy and hectic day to day daily life or the desire for fresh veggies, gardening can fill that void. In addition to providing some peace for an individual it can also provide a brilliant source of nutrition and cost savings at the dinner table. The drawback that gardeners have had to face is change of seasons, insect and rodent pests as well as fertilizing problems. Gardening methods over the years has taken a pleasant turn for the better as people are trying to re-connect to the natural way of things and are taking an organic approach to raising vegetables and fruits. It is pleasing and inspiring to witness this shift from chemical saturated food going back to the natural way it was meant to be eaten. It thrills me to contribute to this global shift! I hope our children and generations after them have many blessed years of health and abundance at their dinner tables from the positive teachings

The obligation to name is no doubt much older than the story of God’s instruction to Adam in the Garden, and only recently have we failed to heed it. We neglect the obligation at our peril: those who don’t know the names for the plants in the landscape don’t see the landscape I see and carelessly cut it. Those who know no insects by their names crush them indiscriminately” (92). Noah’s Children: Restoring the Ecology of Childhood.

Harriet understood now that she'd always had more control over the garden than she'd ever known. Perhaps control wasn't the right word. It was an understanding--- some strange understanding both she and the plants had together. Either way, she knew now that she could ask this garden, any garden, to respond to her touch, to her thoughts, her emotions, and it would respond. She let her hands fall to the bare earth and closed her eyes. She began to push happiness from her heart, down her arms, and out through her hands. The feeling was so intense, so filled with love that tears brimmed along her eyelashes. Eunice breathed steadily beside her, while the insects nearby hummed busily, and the smell of freesias filled her head. Eunice gasped, and Harriet opened her eyes to see a green thread of life prodding up through the dirt, exploring the air above, doubling in size with each passing moment. She watched her cousin examine the bud as it unfurled into a tiny cream primrose with a sunshine-yellow center.