NN/SOTS: Colony Collapse Disorder--'Bee' Enlightened Before You 'Make Your Garden Rich in Gillyvors'

This time of year calls for a bit of shearing--deadheading--to keep some blooms in my garden blooming for a while longer. These beauties waiting to be shorn of their spent blossoms are Dianthus or what Shakespeare knew as carnations, gillyflowers, or gillyvors. So, I got to thinking about another shearing--of sheep in this case--that takes place in a land called Bohemia. One character stands out in this pastoral scene with her steadfast attitude about allowing hybrids into her garden. Why, though? What could be so disastrous about allowing plants that have been hybridized into the mix? Perdita, the stand-out gardener, whose name means "lost," can't bear the thought of allowing anything but the art-less flowers that appear naturally each growing season.

Perdita: Sir, the year growing ancient,

Not yet on summer's death nor on the birth

Of trembling winter, the fairest flow'rs o' th' season

Are our carnations and streaked gillyvors,

Which some call nature's bastards. Of that kind

Our rustic garden's barren, and I care not

To get slips of them.

Polixenes: Wherefore, gentle maiden,

Do you neglect them?

Perdita: For I have heard it said

There is an art which in their piedness shares

With great creating nature.

Polixenes: Say there be;

Yet nature is made better by no mean

But nature makes that mean. So over that art

Which you say adds to nature is an art

That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry

A gentler scion to the wildest stock,

And make conceive a bark of baser kind

By bud of nobler race. This is an art

Which does mend nature--change it, rather--but

The art itself is nature.

Perdita: So it is.

Polixenes: Then make your garden rich in gillyvors,

And do not call them bastards.

Perdita: I'll not put

The dibble in earth to set one slip of them,

No more than, were I painted, I would wish

This youth should say 'twere well, and only therefore

Desire to breed by me...

(The Winter's Tale, Act 4, Scene 4, Lines 79-103)

A swallowtail butterfly (Palamedes, maybe?) on thistle, Cirsium horridulum, seen at St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge on May 9, 2010

No one really knows why honeybees have been disappearing in such large numbers over the last several years. Scientists think that a combination of factors are contributing to the decline. Researchers all over the world are studying this phenomenon because the possible outcome could be significant--a worldwide shortage of food. I asked a beekeeper and honey merchant at the Lumberjack Festival a couple of months ago what the latest word is on the disorder. He said he is studying up to be an expert, certified apiarist but hadn't heard anything new coming down the pike. I found out that the majority of his business comes from transporting his hives to fields and groves where there is a shortage of bees and a surplus of plants and trees in desperate need of pollination. Selling the honey is a way for him to make extra income and to educate people about bees and their habits. He also told us to be wary of honey sold in most outlets because it more than likely is "cut" with corn syrup to make it go further. It tastes similar and doesn't look much different, unless you've tasted the real stuff and can differentiate between what's real and its facsimile. A shortage of honey would seem logical considering the shortage of bees. But why is there a decline? Could the bees be confused--upset--by the displacement of Perdita's faves with those "streaked gillyvors"? Presumably, the bees can tell the difference between original, "rustic garden" flowers and the hybrids that have gradually stolen their scene. I wish someone would figure out what's happening to the bees and find a way to help them negotiate this thorny situation.

Prickly pear, Opuntia humifusa, blossom seen at St. Marks NWR, 5/9/2010

A little more light--maybe some funding too--on the situation might help us understand what we as a species are doing to this old planet, right or wrong, and put to shame--where they belong--those doomsayers' predictions that the world is going to end in 2012 or anytime soon.

 

Lighthouse at St. Marks. Guess who took me there on Mother's Day, 2010, after a great lunch out, just the two of us? I could get used to this new-to-me part of Florida.

For this week's Nature Notes/Signs of the Season post and links to other bloggers' observations about nature, please visit Ramblingwoods.com and leave a comment there too. Michelle would appreciate it. We all do.

NN/SOTS: 'Mistress o' th' Feast' or Hostess with the Mostess?

Shepherd: "Fie, daughter! When my old wife lived, upon
This day she was both pantler, butler, cook,
Both dame and servant; welcomed all, served all;
Would sing her song and dance her turn; now here,
At upper end o' th' table, now i' th' middle;
On his shoulder, and his; her face afire
With labor, and the thing she took to quench it
She would to each one sip. You are retired,
As if you were a feasted one and not
The hostess of the meeting. Pray you, bid
These unknown friends to 's welcome, for it is
A way to make us better friends, more known.
Come, quench your blushes and present yourself
That which you are, mistress o' th' feast...

(from William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, Act 4, Scene 4)

The lumberjack festival was a cut above the normal list of things to do in Northwest Florida last weekend. I felt pretty good about myself, having given up two hours to meet and greet the public in the name of all that is research-based knowledge. Wouldn't you know, though, that the camera went for a ride on SAM's shoulder and in the Honda on Saturday?--see my comment on the last post--so I made sure that it was fully engaged and gainfully employed the next day at Arcadia Mill.

After making the trek across the swinging bridge, single-file because the stream was so high, I found wild blueberries in bloom again--or are they sparkle berries?--along one of the many side trails. SAM's foot was bothering him so we took a short break in a clearing and sat down on a massive log. We heard voices closing in on us. Two young men and a young woman stepped through the surrounding brush. One of them, dread-locks bedecked, stepped forward and asked us what we were doing. Huh? What could be so mysterious about two pudgy, gray-haired people parked on a log? The sun is shining, the afternoon is wearing on, you can see that we have feasted well and often...This young man would not be satisfied by appearances only. He had to know. What do we think of this site? How old is that log you're sitting on? We got to talking. Well, at least he did. He was verbose. We could barely get a word in edge-wise. He finally understood that we love to hike, enjoy nature and each other's company, blog, and garden--well, at least I do, the latter two things. Many questions were answered, I hope, and that nice young man made me aware of something I had not noticed when crossing the bridge over the stream-too-high. Did you see the sliders? he asked. What? The sliders on the log, just past the first bridge. Oh! Well, you see, I was trying to keep the camera dry and trying to be careful where I stepped. I had missed them! What kind of a naturalist am I? The kind that went back to see those sliders still sitting on their log and not even know for sure that what the young man with the dread-locks called them was correct. It is, and they are--yellow-bellied slider turtles, that is, or if you're a purist, Trachemys scripta, "rough turtle that is marked."

Monday saw SAM at work in Tallahassee and me at work in the garden here, trying something new-to-me and quite possibly to you--seed tapes. I found these at the nearest box store and decided to give them a go. What kind of a gardener am I? I'm still not sure yet.

Please visit Ramblingwoods.com for this week's Nature Notes/Signs of the Season post. You will be glad that you did. Let her and the other participants for this week know by dropping in and leaving a comment!

Nature Notes--A Winter's Tale About Moe and Joe

What? Have I twice said well? When was 't before?
I prithee, tell me. Cram 's with praise and make 's
As fat as tame things. One good deed dying
Tongueless
Slaughters a thousand waiting upon that.
Our praises are our wages...
--from William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, Act I, Scene 2--


Before I begin my story about Moe and Joe, I'll treat you with a sursum-corda look at my pink Gerbera daisies and one of our two baby pink grapefruit trees. They do tend to brighten up an otherwise fading-into-winter landscape here in Northwest Florida. Secret Aging Man picked our one grapefruit since this picture was taken a few days before the last full moon, and let me tell you, it was juicy but lip-puckering tart. If I were the kind of person who always says "I told you so," I would have reminded him that we had a discussion about the optimal time for picking the fruit. I'm learning to bite my tongue, though, about certain things. Most situations in life just aren't worth picking a fight, even if it does boost the old ego or enhance the mojo to take someone else down a notch or two. Secret Aging Man has endured enough ego deflation or mojo meltdown being unemployed this past year to last him a lifetime. It's still true, for better or worse, that a man's notion of self-worth is married to his ability to provide for his family. Thankfully, SAM's persistent, yearlong job search has paid off, and he's "moving forward"--have we had enough of that term yet?--with his career. Now I can tell Moe and Joe's story...

Every time I see a turtle now I think about a guy in Kentucky named Joe Sly--not his real surname--and his anniversary gift to his wife Moe. When I was favored with a glimpse of this box turtle, Terrapene carolina--not sure of the subspecies--several weeks ago as it crossed our back yard, my mind slipped back in time to old Joe and his odd turtle story. Secret Aging Man crossed paths with Joe when they both worked for an environmental consulting company in Paducah. SAM the geologist and Joe Sly the GeoProbe Guy worked as a team looking for subsurface contamination coming from leaking underground storage tanks. Back when state and federal funds for this kind of work just about grew on trees, in the mid 1990s, SAM had no trouble landing a job in Kentucky after selling his own environmental service company. Times were good for most Americans then as the nation's prosperity was kicked into high gear. Even Joe brought home a sizable paycheck for his labor with the GeoProbe, but his east Kentucky frugality never left him. One day while working on an out-of-town project near a lake, Joe spotted a huge snapping turtle in the water. Somehow he managed to wrestle the thing onto dry land without getting bitten and put it into a wide bucket. He took it back to his hotel room that evening and kept it alive in the bathtub for a few days until he could get it home to his wife. As the story goes, when he separated the animal from its shell, he found a gold ring stuck tightly around the proximal end of its tail. Since Joe's wedding anniversary was coming up, he considered himself doubly blessed. He was finally able to give Moe the real gold ring she'd never had as well as able to present her with some of the finest turtle meat ever to grace a table. We never got to meet Moe and hear her side of the story, so this might just be one of those Tall Tales that men at work tell each other to lighten the load.

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For more posts this week about nature and the change of seasons, please visit Ramblingwoods.com.

Palm Rescue

"There is a sickness
Which puts some of us in distemper, but
I cannot name the disease; and it is caught
Of you that yet are well."
--Camillo's veiled warning to Polixenes; William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale, 1.2--

I truly believe that winter is not just a season for some people. It characterizes their entire "play" upon this "stage" of life. One bad thing after another creates a habit of bitterness, which builds a pattern of despair, which produces a crop of self-righteousness, which rages against anything that clings--or lays a claim, even if undeserved--to righteousness. I almost fell for the trap. The palms rescued me.