Caterpillar Cruise

On the cusp of the solstice, but it always feels like summer much sooner than that, once the leaves have reached their full size and turned a dark green, whether one is biking around the Western Shore of Maryland with a basket full of Milkweed leaves, or whether one has once again drifted farther afield.

Caterpillars have always been this creeper’s favorite. Even the Gypsy Moths were a wonder and so delightfully easy to find in those golden barefoot days. I only realized that many of the caterpillars I treasured, trapped, or stared at for hours as a child were Gypsy Moths while googling the different but often misidentified Eastern Tent Caterpillar and seeing the two species compared.

I don’t see Gypsy Moth caterpillars much anymore. I suppose they still spray, a lot. I suppose there are newer more fearsome invasive invertebrates everywhere I turn. These are fraught times, and the internet is different, and the natural world is different, and all of us are different too.

This blog set out to examine nature, and the way humans (at least this human) interacts with and affects nature, and the ways that is good and the ways it is complicated. I feel protective of some of what I know now, because I don’t know what harm can come from knowing and seeing things that I could have ignored, and from the ways I want to interact with them. I don’t know what will happen if I show other people what and where to find animals and plants and things that are running out of spaces to exist at all. For now, I am still looking, and thinking, and noticing the wonders even in a very urban setting. I’m noticing the things that are disappearing too. Bird migration is amazing here, but once the migrants have passed through, the breeding birds are almost entirely House Sparrows. The invasive non-woody plants are taking over the last of the botanical jewels I knew to find, and here in this city they have already completely won their war, leaving nothing else to be found.

The Feminist Bird Club’s symbol this year is the Snowy Owl, chosen to represent the importance of restraint and respect of creatures that are vulnerable to human interest and attention to them. This choice lines up well with where my own heart has landed, for now.

But I do see things and I am amazed and grateful for them. Somehow, I see lots of caterpillars now, even after spending so many childhood years looking for more than just Monarchs and Gypsy moths and never finding them. Last year I found a number of new species, and this year I have seen even more.

What you have heard is true, the Black Cherry is an incredible tree for insect variety and numbers. White Oaks and Black Cherries are ecological gifts to the birds, to the ecosystem, and to humans who want to see some creeping things. Bring nature home to your yard with these species especially.

Red Spotted Purple Caterpillar on Cherry

Moth with Eggs on Cherry Leaf

Monarch Caterpillar in a Corn Field

Teeny Summer Azure Caterpillar through a Lens!

 

Take Only Pictures, Leave Only Footprints, Wear Only Tevas

Enjoy your our summer.

Do Pawpaws cause Progressive Supranuclear Palsy?

 

Or, The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil 

 

Once upon a time there was a Grumpy Old Man.

Of course the story does not begin there, but this is not an ultimate origin story. In the background of this blog the presence of a Grumpy Old Man has been ever felt, demanding that we leave the house on time, that the gate is locked, and that the cats are in. There he was surveying his kingdom, stealing the remote control, eating others’ snacks, and announcin the latest scientific findings and political events that he had read about. There he was not, but only because he was out picking blueberries, potting Pawpaws, climbing over the obstacle course he built for himself along the walk to his office farther up the driveway.

There he was not. The fear of this has been present since the blog began, of a day when the safe comfortable background would lose its central, larger than life character. And why? Why do people have to die? Is it because of the fruit some naked people ate in some garden thousands of years ago? Because of another tree, in another garden? Or is it because of the tree in our own yard, the one we all thought was good? Even a horrible explanation appeals to the human heart, over the infinite terror of randomness, meaninglessness. And so I am hesitant to say, the Pawpaws killed him, the Pawpaws took away his beloved words, and then the balance he was so proud of, and then even the joys of stealing and eating my snacks.

But the Grumpy Old Man had Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. It is a rare neurological disease, a type Parkinsonism. When a rare and terrible thing happens, we want to know why, we want to know, why why why? But we don’t expect someone to hand us a scientific paper the next day, describing the very high rates of a very rare disease on a small island, among people who eat a fruit that is in the same genus as the Pawpaw. Or another paper, finding the levels of a neurotoxin in our own Pawpaws, Asimina triloba, to be just as high, and for it to detail just how thoroughly the substance, Annonacin, destroys neurons, those magical cells that together give us our movement, our memories, our minds.

This blog was conceived on the Eastern Shore, while teaching the trees among the clouds of Zebra Swallowtail butterflies hovering above the Pawpaw leaves. Those Pawpaws were wild, but I recognized them easily, the same as those grown from the sweat of the brow of the Grumpy Old Man. Who wasn’t even a little bit grumpy, and wasn’t even very old. But who loved plants, because after the war he went to boarding school and lived with a teacher who taught him to see the fruits and the seeds and the roots and the leaves. He made a life and a business out of plants, and the pawpaws that he grafted and grew became one of his beloved passion projects.

When someone told me that his Pawpaws could have killed him, I didn’t really believe it. We always want to find an answer, lay the blame, and in so doing make ourselves believe we have warded off yet more evil that comes without explanation. I still don’t know how likely it is that this is why he is gone, too soon. People get this disease who have never eaten from the Annonaceae family. But not so many. And how many have I eaten? How much has the rest of my family eaten? Are we safe, or are our brain cells already dying, marked, could a certain X Files mutant smell our imminent demise if we met on yet another new season? Will a small enough quantity limit our penance to just a season, through divine intervention, or the stories we tell ourselves? Is this a poison, like sadness, that will stay forever in my body? Sadness is not fat soluble, and I know that the jolliest and gentlest of Grumpy Men would not want it to leave our days darkened forever, our summers always duller colors. Is this disease already eating through the brain cells of those I love, is our precious time here, our days of not needing walkers and aides, of being able to talk, already numbered?

What knowledge of a tree might save us, and what knowledge will be the shadow that falls over us and never goes away? I am only a human, and raised in large part by a very curious and demanding one. He would want to know, if he was interested. But for him even the saddest of news brought no shade, his days remained sunny even while I followed him around the orchard leaving tears in his footsteps, hiding my face. I want to know, but he wanted to keep climbing cinderblocks and balancing on fences. Though he remembered war, invasion, narrow escapes, he was too interested in looking forward to spend much time looking back, or feeling sorry for himself even as all the things he was proudest of and bragged the most about, telling jokes, winning at ping pong, his quick reflexes, his fast healing times; were taken away. No, he did not ever turn into a pillar of salt. In some moments the world is more beautiful just thinking of how briefly we may be here. How can my spirit, can any spirit, ever hope to match that of the Grumpy Old Man?

Well. He left me with some seasons of transition. This summer was the first that he wasn’t able to pick blueberries with me, I went alone. The last few falls, after crying so much in the yard, I barely helped with the Pawpaw harvest, and could hardly stand to eat the Pawpaws. I still have the Blackhaw Viburnum that I found the Cecropia caterpillars on while he and I were taking a walk 3 summers ago. For the record, he always voted that I let every creeper I found go, free to scale its own fences and sail its own seas. Other people have been making his dishes, his perfectly roasted chicken, his crispy skinned duck, for a couple years. Last Christmas he and I ate oysters, per his tradition, and even I didn’t know at the time they came from the waters of my youth, from St Jerome’s Creek at my own beloved Point No Point. The cat who loved him follows me now. The leaves of the trees he planted made energy all summer to form the buds that he watched silently with me from inside the kitchen window as the weather turned cold. His own energy, always so big and abundant, was almost used up. Even without him, the leaves will emerge next spring. The birds are still outside the windows and the salamanders are underground, waiting to make their return to the pond, and I am glad that he knew this part of myself that I’ve only just begun discovering, the naturalist that I have been waiting my whole life to finally be. He read my blog, also, and he liked it. Well. It is a special thing to find a parent who is like you, and especially one who, despite having very particular taste, really likes you.

At first I didn’t wish the Pawpaws had never come into our lives, because he liked them so much. And even now the trees he planted have my love. But I’d stay away from the fruit, if I were you.

https://growingfruit.org/t/the-dangers-of-pawpaw-consumption/16536

https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/130/3/816/277881

It Might Be Over Soon

Re: time slipping away: it’s still funny.

The song that would have been playing is Bon Iver’s 22 (Over S∞n) and the night would have been in summer 2015, or maybe 2016. A Grumpy Old Man would have seen me eating cheese at the counter on a beautiful evening, and would have come and stood next to me to also, companionably and competitively, eat cheese. He listened to the news on earphones, and I listened to this song. The lyrics had some significance I recognized, even then. Even then. The news seemed less important.

Many species of moths start out as inchworms, measuring the miracles.

This has been a bad year for butterflies, did I mention? But insects are this summer’s taxonomic Class of interest and I would like to share with you that insects have a remarkable ability to rebound. They have evolved to take advantage of good conditions and to survive bad ones, even in very small numbers. They can re-populate at a speed that puts our most prolific ancestors to shame. So the overall insect situation is not great, is maybe even alarming. But lower numbers early in the season, especially in this bizarre season, are not necessarily so dire.

I have been seeing signs of hope. Today, sitting in my yard that is now all lush and flowery and ephemeral, I saw a Red Spotted Purple and an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail. Those are big graceful butterflies and leave even the uninterested person satisfied with their butterfly viewing experience. I saw a number of Eastern Tailed Blues, and endless Cabbage Whites (they’re not moths) which I am happy enough to share space with now that my kale is all eaten (some by them and some by me). They can pollinate my cucumbers without threatening the rest of my meals. And most exciting of all, as I sat not 4 feet away, a female Ruby Throated Hummingbird came zooming in from afar and made a beeline for the Bee Balm that has been blooming for a week. She took a look at me but kept eating. Bee Balm is my favorite hummingbird feeder, 5 stars.

Here is to the rebounds, even those we know better than to hope for.

Twilight Promethea, and the first 5th Instar Saturniid I’ve found in the wild. Someone else found this one, which kind of started my whole entire moth thing. My Spark Bug.

 

First Butterfly I’ve seen at night. Maybe they are moths!! Jk.

 

See the Walnut Sphinx Caterpillar on its namesake food plant?

 

Bee Balm

No photo of the Hummingbird, but here is the Bee Balm a little earlier into its blooming. And Mountain Mint next door, another native pollinator magnet. Two days ago I saw a Horace’s Duskywing on it, another backyard first!

Caterpillars are easier to photograph than butterflies, and I have never found so many before! As far as the adults I hope you’ll take my word for it that they’re showing up out there, and maybe we’ll continue to see more.

Funny How Time Slips Away

Well hello there. My it’s been a long time.

May 6, 2018 was a day that offered precious hours to spend with some fleeting wonders of early May. And today, two weeks later, I even found a little time to creep out on here and imagine those memories could be made permanent. Memory is on my mind in beautiful and nostalgic and sad ways these days. New lives, new loves, things that you go without but find have stayed nearly as you left them and ready for you to come back, things that can be lost slowly, things that can be lost forever. Many of the flowers and others below are already gone, but new and lovely things may come from them.

Blackhaw Viburnums wildly in bloom at a Maryland park that is newish to me.

Oh captive Viburnum prunufolium in my yard, generous host of the Cecropia caterpillars I found in the nursery with the Grumpy Old Man 2 years ago, I never knew you had all this in you.

At the end of this walk, in a patch of Trout Lillies, I almost found the Box Turtle I am forever looking for.

This park is a migrant trap, I have never seen so many Black Throated Blue Warblers, every 10 feet and right on the path, singing their hearts out. They are only passing through, headed to their breeding grounds a bit North. Some may still be around if you stop look and listen for that Beer Beer BEE.

Later in the day, I returned to a place I know well.

Future Oak trees

This may look like 3 Dogwood flowers, but look again. Each of those 4 white leafy bracts contains more like 20!

The Pawpaw flowers crept up on me this year.

 

Willie Nelson wrote tonight’s title song, I learned while doing my obligatory googling. But this is always an Al Green song when you hear about it from me.

May your spring be filled with flowers, may your summer be filled with fruits, may you share the wonder of nature with those you love, may those who love you share it with you. Like the future trees these flowers promise, memories return to us again and again.

What about the Box Turtle?

I will never get over seeing on Zillow that the small patch of wet woods behind my childhood home, filled to the brim with trees above Jack in the Pulpits, Mayapples, and other incredible wildflowers, was entirely cut down and  replaced with sod and 4 bushes. There were Red Backed Salamanders under the logs back there. There was a Box Turtle, and sometimes I could hear it rustling around in the layers of dried leaves on the forest floor. A whole magical world in a backyard. They hardscaped over the place where two of my dogs were buried, and I can never unknow that this sacred spot, unbearable to leave behind, now exists only in my memory. The bones are probably gone. It is sad and dead and ugly, but they bragged about their hardscaping on the Zillow post when the house went up for sale again. Why would someone buy a house that is back in the woods with the goal of getting rid of the woods? What is wrong with people? It breaks my heart, and hasn’t my heart been through enough? My dogs were gone no matter what, but the salamanders and the turtle and the millions of other creatures I did and did not discover back there, and their descendents, should still be with us. It was a particularly well preserved piece of Maryland’s Piedmont biodiversity. I have known about it the changes for 2 years since I happened to look the house up on Zillow, for the first time, and it had just gone on sale that day. This time of year is when I think of it again, when the Mayapples first come up, my favorite before I knew anything about wildflowers. I once saw the Box Turtle eating them, and later learned this animal plant pairing is a classic. I would like to think the turtle, which could live for 100 years, found someplace nearby to go, but in my heart I know that there weren’t many other places, and Box Turtles, with their perfect mental GPS, cannot bear to be taken away from the spot where they’re from. Less adaptable, perhaps, than some humans, neither can I.

Loraxin’

This blog was inspired by a strange period of time in my life during which I chose to abandon the path I had planned out and, for want of some form of income and direction, went to work as an outdoor educator on the Eastern Shore. That job is referenced frequently in early posts. Unlike the other outdoor rec jobs I’d had, which were fun and the opposite of a grind, this one involved grueling ’round the clock work without enough staff. It was spring and rained torrentially more days than not, and despite changing (waterproof) shoes a couple times a day my socks always seemed to be wet. The wet socks I was expecting, of course, but not the lack of opportunities to dry my feet off at the end of the day. But hold the complaints. Although I remember moments from that job like they happened YESTERDAY, it was almost 5 years ago.

Spotted

When I started this blog, my tree was a seed with 3 leaves sticking out of it. I had just moved back to my parents’ house for a few months, on the road to uncertain places. I remember that I rode my bike up large hills on 90 degree days and looked for caterpillars.

Because

Butterflies are with us all year long. Limited to our human senses and localities we think of them as summer creatures. Even if you’re not going away, I will miss you. Photos from September 17, 2017.

Gray Hairstreak

Fiery Skipper

Peck’s Skipper

Happy National Moth Week <3

Male Polyphemus Moth July 2017

Dog Days of Summer (insect days really)

Happy birthday to this sweet little neglected blog! 4 years old and changing every day.

These are Dog Days indeed- one of the hottest I can remember in my 8 summers enjoying life without air conditioning. It’s usually not nearly as bad as people make it out to be- close the blinds, open the windows at night, use the ceiling fan when you’re in the room… I’m good. Sometimes it is an obstacle to cooking just when all yummiest the food is available, but I sweat it out every week or so and live to tell the tale. It is nice to smell the fresh air and hear the birds singing with the windows open and this time of year, the Cicadas! My old favorite insects are back and their chorus is what really makes summer official. Indeed, there is even a Cicada in Maryland named the Dog Day Cicada. It comes out annually, unlike its more famous red-eyed brethren.

Did you know that the Dog Days of summer occur when the constellation Sirius makes an appearance in our night sky? The Scandinavians are into celebrating anything related to non-frozen times of year and all the old Pagan traditions, so this is obviously their holiday, occurring between early July and mid-August. That is more or less when the Dog Day Cicada calls too. But here is another did you know: Did you know that there are actually 18 species of Cicadas that live here in Maryland? And that the periodic Cicadas are actually 3 different species? That is what the Maryland Biodiversity Project has listed on their website. There is not a lot of information- most of the species have no records, and the Dog Day Cicada has none! Is it a rare Cicada? I’m not even sure. Today I found a barely alive perfect looking Swamp Cicada hanging out in the driveway, so my guess is that this species is the common choruser.

Here is to the soil that remains unturned and the concrete that is not poured over it, so that these sweet friends can sing for many generations to come.