Caterpillars and Creepy Crawlies

by Mimi Hedl

Recently I had dinner with my friend Barbara. She’s an Islamic art scholar with a specialty in miniatures. She knows the art and its history inside out. She can recite dates, places and tell you what was going on in Persia or Pakistan or wherever at the time the art was made. She’s written many books and is as much of a misfit in this rural part of America as I am. Maybe that’s what brought us together 31 years ago when she bought my baguettes and bunches of basil at the Farmer’s Market in Linn.

But can she remember names of flowers or what they need and like or how to propagate them? Give me a break. Of course not. She’ll call me and say something like, “that little white flower you gave me, what’s it called?” And I rack my brain trying to come up with the name of the correct flower from that lengthy description. And if I ask her to describe it, she’ll mumble and fumble and fail to use any descriptive words like she does in great detail in her Islamic art books.

Yes, yes. We have our passions. We have our failings. I give blank stares about so many things. I don’t expect people to know what I know about botany. BUT!! I was horrified when Barbara told me she sprayed some nasty bugs (the carcasses of cicadas, all three of them) because she thought they were eating her Rose of Sharon shrub. GRAB POISON, SPRAY, then ask questions. As we sat on the back deck she pointed at the Rose of Sharon and the fact those bugs were still there. I went closer to investigate and did indeed find the shells the cicadas shed when they molted. I closed my eyes and tried to calm myself down, all the time thinking, “us ignorant Americans”. How often we react instead of try to understand what’s going on. Barbara has spent her life with a can of poison at the ready, never curious as to how Mother Nature works. She wants her beautiful garden to be perfect. Period.

Her garden may be perfect but not to the bees and butterflies. Few pollinators visit. A residue of poison lurks whenever I visit. She forgets my words before I leave and uses her spray can as soon as she sees a bug.  Ahhh… So I pondered what she would do if she had a wall of pipe vine growing on her fence instead of the euonymus.

Now hundreds of caterpillars, in all stages of development, devour the leaves of the pipe vine. Sometimes there’ll be two caterpillars on one leaf. (Notice the color change from the young caterpillar to the mature.) In a few weeks we will have riches of this butterfly visiting the gardens.

The Great Spangled Fritillary has had its moment. I’ve tried to capture the 15 or more butterflies that will flit around the rue or grey dogwood or red clover at one time, in one part of the garden, but as soon as I move, they fly around. They’re everywhere because the nectar plants they love are too. It feels magical to walk through a haze of butterflies, wondering if one will get trapped in my hair.

I came in from weeding and found this inch worm on my shorts. They fascinate me. I kept watching this one scrunch up its body and do the measuring thing. Such fun and what a cool way to move through the world. A great move for a hip hop artist!

The Flanders poppies bloom around Memorial Day. What a beautiful flower to commemorate our fallen soldiers. The flower makes such a bold presence and I can only imagine what the field in Flanders must have looked like before modern agriculture disturbed the poppies after World War 1.

Notice how the bees have literally rubbed the pollen all over their bodies, hence the stamens, the male part, lays in a puddle while the pistil, the female part, stays erect. Sometimes, early in the morning, while it’s still cool, I’ll find a bee laying on all the stamens in the flower, fast asleep.

When well-intentioned neighbors stop by to visit and offer to cut my tall grasses and “weedy” areas (their words, not mine!). I demur and say thank you, but I love it just like it is. I feel sure they go away feeling like I don’t know what I’m doing and that my yard just doesn’t look “right”. I understand. We all see the world differently. I try to remember that when someone has a can of poison in their hand.