REVIVING NAKED LADIES

TODAY BIRDLAND IS PLEASANTLY OVERCAST. The sun winks through grey cloud cover once in awhile. I stepped out to grab the laundry off the line and saw constellations of dark raindrops in the dust. But when I reached the laundry, it was no more damp than this morning's dew had left it. (Yes, I left it out all night. Again.) We got rain last week, but the parched earth swallowed it up and asks for more. I've always liked this kind of sky once in awhile. It feels a bit like the protective feeling you get walking under an umbrella, or sitting in a tent listening to the gentle rhythm of raindrops. I'm hoping that gentle rhythm will come soon. I rigged up a hopeful mini-rainbarrel—the bucket from an old dehumidifier under the downspout to siphon water through a garden hose into my little pond, which is going dry.

 The Ghost Lilies, which have been reticent this summer—only a few blooming in stunted fashion here and there—had a party after last week's rain. They have popped up from all their secret spots, soft pink clusters of trumpets calling the bees with their gentle fragrance. They remind me that it's time to indulge my fascination with them—the ultimate reminder of invisible, subterranean forces that eventually blossom. I hope you are not tired of hearing about Ghost Lilies by now, because I'm not sure I'll ever be through with them.

Do you remember them? They have many names, and I've collected a few new to me in the past couple of years: Magic Lilies, Surprise Lilies, Vacation Lilies, Resurrection Lilies, Naked Ladies. They are like pale pink Amaryllis, emerging in the spring as a nubbin the size of your thumb—a tight bundle of leaves lined up like the pages of a tiny, green book. Then they grow like Jack's beanstalk, inches per hour, until they are a like a giant spray of leaves of grass, up to your knees. Except for their growth rate, they are unremarkable, just naked leaves that bravely collect sunshine for a few weeks, then, as suddenly as they came, they collapse in a yellowed heap and disappear until you see no trace, even of the wilted leaves.

We go about our summer business—weeding the garden, repairing the chicken coop, driving kids to soccer practice and swimming pools, paying bills, working, peeling peaches, trying to keep cool—and forget all about those green leaves. Then one day, when you least expect it, you walk out to the chicken coop with a scoop of food in each hand and there comes the first Ghost Lily of the summer. It wasn't there yesterday, and now it is. No leaves, only a crisp stalk with a tight cluster of elegant, long buds, like fingers. Tomorrow they will be twice as tall, and open into pink bells, long slender stamens topped with anthers full of golden pollen. One long pistil waits for the bee. Tomorrow, more stalks with more buds will follow, but look deep into the blossom. Down in the center of the bell the pink fades to a bright yellow, as if a golden light is shining up the stalk with fiber optics. And who's to say it isn't? Do we know what goes on deep in the earth in that secret bulb below? Something magical and transformative. I once dug a bunch of Ghost Lilies to spread around the yard and was surprised at how deeply I had to dig to find the bulbs. More than a foot. I was surprised at how crisp and bright the bulbs were, all the way through. (I had cut some with my shovel.)

Now play the part of the bee. Put your nose right into the bouquet and breathe in. The flower will give you a gift of fragrance and dust your nose with golden pollen. Let's sing a song of gratitude to the flower, the bee, the darkness and the light. Each part of the cycle is important, especially, perhaps, the quiet, dark, underground part. Gathering thoughts, sunshine, beauty, fragrance, creativity—ready to emerge when you least expect it.

Gather Beauty; Inhale Peace; Blessed Be.

BENEFICIAL INSECTS LIKE NATIVE PLANTS

IN BIRDLAND, WE HAVE A RESPITE FROM THE HEAT, but not the drought. I'm jealous of the rain that  Champaign had the other day, where it “poured.” I can hear my grandmother's voice complaining that “rain on pavement never did anybody any good.” Here we haven't had a drop for weeks and the yard is dusty. The flowers that have it in them to bloom anyway are shy, with spare, small blossoms, their leaves drooping.  Ghost Lilies tentatively emerge, half their usual height, the flowers smaller, tighter, only weakly fragrant. Shrubs show signs of stress. But at least it's been cool the past few days, the humidity rising up to the sky to fall as rain far away.

 This morning I went down to visit my aunts and they invited me to pick peaches. My little peach trees are all barren this year. We had a cold snap when they bloomed, and I didn't see any bees. My pear tree only has a handful of fruit.  I was surprised that my aunts' tree had peaches. Their tree has always offered an abundance of sweet, plump peaches every year, occasionally taking a year off to rest. A spring gale broke off the best half of their tree, and when I went out to survey the damage, I didn't see any peaches set on, but it fooled me. Instead of a wheelbarrow, we used a couple of grocery bags for our harvest, filling each about halfway. My Aunt Kate shook the heck out of the tree, while I tried to pick up the peaches before Ursula got them. They look just like her rubber ball, and she thought she had hit the jackpot.

The sad little harvest, while better than the nothing I thought we would get, reminded about the workshop I went to in Ames, Iowa last week. It was called “Conserving beneficial insects with native plants,” and offered by Iowa State University. The first speaker, Dr. Lisa Schulte, introduced me to a new way of thinking about our place in nature called, “Ecosystem Services.” Scientists have been using this model for awhile, but it was new to me. At first the term put me off. It sounded kind of corporate to me, like an economic term, rather than one describing nature, as if ecosystems were just put here to benefit human society, and isn't that attitude how our ecosystems got to be such a mess in the first place? But as she spoke, and showed her slides, I began to understand that acknowledging the goods and services that seem to come “free” from nature might help us acknowledge that we'd better take care of the sources of these services. For example, the bean fields outside my window are pollinated by wild pollinators. They come, as if by magic, and we harvest the beans without a thought for these seemingly “free” services. However, I know in some places farmers pay beekeepers to park hives in their orchards. Here, at least, is an acknowledgment that pollination services are worth money. What if we had to pay bees, or even hire people to pollinate the beans in our fields? Our wild pollinators do it for the pollen and the nectar, but if we don't protect their habitat, how will we attract them to our fields? Another speaker, Dr. Mary Harris, said, “It's a tough life out there for pollinators.”

 

What can we do to help reestablish populations of wild pollinators? We can provide diversity of native plants in our gardens, roadsides and yards. Even on our farms, according to Dr. Harris, “diversity of crops themselves can help pollinators." We can think about the needs of the pollinators. What do bees need? They need floral resources for food—pollen and nectar, throughout the season. That's how a diversity of plants can help. They need nesting spaces—undisturbed soil, wood, even hollow stems, like those left over from Day Lilies after they've bloomed, can provide shelter. Really, they just need nature. In my own yard I can encourage wild Asters and Black-Eyed-Susans that come up in my yard, banking some of the ecosystem services (pollination services, yes, but also more selfish ones. I can pick some of those flowers for my table, saving $5-$10 to fill each vase. I get spiritual benefits, too—stopping for a moment to smell, or appreciate the colors in the sun). In our yards and in our farms, even in our roadsides we can consider diversity of plant life, which supports diversity of pollinators. As we viewed slides of diversified farms, I began to imagine our own grass waterway—the lovely, green, well-clipped road through the fields built to preserve the soil—as a prairie waterway, or a bee road, hosting myriad native plants and pollinators. Imagine.

Diversify Beauty; Imagine Peace; Blessed Be.