Garden Discrimination

heidi08 Educational, Environmental, New Species July 19, 2009

So I was sitting at my parents’ table after a recent camping trip and noticed the Sacramento Bee’s Carlos Acala was having a poetry contest about gardening and asking for submissions. Winners would be published July 18th. Of course he would expect the usual complaints about moles and slugs, and a few fruit stealing incidents in literary form. I had a vision though. I wanted something different. I wanted to be the Upton Sinclair of horticulture. I wanted to be the “Silkwood” of the gardening industry. I wanted to rock their world.

Devoted gardeners everywhere will instantly recognize this avaricious visitor. The Horn worm, or tomato worm, is much despised in the agricultural world. He is famed for eating through your tomato leaves at the rate of a whole plant in a single night. Certainly there could be absolutely no reasonable value in letting him stick around. Except for this:

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=toNUsuYAZiw]

Have you ever seen one of these? This is the Hummingbird, Hawk, or Sphinx Moth. They come to your flowers to take nectar and their heavy bodies move as if they were flying underwater. I first saw one when I was camping on the Russian River. It was twilight, and the strange evening hummingbird appeared to visit the flowers but didn’t fly away when we went to investigate. I couldn’t imagine what it could be and called the park ranger in the morning. He hadn’t seen one either, and had to call three friends, but we eventually solved the mystery. They are nearly as big as your fist, and there are many variations in coloring. I have only seen three in my lifetime, but I remember each precious glimpse.

It is stunning to me that considering all the gruesome detail with which we are warned against tomato worms, we aren’t at least given a mention of what they grow up to be. It’s almost an illicit secret, suppressed by the Ortho lobby or the Tomato Growers Association of America or something. With the weighty moral compass of a woman who had helped save beavers, I figured that my entry to the garden verse contest would have to address this prejudicial silence. I rolled up my sleeves and went to work.

Make friends with the Pest and Potato
Cultivate Peace: Garden NATO
No moth, me thinks
can rival the sphinx
She just needs a little Tomato!

I was proud of myself. A limerick, more accessible than the lofty sonnet, and how many women can rhyme sphinx? Garden descriminations being what they are, I, sadly, didn’t win, although I was contacted by the columnist running the contest who cleverly remarked that he would garden NATO but he didn’t know “where to get the seeds”. Aha! Suppressed by a Burpee and an Ortho lobby! It’s a green consipiracy.

Here is the fully-expected tomato poem that contained adequate prejudice to win.

The Tomato Worm

If I had to pick my garden’s number one pest I think that the Tomato Worm stands above the rest It can devour a tomato plan almost overnight To see the devastation is quite a fright It’s voracious appetite one must stop Left uncontrolled and you’ll have no crop In addition to all this, it’s such an ugly worm Just the sight of them always makes me squirm

— Craig Wahl, Sacramento

Ahh Craig, you’re sooo establishment. You can read the other stepford-gardener-entries here. They’re a lot of fun, and the Bee’s garden section is one of the best around. But its missing a poem about sphinx moths. The gaping hole is obvious. Sigh.

I’m just curious. What if they grew up to be puppies? or unicorns? would gardeners still routinely kill them?

The Private Lives of Beavers

heidi08 Beavers elsewhere July 18, 2009

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=MzNWhJow67k]

This remarkable clip is from the Philadelphia zoo, which just enjoyed the birth of six new kits this year. Did you click play? Go ahead, I’ll wait, and its worth it, I promise.

What I love about the clip is that it shows how the kits are using mom’s tail as a seat cushion to feed. I love seeing her rubbing her own tummy, maybe to stimulate milk production, or maybe because its just part of the mutual grooming beaver trance. (See this video for a demonstration!) I love seeing the parts of their lives that we’re usually denied, although every time I see one of these videos I hate the concrete habitat a little more. Still, the beavers are apparently thriving in their miniature golf-scape, and engaged in very normal looking beaver behavior. So it can’t be all bad.

Last night’s beaver viewing saw a yearling that decided not to sleep at the frat house, and a veryyyyy tiny muskrat. Creek friend Robert Rust paddled his kayak through water and did a much-needed cleanup. Beaver regulars gathered to watch the massively high tide flow up and over the dam and through the recently-plugged-up whole under the viewing platform. Oh how I wished for some sandbags to keep the water at that height when the tides changed! The pipe was hidden, even the filter was submerged. It was beautiful.

But no man can tether time nor tide, I’m told….sigh.

Walter Cronkite 1916-2009

heidi08 Uncategorized July 17, 2009

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=g_sWmD6NvMY]

Plots and Plans

heidi08 Beaver News, Festival, Friends of Martinez Beavers July 17, 2009

It’s full steam ahead for the Beaver Festival, and things are impressively taking shape. We have 17 nonprofit displays participating, two remarkable retail additions, two art projects, four Worth A Dam event areas, and four musical groups lined up.

National Park Service	Green Sols Water
Naval weapons Open Space	Wild Bryde Jewelry
Native Birds	Beaver Book Signing
CCC Clean water program
LINDSAY MUSEUM	WAD Membership
P.L.A.N. (Badgers petaluma)	WAD Silent Auction
TEAMS in Training	Beaver Information
Open Space Bird & Bee Boxes	Beaver Tours
Friends of Alhambra Creek	Beaver Art Tiles
California Native Plant Society	Beaver tail bookmarks
Elle Falahat
West County Toxics Coalition	Alhambra Valley Band
Parents for a safer environment	Jeff Campbell Bag Piper
Noah’s Wish Foundation	Teachers of the Year
Bay Area Ridge Trail SF	Muir Station Jazz Band
Phillip Ciaramataro

It’s a piece of work, I can tell you. Herding cats indeed. Remind me not to be a wedding planner.

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=Pk7yqlTMvp8]

I heard a rumor today that the beavers were named East Bay Animal Family of the Year, so I went looking.

BEST URBAN WILDLIFE PHENOMENON (2008 AND 2009)

The Beaver Family in Alhambra Creek

Escobar St. between Estudillo and Castro Streets, Martinez

Forget New York’s rats and the wild parrots of Telegraph Hill. Martinez has beavers running in the streets. Almost literally. In the seat of Contra Costa County, government employees, drunk-tank refugees, disgruntled jurors, and old-time “Martizians” wander the downtown streets by day. Although businesses are mostly shuttered after 5 p.m., it’s only then you can catch a glimpse of the beaver family that’s made its home in Alhambra Creek, which runs through the center of the town where Joe DiMaggio was born. When the city council announced it would be killing the beavers to help alleviate a preexisting flood threat their dam made worse, a candlelight vigil was held on the behalf of the beloved semiaquatic rodents, and amnesty was their reward. The city has now sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars into beaver-related maintenance, and the beaver brood is, somewhat laughably, Martinez’s main tourist attraction. The family has a dedicated blog, advocacy group, Wikipedia page, and many YouTube videos. Catch a glimpse of the playful nocturnal critters in person at dusk, when they leave their lodge and splash about in the creek.

Never Cry Beaver

heidi08 Environmental, Video, Why We Care July 16, 2009

In the end, there were no simple answers,

no heroes, no villians.

only silence.

But it began the moment that I first saw the wolf

By the act of watching, with the eyes of man,

I had pointed the way for those who followed.

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=Izb0ScZSBpk]

This movie came out the year I graduated from High School—(that’s Alhambra High School right here in Martinez California. Coincidentally the superintendent of the school then was John Searles, who invited me last month to talk about beavers for the Rotary Club, small beaver world, but you knew that already.) I was enrolled in a film class at DVC when Carroll Ballard’s remarkable animal photography was pointed out to me. My mind’s eye remembered the scene where he falls through the ice and we watch the hare’s face to follow the story. When I used the barn owl’s tilting head in the “high hopes” video that was what i was thinking of. (Not that you could tell.)

From the first five minutes of this remarkable movie I knew it was about epic challenges, personal courage, government bureaucracy and awesome, life-changing closeness to nature. For an unexplained while, before each big hurdle of my student life, (internship interviews, comprehensive exams, licensing exam, dissertation defense) I watched this movie and tried to put my nervous self in order.

I had no idea, then, that it was preparing me for beavers.

If you haven’t watched Never Cry Wolf in 26 years, (or if you sadly never watched it at all) give yourself a monumental treat. The movie is a slow, introspective look at the wilderness. Even today I’m not sure I understand how seeing the natural world in such staggering splendor can focus your vision inward in the most minute and compassionate detail. If you aren’t feeling introspective maybe you could invite your friends over to play the special Martinez Version where you do a shot each time you identify a similarity with our beaver story (faulty understanding, unreliable officials, greedy developers, exaggerated fears, lost wisdom, and wavering bassoon.) (Well, okay, there’s no bassoon in Martinez, but the rest is a direct hit!)

As a reward for struggling to keep up on a remarkable journey, you are treated at the end to the amazing footage of the main character teaching his inuit friend how to juggle. Very possibly the best movie ever made for helping you to see the world, value its beauty and wildness, unlearn all the bogus scientific mythology you’ve been taught, try remarkable new ways to test out developing theories, and advocate humane understanding of the creatures you encounter.

Hmm.