Corpus Delicti

 

Frontyard massacre.

There’s forensic evidence,

But where’s the body?

Not Quite According To Plan

It was, like so many of my gardening activities, not planned.

             

My original project for the thirty-five degree Saturday morning was to burn up the last of the gasoline in my Toro mower to prepare it for its winter hibernation.  And since the mower would be running anyway I figured I would rake up the small amount of leaves that had shown up in my yard since our last late-November rake-a-thon and mulch them into the still unfrozen earth.

             

Then I would tie up the “dead man’ switch” on the mower to keep the motor running and go for a walk to get some real exercise.

             

The raking and mulching took about 15 minutes so I put the Toro on stationary auto-pilot and thought I would patrol the property to see if there were any last minute fine-tunings I could give my perennials before I bid them a restful cold season.  I found a few Rudbekia stalks to cut down and some dried out ferns to trim – 5 more minutes.

            

 I continued my walkabout along the southern border of my yard where I noticed two small Maple trees growing up in the midst of our boundary Arborvitae – the existence of both saplings having been hidden by Hosta and other plants during the growing season.

             

Ever alert for an opportunity to use my pruning saw I retrieved my favorite landscaping tool and wormed my way into the area under the white cedars and began cutting away.  Potential exercise – but still not enough to curtail my walk.  Until I got up and caught my stocking cap and sweatshirt sleeve on two pricker branches that had also wormed their own way in amongst the trees.

             

I cut them off with my hand pruners and then noticed that – because of the time of year – I actually had a fairly unobstructed entry point to the base of the spike-stemmed perennial that has long been a literal thorn-in-my-side during my gardening labors in that area.

            

 So, forty-five minutes later – and (remarkably) with no skin punctures or torn clothing – I had my large trash bin filled to the brim with sharply barbed branches.  And, in spite of the cold temperature I had worked up a minor sweat and satisfied my need for working out.

             

The greatest joys in life are unrehearsed – but not totally unintentional.

Well Fed or Well Groomed?

The Little Brown Birds (or LBBs as our D.I.L. and son call them) are making a day spa out of family room garden.

LBBs scatter

dry dirt outside our window –

dust baths at daybreak.

             

Normally this perennial flowerbed, which sits across the paver path from our family room, would be blanketed in Cedar bark mulch.  But this year, because of some on-going plant replacement work that Mars and I are doing, the bare earth is instead exposed.  And due to our recent drought that soil is preternaturally dry.  I vaguely recollect one of two instances of mulch-bathing in previous years.  But, I suspect that the extreme exfoliating effect of the cedar chips was not quite what the LBBs were hoping for – so they probably flew off in search of browner pastures.  This year however the softer silt surface is apparently just what the doctor ordered – if wild birds had medical coverage, and they paid attention to the advice.

             

So, is this strange but entertaining behavior a form of recreation, or a relaxation technique, or perhaps even some form of avian spiritual ritual?  No.  Evidently dust (or sand) bathing is a common grooming activity of animals in order to clean their fur, feathers or skin, and to remove parasites.

             

“Birds cower close to the ground while taking a dust bath, vigorously wriggling their bodies and flapping their wings. This disperses loose substrate into the air. The birds spread one or both wings, which allows the falling substrate to fall between the feathers and reach the skin. The dust bath is often followed by thorough shaking to further ruffle the feathers which may be accompanied with preening using the bill.” (wikipedia.com)

            

 I am particularly impressed by the part where the LBBs stretch out their wings to permit “the falling substrate to fall between the feathers and reach the skin.”  How did the first LBB use its LBB (Little Bird Brain) to figure this out?  And then teach it to its friends – “Hey guys, watch this!”  Or is the whole spread wing thing just a perfectly natural feel-good reaction to the pleasant feeling of finally getting that killer itch scratched?

             

I checked online and apparently, as hard as it may be for some of us to believe, the human spa business has not picked up on this holistic dry dirt idea – except as a food supplement. 

             

Now technically it’s not the same plain old whatever-you-find-on-the-ground dirt that our LBBs are happy to frolic in.  It’s called “Food Grade Diatomaceous Earth (DE)” and it is made from the fossilized remains of tiny, aquatic organisms called diatoms.    Unlike Rebeca the orphan girl in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” who actually ate dirt, this all-natural soil is simply mixed with water and drunk.  There is however at least one caveat.  According to www.organicspamagazine.com, “there are two kinds of Diatomaceous Earth, one you put in pools (very toxic), and food grade. MAKE SURE that you purchase only Food Grade, and consult your physician (or naturopath) before you start.”

             

Many spas for humans however do offer wet dirt treatments in the form of mud scrubs and mud pools.  Mars and I have partaken of the latter several times at the Ojo Caliente Mineral Spring and Spa in northern New Mexico.  As their website puts it, “Where else can you slather mud all over your body and bake in the sun until done? As our special blend of clay dries, toxins are released from the pores of your skin and you come away feeling cleansed and refreshed.”

             

And for those of you who are curious, “Please note that the natural mineral content and coloration of the mud may stain bathing suits” – so the answer is yes, or no, depending upon how the question is phrased.

             

So here’s how it works.  Probably with some help, you coat the entire unclothed portion of your body with their magic mud.  Then quickly (before your limbs harden into position) stretch yourself out on a lounge chair in the warm sun, and let the mud dry while staying as motionless as possible – which becomes easier to do as the wet earth solidifies.  After a while you somehow get up and move yourself into the rinsing-off pool where the toxins you are shedding mingle with the toxins of those who have come before you and form (I guess) new toxic relationships.  Then you take a shower.  Your skin really does feel good – and you don’t have to worry about aligning yourself up with any plummeting substrates to get the full benefit.

             

This obviously is very similar to the animal behavior of wallowing – of which according to ethologists (those who study such stuff) dust bathing is technically not a sub-category.

             

Per Wikipedia.com, some reasons for rolling in the mud may include: thermoregulation, providing a sunscreen, removal of ectoparasites, social cohesion, relief from moulting, relief from biting insects, play (in young animals), skin maintenance, camouflage, and male-male conflict social behavior. 

             

There is some “social cohesion” at the Ojo Caliente mud pool – especially among couples – but I haven’t observed any “Male-male conflict social behavior”.  Tempers do however occasionally flare at our LBB Day Spa when a newcomer tries to usurp one of the established dusting pits that one of the regulars has hopped away from for a quick break.  In general though the atmosphere is peacefully spa-like, and the behaviors of the bathers is entertaining enough that Mars and I have decided not to mulch over the area until at least next spring.

             

But, just to confuse matters, some of the chatter on the web says that birds do like mulch covered beds – both for the insects that come along within the chips, as well as for the native bugs and worms that find a safe home under the pine bark.  And I have in fact seen both LBBs, and Mid-Sized Brown Birds such as Robins, turning over chunks of mulch with apparent success in this and other parts of our yard. 

             

To mulch or not to mulch?  Well-fed or well-groomed?   Choices Mars and I look forward to making in the next gardening season.

             

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb-EMYdk-cA

Dancing in the Streets

Cold front coming in.

Dancing red leaf dervishes

spiral down the street.

Mulch Ado About Nothing!

One good thing is that you can clearly see your carbon footprint in the pattern of uncovered grass.  Another is that you can just as clearly see the organic good being done by looking more closely within that footmark at the tiny flecks of fall foliage suspended on the blades of green.

             

It’s the perfect visual for the ecological conundrum that I semi-seriously fret about every autumn – is it okay to pollute in order to be organic?

             

Back in college I studied the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, a proponent of Utilitarianism – the ethical theory that an action is morally right if and only if it is productive of the most happiness for the greatest number of persons. 

            

Fun digression – Bentham’s fully dressed skeleton (padded out with hay) and topped with a wax head is on display, sitting upright in a wooden cabinet at the end of the South Cloisters in the main building of University College in London, England.  The clothes are Bentham’s and he requested that his body be preserved this way in the will that he made shortly before his death on June 6, 1832.  Legend has it that this “auto-icon”, as the dead theorist dubbed it, attends meetings of the College Council and is listed in the minutes as present but not voting.  However the university’s website avers that this story is a myth. 

In any event, back when his cranium was real and still functioning Bentham created a “Hedonic Calculus” to be used in determining the rightness or wrongness of an action.  In its simplest form this mathematical exercise calls for totaling up all the pleasure and all the pain caused by an action and only doing those things where the scales weight more heavily on the pleasure side.  In other words – an ethical cost/benefit analysis.

             

Calculating the extent of the atmospheric damage is actually pretty straightforward; Footprint =  (amount of gas used) x (17.7 pounds of carbon per gallon) It takes about 60 minutes to mulch my entire lawn.  1 hour of mowing using 0.5 gallons of gas = 11 gallon about 9 pounds of carbon per mulching session.  That seems like a reasonably small number to me for 2 or 3 mulch-athons.

             

As for the effect on the lawn – it’s all good.  According to the Mother Nature Network (mnn.com)  “Micro-organisms that live in the soil beak down organic material such as leaves. Worms get in on the action, too. The roots of some grasses such as fescue can grow slowly in the fall and a mild winter and the decaying action of mulched leaves left on the yard will provide these roots with nutrients. Mulched leaves will biodegrade and disappear from the lawn by spring. The same type of activity with micro-organisms and worms that is happening in the lawn area is also happening in landscape and vegetable beds.”

             

This negates, or at least lowers, the need for chemicals.  If you don’t agree that’s a good thing then you probably bailed out of this essay a few paragraphs ago.

            

 So Bentham’s Calculus says – mulch.

             

But there is one catch.  Again, mnn.com, “If the leaves are so thick that they make mowing difficult, you may need to add the bag attachment or even rake them.”

            

 I choose the latter approach.

            

 I enjoy mulching.  It’s lawn mowing, which I enjoy, with the added cathartic effect of immediately seeing the result of your work.  Raking provides the same therapeutic sense of accomplishment but without the noise and with more upper body exercise.  And I can do it at 8:00 am without disturbing my neighbors.

            

 On a recent Tuesday morning with the temperature in the mid-forties and the early sun barely warming my back, I set myself the task of re-raking my lawn in anticipation of a scheduled pickup sometime in the next few days.  Over the preceding weekend I had spent about two hours getting my first set of leaves onto my snow-shelves from which my town vacuums them up with a device resembling Sesame Street’s Snuffleupagus and then turns them into piles of publicly available mulch.  During a windy Monday part of that fallen foliage had been blown back into my yard, along with some from my neighbor’s, and another set dropping from my oak and maple trees.

             

In forty-five wonderful minutes I had completed my task – in the middle of which I actually stopped for a moment and thought, “Gardening just doesn’t get any better than this!”  And Snuffy cometh and taketh away that very afternoon.  How good a day is that?

             

The town will collect one more time this year, but I suspect from now on I will be mulching.  I’ve done it once and expect to do it maybe two more times.

             

Unless that is the spirit of Jeremy Bentham overcomes me and I decide instead to take some of my old gardening clothes and pad them out with the remaining leaves to create my own auto-icon.  Unlike the philosopher however I would display my self-image in an erect posture, striding purposefully and proudly behind my faded-red Toro mulching mower.

             

And that, according to the Calculus, might even provide me with as much happiness as writing about it.

The Kindness of Strangers

Hurricane Matthew delayed for two days our departure for our almost-annual mid-October vacation in Emerald Isle,North Carolina.  Our destination is on the west end of the Bogue Banks barrier island in Carteret County, NC – also known as the South Outer Banks or SOBX on the official oval decal.  We make the drive down there in two days stopping midway in Pocomoke  City, Maryland, a town with everything that Mars and I want for such an overnight – a Holiday inn Express with a nice shower, comfortable bed and warm breakfast; a downtown historic area and nature trail to stretch our legs; and a restaurant overlooking the Pocomoke River with a dizzying variety of the “Old Line State’s” official dessert, the nine-layer Smith Island cake.  (This time we chose Oreo.) 

             

Our travel route is through the Delmarva Peninsula, getting off major highways after crossing the Delaware Memorial Bridge and taking U.S. Route 13 through “The First State”, Maryland, Virginia into North Carolina then picking up U.S. 17 for the rest of the trip.  Three decades ago when we first began this sojourn these “highways” were plain old two lane roads running through rural towns with small houses, double wide trailers, the occasional really big white house, and farmland growing cotton, soy beans and (in the 80s and early 90s) tobacco. Nowadays many of these byways have either been widened to four lanes or have multi-lane bypasses around them.  This year our progress through New Jersey was slowed down by rain that was slightly less than torrential – but otherwise it was an uneventful trip to Pocomoke City.

             

Day two of our journey, as usual, found us in Ahoskie, NC around 12 noon.  We began visiting SOBX in the later 1980s – and on that first trip, and everyone since  (except for last year when it was closed) we lunched at O’Connor’s Restaurant – an outwardly nondescript local eatery with an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet, bottomless pitchers of “tea” (which from this point southward in our travels mean iced and sweet), and Eastern North Carolina barbecue. 

             

We did not know it when we first came to the Tarheel State but down there barbecue equals pulled pork cooked in either a red sauce of ketchup, vinegar, and pepper,  (Piedmont or Western Style) or vinegar, pepper and no tomato (Eastern Style).  Piedmont style uses only the pork shoulder whereas Eastern is said to use "every part of the hog except the squeal".  We became more familiar with this staple of Carolina cuisine at several other dining establishments on that first sojourn and enjoyably continue that tradition.

The restaurant was always pretty much full.  Mr. O’Connor manned the cash only register and greeted pretty much everyone by name – blue collar, white collar, black, white, retired seniors, lunch hour workers.  He was older than us when we started eating there and seemed even more elderly during our 2014 visit when, after we explained our history as customers, he told us he was in the process of selling the business.  During our earlier years we had noticed a young adult male involved in the daily operations.  Then one year we noticed his photo located front and center on the building’s only real wall – windows, waitress station and cash-out area being the other sides.  It remained there every year since. We assumed that he would have been the next owner-operator.  This October the place was re-opened as “Carolina BBQ and Chicken”.  And the ambiance and menu was close enough to O’Connor’s to work for us.

             

After she took our order – barbeque platter with slaw and hush puppies for $4.95 – the waitress (apparently having detected our blatantly non-Carolinian accents) asked, “Where y’all folks heading?”  We explained where and what our route was.  “I don’t think you can get there,” she told us.  “The roads are flooded.  Better plan on spending the night in town.”

            

 “Where is the best place to stay?” I asked – partially to keep the conversation going, partially because I wanted to know our options, and partially because I knew I wasn’t going to like the answer.

             

She paused.  “The Ahoskie Inn I guess,” she replied as if she were saying “Bates Motel”.  “Oh, and we have a 7:00 curfew tonight.”

             

Mars and I decided that a night in Ahoskie would not be our Plan B.  Or probably even C or D.

             

When the waitress came back with our food she said, “You might want to talk to that guy over there – indicating a work clothes clad fifty-something having lunch with a casually dressed similarly aged man and (we presumed) his mother.”

              

“You shouldn’t have any problems, except for a place where 17 is washed out – but the D.O.T. has away around it”, he told us.  “My daughter drove from here to Morehead City [adjacent to our destination, same route to get there] yesterday to get back to work.”

             

(click to enlarge)

Mars and I thanked him, and our collective state of anxiety lowered.  As we paid our bill at the register he walked up to us to tell us, with great paternal pride, about his daughter’s pharmaceutical work at the Hospital in Morehead.  He gave us her name, in case we bumped into her, and wished us a safe trip.

             

Then, a couple of miles out of town on Route 13 we came upon a set of unguarded road closure barriers with enough of an opening for a large vehicle to slip through.  Ours is small, a PT Cruiser, so we drove between barricades to see how bad the problem was.  The road ahead was underwater – damn!  But vehicles of the mid-sized truck and SUV variety were, one by one, plowing their way through the 50 yard long puddle – umm?  We watched a few and Mars said that we should try it also.  So we did.  I couldn’t tell how far up the car the water was – Mars said halfway up the tires – but we kept moving, downshifting our manual transmission from 3^rd to 2^nd gear and came out the other side.

            

 Sigh of relief!  Another exhale a few minutes later when our car was still running smoothly and braking without a problem. 

            

 Several more miles down the back road highway there was another unmanned roadblock – behind which was another washout, this one (even without the benefit of other trailblazers to show us) was clearly deeper than the roof of our tiny, red automobile.

            

 “I saw a guy working on his porch back a little ways”, said Mars.  “We’ll stop and ask directions.”

             

He turned out to be disconnecting his generator now that power had been restored to his home.  We told him our problem – and he had the solution.  He started to give directions for a way around the flooding, “Go backup the road a couple of miles to Route 305..”, when Mars said let me get some paper to write this down.  While she ran to the car he mentioned that there was a 7:00 curfew.

            

 Pencil and paper in hand, he began again with directions to “go around the elbow” – “305 left, 4 ½ miles left Charles Taylor Road turns into Republican Road, about 5 miles.  Stay on Republican, 2^nd intersection 308 left – until 17 south.”  We thanked him and headed off with hope in our hearts and faith in his words.  Thirty minutes later we came to the flooded spot on Route 17 with the D.O.T. workaround.  We drove through with a guarded sense of comfort – and did not come upon any issues for the rest of our trip.  As we drove along Mars asked “What was that Tennessee Williams line about the kindness of strangers?”  

             

When we reached Emerald Isle our condo was fine, and all of the barrier island and immediately surrounding area was fine. But farther inland on the next day, and the subsequent ones, things just got worse as water flowed from the non-absorbing lands into the rivers which then began overflowing, and overflowing, and overflowing.  We turned to the Weather Channel, which suddenly had become all North Carolina flood news all the time and quickly realized that now that we were here, we could not get back up north if we wanted to.  It took about a week for rivers to stops cresting and roads to start clearing.  Meanwhile lots of people who definitely could not afford to, lost what little they had.

             

At Emerald Isle we quickly fell into our usual routine:  a half-mile walk each morning to the wine and convenience store at the nearby trailer park to pick up the News and Observer newspaper from the machine out front; a morning barefoot one hour walk on the beach; golf at the nearby Silver Creek course some afternoons; al fresco reading either on our ocean-facing deck or in the condo’s ocean front gazebo; one meal out each day (dinner on the days we golfed, lunch on the others); junk cable television (which we do not have it at home – Project Runway, Say Yes to the Dress, etc.): and our annual reunion with one of Mars’ BFFs from high school who now lives in Apex, NC.  at a restaurant equidistant between her home and our rental. (Interestingly the third member of this Twelfth-grade Trio now lives in Albuquerque, NM – our other annual travel destination.)

             

But not everything followed that script. 

             

One afternoon around 4:00 as we were sitting in the gazebo, each deep into respective books – “The Rainmaker” by John Grisham (Mars) and “Inner Circle” by T.C. Boyle (me) – we were jolted back to reality by deep male North Carolinian voice booming out “So you two are readers!”

             

We acknowledged our guilt.  “Well so am I.  Y’all mind if I sit down?”  He joined us just about every afternoon for the rest of our stay.  We also saw him several mornings driving his red pickup truck on his way to breakfast at Hardees while we were returning from our daily newspaper walk.

             

His name was Billy.  He quickly told us that, in addition to an avid consumer of books, he was 78 years old and (with his 72 year old wife) owned an oceanfront condo on the other side of the same building that we were in.  Billy was big, like a former football player, and made solid eye contact with one or the other of us while we were talking.  He also had a speech pattern where he periodically deepened his voice and spoke louder in the middle of a word or phrase – as in the name of his inland hometown Clay-TON.  He was born there and never lived more than 3 miles from his original home.  Clay-TON is a cotton-farming town with, when Billy was growing up there, a shirt factory at each end of town.  “Then the factories went somewhere else.”  I pointed to the horizon out beyond the adjacent Atlantic Ocean and he nodded.

             

Without our asking or any prompting Billy told us his finances – this was his third condo on the barrier island having sold each of the first two at a profit that allowed him to upgrade ultimately to this two bedroom one. He gave us all the numbers.  His wife says she would like more rooms for when their son’s family visits – but at his age he doesn’t feel like fixing up another place.  Billy says they’ll just rent another condo for the overflow when that happens. We did meet his wife one time as they were heading off somewhere.

             

“North Carolina is a ‘battle GROUND state’”, and Billy, who says he is a moderate Democrat that opposes North Carolina’s anti-LGBT HB2 law is a Trump supporter.  “He says he is going to bring back those factories.”  He said as he swung his right arms towards the ocean as if scooping the jobs back from Europe.

             

Billy was a plant researcher at North Carolina State University specializing in azaleas, rhododendrons, and similar plants who retired for five years and then went back on a part time basis.  One of the perks of the job was an unusual yellow azalea, which he has at his Clay-TON home.  People stop by to see the bush.  He hopes that his pension and social security will support his wife after he passes on.  “Oh, and then there’s the farm.”

             

Billy actually died once already in the Operating Room during a heart stent procedure that cut an artery.  “I was looking down at the doctors working at the table.  But I didn’t see myself lying there.”  The surgeon told him about it after he was saved.  He is the first person that Mars and I met in person who has experienced that.

             

On our last full day in Emerald Isle we went for both a morning and an afternoon walk on the beach  – barefoot in shorts and tee shirts.  Billy dropped by to say good bye and say he hoped to see us again next year – “If I’m STILL here.” When we left for home around 8:00 am the next morning the cold air had moved in and the temperature was in the low fifties.  Because it wasn’t yet lunchtime when we arrived in Ahoskie we fueled up at the town’s Duck Gas Station and drove on to within 5 minutes of the Virginia border at our new favorite barbecue spot that we discovered on last year’s trip back – Doris and Roger’s Kitchen in Gates, NC.  (At least we think its Gates – town lines are a little vague on these country roads with nothing but pine trees and swamps as landmarks.) 

             

Along the way back we had spotted several camo-clad, orange-hatted hunters pulled off the to side of the road.  There were a couple more on lunch break at the “Kitchen” and another group of them eating breakfast at the Holiday in Express in Pocomoke City, MD the next morning – one of them wolfing down an overflowing plate of biscuits, sausage gravy, and handfuls of bacon.

            

 Mars and I were eating our more modest meal.  We both were wearing our pale gray hoodie sweatshirts with the red logo of the alternative public radio station at which we volunteer.  The female half of a couple sitting nearby looked over at us and slowly said 

“W W U H.? University of Hartford?”

             

We explained what it was, and its affiliation with the college.

             

“Those are very nice looking sweaters,” she told us.

            

 I wasn’t all that enthusiastic about ending our vacation, but this unexpected compliment from someone we had never met reminded me of one of the things that Mars and I enjoy doing as part of our every-day retirement life at home – and made that day’s ride more tolerable.

             

What was that Tennessee Williams line about the kindness of strangers?

           

           

           

Surroundings! Surroundings! Surroundings!

For most of the 39 years that Mars and I have gardened at our current location we have tried to attract butterflies and hummingbirds – with limited success.

             

It started in earnest with a butterfly house that our son Bram gave me.  Both he, who was a teenage non-gardener and had no reason to know better, and I thought that the homestead itself was the draw.  And that soon after it was put into place atop the pole with which it came, kaleidoscopes (aka swarms or rabbles) of large fragile-winged, colorful insects would literally flock into our yard to reside in our brand-spanking-new Lepidoptera dorm. 

             

We forgot the basic law of real estate, “Location! Location! Location!”

             

Not the street address – rather the physical location within which the landing pad was placed.  “Surroundings! Surroundings! Surroundings!”  We needed a butterfly garden to surround our butterfly house.

             

The wooden dwelling with vertical slots is intended as a resting place for insects, which happen to be in the area for another reason –an overnight pad within which to crash after an all-day nectar binge garden party. 

             

Not a problem.  There was no shortage of lists of what to grow in your butterfly garden.  We initially went, as I recall, with the usual suspects: butterfly bush and bee balm added to the daisies, cardinal plants, and false dragonheads that already occupied the area. We also acquired some kind of “prairie flower”.  I remember that the nurseryman imitated its movement in a breeze by flailing his arms back and forth and twisting his body like the inflatable “air dancers” that advertise the presence of car dealers and other roadside retail businesses.

             

We planted the garden in early spring.  By autumn the prairie flowers had been swallowed up by their fellow plants and never were seen again.  A few butterflies came by for a look and a quick sip – roughly the same number that came before we put in our alfresco nectar saloon.  None stayed overnight as far as we could tell.  But then again it would have been dark and the insects would have hidden themselves within their narrow bed apertures – so who knows?

             

To help with the attempt, my in-laws gave us a “Butterfly Growing Kit” with a cup of 5 caterpillars, caterpillar chow, and a cardboard container within which to grow them.  When the time came, on a warm summer morning, we released the quintet of Monarchs into our butterfly garden.  They surveyed the offerings and left.

             

Sometime during the first couple of years the butterfly bush was pushed out by its neighbors – and over time we have added and subtracted various other butterfly attractors – such as loosestrife, hollyhock, Queen Anne’s Lace, sunflower – with no appreciable increase or decline in the count of Lepidoptera.

             

I know I shouldn’t take it personally.  Most butterflies have only a few weeks of life as an adult, winged creature so they are really pretty focused on eating and mating during the short time that they have.  Even the well-traveled Monarch has a brief and very busy life.  Those born in the summer breeding season live only 2-6 weeks. But the ones that migrate to Mexico are born in late summer, stay alive all winter, and migrate north the following spring – so whatever extra time they have is spent planning their vacation (getting passports, shots, directions, etc.)  None of them have the time to be your friend.

             

But I have not given up just yet.  On the web I came across suggestions and recipes for “butterfly bait” to draw the little flitters into our yard.

             

“Many butterflies prefer rotting fruit, tree sap, dung, carrion, urine, and other non-nectar sources of nutrients. [And who wouldn’t?] You can allow fruit from your fruit trees to decay on the ground, leave your pet’s droppings where they lie, or place a bit of raw meat or fish in a discreet part of your garden.”

            

 Or perhaps just blend them all together and spray a thick coat of the resulting liquor all over the body of a purple-and-red thrashing air dancer man that is tethered to the spot where the butterfly house once stood.

             

And as a side benefit we might get a good price for our two decade-old cars.