Re: CONFESSIONS
Perhaps the presence of such critters is another cause besides heat that
contributed to the scarcity of leaves in some desert plants. One would expect
some bird or other to have evolved a migration pattern to make use of the
summer grasshoppers. Or maybe the summer grasshoppers are a recent product of
man's altering of the desert ecosystem; or the birds that used to much on the
grasshoppers have been extinguished by another of man's unintended
consequences.
Now if we could just bio-engineer a human-friendly pesticide into all our
garden plants . . .
riedy wrote:
> I use no pesticides, etc. As a consequence, I have a flourishing garden
> only from March to about the middle of June, which is when nature with a
> great crashing fanfare finds its summer balance: grasshoppers,
> hordes, plagues of them (not the occasional mavericks that dainty
> gardening books say I can control by picking off the plants of a fine,
> summer morn). I suppose there might be something admirable about a summer
> graveyard of plant skeletons, though for the life of me I've yet to attain
> such appreciation.
