Busy as Bees

We have been busy as bees in the past twenty-four hours -- and so have the bees on the redbud tree.

Swarms of bees buzzed all day from branch to branch of the redbud, and overhead the hawks flew even higher than the bees. Some of the bees were unusually small and some were medium sized and some were giant bumble bees.

It's hard to see all the bees when you are trying to take everything in, but if you focus on a single bee you can see it more clearly, precariously perched on a delicate blossom and going at it with gusto.

In the orchard, the mystery tree is blooming.

I posted a video of it on Youtube, saying how I wondered what it was.

I also posted pictures of some of the blossoms on Facebook.

My friend Martyn, who lives in Greece, told me that his wife thought it might be a blackthorn or sloe or, in Latin, prunus spinosa. I do think that is more or less right, as it is some kind of plum-like tree. I once saw a single fruit on it, many years ago. I thought it was a small plum, but it did not taste much like one. I haven't actually noticed any spines or thorns on the tree, but everything else seems to fit.

Meanwhile, these little tiny flowers by the house have really opened up.

I planted them many years ago, but have not given them any care since. They come in two colors.

I think they might be related to impatiens, but I am not sure. As I was admiring these flowers, the gardener came by with my new trees.

He planted four of them, but he did not have the saw he needed to remove the dead apple tree, so one will have to wait.

This is the information on one of my new peach trees.

You can see there already are some tiny peaches on it, though I doubt they will amount to much this year.

The other peach tree is called a Harvester peach.

My new apple trees are Gala apples and Autumn Beauty. They are not native to Missouri, but guess what? Apparently no apple tree is native to Missouri.

They are all exotic.

Blossoms n the Autumn beauty apple tree

One of the new apple trees already has open blossoms. The other is much smaller.

I only meant to replace the missing fruit trees this year, not to expand the orchard. But who knows, if this succeeds, I could add five new trees every year for the next ten years and have an orchard that might actually fill Bow's needs. Wouldn't that be nice?

The question is: how much labor would be involved to care for the trees and pick the fruit? Does it really require ten ordinary men working full time to do the work of a single chimpanzee? And if it does, might it not be easier to let the chimp pick his own fruit?

Maybe ten years from now, there will be a force field capable of keeping Bow within the borders of our property. In that case, we would have no need for metal bars or grids,

A bee on the pear blossoms from yesterday

In any event, there is no fear of not having enough pollinators for our orchard. The bees are more than willing to do their share of the work.

What Flowers Are For

While Bow does not find the daffodil flower appetizing, there are others who do.

Flowers are not usually meant to be eaten. They offer nectar in return for cross-pollination.

It's the fruit that is made to be eaten, and even then, there is an ulterior reproductive motive behind all that generosity. But this is not the season of fruit. This is the season of flowers.

The forsythia is just now starting to blossom. And even those little evergreen scrub trees that sprang up in my pasture unbidden are doing their part to contribute to the pollen count.

Nobody planted these trees, and no one will cry when they die, but while they live, they are doing their best to reproduce, because that is the nature of life. Living things strive to live and to leave behind heirs when they die. Because even trees of the longest lifespan do eventually die. And before they die, they try their best to make sure they are not the last of their kind.

However, when human beings interfere with the process of reproduction, things do not always manage to reproduce before they die. Take the old apple trees that I used to have on my property.

When I first bought this place in 2001, it came complete with a full orchard, which had growing in it, among other fruit trees, two messy apple trees that gave tiny little green apples. I did not think the apples were edible at first, so my daughter and I used to feed them to the horses across the fence.

Then one day, long before 2007, when I was mowing the grass, an old man drove by and asked me if I would sell him some of my apples. He quoted me a price by the bushel that sounded pretty good, but that's just because I didn't actually know what a bushel was. A bushel of apples is a lot more than a pound!

The man who bought the apples was called Mr. Wantland. The name stayed in my mind, because it reminded me of Verity Lackland, a character in my novel, Vacuum County.

The next year, Mr. Wantland did not come back. The apples just lay on the ground, and nobody ate them. We shared them with some of our neighbors, who told us about a recipe for fried apples.

Then a few years later there arose a great storm, and both apple trees were uprooted. There were no more apples. There was also no more Mr. Wantland. I visited the cemetery this year and found out that he had been buried there next to his wife in 2012.

I hope that Mr. and Mrs, Wantland had many children, and grandchildren and great grandchildren before they died, because a name like Wantland deserves to be conserved. But, as for my apple trees are concerned, I am pretty sure they never reproduced. Not on my property, anyhow.  I suspect that the fruit bearing portion of the tree had been grafted onto another tree and that the whole process was so artificial that trees like that could never reproduce or thrive without human assistance. And that is not ultimately a good idea,

Many people think that planting a tree is an act of conservation, but the most conservative and therefore the most conservationist,  thing to do is to let the trees plant themselves. That way, nature will make sure to weed out what cannot survive on its own, and it will reward good health and fecundity.

But what does this have to do with chimpanzees, you may ask?

Well, there are conservationists who limit the reproductive lives of chimpanzees, because they see that resources are scarce. They may do this in very humane ways and for seemingly humane reasons, but they are still dooming chimpanzees to extinction.

This morning, Bow and I watched a video about a sanctuary for chimpanzees where all the males get vasectomies, However, one such operation must have failed, because an unexpected baby was born to an eight year old female chimpanzee. However, the new mother, never having seen an example of how a mother should behave, did not care for her baby. The baby was then bottle fed by humans, but eventually adopted by a childless couple of chimpanzees who did like babies. The narration explained that this was the best possible outcome, but with a fifty year commitment for each chimpanzee, the sanctuary will try to make sure that no more babies will ever be born.

They see a chimpanzee as a fifty year commitment, all debit and no credit, because they don't think that chimpanzees could help contribute to their own keep. They would frown on a chimpanzee working in entertainment or language research as inhumane. They would also frown on a chimpanzee living as a human's companion or caretaker or pet in a regular household. That would be inhumane. But dooming all the chimpanzees not in the wild to extinction is not inhumane!

These people are not conservationists. They don't care about the species, and to the extent that they care about the individual members of the species, they do not appreciate the natural role in improving the quality of living that having babies can play, not only in the life of a female, but also of an entire community.

Those are the sanctuary people. And then there are others who believe that all non-human apes should be "returned" to the wild, even if they were captive bred and cannot return to a place where they have never been. Damien Aspinall is an example of that.

http://awesomeocean.com/2015/03/18/the-horrifying-60-minutes-story-activists-beg-you-not-to-see/

But what else could we do to help endangered species to reproduce and to thrive?

http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-new-idea-for-saving-tigers-keep-them-as-pets-1426285276

A minister in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh has asked state forest officials to allow individuals to keep lions and tigers in their homes. This would be a way to fund and boost a resurgence in the population of the big cats.

Meanwhile, here in the United States everything is being done to take such animals away from people who keep them at their own expense and to put them into institutions funded by the state -- institutions that will see their care and feeding as all loss and no gain.

http://www.thenews-messenger.com/story/news/local/2015/03/17/volunteers-band-together-save-tiger-ridge-exotics/24934387/

What is the difference between the state that confiscates exotic animals and the people who keep them at their own expense? The state sees no value in the animals, only the danger they pose and the expense of feeding them. But the people who keep them value them enough to invest in their care. Yet it is the very act of caring that makes private individuals suspect in the eyes of the public. There must be some profit in this, and profit is bad. But profit is what makes the world go round!

Flowers are for spreading pollen. They are not mere decorations. Fruit is for spreading seeds. It is not a free handout given by charitable plants to hapless animals. Babies are for the maintenance of populations. They are not just a fifty year commitment -- they are the future for all of us, until the end of time.

Flowers are beautiful for a reason

The way nature works to preserve species is not through "unselfish" efforts by individuals working against their own self interest. Nature works by offering enticements. Flowers are pretty for a reason. Nectar is sweet to draw bees in. Babies are cute to make us cherish them. And every living thing has its own beauty and its special allure. Let those who do it because they love the baby adopt, not those who see the baby only as a fifty year commitment. Let those who love the nectar keep the flowers planted, those who eat of the fruit of the tree plant more trees with their droppings. Don't punish people for loving what they do. Self-interest is the only thing that keeps the cycle of life in play. Let's embrace it, rather than expecting that we can find some other, better way.

We are a part of nature. We are not exempt from its rules. Let's not think we can get anywhere by playing holier than thou.

Rewards, Punishment and the Indomitable Spirit

The apple tree at Orchard House is loaded down with ripe fruit. It's really a rather small tree, but this year the yield is bountiful. I went over there several times this week to pick the red and green apples, and I have two giant bowls of them over here, and some in the refrigerator at Orchard House, and many more still on the tree.

The apples are a bit on the tangy side and the skin on them is a little coarse, and they come in irregular shapes, not like the apples from Wal*Mart. Still, they are perfectly edible, and I eat them myself. I also want Bow to eat them, but he's not sure he wants to. He's rather picky when it comes to fruit.

Yesterday, for lunch, Bow had a sumptuous feast, including a green apple from the store, a red and green apple from Orchard House, a banana, two Chinese pork dumplings, and some macadamia nuts. He chose to eat the green apple first, then the banana, then he asked for what he called "the little apple".

"Now, Bow, are you sure you want to ask for that little apple before the other things?" I asked. "You know if you don't finish it, you don't get the rest of your meal."

"Yes," spelled Bow.

I gave him the little apple from Orchard House. As I anticipated, after a couple of bites, Bow stopped eating and started examining the apple distastefully.

I waited a while to see what would happen, but when it was obvious he wasn't eating any more, I had two choices: to clear everything away or to try a more diplomatic approach.

Bow is a well-fed chimpanzee, though by most standards he seems slim, compared to chimps in institutional settings who are fed on Monkey Chow. I can and I will clear everything away, if need be, and I know he won't starve. But yesterday I was feeling more conciliatory, and I didn't feel like going through the whole day with Bow bearing me a grudge and me having to be extra tough on him.

I went and sat down next to him. "The apple is good," I told him. I took it from his limp hand and bit into it myself. As I was chewing, I made sounds to let him know I was enjoying the apple. After I finished that bite, I let him smell my empty mouth. Then I gave him back the apple. "Your turn," I said.

He started eating it again, but when he got close to the core, he stopped and gave me a searching glance. I took the apple from him again. "There's still more left to eat," I said and took another bite.

Bow smelled my breath after I was done, then he ate some more. But he never consumed it entirely, the way he does with his store bought apples until nothing is left but the stem. He left a small slender core, which by human standards would be equivalent to finishing the apple. By  chimp standards though, it was a protest against the quality of the produce.

I let that that pass, and he proceeded to ask for the rest of his meal, one item at a time.

One of my readers commented yesterday that maybe the way to get Bow to sit still and work on his penmanship would be to offer a banana as reward. But food rewards are not what motivates Bow to write. Neither would a punishment of denial of food be effective. Bow writes when the spirit moves him, and no threat or bribe can affect his output.

This is one of the things that I find most difficult to explain to outsiders. Yes, Bow loves food. Yes, food and mealtimes are important parts of Bow's day. But even when he is asking for food , or negotiating over food-related privileges, his use of language is not motivated by a direct food reward. Bow uses language to communicate, and one of the things he communicates are his individual preferences, his likes and dislikes.

I could no more motivate Bow to improve his penmanship by offering him a banana, than you could make your child excel at calculus by offering a lollipop. It just doesn't work that way!