A Fall Bouquet for Bow

Fall comes every year. This year, the first day of fall is today, September 22. It's still pretty warm out, but somehow the animals and plants outside sense that it is time to get ready for winter.

In fact, they have been getting ready for the past week now.

The wasps on the goldenrods are stocking up for the winter. 

The honey bees on the white wildflowers are doing the same.

The pipevine swallowtail is in such a hurry to meet all its deadlines, that it flits right past me in the field.

It won't stay in one spot long, but it will pause long enough for a clear view.

An American Lady butterfly, a little worn in the wings, enjoys the goldenrod flowers.

Them a Common Buckeye and the American Lady Butterfly socialize together on the swaying goldenrods.

A fuzzy little caterpillar makes its way on the ground among the fallen leaves.

And then there is the dogwood all decked out with faux berries, an unmistakable sign of fall. 

The dogwood tries to dupe us into thinking its bright red drupes are luscious fruit, while the dogs frolic under its branches.

The tiniest butterflies, the eastern tailed-blue and the pearl crescents, hold social balls on the gravel road.

There are still so many flowers blooming out today, that I decided to gather a bouquet and present it to Bow in a vase. Bow was interested.

He began taking out the flowers.

I thought he was getting all excited about the flowers, but actually it was the vase that he wanted.

"Hey, what's in that vase?" Bow seemed to be wondering. "Nothing, after you took all the flowers out!" I wanted to say. "It's just an empty vase now." But we didn't actually say any of that. We just acted it out. 

Once he had made sure that the vase was really empty, Bow handed it back to me.

I think that's sort of how it is when we expect something special to happen on the first day of fall. It's just a date. It's a day of the year. It's an empty possibility, until you fill it with something. It's like any other empty vessel.

The View from the Outer Pen

There is an eight foot fence surrounding our back yard, That is mostly for privacy for Bow. It means that delivery people and others who mistakenly drive onto our property don't immediately have to spot Bow and start gaping at him, if he happens to be outside. But the privacy fence does not keep Bow from seeing things that are going on in the outer yard, if he wants. He can climb high and get a view of what is going on in the world beyond.

From the top of the bench rim, you can see the nearby tulip tree and the Weigela bush in the distance.

The tulip tree is getting ready to flower.

The old, dried out blossoms are still there, but this year's green flower heads are already visible and getting ready to open.

When I go to check on the Weigela blossoms, I know that Bow is watching me, and he sometimes vocalizes in my direction to let me know.

The Weigela blossoms have been open for a while now, and they are getting a little droopy. Their petals are falling one by one to the ground.

Still there are insects who find them attractive.

Sometimes I have trouble putting a name to the insect.

But sometimes they are just the familiar honey bee.

Back in the pen, Bow has a clear view of the flowering dogwood.

You can see the orientation of the pen toward these trees in the short video embedded below.

When I go for my afternoon walks, Bow also gets to be outside, if he wants to be.  Our grass has not been mowed yet, and so I get glimpses of tiny little flowers shooting up that I might otherwise never have gotten to see.

The clover flowers are so delicate and fresh.

Dandelions, both young and old, are making a nice showing.

These little tiny yellow flowers are so pretty, whatever they are called!

To make the flowers grow, sometimes all you have to do is not mow the grass for a while. The same is true for trees. Much as I hope that the new fruit trees we planted in the orchard will make it, there is a very good chance that some of them will not. When you "plant a tree" you are doing a very unnatural thing. It's not at all what the tree huggers would have you believe. You are not planting, but transplanting. You are tearing out roots and making them grow someplace else. It's a shock for the tree. Some survive and some don't.

But if you just don't always mow the lawn, you will be amazed at what shoots up all on its own, without any work on your part. On the other side of the driveway from our majestic tulip tree, a baby tulip tree is growing.

Nobody planted it. It just volunteered. But already it is getting ready to blossom. This little tulip tree, if left undisturbed, is better than any tulip tree I might buy in a nursery to plant, because it already has strong roots here.

Of course, just because a plant is growing, that does not mean its survival is guaranteed. Predation takes place at every level of the trophic pyramid. This peony by the lagoon is getting ready to blossom, but will those black ants let it?

When I get back from my walk, Bow usually wants to go back inside, and he tells me so.

Bow needs my help to unlock the metal door, but he opens the glass door all by himself.

The Yellow Jacket on the Dogwood Bloom

Yesterday was a Wednesday. It was also April 15. If you live in the US, you know what that means. It's too ugly a thing for me to spell out, but the upshot was that I needed to have Lawrence sit with Bow for the whole day. And while he was here for that long, I asked him to  also weed-eat the backyard and spread the insecticide, because tick and flea season is upon us, not just on the Federal level, but at the grassroots, so to speak.

Bow  in a friendly mood

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Bow is always happy and excited to see Lawrence, but that does not keep him from displaying at him for about ten minuted before he will allow Lawrence to come into the pen with him. Fortunately, Lawrence understands Bow very well, and he does not hold this territorial display against him.

Brownie lets Leo do just about anything to him -- except eat his food

I don't like using insecticide, but we do have dogs in the backyard, and if they get fleas and ticks, they could spread to Bow and to me, and that would not be good. So while most of my ten acres are a haven for insects of all sorts, the backyard does get treated. The insecticide comes as a powder that is spread on the lawn, and then it gets wet and sinks into the ground. As this is the rainy season, I am counting on nature to help me with that last part.

This is how the front yard looked yesterday morning

Lawrence told me that he asked Bow to come outside with him to see him work on the lawn, and Bow even said he wanted to go out into the outer pen, but when he got to the door, he realized it was still cold out and changed his mind. Then they went back in, and when Lawrence asked Bow why he didn't want to go out, Bow just spelled. "You go out." Which meant Lawrence had permission to go, and Bow would not play a trick on him when he got back. There was no mess.

The dogwood petals have turned white

When I went out into the back yard late that afternoon, I wanted to inspect Lawrence's handiwork, but I was drawn to the blossoms of the dogwood tree, whose petals by now have turned white.

A lone yellow jacket on the dogwood

I noticed an insect on one of the blossoms, and tried with difficulty to identify it.

The yellow jacket focuses o a little black dot in front of it

It turned out to be a yellow jacket, which my friends warn me can sting very badly. But this lone yellow jacket was not interested in me. It was focused on a little black speck in front of it. Could that have been another, even smaller insect that it wanted to eat?

Yellow jackets look a little like bees, but they do not gather pollen, and they are in fact predatory wasps. No bees are attracted to our beautiful dogwood in bloom, because even though these look just like flowers,the white petal-like things are really bracts, and  the middle part is composed of flower heads that have not opened yet, and there's no pollen there to be had, I wondered if the yellow jacket seemed so passive because of the insecticide we had just scattered on the lawn. I felt a little guilty about that. Yellow jackets may be disliked for their sting, but they do help us by eating other pests.

Part of the end of semester handout for biology

My daughter is taking biology this semester. Looking at her review handout, it reminded me of the weird use of  "community" that certain artistic types make. One of my artist friends criticized some of the artists in her community for being too competitive -- as if there were no place for competition in a community. But the very first concept under "community interactions" in the biology handout is competition. Competition is normal. It is part of what makes a community healthy.

While none of us like parasites, some symbiotic relationships are healthy, as both sides benefit. The trick is to recognize which is which. Sometimes we err. But whatever the community, the concept of balance requires competing forces to be in equilibrium.

It is not possible for everyone to love everyone. It is not possible for a human to give the same consideration to a flea or a tick as to his own children and other non-human dependents. Sometimes a useful yellow jacket may be harmed by an attempt to get rid of parasites. We try to make appropriate distinctions, but mistakes can be made.

Even the story of the helpful wolves introduced into Yellowstone National Park has another side to it.

I am not necessarily endorsing the content of the documentary above, any more than I did that other film sponsored by the establishment that I shared a while back, singing the praises of the wolves. I think it is important to consider many sides of every story.

I like wolves and trees and honey bees and yellow jackets. But I am not a tree hugger, either. I wonder about the agenda behind all these competing nature documentaries. Were the wolves introduced to improve the health of deer and elk? Or were they ultimately meant to trim down the herd of humans grazing on the land?

The real balance in nature comes when we each take care of ourselves and our dependents first. If there are wolves, then there also need to be wolf hunters. If there are parasites, there have to be anti-parasites. For every force there has to be a countervailing force. This is the only way to keep everything in balance.

The Subtle Transformations that We Seldom Notice

Everyone notices how cute a baby is.

Everyone can see how much more mature an adolescent appears.

But how did the transformation come about? What were all the awkward little stages? If you read all my blog posts and articles about Bow and look at all the pictures, you can see it happen gradually. But usually when a child grows, we do not notice.

 The same applies to flowers and fruit. Everybody notices the pretty cherry blossoms.

And who could fail to note when the cherries are ripe?

But how did they get that way? Lately I have been noticing some of the intermediate awkward moments, like a green cherry emerging from a pink flower cap.

The flowers on the cherry trees in my yard start out as white. But as they age, they become pink. Then the green fruit emerges, capped with a pink tuft.

Only later does the pink tuft disappear, and you see bunches of the green fruit, waiting to ripen.

Other awkward transformations are taking place all around me. For instance, the redbud blossoms have sprouted little miniature swords.

Those tiny, dagger-like protrusions will eventually become the well known seed pods. And guess what the dogwood is up to? Its blossoms -- the real ones -- have opened.

Remember that I mentioned the dogwood is a drupe? This means the four white petals are nothing but bracts, and the real action happens inside those little globe-like green things in the center. Those are the real flowers, and their tiny stamens and pistils are now open for business.

It has taken me a long time to notice some of these things. It has been twelve years since Bow was a baby and that's how long it took for me to get to the point of noticing when the little true blossoms inside the big false blossoms really open!

Yesterday I encountered another rabbit.

It was a pretty fast runner, so I was not able to observe any subtle details. It might take me another twelve years before I notice anything truly significant about rabbits. By then, Bow will be twenty-four.

The View From Outside the Pen

Most days, for nearly twelve hours a day, I am with Bow, inside the pens. But I do occasionally go outside, and when I do, this is what it looks like.

This was my front yard, yesterday morning. Everything is in bloom, and the birds are singing. I brought some redbud blossoms for Bow to try again, as they have fully opened up by now, and even the leaves are starting to come in.

Bow decided he would rather watch me eat the flowers than eat them himself. They taste fine, but it's just like salad: not enough calories to live off. Redbud would make a nice garnish, but not a meal.

The weather has gotten cooler this morning, so much so that I am wearing a jacket. Bow is sleepy, because the sky is cloudy and there is not that much light.

Earlier, I went out to the back yard to mow what grass we have left. I have not been taking care of the grass, and the dogs have worn out big patches. However, what remains needs to be kept fairly low. This gives me an opportunity to interact more with the dogs, but Bow feels left out.

Notice how when Bow rattles the grid, the pea plants shudder? I am not sure what to do about that. In the distance, we could occasionally hear gunshots. Our neighbors must be out hunting.This upset Bow a little, but the dogs did not care.

Brownie really wanted me to throw him a rock, so I complied.

Brownie was very happy that I threw him that rock, but he did not return it to me. He decided it was time to bury it. Leo just wanted to be petted.

I use a hand-pushed reel mower, which is good exercise, but I stop many times to look at things in the yard.

The dogwood is in full bloom now. The dogs look happy under its snowy blossoms.

Bow, on the other hand, was not always so happy while I was out in the yard. This is what he looked like from outside the pen.

This is the way most people view primates in zoos and sanctuaries. Even the people who work there as caretakers often do not get to go in.  It is not the best way to really get to know a chimpanzee and develop a long term relationship. But when we go inside, as I did, after I had mowed the grass, the grid disappears, and we see the real chimp.

Bow wanted me to groom him, so I did,  but now Leo was jealous. You can't please everyone all at once!