grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

Dragonfly Effect

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Some endangered species should just be allowed to disappear. Perhaps we intervene too often, disrupting the natural order and balance of the universe. For example, I came across a plea to save the Alpine Wooly Rat. Honestly, I hope to never cross his path. Or the Purcell Hunter Slug threatened by loss of habitat. If one moves into my garden by some strange happenstance, he will dissolve in a dusting of Sluggo as fast as the bucket of water melted the Wicked Witch of the West.

Thank goodness the dinosaurs died out. We think traffic is bad now. If you recall, Jurassic Park didn’t end well.

I’m skeptical of the butterfly effect. I know things are somewhat interrelated and devastation of one species can result in utter chaos, but is the graceful flutter of the orange dragonfly hovering over our swimming pool truly responsible for  tropical storm Debby currently stirring up the Gulf of Mexico? The dragonfly does reappear each spring right at the onset of hurricane season… Fluke? Fate? Although there are several dragonfly species on the extinct list, they are alive and thriving in our back yard.

Maybe some things should be allowed to naturally die or change or expire or evolve. Extraordinary measures should not become commonplace. No one is responsible. Everyone is responsible. We need protection from ourselves. We should just let things be.

I vote we concentrate all our ecological tree hugging money and efforts on saving whichever species eat mosquitoes.

The blood suckers are well represented this year.

talya

Musical Pairings:

Let it Be, The Beatles

Oooh, so Mother Nature needs a favor?! Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys! Nature started the fight for survival, and now she wants to quit because she’s losing. Well I say ‘hard cheese.’ – Mr. Burns, The Simpsons

the morning after

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Just after I posted Mother Nature has a wicked sense of humor she pelts our Dallas neighborhood with softball size hail for twenty minutes. Long enough to break car windows, tree limbs, house windows and lights around the garage. My neighbor lost 23 windows…
All those things can be replaced. 
The morning after, our neighborhood looks like a monsoon swept down Worth Street. My car is dented and dinged, the window is shattered and a wiper was tossed across the yard. The morning after, I can’t imagine how people survive devastating tornadoes or hurricanes or tsunamis – losing homes, crops, lives, entire communities.

Mother Nature…

talya

Musical Pairings

Southern Rain, Cowboy Junkies
Have You Ever Seen the Rain, Creedence Clearwater Revival

Rain

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I awoke to clapping thunder and a downpour. Perfect dozing weather. Except in our tiny Fayetteville bedroom on the air mattress, it seemed the house would be whisked off to Oz. I was just being introduced to this home – its storm sounds new. The rain reverberated on the tin roof sounding like golf ball-sized hail. Nearby flashes of lightning illuminated the interior – partially painted, barely furnished. Lucy and Annabelle burrowed underneath the quilt thinking the end was near. It was peaceful.
Dallas rain from upstairs porch
The next morning back in Dallas, thunder and a much needed rainstorm drenched the already parched city. The weathermen were animated. Everyone breathed more easily.
One week later I spent my first evening in Piggott amidst a typical Northeast Arkansas tornado watch. The blackened skies immediately put me at ease, made me feel at home. With all my recent traveling, I was becoming a storm chaser. Or a storm magnet?
Growing up on a farm, there were many thirsty summers when no one dared look at Daddy or accidentally smile about anything, followed by days of rising flood waters. Mother Nature has a wicked sense of humor. We grew up studying the clouds and the sky, sniffing out wind direction and predicting rain by our achy bones. We did August rain dances, careful not to twist an ankle in the bone dry cracks splitting the front yard open. On Sunday mornings during the every-eye-closed-and-every-head-bowed part of Just As I Am, every farmer’s wife and child prayed for rain. The farmers did their praying out in the fields scouting for rain on the steamy horizon. 
Tate Farm (aka florida farm)
Spending the day out on our farm Saturday, I learned about new irrigation techniques and pumps, laser leveling to save water and increase yield, and the inner workings of center pivots. I can spot pigweed from the interstate. After a day of studying the slope of each field, I realized for the first time Mississippi County isn’t pancake flat. It started looking downright hilly by the end of the day as I noticed low spots around Little River and the built up banks along Kochtitzki. Even the topography has changed since Hernando De Soto explored the Mississippi River Valley. I wonder what Thomas Tate thinks about the  new fangled farm technology? Tractors drive themselves now…
electric pump Tate Farm
Leveled irrigated fields would certainly allow the farmer to sleep a bit easier during the long hot summer, if farmers slept. But they don’t.
When I water my herbs and flowers in Dallas during a string of 100 degree days, I can keep them alive. Barely. But if it rains, a steady slow soaking, they smile and grow. Nothing replaces the real thing when the heavens open and the rain falls. 
talya
Musical Pairing:
“Rain is a Good Thing”, Luke Bryan
The rain, rain, rain came down, down, down
In rushing, rising riv’lets,
’til the river crept out of it’s bed
And crept right into Piglet’s!  (Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day)

Food. Farm. Garden. Life.

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