Watching the Gardener

   As I was on my hands and knees transplanting cauliflower into the garden rows, a sudden feeling overcame me.  Eerily it felt as if someone (or something) was watching me.  Hmmm?  Where is that goofy cat?  Bat, the Bayou Prince Cat, has a sneaky way of creeping up on you and silently watching your every move.  He just sits and stares, then, suddenly darts out of his hiding spot to nearly knock you off your feet.  I am sure he is just being playful but, I have to admit, he has caught me off guard on several occasions.  A 16lb cat can really pack a wallop when it wants.  Anyway, no cat could be seen lurking nearby nor was any snoopy person in the area so I went back to my planting.

  Then...the feeling returned.  Something had to be watching me!  I usually get gut-feelings and tend to follow them.  This gut-feeling was not leaving so I needed to find the "watcher".  My search took me outside the garden gate and down the hill where I could get a better view of the garden perimeter.  Still...nothing.  I was just about to shrug off the feeling as a fluke when a loud "Kee-aah" followed by four more of the same came from the top of the dead oak tree.  Ahh, there is my watcher!  A beautiful, red shouldered hawk was perched on the tiptop of the tree and had the perfect view of this old lady in her garden.

  The sighting of the hawk pleased me as I know that my plants will be protected from varmints.  These hawks are agile hunters that can drop silently from a treetop to the garden without a rodent ever being aware of their presence.  Red shouldered hawks will eat most any small mammal, bird or reptile that they can catch but I am in hopes that this one will merely catch whatever munches my cauliflower plants!  I welcomed the hawk to the garden and I went back to work with my transplanting.  My garden is late as I was sidelined by a brief bout of sickness.  It is past time to get those plants to growing!

Poor, Little Dead Bug

   Right now, it appears that it is the "season of bugs".   Last week, swarms of termites clouded over the city areas with a vengeance.  Traffic came to a crawl, ball games were cancelled and it was "lights out" on the Coast.  The lights out thing is to keep the critters from swarming into the house.  Those lucky enough to have streetlights nearby can watch from indoors as the large swarms literally block out the beams of the lights.  They are that thick.  The swarms were not limited to termites, however, as the eastern lubber grasshoppers made their appearance, gnats are out in masses and deer flies attack anything that moves.  Then, there are mosquitoes.  With the over abundance of rain in the early spring, mosquitoes have flourished and are blood-thirsty.  Thankfully, I appear to have very distasteful blood for all of the biting critters. 

  The insects do not end there as the garden has been under siege for a few weeks now.  Hating to pour toxic chemicals on my foodstuffs, my only hope is that the predatory bugs, lizards and birds kick it in gear and rescue the plants.  It is one of those predatory bugs that saddened me today.  I found a dead tiger beetle in the tomato patch. What killed the critter is beyond me since (like I said) no sprays are used on the place.  

  The beetle only caught my eye since it was upside down.  The topside of the insect was black but that underside was metallic blue!  The deceased critter needed to be examined since old ladies cannot go around chasing one of the fastest bugs on earth!  I gingerly picked up the beetle and brought it to the steps where I could see it better.  Yep, that metallic blue was pretty impressive!  After the initial admiring of the colors, I decided to check the "build" of the bug.  (Yep, I am curious enough to examine dead bugs.  That is how you learn.) No wonder that critter is so fast!  The legs were build for speed!  In fact, the whole beetle was fashioned perfectly to be the voracious predator it is. I sure wish it had lived and was protecting the tomato plants.

  Folks, be careful what you put in your yards and gardens.  Those chemical sprays are not discriminatory and will kill ALL insects both the bad and the good.  Just use commonsense when it comes to using any and all chemicals.  Lives matter...critter lives, too.