The Grubs. Hidden. Working. Living.
I have continued to search for information. I've asked everyone i can and been reading reading reading on the internet. I have found a surprising amount of wrong information and half information. A good lesson in itself. I asked a person who presents himself as very knowledgable about Everything, including organic gardening in this area. I asked the guy who officiates at the dump who lives in the house he was born in, 60 some years. Asked if he had any of these at his house and yes, he does. Asked what he thinks of them, of the fact that i have so MANY. He shrugged his shoulders and said he has seen many things this summer that he's never seen before. I said "would you worry?" and he smiled and said " you can if you want to".
I want to know and understand them because of the very Literal magic they have performed with that 15 foot x 5ft x 16" deep pile of manure and feed waste. Including the layer of the bales of Oat hay that the Goats refused to eat that just laid there almost unchanged for going on 2 years. It is now gone. Disappeared. Poof. In a maybe a month or so. Poof.
I have been trying for some time now to learn how the application of Permaculture philosophy can work here in a place of desert sand and drought. The most basic tenet being Living Soil. Microbial beings, earth worms and etc. In this case, the Etc. is maybe for one year only, GRUBS. Maybe i am seeing the fruits of Leaving Things Alone. And seeing also the fruits of Waiting....waiting through that knee jerk reaction of perceiving them as a THREAT. Because of their sheer number, their ugliness, their hiddenness. I want to look at the importance of trying to know the truth of them, of them being here, what it means to the Whole of this Diorama. Unless the conditions of this summer were to occur again, this might be the only time in my life that i will be able to witness this. There has Never, in my 19 years here been near this much rain and over a prolonged period.
I read through so Many agricultural papers, blogs, and well all manner of postings but the one that is the most concise and clear is Mother Nature's Backyard...mother-natures-backyard.blogspot.com.
"Fig eater beetle, cotinus mutabilis, Green fruit beetle, Fig beetle and June bug. Habitat primarily the South West US and Mexico...are often mistaken for green June beetles, cotinis nitida and occasionally Japanese Beetles, popillia japonica which occur in the Eastern US. The beetles feed on already injured fruit. The larvae occasionally consume plant roots but their primary food is decayed plant matter. They provide a vital service by hastening the decomposition of organic matter, aerating soil and compost. Aug. 24, 2013 post.
So, i am going to be grateful for being given the opportunity to Witness this and in the coming week actually feed them by adding the rest of the manure and bedding straw from the Albatros. I'll go back over the information and find out when they pupate and at that point I'll quit adding. Will move that BEAUTY FULL soil to the raised garden beds and begin again in that long pre-compost strip.
I feel very very Happy.
And i saw something this morning as i got to my Tuesday job. The house next door...where the mare and her foul were stung to death by the bees a while ago?, well, though the rest of the horses had been there all along, the house had been empty. Through the local grapevine i know that the man who had owned and worked the horses had recently died and his wife intended to move over to that house at some point. As i drove by slowing down i saw much MOVEMENT and saw two Great Pyrenees moving about, and a large livestock trailer with two Australian Shepards tied to it, barking, excited. A woman moving about. And then, as i watched, having parked and walked over to the road fence, i saw her untie the dogs and open the trailer from which spilled a herd of maybe 30 recently sheared sheep, two adult llamas and a baby. The woman moved slowly and surely, the dogs excited as they separated the llamas into one paddock, the sheep into another. Gates clanged shut and she went to another trailer and hauled bales of feed to each of these. I called out....Hello! and she looked up, i said what i was doing there and asked if the sheep would be staying and commented on the dogs. Yes. sheep were staying. I said that i have Goats. She asked where i live. All the while continuing moving, looking, signaling the dogs. I've heard through that grapevine that she's not too friendly but even if so, this was enough. I watched a woman maybe around my age, working. Steadily. Surely. Doing what needed to be done. and I imagine, Just Going. This fed me. A lot.
