Cicada Van Winkle's Garden

Magicicada septendecim
Photo credit: cicadamania.com
It’s National Garden Week and I thought it would be fun to follow on the heels of last week’s Brian Lehrer Show open phone segment by imagining what Cicada Van Winkle would think if he woke up in your garden today, after having been asleep for 17 years.

So I’m calling on all garden bloggers and gardeners to write a post that answers the following question: 

If you were Cicada Van Winkle and you just woke up for the first time since 1996, what would be the first thing you would notice about your garden in 2013? 

Post a link to your blog in my comments section. If you don’t have a blog, just answer the question in the “Comments” box.

My answer to the question is that the house is a little bigger and the garden is five times as large and far more colorful than it was in 1996. And, oh yeah, there seem to be a lot of trees missing (compliments of Hurricanes Irene and Sandy and several ice storms).

Even though the Brood II Magicicada’s range is limited to the East Coast, join in anyway, because it’s an interesting conversation to have.

To find out more about periodical cicadas, see the NJ Conservation Foundation’s post: http://njconservation.org/blog/?p=448 “Rip Van Winkle of bugs to awaken,” or go to the Cicada Mania website at www.cicadamania.com. It includes maps of where they’re likely to emerge, fun facts about their life cycles and habitats, recordings of their song, and videos. 

And, get out and cultivate your inner gardener.


Popular posts from this blog

Detention Basins: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Image
In our area, stormwater sewers that serve housing developments and some businesses empty into the dreaded detention (or retention, or infiltration) basin, a visually hideous engineered method of holding large volumes of water until it can safely disperse to groundwater, natural streams, ponds, etc. (top photo). These are generally grass monocultures or rip rap which, if not properly maintained become weedy, overgrown maintenance nightmares. Suffice it to say that anyone who can get away with not maintaining one will continue to not maintain it. Frequently, the town ends up owning and maintaining such basins, meaning that all the taxpayers pay. When grass is used as the only groundcover and pesticides and fertilizers are applied, they can contaminate the runoff. Regular mowing of the basins is difficult because of the steep sides and wet floor. This maintenance adds contaminants to the watercourse, as well. Grass basins also attract undesirable wildlife, such as Canada Geese, which ...
Keep reading

Please Garden Responsibly. Because What You Spray in Your Garden Doesn’t Stay in Your Garden

Image
American Lady caterpillar on licorice plant. Photo: Courtesy Missouri Botanical Garden Scores of their silky tents covered the licorice plant in the container on my porch. Inside the tents, something was gobbling up the leaves faster than I could pick them off. The plant must have been infested when I bought it. As I reached for my organic insecticide, I thought, “Wait, you don’t know what kind of caterpillars these are!” I recalled an article on pest management by a friend who cautioned: “Sometimes, the best treatment is no treatment at all.” It took the better part of the afternoon for me to identify the miniature mowing machines. In the meantime, half of them had started dropping from their perches and wriggling off into the underbrush. I hoped I had made the right decision. The licorice plant was devastated. But then I noticed that the caterpillars had not eaten the leaves all the way down to the stem. Possibly, secondary buds could sprout and still provide a silvery...
Keep reading

Musings on the Relativity of Time and The Arithmetic of Overpopulation

Image
I celebrated my birthday recently. Beyond a certain age, birthdays become a double-edged sword. You’re glad you made it to the next one, but realize that there are far fewer years ahead of you than behind you. The list of absent friends grows ever longer. Colleagues grow grey; everyone else looks like they just graduated from middle school. I used to console myself by calculating that I still had at least 2 5 more years to go, which made the end point seem very far off. But, now that would mean I’d live to an unrealistically old age, a concept supported by neither family history nor actuarial tables. I’m reminded of Einstein’s summary of his Theory of Relativity: "When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour." I guess I’ve been having too much fun. But that can’t go on forever. My immortality would not be good for the planet. It’s not sustainable. At the same time that medical advances have...
Keep reading