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Abuzz

The pleasure of my summer has been watching the food plot I planted in May come along . . . has been watching the wildlife garden I planted in May come along . . . has been watching the . . .

It’s hard to come up with the right descriptor.

I broke ground in May for a wildlife garden in the back-backyard, up against the tree line. The problem with calling it a wildlife garden is that it sounds so Ranger Rick. As the proud father of a three-year-old, I’m nevertheless trying to hold on to a bit of my adult self. It is a food plot, but I’m uncomfortable with that blunt, clinical phrase in the other direction, especially with the implication that its sole purpose is to hang a tree stand over. To be clear I’m not above meat-hunting, and if a fat doe presents a legal opportunity this fall while availing herself of the forage, there’s a chance she’ll end up in the freezer. But the goal here is a lot bigger than hunting. It’s about giving back, to deer but also to every other animal that wants to avail itself of the planting.

The original plan was a buckwheat crop that I’d knock over right about now, to be followed by a fall clover planting. In theory, I want to kill the buckwheat before it goes to seed. But in practice, I just can’t bring myself to do it. When I envisioned helping animals I was picturing mammals, but this planting is so abuzz with thousands of insects that I’ll likely miss my window.

In the quiet morning you can hear the buzz emanating from the quarter-acre plot at about 50 feet off. I spent some time this morning standing in the chest-high flowers, just feeling the pulse. There were hundreds if not thousands of honey bees, and bumble bees of all different species, but most remarkable were the pollinators I’d never taken the time to observe. Little yellow jacket mimics that hovered like hummingbirds. Jewel-colored flies and wasps of all sizes. Black insects with orange bottoms and soft, moth-like wings. Dainty wasps with hornet-butts and delicate, French-looking wings. Aggressive-looking horsefly-sized flies. Nondescript flies. Ants of every size and shape.  Tiny butterflies that you could spend a morning trying to ID.

I remember interviewing an entomologist for a story years ago, who told me that while there were something-thousand known insects in the Northeast, there are likely thousands more that have yet to be classified. There’s a chance that some of the pollinators I was watching have never been documented. And with the well-known struggles pollinators are having these days, there’s a chance some could go extinct without ever being “known.”

And so the buckwheat stands, and the clover planting is being pushed off until the buzz dies down.