Cruel warriors in my garden
There may be a looming worldwide insect extinction, but my city garden throbs with them. These are battle-hardened warriors, Isis troops who pop up again just when you think they’re beaten and, like Isis guys, they come in outfits that, closely studied, could be translated onto Milan catwalks. Minus the beards.
They are also cruel. Spiders weave their traps all through the garden, and tucked around the outside windows, where they’re most visible, are their parcels of prey, mostly flies and cabbage white butterflies. For all that, I hate to break their marvellous webs.
The air is filled with cabbage white butterflies these hot, sweaty days, shamelessly fornicating on the plants. It’s been a nature lesson to open leaves folded over and stuck together for caterpillars to develop in, then chew their way out of. As fast as I squash them, they do the same thing on another plant. There may not be much to them, but what there is, is crazed with lust, and from only two or three days old.
The sight of them in the air is pleasing, though, as if they’re flowers taking flight.
Yes. Derris Dust. But how many tonnes would it take to eradicate them, and for what? Better that they survive for a few hundred centuries; when I want to grow vegetables, I’ll have to cover them somehow.
There’ve been fewer monarch butterflies sailing by this year, and only the odd yellow admiral. The garden used to swarm with both before the buddleias were infested with a parasite imported by scientists, and I had to dig them up.
Scientists and imported pests are a dangerous combination. I’d rather dust the scientists responsible.
A skirmish to one side of the action is being fought by katydids, who’ve taken a liking to dahlias. They, or something like them, have an annoying habit of chewing the ends of the petals off, then hiding, probably gloating. I’ve only found one earwig, and they love dahlias, so maybe they’re being held in reserve for a future mission.
Bees toil tirelessly among the tall salvias and perennial red lobelias, still at work when the sun has almost gone down. I wouldn’t complain about a bee. Without them we’re doomed. Flies, who can also help with crop pollination, are here in abundance. They may be the last insects on the planet, but when they come inside I become a killer. And I detest passion vine hoppers. Just now they’re lining up on the stems of healthy plants in a sinister fashion. They surely have murder in mind.
Green vegetable bugs haven’t appeared, maybe because I’m not growing beans here. You can squash them with your fingers, which pleases your own murderous intentions, but they stink in revenge. Aphids on the roses are easy enough to kill on sight. Ants, and the occasional praying mantis, appear but there’ll be many more insects I can’t name.
It’s sad news that the world is killing them off at a rapid rate, and sad news that Te Papa has just axed two top scientists. When we puzzle over the creatures in our gardens we rely on taxonomists like them to say exactly what they are, and to maintain immaculate collections to help with identification. Is this another mad example of user pays, or with 80 years of experience between them, is it ageism at work?
The bad news is that we’ll have killed all insect life in a century if we do nothing. That will have killed us off as well, and gardens like mine will be ancient history, under six feet of ocean water and tonnes of plastic.