GroHappy

Gardening makes me sick

This time of year I should be deadheading the late spring bulbs, cutting back tulip stems, weeding, harvesting lettuce, mowing the lawn, etc. Instead I find myself crouched in fetal position vacillating between cold shakes and hot sweats. I have wet the bed (with my sweat). Everything is sore. I’ve got fever to burn at 105 degrees. I’m as limp as over-boiled pasta. I want to die. I’ve got ehrlichiosisis. From a stupid tick.

Only now though the miracle of antibiotics and the loving care of my family do I start to feel human again. It turns out ticks don’t just transmit Lyme’s disease, named after a nearby Connecticut community, but also lots of other nasty things. But that doesn’t really matter to me as I lie unable to move my head without being in a huge amount of pain. What does matter is how can I prevent this from happening again?

I know that you should always remove all your clothing and take a shower after you spend anytime in the garden. And I always do that. . .most of the time. You should look for any little creatures hanging on to you. I do that though it is a difficult thing in the steam of a hot shower without my glasses. You should spray tick repellant like DEET at least on your shoes, pants, anything that comes into potential contact with a tick. But I haven’t gotten anything in the past decade and I really hate to spray pesticides around. OK, I have pulled some ticks off and I have gotten some preventative treatments of Doxycycline in the past. And I know you are not supposed to walk through fields of grass and try to stay away from brush. The problem with that this year, however, is that we are building new gardens at Ann’s Place and some unwanted rye has sprouted in the back that needs to be plowed under.  Doesn’t sound too convincing, does it?

Well maybe I have learned my lesson and for the next three weeks because of the sun-sensitivity side effect of Doxycycline I will be walking around fully clothed with a wide-brimmed hat looking like some Miami Beach retirement wannabe. And perhaps I need to take showers more often and buy myself some DEET.

Blowing (away) your own horn (worm)

One of nature’s paradoxes is the inherent beauty of things that are deadly. Wild white berries on shrubs or trees should rarely (if ever) be eaten. The lush almost tropical leaves of New England poison ivy should never be touched.  Never look directly into the sun during an eclipse.

So the other day when I was looking through my tomatoes I noticed that the top leaves were all gone. Too high for the groundhog, whose population I have eliminated (I believe based on the lack of recent damage.) What could it be? Looking more closely, I discovered little brown mounds on the lower leaves. Must be some type of creature but what?

As I fingered through the plants I nearly touched this long green, brightly colored caterpillar. It was beautiful. It had a neon green body with white and yellow stripes and dots on the side the looked liked a series of eyes. But what was it? I showed it to my wife, who quickly perused one of our many bug books and identified it as a tomato hornworm, which is one of the few bugs that will eat tomato leaves.

Now I had just about enough of things trying to attack my garden (see prior groundhog posts) and upon reading up on these bugs I quickly figured out that they are not my friends as they can devour a tomato plant fairly fast. After showing this bad boy to my wife and daughter I trashed it (literally) sending it onto its afterlife. Coming from the school that there is never just one pest in the garden, I went back and looked for any other brothers and sisters. I found a few. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that they were all carrying dozens of braconidae parasitoid wasps. Excitingly I brought a sample to show both my wife and daughter and they were horrified. “That is so gross,” said Sarah. “I’m getting nauseous.” My wife Juana was not too far behind not wanting to see the hornworm and its rice-lice-like passengers. “Get that out of my house!”

So I did retiring them to a patch of ground. In this case you want to keep the tomato hornworm alive as a farm for the wasp larvae, which will kill the worm and then hatch forming a natural, native colony that will keep future worms in check.

I thought about these worms yesterday at Green Chimneys  cutting tomato stalks that were infected with bacterial speck. As I was removing infected leaves with one of my students I noticed that the top of one tomato plant was missing all its leaves. And sure enough, right under the missing leaves was a tomato hornworm full of parasitoid wasps.

“That is sooo cool,” said Beth, who was helping me prune the plants. She had been a bit withdrawn so far and this new discovery brought her out of her shell and put a big smile on her face. Tracy was nearby with a class collecting tomatoes to make her homemade salsa (which is quite delicious.) Never one to waste a garden pest, Tracy sat down and gave her class and my student a quick lesson on tomato hornworms, natural insect controls, and the circle of life for the parasitoid wasp. “It’s kind of like Alien vs. Predator,” said Tracy. “Except that it is for real.”  I found a few more pairings, which I gave to Tracy who was becoming a kind of tomato hornworm earth mother. The kids loved it.

Changes in attitude and spider homes

I was looking forward to picking up Cheryl a few days ago to work in the Children’s Garden at Green Chimneys. There was much to do as the broccoli had started to bolt and the spinach was perfect for harvest. When I picked her up, however, something wasn’t right. Cheryl was looking at one of the classroom computers intently and when told that it was time for her job replied, “I don’t want to go! I hate being in the garden.” Oh boy.

Upon walking with Cheryl to the garden I asked her how her week had gone and how she feels. “It has been horrible and things suck,” was the reply she made as she choked back a few tears. “Is there anything you want to do in the garden?,” I asked.

“No,” she said.

“Would you like to sit down and talk or walk?”

“No.”

A similar problem occurred with Cheryl a month ago and I decided to take her back to class rather than risk her having a breakdown in the garden. Unfortunately that decision may not have been the best as her return turned into a power struggle, which just made her more upset and agitated. I decided to take a different tack.

“Today Cheryl we will be harvesting spinach and broccoli. Would you like to see the peas we planted last month before we begin?”

“No.”

So we walked to the barn to get kneeling pads and pruning shears. With few words exchanged we sat down in front of the broccoli bed and I showed her how to harvest it using pruners. Cheryl nodded in understanding and worked quietly with a far away look on her face as she cut the heads and placed them in a bin. I didn’t try any conversation as I worked next to her weeding an adjacent patch. She remained emotionless as she worked though it appears that she was beginning to relax. Within five minutes her attitude started to change visibly. Her facial expressions softened and she noticed a butterfly that floated nearby.

In another five minutes she became more animated and content; by the end of the harvest, she was smiling and working intently. “I’m done,” she said with pride in her voice.

“No you aren’t,” I replied. “You missed one.”

In the middle of the broccoli patch was a tiny, uncut floret. I snipped it with my shears and gave it to her. "This is your reward. Try it.”

As she bit into it her eyes went wide and she said,” That’s awesome! It’s so delicious!” Cheryl had never had fresh broccoli before.

I smiled and asked her to pick up our harvest so we could weigh it in. As we walked toward where the scale was hanging I reflected upon how just being in the garden had changed Cheryl’s view. She went from a near meltdown to being extremely happy.

As we weighed the broccoli I grabbed a group of heads and stuck them in her face. The fresh smell of the cut heads was powerful and slightly sweet. Cheryl loved the smell and was amazed. “I never smelled anything like that,” she said.

“So what does it smell like?” I asked.

She thought about it for a while and replied that she didn’t know.

“It smells like broccoli, you silly goose,” I said. She laughed and smiled.

She had better attention and focus as we cut the spinach. She ate a leaf and was also amazed by the freshness and the taste. But mostly she was shocked by their size.” These are humungous,” she said. We then had a contest as to whom could find the most humungous spinach leaf. She won but not before she accidently ripped a large leaf. Cheryl wanted to try to fix it using scotch tape but I told her that most people would not like it as part of their dinner. “They could always take it off. It would look pretty.”

As we were finishing I noticed that there was a lone head of romaine lettuce that hadn’t been cut from the last time we were in the garden due to the fact that a large brown spider had taken up residence inside. “Do you think the spider is still there,” asked Cheryl remembering why we had left it. I pulled up a bunch of leaves and couldn’t see anything so we clipped it and added it to our pile. For the morning, we had harvested nearly 10 pounds of food.

As it turned out I had not been that good an inspector and as I was carrying the tote filled with produce, I noticed that our brown spider was climbing out of the cut lettuce carrying a large fluffy white ball. “What’s that?” asked Cheryl.

“That is the spider’s egg nest. She is getting ready to have babies.”

Because the spider was a mother, Cheryl was not as fast to ask me to kill it as is often the case when we come across spiders. So I placed the spider on a fence post and continued on our way.

“Cheryl, have you ever read the story ‘Charlotte’s Web’?”

“Yes it is one of my favorites.”

“Mine too,” I replied as we spent the remainder of our time talking about spiders, rats, barns and humongous spinach leaves. 

Spiders and rats and moths, oh my!

 

If a Northerner, you must appreciate the brisk restorative nature of a crisp 20 degree winter morning as well as the comforting feeling of rolling out of your bed in the summer to a delightful 75 degree day with birds chirping in the background from an open window. OK, perhaps I am rationalizing, but regardless it is a good idea to get children out in the garden during all the seasons so they can see and feel how nature changes and how the environment is not as they imagine it should be.

In the past few months we have had a great success in the garden at Green Chimneys being able to harvest food until mid-December. Since then between the occasional snow and the constant cold, our harvest has been more mental than physical. But with the prospect of a warming weekend, we decided last Thursday to clean the snow off the hoop houses. We had to do this before and it was a big hit with the kids as they lifted hunks of snow, made snow angels and had a good time in addition to working hard.

My first charge, David, had done this before and he was up to go outside rather than to seed yet another flat. Thursday was an ideal winter day. It was sunny and windless with a temperature a little under 30 degrees. We attempted to open the padlock to the garden, but as it was frozen we had to enter through the handicap entrance that was recently built on the side of the garden.

The garden seemed quiet and lifeless as everything was covered with an undulating layer of smooth white snow that was marred only by the few animals that had scurried around the landscape leaving undistinguished footprints. Dried heads of dill as well as a few sunflowers were the only reminders of past crops.

When we opened up the shed, a white moth fluttered out not realizing that its prior home was a much better place to be. We retrieved a set of shovels and started to clear the snow off the hoops. The snow that had rested on the top of the hoops had started to melt from the heat and came off in icy clumps. But soon we were able to get all the snow off and wanted to see how well the lettuce and mustard greens were doing. Upon pulling off the tarp we were greeted by a rat.

It was as surprised as we were. The hoop house is not a bad place if you are a rat. This one contains  left over greens, drips of water from the melting snow and a warmer dwelling than one would have under or in a log.

It scampered around looking for a place to hide, only finding hard ground or soft snow to tunnel through. It was scared.

“Let’s kill it!,” yelled David.

“With what?” I said, remembering the episode at my house when my wife said that if I had a gun I would have been able to shoot the rat that had taken up residence under our bed while we were on vacation.  “We have shovels,” replied David.

“Let’s just let it alone because we could hurt it rather than kill it, which would be cruel,” I replied. I have never been a big hunter and the idea of flailing around in the snow with a shovel and a rat had all the makings of a comic disaster. We put back the fabric and started to clean off other hoops.

My next child, Charles, was interested in seeing how well the carrots were doing. As it was later in the day and the raised beds were warming, the greens were beginning to re-hydrate though the ground was still like a rock. In pulling off the Agribon fabric draped over the plastic hoops, I noticed a brown spider that was clinging to the underside of the cloth.

I thought it was dead but after a few minutes it started to twitch and move around. I felt bad that I woke it up as it will need to find another place to settle in for the winter.

As I was looking at the spider, Charles was trying to dig out a carrot. The ground was still very frozen even though the carrot tops and surrounding weeds were hydrating and greening up. They looked very alive and tempting. The carrots currently in the garden, if you can remove them, are very sweet. Storing them in the frozen soil causes their starch to be converted to sugar, thus making them increasingly sweeter as the season stretches on.

Charles knew this and was becoming very frustrated at not being able to get a carrot. I told Charles that he needed to be patient, but with any hope evaporating for success he soon was on the verge of tears. I needed to think of something fast.

“Charles, let’s look for a carrot at the edge of the garden. If the carrot is close enough to the boards, perhaps the sun has had the opportunity to melt some of the soil that is holding it into place.”

We were able to find such a carrot quickly and I was able to insert a trowel between the boards and the carrot. I wiggled it around a bit and then gave the carrot a tug. No good. I then pushed the trowel through the soil on the other side of the carrot and was able to loosen it enough so that Charles could pull it out.

“I got a carrot!” Charles was beside himself as his emotions altered from agony to ecstasy.  He said that he was going to bring the carrot home so that his mother could make a healthy soup for the family. Even though he was tempted, he didn’t try to eat it. 

There are still plenty of carrots in the garden that we can harvest once the weather breaks. I just hope the rat (and it’s buddies) doesn’t get to them first.

Feed me Krelborn, feed me now!

Whenever you start working with a new child, there is often a mutual sizing up that occurs. You look over the child in the attempt to determine the best course of therapy. They look you over to determine what type of person you are and if you are worth the effort. There are some instances, however, where you can take an obsession and turn it into a motivating factor that will help the child in therapy.

I ran into such a child a few months back. He was new to the school and was having a difficult time finding his groove. When I had a slot open up for a new student, Tracy and Allie (who run the HT program at Green Chimneys) both said that he would be a good match for me but I had to watch out as he was obsessed with carnivorous plants.  For me this was a serendipitous coupling as I have started to propagate them at home. A few months before I had brought by a variety of sample for the students at the school to look at and examine.

I fell in love with Nature’s own bug zapper when I went to California for a wedding a few years back and had the opportunity to visit California Carnivores, which specializes in these little meat eaters.  After reading the owner’s book, The Savage Garden, I was hooked.

So the first time that I met with the student it took all of three minutes before he started to tell me that he wanted to work in the garden with carnivorous plants and did I know anything about them.

“Why yes, Seymour (not his real name) I know a lot about carnivorous plants. In fact, I grow them.”

With that his eyes went wide and wanted to talk about nothing except carnivorous plants. We chatted for about 10 minutes and then I told him that it was time to go to work.

“But I don’t want to work. I want to talk about carnivorous plants with you.”

“I’ll make a deal with you Seymour. If you work well with me, follow directions, and do your job, I’ll give you a carnivorous plant after Thanksgiving.”

His eyes went wide again. “My own plant? But how will I take care of it?”

“I’ll teach you and I will give you a plant that is easy to take care of. You can have a Cape Sundew.”

These sundews are like weeds as they self-seed with abandon. I started out with one a year ago and now have over a dozen. They have become a favorite with my wife in the kitchen as their little leaves have sticky orbs of mucilage that trap and consume insects. Since they have made a home in our kitchen, we have had no bugs of any kind flying around. The kitchen sundews went from being the size of my finger to the size of my fist. I figure Seymour will have similar success.

So with that deal, Seymour became the perfect student. Everything we worked on together, he did with enthusiasm and care. He wanted to talk a lot about different types of carnivorous plants, and when we had an opportunity we did. I started to teach him about how a carnivorous plant needs to be watered (with either distilled or rain water) and be kept moist (in a water tray) and their temperature requirements (sundews are warm weather plants that do not require dormancy whereas Venus fly traps and pitcher plants do require a cold-weather dormancy period.) These discussions were just background chatter, however, to the lesson of the day, which he picked up very quickly.

Every day I’m with Seymour, he talks about getting his plant and tells me how good a job he plans to do that day. Even when he is a bit off and not wanting to work, the thought of getting his own plant motivates him enough so that he gets on with the job and is successful.

I’m looking forward to giving him a plant in a month and just to keep him going I promised to teach him how to propagate Venus fly traps this spring when they emerge from dormancy. That’s the plant he really wants.

Bug out

The weather this fall has been frenetic. Snow, heat, drenching rain, drought. We have seen it all. Or so I thought. Last week in a middle of a stretch of Indian summer we were invaded by Mexican bean beetles. Thousands. I don’t know much about its life cycle but I think the snow and cold weather of the prior week followed by 80-degree weather coaxed a bunch of beetles out of their dormancy. Or perhaps they were just passing through.

At first we thought there were just a few. When there are ever a few of any creature (with perhaps the exception of a wasp or hornet) I look for the cute and interesting aspects of them. Like me, we are all nature’s creatures.  In this case, however, the few grew to a swarm and became a new polka-dot pattern on the side of my house and all the windows. Working outside became a bit of a challenge as these unseasonal invaders took a while to determine that I was not a good food source or place to lay eggs. Within a few days they would be gone but it always amazes me how quickly nature will manifest itself in different ways. A similar event occurred earlier this year as our outdoor lights became disco central for a swarm of flying bugs. 

The arrival of these new neighbors reminded me of a similar arrival years ago of citronella ants, which used to swarm in early October around our house. After years of serving them kettles of boiling water, we seem to have rid ourselves of this pest.

Perhaps this is the replacement.

The uncommon greens of fall

As I have been attempting to expand the gardening season into the fall and (dare I hope?) winter, my family has been quietly indulgent to my reports of progress and growth. Their responses to me have been soothing affirmations akin to those given to a favored old uncle who is not quite right.

“I sure everything will come out great Erik.”

“Ohhhh, that’s nice Dad.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

Given that fact that I have not totally lost my mind yet, I realize that I am fighting against common wisdom rather than malice. No one is wishing me ill but rather they believe that my desire to provide a consistent supply of greens at this time of the year is a Quixotic quest being pursued by a Don Quixote-like man. Given the fact that I have convinced none of them to become my trusty Sancho-like companion, I have to pursue this “impossible dream” on my own.

To be truthful, they do have reasons to be skeptical.

Last year I had constructed a greenhouse and doubled my space of raised beds promising food aplenty.

It was a bust.

But as there are no failures in the garden, I realized why I was sans greens last fall and how I could remedy the issue this year. Determined not to be accused again of tilting at horticultural windmills, my first change was not to seed directly into the beds. What I discovered last year was that when you have slugs in the garden (which you do in September,) greens seedlings have no chance at all to get beyond the early germination stages.

Carefully planted lettuce and spinach seeds would pop up in the garden forming nice rows would be wiped out in a single evening by slugs who were slimy versions of  Sidney Greenstreet in both corpulence and appetite. By the time I figured out my problem, the season was shot.

This year I started all my greens in the greenhouse in August so they could get to a critical size before I would transfer them to the garden where they would have to fend for themselves against the slugs and other pests.

And it has worked.

I have a cold frame full of greens in different sizes and growths that will permit us to harvest greens (I hope) throughout the fall and perhaps the spring.

A few weeks ago I asked my wife if she would like a fresh salad for lunch. She thought that would be nice, but we didn’t have any greens in the fridge.

“I’ll get some from the garden.”

I harvested some sorrel, parsley, thyme, nasturtium flowers, arugula, romaine, mizuna, corn salad and mesclun. I washed them, added some goat cheese and served up the salad to my wife. She was in love.

“This is so fresh. It’s incredible.”

Last week I served up a salad for the entire family. They thought it was wonderfully fresh and when I told them that it came from the garden, they were pleasantly surprised.

So they no longer think I’m Don Quixote but want fresh salads regularly.

Pollinate me

When many of the children I work with see an insect, particularly a bee or wasp, their reaction is often between alarm and outright panic. But one child I started to work with looks at bees with total indifference.

We were planting a row of lettuce for a fall harvest and a fat honeybee flew around our heads and fell to the ground. My student pointed it out and said, “That bee looks funny. Is he hurt?”

I stopped my seeding and went over to look at it. Its legs were fat with pollen but it was just rolling around in the dirt, appearing disoriented. If it was a person I would have said that it was drunk. I told my student I didn’t know why but we should let the bee alone and perhaps it would catch its breadth and find its way back to the hive. We watched it and in a few minutes it regained its footing and flew away.

When I went home after work I thought about the bee as well as all the different pollinators that find their way into our gardens. As I started to concentrate on all the different flowers around my house, I noticed how many different types of pollinators were out at work today as August is a time when many plants are in full bloom waiting for a bug or a breadth of wind to move pollen from one flower to another enabling reproduction.

I was first struck by the different scents as well as their potency. The most potent in my garden is the white oakleaf hydrangea that is next to my driveway. You get a whiff of its heady scent at least five feet away from it and as you get close it can be overwhelming. The driveway is covered with a dusty white film that has either been discarded or dislodged from its white florets. It is filled with different insects each trying to claim as much turf as possible.

The activity around the butterfly bushes is not nearly as frenetic with bees spending more time than butterflies around the flowers. The purple flowers are more heady than the blue ones; the yellows have but only a slight scent that is difficult to discern. Perhaps, not surprisingly, the yellows are the wallflowers of the pollination dance with only a few stragglers looking to take them for a spin. 

In the garden there is lots of competition for attention with each flower having different luck. Our rose of sharon seems to have the worst luck as its flowers have little scent and few attractors. Others having this bush seem to have better luck attracting bees.

Hostas create cones of pollination that the bees and others must climb in like a sleeping bag, yet none of them sleep in the flower but rather visit to check out the fit and contents and flitter off to another model. Being seemingly chaste, they hide their anthers and stigmas more than others in the garden.

Sunflowers, on the other hand, shout, “Pollinate me!” with yellow petals pointing to a landing pad that becomes sticky yellow with excess. Bees fight for a place and jump all over the base becoming insect versions of a C-130 loaded with pollen for the home base. Clematis is different with only a few tiny insects deciding to dine on its dainty and almost invisible reproductive parts. A lone hummingbird quickly samples the fuchsia and then speeds away as quickly as it came.

  One of the advantages that we have over our neighbors is a deer fence that keeps our flowers intact making our home an oasis for pollinating creatures. They come to dance, eat, and flitter from flower to flower. We sit and watch. 

Dance with me

As we cannot often see what is occurring, the night is a quiet period for the senses and much of observable nature. But a simple light can illuminate and even create extreme circumstances. Last evening as my wife and I were heading for bed, the motion detector on the second floor eave clicked on a pair of security lights. When this happens you see little, as a cat or other nocturnal creature trips the circuit and has already scurried away.

A light on a summer evening typically attracts a few nondescript moths, mosquitoes and a big June bug or two. These evening denizens do little save hang onto the screen with their limbs, seemingly seeking egress. But tonight’s gathering is different. Initially a few tiny whitish bugs hover around the light. But within 30 seconds they metamorphose into a swarm of thousands attending a rave. They are mad like crazy teens dancing with abandon and without purpose in a composite pattern reminiscent of a white-on-black Jackson Pollock painting. The light reflects off their bodies creating a continuous  record of their dance steps.

Each bug leaves a light trail as it spirals between the lights somehow avoiding collision with its peers as they avoid each other. Perspective and distance changes the pattern as would a view of a Master’s painting. Up close the details and shape of each little bug and associated movement can be seen; far away, a gyrating pattern of spherical forms and intensities moves between the two lights.

A few are tired, resting on the screen and find a few holes that should have been patched. I quickly shut the window trapping my iridescent little friends between the screen and glass, now unable to rejoin their frenzied companions.

We try an experiment and turn off the light for a minute and then back on. Just like before, the adolescents regroup in the light and reengage in their dance. But what is this dance? Is is some type of mating behavior? Is it because they have just hatched and never seen light before? Are these the excessive bugs out for a good time now that many of our local bats have died off and are no longer consuming thousands of insects every night? Why are they here?

We can’t answer these questions so we shut off the light and head for bed leaving the dancers to find another venue to regroup, replay, redance.

Accidental housing

Surprises in the garden aren’t as rare as one might think though some are sweeter than others. Next to my vegetable garden I have one of my three compost heaps each placed on different parts of my property based more on my laziness to walk all my plant waste to a single location than the desire to create perfect compost based on the correct mix of organic materials. As I was turning and adding to the heap, which is supported by a back concrete wall of an old greenhouse, I noticed a few bumblebees dancing about.

At first I kept my distance as I didn’t know if I inadvertently stepped on a nest that was created in the heap or I offended the bee gods by turning it over. But the bees weren’t hostile and kept buzzing around this location, legs fat with pollen looking for a landing pad. After about a minute, a lone bee flew out of the compost near the wall and out into the world. It quickly dawned on me that I just became a bad version of un-urban renewal that had buried their doorway.

The bees are squatters in a cavity within an abandoned greenhouse foundation that I share with a neighbor. And I blocked their door. They were doing nothing to me except fly around impatiently probably feeling like many of us do (on occasion) when we are further away from a bathroom than is convenient.

Upon pulling back some rotting lemon balm, crabgrass, garlic mustard and spent daffodil leaves, the bees soon found their way into their hive and other bees found their way out. They and their colleagues soon continued on their work in and out collecting pollen from nearby flowers and bringing it back home.

I was encouraged by my newly discovered neighbors as there has been much made in the press (and a recent book) about the collapse of bee hives, without which almonds (in particular) and many other vegetables could find themselves in short supply.

But at least in our little garden that has never been the problem. There is always something in bloom around our house so bees and other pollinators swarm around our gardens like stylized hot rods getting take out at Mel’s Diner in “American Graffiti." Each plant attracts a different rod with bumblebees loving the catnip whereas I have seen mason bees go after my blueberry bushes.

Sitting outside after dinner with a drink in the dimming light, I watch some greedy bees that are getting the last bit of pollen from foxgloves that ring our patio. I used to worry that their laggardness would get them lost trying to get home in the dark. Now I realize that they my neighbors are just out for a quick and final forage before they settle down for a good night’s sleep.