Where did the time go?!
2021 is drawing to a close, faster, perhaps, than I would have wanted. So feeling nostalgic, I looked back at photos I took in 2019 and I was surprised by the number of caterpillars I saw compared to this year. This year was not a good one for a gardener trying to host insects. Maybe my first and best wildlife siting in the spring of 2021, a brown water snake, was an ill omen. Let's not pretend. 2021 was a year of poverty in the garden: voles destroyed perennials; painted ladies did not show up at all; there were no caterpillars at all on the viburnums; ferocious winds assaulted perennials; wasps ferociously devoured the caterpillars on pearly everlastings faster than they could hatch. It is hard to recall anything positive about nature. Is there any positive? I suppose that I should be thankful that the drought of 2020 ended; I built a rain garden that infiltrated the worst that hurricane Elsa could throw at me; my lawn hosted a nest cottontails (devoured by crows); an