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); and I had close to 100 peaches. Also a brown wasp mantid fly spent a week in my rain garden a month after I planted it. How cool is that?
So I suppose that, if one looks, positives can be found. The problem is that the measurement of positive or negative should be apparent based on unbiased observation, not by seeking out positives to offset unmet expectations. Let's hope that a larger sample size in 2022 leads to better results.v
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