In the pond, a few bluegills spared by the otters built nests this summer. Each nest can hold 6000-18000 eggs, and they face grave danger from the outset, with less than one half of one percent resulting in fish that die of old age. Thirty out of every 6000.
The capacity of the earth to replenish itself is impressive. Many species low on the food chain produce massive numbers of offspring. Among insects, the cabbage aphid may be the champion. Under perfect conditions a single female could, in one year’s time, spawn enough descendants to cover the earth to a depth of 90 miles! But since perfect conditions don’t exist, most aphids are quickly lost to predation by birds and other insects. Generally, larger animals have fewer young, but there are exceptions. Female ocean sunfish weighing up to two tons can release 300 million eggs at a time, but most never get fertilized or are eaten by foraging fishes. Everything’s connected, seeking balance, beautifully functional.
We grow cucumbers on trellises, A-frames made of four foot wire panels. This year we had two trellises three feet apart, each holding eight plants. We pick cukes when they’re small and bristly, prime for pickling, and this year’s crop has been good. There are 65 pints of pickles in the pantry, refrigerator dills for good measure, and we’ve given away over 100 pounds of surplus. The space between trellises is filled with vines that extend into the yard and are growing up adjacent tomato cages and threatening to cover pepper plants and anything else that gets in their way.
Like all living things, a cucumber plant is driven to procreate. Removing small cukes with their immature seeds spurs the plant to produce more fruit, not unlike stealing eggs from a laying hen. The push to procreate and replicate is strong and mutations are part of the process, which helps explain the Delta variant. With more than half the world unvaccinated the virus has a great playground where it experiments on cooperative and willing hosts.
In spite of my best efforts there are cucumbers I miss and they grow large and yellow and are filled with mature seeds so the plant succeeds in its objective. Nature always wins. We’re just players in her orchestra who sometimes pretend to be smarter and more capable. We develop poisons to kill weeds, she develops super weeds, immune to our chemicals. We abuse soil, she washes or blows it away. We remove key components from established ecosystems, she removes services we deem essential. We overpopulate and abuse land and lay resources to waste, she will ultimately thin us out like so many aphids. Her checks and balances are finely tuned and not open to compromise.
The earth constantly regenerates resources and ecological services but every year we’re using more than can be replaced. This year, we used our annual allotment on July 29th, so from here on out we’re in the red. The date is known as Earth Overshoot Day and in recent history has been occurring in July. In 2020, the influence of the pandemic moved the date back by a month to August 22, still four months shy of where we need to be.
My wife had a birthday recently and her request was a rhubarb pie. I made her one using my mom’s hand written, lard-heavy pie crust recipe and rhubarb from the freezer. It turned out superb, if I do say so myself. We ate a piece right after Lee summarized the news of the day: cattle starving and being sold months early due to drought, sweet onions in the NW completely destroyed by intense heat, California fighting its third largest fire in history, scientists becoming increasingly alarmed over changes in the Gulf Stream. I was reminded of a little ditty Garrison Keillor did on his Prairie Home Companion radio show: Beebopareebop rhubarb pie. “One little thing can revive a guy, and that’s a piece of rhubarb pie. Serve it up, nice and hot, maybe things aren’t as bad as you thought.” And for just a little while, they weren’t.
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