My urban backyard has always amazed me with the many different species of wildlife that take refuge there. Despite the rush of traffic on always-busy Tilghman Street, my neighbor's bird feeder regularly attracts cardinals, sparrows, chickadees, catbirds and mourning doves for their daily meals. But the other day I heard the unmistakeable cries of blue jays outside my window. At first I welcomed the arrival of these colorful flyers until I found out what they had come for—my blackberries. The berries are just beginning to ripen and although I expect I will have to share some of the bounty with my feathered friends, these greedy little beggars are decimating my harvest. It looks like I will have to cover the bushes with netting if I expect to get enough berries for a pie this summer.

Today I managed to catch the thieves in the act and thought I'd share the photos.

    Scoping out the joint

    Hmmmm, that one looks tasty!

    Caught in the act

    Leaving with the evidence

    Coming back for more

The firefly's flame
Is something for which science has no name
I can think of nothing eerier
Than flying around with an unidentified glow on a person's posteerier.
- from The Firefly by Ogden Nash

From The Grave of the Fireflies, 1988

I saw the first fireflies of summer the other evening, their bodies lit from within by the eerie-sounding process of "bioluminescence." I remember catching "lightning bugs" as a child, making a comfy home for them in a mayonnaise jar so that I could use them to read at night under the covers. (Of course, it was never enough light to read by, but that's beside the point). My father would poke holes in the jar's lid for air (do lightning bugs breathe?) and I'd give them a nice cushy layer of grass so they'd feel right at home. They had everything they needed, I thought, yet I was devastated to wake the next morning and find them all dead. I learned a valuable lesson about taking creatures out of their natural habitat, trying to fit nature into something comfortable and harmless that I could keep caged up for my own pleasure. Nature doesn't work that way. Beauty needs to be free in its own space.

Fireflies have always fascinated me. They are the most innocuous and ethereal of bugs. The sight of a meadow at dusk lit by the fires of thousands of graceful flyers is one of those indelible memories of my childhood. Interestingly, the male firefly flashes while in flight, sending out a visual signal to attract a female. If she likes what she sees, she'll flash from a stationary perch in response, the two will get together and, well, you know the rest of the story. How does she know which male to respond to? It's like in everything to do with courtship: he who has the biggest, brightest light wins. If the female is not interested in a certain male, she'll keep her light to herself and the male will never even know she's there. Pretty good system, I'd say.

Unfortunately, the firefly population is dwindling. Read more in this 2008 article by Michael Casey: "Thailand's Firefly Populations Fading Out".

The strange light of fireflies has not only inspired me but also many poets, authors and artists throughout the ages. Just for s&g, I did a little research and found fascinating stories and illustrations about the lowly lightning bug. Here are some interesting myths about the firefly: The Mayans believed that fireflies carried light from the stars; the Japanese say fireflies are the souls of dead soldiers; in the Phillippines they are the graceful guardians of the star apple tree; in China the firefly is associated with poverty-stricken students who must study at night by their gentle light.

Photo by Jamie Medieros

This beautiful passage is from British fantasy writer Francis William Bain's The Indian Stories.

"And as he went, gradually the trees grew rarer, and at length he looked before him, and saw in a clear space a dark blue forest pool, studded with moon-lotuses, as if created to mock the expanse of heaven bespangled with its stars, a mirror formed by Wedasa [the Creator] to reproduce another world below. And all about it flitted fireflies, looking like swarms of bees that had returned with torches, unable to endure separation at night from the lotus flowers which they loved all day."

Fireflies At Ocha No-Mizu by Kobayashi Kiyochika(1847-1915) Courtesy  First Art Gallery

Although I have not watched it yet, the 1988 animated film, The Grave of the Fireflies, based on a book by Akiyuki Nosaka, sounds very reminiscent of my own childhood experience with trying to capture and keep some of the insects for my own use. The storyline follows Seita and his younger sister Setsuko after they are left to fend for themselves when their mother passes away from severe burns inflicted by the American fire-bombing of their town during WWII. Their father is serving in the Japanese navy, but the children have not heard from him in a long time.

The film critic Roger Ebert wrote: "Grave of the Fireflies is a powerful dramatic film that happens to be animated, and I know what the critic Ernest Rister means when he compares it to Schindler's List and says, 'It is the most profoundly human animated film I've ever seen.' ...There are individual moments of great beauty. One involves a night when the children catch fireflies and use them to illuminate their cave. The next day, Seita finds his little sister carefully burying the dead insects--as she imagines her mother was buried...." Ebert concludes, "...it belongs on any list of the greatest war films ever made." I look forward to seeing it. Learn more at these sites: Myth*ing Links: Fireflies, Museum of Science, Boston's Firefly Watch. 

With the clocks turned back on Saturday, the days are frightfully short. Darkness descends by 5:30 p.m., coming one minute sooner each day until the winter solstice on December 21, the day I look forward to every year. That's when things start to turn around with the daylight slowly increasing until glorious springtime.

Meanwhile, fall is making way for the desolation of winter. I haven't even begun to rake up the leaves yet. But there are still surprises to be found in the garden. While cleaning out the pond and tidying up the backyard, I was amazed to still find beautiful peppers like these in November. The temperatures have remained moderate enough to keep these beauties growing. I don't think the harvest will continue much longer, though, as we are supposed to drop below freezing tonight. I may have to pick the last few and use them to make stuffed peppers this weekend.

And yes, those are the last of the Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, brought inside green and slowly ripening up for that one last "summer salad."

The summer is ending; the days grow shorter as the earth moves towards the autumnal equinox. The bounty is winding down. The tomatoes are small, the carrots tough and woody. But abundant beauty is still to be found in the end-of-summer garden as these photographs will show. I hope you enjoy them.

Arugula leaves begin to change color

The lovely symmetry of a banana plant leaf

The leaves of a thornless blackberry vine

The star-shaped leaf cluster of a basil plant

One gorgeous red pepper

I saw something disturbing in nature this morning—what looked like a peregrine falcon with its prey, a young robin. The mother robin bravely flew at the falcon to try to rescue her young, but it was hopeless. He was three times her size.

Now I know that hawks and falcons are meat eaters, but there is something really disturbing about a bird killing and eating its own kind. If he had caught a squirrel (aka tree rat), I would have probably congratulated him and offered to take him out for a beer, but hearing that helpless robin's cries and seeing the mother's hysteria just left me with a bad feeling for the cruelty of nature. Guess I'm just being sentimental.

The day's bounty from the garden

This is the time of the summer when the toil of spring planting begins to pay off in dividends of bountiful fruits and flowers. Summer squash, onions and pole beans have been providing the dinner vegetable for the last week and I've even managed to pick a couple of handfuls of blackberries before the birds and squirrels got to them. Abundant basil has provided the first of many pesto preparations. Soon tomatoes, beets, cucumbers and peppers will add to the harvest.

There is nothing like going out to the garden and picking out what will become the evening's dinner or the next day's zucchini cake and blackberry pie. Everything is coming along well, despite my annoying habit of planting everything too close together. Unfortunately, I've just spotted the first of the Japanese beetles. These destructive pests will decimate my beans especially, and I foresee many hours of handpicking the beetles and plopping them into a jar of white vinegar. I don't use traps, as that tends to draw more of them from the area. Hopefully, I wil be able to keep up with the infestation and not lose all my bean harvest.

My dear friend Keith Butler is as industrious as he is generous with his time. So when he volunteered to help me rebuild my backyard pond, I hesitated, knowing what a gargantuous project it would turn out to be. "Are you SURE you want to do this?" I asked him over and over. He assured me that he was, so off we went to the home store for the liner, a kiddie pool to hold the old pond water and tools.

The old pond was an odd shape, rounded to look like a natural woodland pond, and it was notoriously hard to clean and care for. Nearly the width of the yard, there was little room to get around it and the unfinished river rock border was unsteady and begininning to fall apart from years of settling. We decided to turn it into a rectangle with a slate border, flat and level to the surrounding ground and with plenty of room to get to all four sides for cleaning.

Unfortunately, the ground was a rock-hard clay and the massive tree roots encroaching from the neighbors' yard made the job incredibly difficult. We had decided against buying a pickaxe (a bad move), so the digging went slowly. I'm afraid I was not much help, being unfit and out of shape from sitting at the computer most of the day, so the majority of the hard work fell on Keith's shoulders.

Since the new pond was deeper than the old one, we wound up with about three cubic yards of crappy clay soil piled four feet high on the patio and nowhere to go with it. Calls to local excavators proved to be an expensive venture, so I got the bright idea to hold a sidewalk sale to help pay for the expenses. The sale would mean more work for me, lifting and carrying furniture up from the basement, and also that I wouldn't be able to help Keith with the massive job of moving the humongous dirt pile to the alley behind the house to allow easy access for a front end loader. I stubbornly insisted that I could handle both jobs, so Saturday morning I filled the sidewalk with the sundry items and unfinished projects that have been taking up valuable space in my basement. Most of the furniture had been acquired through my skills as a trash-picker so whatever I made would be pure profit. 

Business was slow at first, it being the Fourth of July holiday, but things picked up in the afternoon. One gentleman asked if I had any old cabinets or tools and I invited him to shop the basement to see if there was anything he liked. As we passed the pond project, he asked what we were going to do with the pile of dirt on the patio. Turned out he was an excavator and he offered to come the next morning and remove the dirt for $40, about $140 less than the estimated we had gotten by phone. Not only did I sell the man an old cabinet for $25 but our dilemma with the dirt pile was solved as well. The Lord sure moves in mysterious ways.

By Sunday morning, the pond was finished and our only job was to load the dirt pile into the front end loader. The rest of the afternoon Keith and I lolled on the front porch reading the New York Times and nursing our sore muscles. The weekend had been exhausting for both of us and Keith was anxious to get back home to his apartment in New York City. Little by little the items on the sidewalk were paid for and taken off to their new homes. I had made enough money in the sale to pay for the pond expenses plus a bus ticket home for Keith, making it a successful weekend all around. Would I do it again? Well. . . let me get back to you on that.

My next-door neighbor Joyce Kurtz has the most extraordinarily beautiful Peace rose. Yesterday's showers made it even more lovely, so out came the macro lense again.

The subtle gradations of color from pale pink to warmest yellow are magnified in the raindrops. This has been one of the best springs in memory for roses, and this beauty will continue showing off its' blooms until September.

I am so fortunate to have Joyce as a neighbor and friend, not only for her lovely roses but for her kindness and thoughtfulness in all that she does. At Christmastime she bakes the best cookies and shares them with all her neighbors, and I, for one, look forward with anticipation to that time each year. She treats me just like a part of her family.

Her husband, Ed, was the garden keeper and I still miss my long talks with him about everything from how to grow the best tomatoes to controlling the yearly influx of Japanese beetles (he used a jar of kerosene and I use a jar of white vinegar). He knew I hated the squirrels (aka Tree Rats) who wreak havoc on the garden and my potted plants and would patiently listen to my ranting tirades. June 28 will mark the fourth year anniversary of his death following a bout with cancer. My heart always goes out to Joyce as the end of June draws near, as I know she still misses her best friend and companion of some 50 years.

I made Ed a promise before he died that I would cut the grass and care for the garden for Joyce, but I admit I am sadly lacking in his instinctive gardening skills. Their front lawn has gone from the pride of the neighborhood to a sorry patch of withered grass and thriving dandelions, the result of my setting the lawnmower blades too low to the ground. I have my work cut out for me and would appreciate any advice on how to rid the weeds and bring back the lush lawn of old. 

I don't think I've ever really taken a closeup look at a tomato leaf unfurling as it grows. Yesterday I took the macro lense out to the budding garden and captured these incredible photographs of a bug's-eye-view of the lovely leaf in all of its glory.

A few days of sun has really helped the tomatoes and peppers. I was beginning to think all the rain and cool weather would start to rot the roots, but it looks like all the vegetables will survive. As usual, I have planted things too closely and the zucchini and summer squash will grow to shadow the beets and carrots. I always seem to forget how big these garden giants become.

I'm trying a new heirloom tomato this year called "Hillbilly." It produces a yellow fruit with red stripes. I like the yellow tomatoes for slicing and eating rather than the red ones, which will go for sandwiches and sauce.

Late spring always brings dozens of pink and crimson blooms to my climbing roses but this year the vines are especially loaded, as you can see from the photo. And take a look at the first of the June-bearing strawberries. No more paying high prices at the grocery store for mediocre fruits for the next month as these babies continue to produce about a quart a day.

The sugar snap peas, pole beans and squash are all strong and healthy, but the peppers and tomatoes are looking a bit peaked. I think those temperature dips into the 30s a week ago did more harm than good, and if we don't get some sun soon they may not have enough time to recover.

Now if I could only get it to stop raining for one day. . .