Bandits in the Orchard

I love the ease of summer, as I go out each morning before 7:00 and start watering the plants, flowers, trees and bushes in our 1/2 acre piece of land. The greenhouse was already watered, with its tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries and cilantro. I had finished watering the many patio and deck plants, the petunias, the nicotinia, the pansies, and calla and day lilies, and had put out the seed and water for the 7 or 8 different types of birds that come around from little tit birds to Mourning Doves, to sparrow, finches, and Blue Jay and even crows, and was ready to water our tall sunflowers , pole beans and squash and pumpkins, before moving on to water our Asian pear and hazelnut bushes, when I heard the familiar squawking of the squirrels, and the busy rustling of the foliage in the hazelnut trees. Those little bandits are very crafty and athletic, and they must find me quite daft for smiling at their clever thievery while I am watering the trees they are raiding. In the last years, my husband and I have seen a marked decline in the number of butterflies, dragonflies and bees, and Michael came up with the idea of orchard bees, with some success.Our backyard is wild and abundant,and free, a safe haven for birds, squirrels, snakes, opossum, raccoons, and quite a number of stray dogs and cats. We grow a ton of flowers, and are therefore very popular with bees. It makes me feel good we do what we can for the natural world on our piece of this beautiful green planet we seem so bent on destroying with our indifference and willful ignorance. I love how our free spirit garden brings me to remember on a daily basis, that we are part of a large, beautiful ecosystem, and that to forget this is to lose a large part of the joy and beauty of living on this very special planet that has so much to offer when it comes to the natural world.