Awe and Wonder
What we Need More of.... 9 Jul 2019
I travel quite a bit and so listen to audio books and podcasts to keep the old brain crackling. One of my favorite podcast interviewees is Russell Brand. Not the punk-ass, mediocre actor, heroin addict per se, but the bad-ass comedian, 14 years’ sober, newly enlightened bodhisattva. During a recent interview he quipped, among other things, about something I’ve been thinking about lately. In essence, what he said was that “we need more awe and wonder in our lives;” how can we go through life and take things we see and have seen throughout our lifetimes as ‘ho-hum’ or ordinary.
A few weeks ago, during an early morning drive through the southern Catskills, I pondered the beauty of the low hanging clouds with the magic that lay behind them, and the rushing rivers below. I have to admit it brought me back to those days when I hiked and camped central Virginia’s mystical forests in a mythical medieval cloud, full of awe of wonder. So during this drive I pondered how as we grow older we lose our naivete and ability to just be lost in the beauty of the planet. We have bills to pay, furnaces to fix, kids; we have obligations. But why do we really lose our wonderment at the miracles of the world? My feeling is that that’s what we’re “told to do.” Directly or otherwise, society drives us in a direction of obligation and “reality.” That is unless we resist and go in the other direction.
From the mid-80s to early 90s, I was a Deadhead and followed the band around the country and caught a glimpse of what true freedom could be about. That said, I never lost sight of my responsibilities and so never cut the cord from mainstream society. I’ve circled back around recently, thinking about those days. Not in a nostalgic sort of way, but rather by wondering how we can “grow up” without losing that awe and wonder we had when we were younger, unpolluted by society’s demands.
As a farmer, I’ve had to deal with the realities of my occupation on many levels. I’ve cursed the gods and reveled in nature’s resplendent beauty. I witnessed some early morning sunrises where I could have gotten off the train right then. In other words, it couldn’t get any better.
Just the other day, I was walking Rose Hill orchard with my friend and compatriot Kevin Clark. We, of course, were looking for the good, bad, and ugly in the orchard – apples scab, codling moth, and the like; the scourges of farming. There were two times when we stopped and absorbed the beauty of the farm. The first was looking at some green apple aphids being ravaged by a lacewing larva – a medieval rampage if there ever was one. Too bad for the aphids, but a sheer magical embodiment of the power of nature. The second time was when Kevin stooped down to look at some wild bees working the flowers of broadleaf plantain. The bees were just doing their thing, inconspicuously, moving pollen from anther to pistil, likely as they have done for millennia. We both stopped, watched and continued on our way, enlightened in a way that few are these days if they don’t stop and smell the roses – so to speak.
My wife Debbie and I try to take as much time as possible to tour the backyard – our own little paradise – to see what’s going on. How are the elderberries doing? The skullcap? The lupine? We stop to watch the bees, the water flow, the wind blow, and we realize that we are in the midst of awe and wonder every single day. My son Mathew on the other hand is a wonder to behold and an amazing life-force to to be around each and every day. So no matter what, as long as we have each other and take the time to breathe in the beauty, we always will be one with the world around us and each other. Forever.
IPM Update The IPM updates have been few and far between, in large part because we have entered a quiescent period with not so much going on, yet lots of stuff brewing. We're now entering that period where all the summer stuff will start to pop up. I've been seeing some Marsonnina leaf blotch, black rot, and other foliage issues. There has been a fair amount of potato leafhopper, woolly apple aphid, and some internal fruit feeder action. In fact, the leafhopper has been pretty dramatic in how quick it has popped up. I am not surprised, just always weirded out by out how this little critter can create problems. But for now I'd like to say just a little bit about Woolly Apple Aphid:
Woolly Apple Aphid (Eriosoma lanigerum) is one of the most difficult to control insect pests of apple due to its waxy coating and discrete hiding places. When American Elm was common, WAA would leave apple in the fall and head to elm to overwinter. Since American elm is absent from most parts of the northeastern US, it completes its life cycle and spends its entire year almost exclusively on apple. It can be found in both the above and below ground portions of the trees. There is no strong correlation between above and below ground populations – meaning that what you see above ground is no indication of the size of the colonies in the root system. WAA overwinters in the root zone, below the soil line, and in the spring slowly makes its way up the trunk to the canopy of the trees. It prefers areas with “protection” from the elements and sprays, such as nooks and crannies that are found in old pruning cuts, cracked limbs, scaly bark, and crooks of branches. Colonies develop in these areas early in the season, but migrate to shoot tips and fruit by early summer causing distorted branch growth and sooty buildup on fruit in the stem and calyx ends of fruit. They can cause galls and distorted growth in the roots as well. The excruciating thing is that as colonies develop they create a fibrous waxy covering that makes it nearly impossible for sprays to penetrate, make contact, and kill the pests. Additionally there are very few effective conventional insecticides available in the US, much less organic controls, so we need to rely on good horticulture and nature. There is a natural enemy (Aphelinus mali) of woolly aphid that is moderately successful when allowed to establish in problem areas, but usually isn’t present in sufficient numbers to be effective. If you begin to suspect or know you have issues with WAA, then please contact me ASAP so we can develop a protocol. I will say that with most of the holistic orchard I work with there have no or very fr problems with WAA. That, my friends, is the power of nature.
