RESISTANCE IS FERTILE🌱
Hello All!
I’m sure most of you are ready for lots of color after this cold and snowy winter, and you know what? It will happen, it always does:) Scott, the kids and myself are the weirdos that love the cold snowy stuff (the ice on the creeks and lakes is especially awesome), BUT….. I’m always ready for things to shift gears. I don’t like the same weather for very long, and the Spring in our area is spectacular! This cold winter will make this spring only that more beautiful💚 But, oh, if I hear one more climate change denying dipcrack say ‘What climate change??!!’ because it was so cold and snowy, I’m going to scream. I've gone there so many times before in my past newsletters. But……….there’s so much REAL scientific info, actual FACTS right at your fingertips at any time, OMG, LIKE FOR REAL!!! CLIMATE and WEATHER are not the same thing. WEATHER is short term, today, tomorrow. CLIMATE is long term, decades and longer. Climate is what you expect, Weather is what you get! There are many factors to why the Earth’s temperature rises, but human activity, our polluting ways, has caused it to rise at an UNPRECEDENTED rate. Period. Our area, the Northeast, will continue to see extremes BECAUSE of this. Extreme HEAT (I’m melting most summers now), COLD, DROUGHT (the worst), DOWNPOURS, and yes SNOW. We will see a smorgasbord of weather! And now that the greedy, piggy monsters are in control of our beautiful country, we're just gonna go back in time to the 1960s, when pollution was rampant, making things even worse (yay let’s go backwards). It’s happening now. Toxic air/water, sickness, hopelessness, oh and of course greed, is their game………..
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Ugh, Scott said I should make this Newsletter ALL positive because of all the hate and ugliness in this country right now (so far I’m failing), but It’s just not in my nature to keep my mouth shut (I probably need a shut off valve, but it would just malfunction anyway). I just become obsessively angry when I KNOW things are wrong (I’m usually right:), and that the gross people are ruining things for the rest of us!
“When injustice becomes law, Resistance becomes duty”
- Thomas Jefferson
Ok, lol, so let’s talk about BEES! Bees are a positive subject:) When I think of them, I think of flowers💮We’ll just stick to just the Bumble bees because they’re super cute.🐝 So, the QUEEN is an absolute ROCK STAR, as she is the only winter survivor, hibernating alone. In the spring, she must find her strength quickly and start feeding on flowers (this is why EARLY SPRING trees, shrubs and perennials are super important to plant!), while also trying to find a nesting site.
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After creating her nest and laying her first batch of eggs (which she protects by shivering to keep them warm), she must leave to feed herself and bring back nectar for her babies. The Queens FIRST batch of eggs is a FEMALE ARMY of worker bees, who are there to cater and serve their Queen! (hence, why I have offspring). They take over collecting pollen, nurturing young, regulating nest temps, and defending the nest. The Queen can then stay in the nest, and focus on laying a second batch of eggs that she was fertilized with the summer before. The nest gets BIGGER AND BIGGER over the summer, and since the worker (infertile) females only live 4-6 weeks, they need to be replaced constantly! FINALLY, IF and WHEN the nest gets big enough, the queen will start to produce NEW QUEENS (fertile) and MALES. The MALES will eventually leave the nest to mate with new Queens from other colonies, and are NOT allowed back in (since they don’t do any nestwork, they’ll just eat all the food:) There are three types of bees in the hive, the Queen, the female workers, and the male drones. The male's job is simple (of course it is). Their only job is to mate with a female queen (of course it is). They don’t have stingers so they’re harmless (awwwwww), while the female can sting you many times over (of course she can), but only if you're an ass and do something stupid like make them angry on purpose.😎
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If you see a loopy bee just laying on a flower, it’s probably a male worn out from chasing queens all day, drinking nectar and staying out all night:) They’ve been chucked out of the nest, they're not allowed back in, but sometimes they will just swarm around a nest entrance, waiting for the new virgin queens to fly out, giving them lots of attention, and also fighting with each other for the better position (hmmmm). Males will die right after mating, as their endophallus is broken off after it explodes inside the female (lol, ouchy). So, sometimes they score, passing along their genes, and sometimes they don’t, which means a longer life span (although, which would be the better way to go out:)
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The new Queens will eventually leave and mate with males from other colonies. ONLY QUEENS can start a new nest the following year, the FUTURE depends on them. They also need to eat a lot before hibernating, so planting lots of late fall perennials is CRUCIAL for her survival. After all the worker bees, males and old queen are dead, the new Queen must find a safe place to hibernate, and the process starts over.
So, when we aggressively obliterate our properties with that super destructive fall/spring cleanup (bumble bees are mostly ground or surface nesters), we are destroying them, and this whole process is dead. When the Queen comes out from hibernation in the spring, and are met with pesticides for our perfect lawns that wafts onto flowering plants, plus the mosquito fogs that are being sprayed (even though in the long term mosquitoes just get stronger, which happens when you’re one of the oldest living species on the planet), the bees get disoriented and never make it back to the nest, and therefore this whole process is dead (uh oh, I’m getting angry again).
So why, you may be asking, am I giving you a biology lesson on bees? Because our Bees survival is linked to ours (no more bees, no more humans), so next time you see a Bee, they’re the good guys (except for that occasional angry female, look out!:)
“People are like plants; They grow towards the light”
- Hope Jahren
We are planning, designing, maintaining and planting gardens right now, and I always tell people the only thing I guarantee in the garden is that it will look different EVERY YEAR. Between the rain and the dry, the hot and the cold, the bugs and the voles, the deer and the bunnies, that fat ass raccoon that I think was a small bear, climate change (that’s right), there are just a lot of different things that can alter the garden from year to year. Remember, plants, like us, are living things whose health is subject to their environment. Plants will disappoint you if you don’t understand them and know how to use them (although I swear some plants just do whatever the hell they want no matter what), and perennials can definitely make the design process harder because there are just so many factors involved! Is the plant aggressive or not, shade or sun, short or long lived, does it have structure in the summer, winter or both, how long does it flower and when, does it perform over a long or short period of time, evergreen or no, beautiful foliage when not blooming or no, deer/bunny activity, seedheads in the winter (there’s more but my head is spinning just writing about it:) Then you have to make sure that it all friggin works! The balance, the rhythm, the repetition……
“Luxury is not a necessity to me, but beautiful and good things are”
- Anais Nin
Oh, and there have been plenty of mistakes in the past (I mean experiments), and there will ALWAYS be edits to any garden as the years pass. And no matter how much experience I have from doing this for 40 years, the customer is another very important element in the equation. Your ideas and visions are VERY important to me, and the best gardens are from that collaboration between us🌿
“Gardens are metaphors for life-they give room for contemplation, they give energy, they give good spirits. They are an experience that is hard to define, because it’s different every time”
- Piet Oudolf
My job is both physically and mentally exhausting, but I wouldn’t have it any other way! I love making things pretty, and I love making my customers happy💚We are all exposed right now to so much division and rancour, what better way to tune it out than by looking, sitting, breathing, being in a beautiful garden🏵️Beauty fighting Ugliness. I know which one I would rather be a part of…………………
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See you all soon, the flowers are coming!!
Kirsten and Scott
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“In a time of hate
Love is an act of Resistance
In a time of fear
Faith is an act of Resistance
In a time of misinformation
Education is an act of Resistance
In a time of poor leadership
Community is an act of Resistance
In a time like this
Joy is act of Resistance
Resist. Resist. Resist.
-Loryn Brantz