People in the city have a hard time comprehending that the further out you are the more vermin you have to fight against. My aunt was a avid gardener for years in a country setting. They had their area fenced in whereas in the city I never had to go to those lengths to protect my garden when I had one. Then I stopped because they just didn't produce like they use to and it took me years later when I had the same thing with growing flowers, they just wouldn't grow, and it was in my opinion this lady who lived two doors down who moved and for years had her lawn sprayed for insects which killed most the bees off. Her and another lady down on the corner, she must have passed away and the lady two doors down finally moved. The bees are making a come back. Last year we had one set of bees with a hive under our porch roof on top of a pillar. After discussing it with my son who rents from me next door we decided to teach the grand kids the value having the bees, how important they were and to be cautious not to stick anything like a stick at them. They are afraid of bees but we told them if left alone a bee will be busy being a bee. It worked out really well. My flowers did exceptionally well!
I remember as a kid chasing the grasshoppers and catching them and it's something that I miss. I also miss the crickets so last year I went to a pet store and bought me a bunch of crickets, it was great listening to them again after years of not hearing them chirp. I actually have a funny story to about this one particular cricket when I first bought my house that drove me crazy at night he was so loud. I'd actually get out of bed and try to hunt him down but as soon as I opened my door he'd stop. lol. Never did get him. I guess the lady two doors down did with her nasty chemicals. I'd love to have some grasshoppers but like you said they are so devastating to crops it's actually illegal to mail order them in the United States. Our life styles are so polar opposite and I think that's why I like to read your blogs, you don't have to listen to fire trucks, ambulance and, so far only, occasional gun shots that have nothing to do with killing vermin eating your vegetables if you get my drift almost every night particularly in the summer when all the hood rats are out and about. As a matter of fact it was after a house got shot up last year about a block away when a neighbor said to the news that twenty years ago when he first moved hear he said all you could hear at night were the crickets. I said to myself you know he's right, you never hear crickets anymore. Then I started missing the sound and decided to act. I'd love to live a little further out but I hardly doubt it will transpire at this point. The closest I am going to get is reading your blogs...lol.
Lol! I have had a cricket in the house, it is CRAZY how loud they are! That is awesome about the bees. A well-aged friend told my husband that bees are most mellow at dusk. We used to go down and check the boxes with no hood or smoke or anything, just wait till it was sleepy time for them and we never got stung. We did NOT try to harvest honey, would have hooded up for that! But they are very chill at dusk, if the grandkids want to just go watch them fly home it is sort of cool. Thanks for your kindness and support, and it was fun to hear you say why you read my blog. I confess, I often wonder "Why does ANYONE follow me...?" At least I know why one person does now lol!
I've often believed that if there was some sort of reincarnation that my happiest life was lived in the old wild, wild west...at least that's what I am most attracted to, old western towns, open land and antiques. To me it's interesting to see the buildings and information you guys post about the things around you. I guess maybe we aren't meant to go backwards in time or I am just plain cursed...but it's not as bad here yet as some big cities so it could be worse.
I don't know if the bees will return to the same spot this year, in a way I am hoping they do because it was such a educational experience for the grand kids. We will have to observe them one night coming in from their busy day....thanks for the tip!
If mailing crickets is illegal, then that might be a animal rights violation, right? Yes, bees are busy being bees. I've lived in a 20K population city about 40 miles from Portland, OR, a big city, and I was living between city life and farm life, born 1985, and I love it so much. I have gardens now and am trying to get back to all of it. What you are writing here is very valuable for many people to remember for so many reasons. Thanks for sharing, hehe. You are awesome. I'm Oatmeal Joey Arnold. You can call me Joey.
You can order crickets by mail legally, it's the grasshoppers you can get in trouble for transporting through the mail. Since there are a couple places that will ship them I don't know how well they enforce that law. It would be my luck that as soon as I ordered some the place would get busted and my name found on a mail order list! lol. I think I'd rather spend hours out in the country trying to catch some than have that hanging over my head.
That is a bad law. We got to stop bad law.
I guess you have to look at it from the angle of a farmer whose whole crops could be wiped out by a massive explosion of locust....then again this isn't 1874-75 when they had the great locust plague, we are more equipped in this modern world to deal with situations like that.
Let the free market decide. Let each person fend for themselves. Unless if we just want big brother to babysit us and keep us safe like Facebook says they do to help us know what is safe and not safe or maybe like bots that are saying my comments, like this one, is bad.
It would be pretty hard to live in a world where everyone fended for himself. There'd be mass starvation on the horizon. Though a lot of people hate that the government regulates so many things food production is to keep low cost products on the market so people don't starve like wheat, corn and soybeans. One or the other is usually a basic staple in people's diets all across the world and can be flown in and dropped from planes in area's where there's feminine at a reasonably low cost. There's billions of people in the world most wouldn't know the first thing about how to garden for survival. With so many controls in place though they should release the regulations on grasshoppers
We can totally forget what North Korea does as they regulate. We can pretend Mao didn't do anything. We may forget about Stalin, Hitler, Cuba, Venezuela. Look at what happened in the Roman Empire centuries ago as they moved people to the big cities and then Rome fell. History repeats again and again. Here are the examples of how starvation increases because of the empires as absolute power corrupts absolutely and government, corporatism, plutocracy, grows and grows more and more. People can learn how to garden, farm.