Balance of Nature

It's been a hot summer. Too hot, almost, to sit out on the porch in the evenings and listen to the rackety chorus of katydids and crickets. I like to spend time outside every day and some nights. I like the velvety feel of the heavy air wrapping itself around me. I like the hum of the insects and the rattle of the leaves in the slightest of breezes. It is an insincere pretense that I could live like this if I "had to." Sans air condition, that is. It helps me to regulate my body temperature so that I don't have to keep the inside air so darned low, and the 80 degree inside air feels good after being outside in the 95 degree swelter. It balances things out.

The cicada killers are back. They're beautiful, scary, ominous looking insects of the wasp family that are the natural predators of the cicadas. We first noticed them a couple of years ago. They fly low, circling the back yard inches above the ground. They are about an inch and a half long, slender, with bright yellow stripes on their backs. But even though they are large, as wasps go, they struggle to take down and hold onto a full grown katydid. An epic battle ensues when the smaller wasp conquers the larger insect and pulls it down into it's hole in the ground.

When we these hunters first colonized our back yard, we were terrified to go outside. The exterminator told us that cicada killers are beneficial insects that will keep the katydids in check, the natural predator that keeps the balance of nature. He said they will only sting if provoked and that the best thing is let them do their job. We've found this to be sound wisdom and so we have grown accustomed to their early summer habitation of our yard.

My climbing rose has mysteriously come back after five years of absence. It died back to the ground after the first year. Then something alien grew out of the root stock: straight shoots of suckers that had thorns as thick as fur, thousands of them per inch. The little-bitty roses that grew from the suckers looked like sweet, pink miniature roses until they fully opened. Then another bud formed in the middle of each. Those secondary buds turned brown, withered, then the whole flower turned soggy. So I cut it back to the ground and sprayed it with weed killer. Then vine killer. Then I whacked at the roots with a shovel. For five years I've approached the demon rose with long sleeves and gloves and weapons of destruction and chopped, stomped, and hacked anything that dares to grow above the ground. This year, quite mysteriously, the original rose seems to have reborn and sent out nice little shoots, with a respectable amount of thorns. I'm hopeful we may even have some normal roses later in the season. But to my dismay, on my early foray into the garden this morning, I saw, growing along side the nice rose, angry, jutting, vicious suckers of the demon rose. Would that all my flowers and trees and shrubs had the will to live and thrive that this evil rose has.

What would the world look like if all the evil dictators had natural predators that would take care if them? Like wasps that would swoop down and drag them down into their holes in the ground. Nature has such wonderful checks and balances, when left to it's own devices. Shame, isn't it, that there is no balance in human nature?