Today, I went for a walkabout at the Madrona Marsh, which is one of the few remaining wetlands here in SoCal!

[eppur_se_muova]

24. So many blooms now means so many fruits and seeds later ... so many to be eaten by little critters.

Including caterpillars, aphids, grasshoppers, and all the insects suburban lawn-tenders regard as pests, and do their best to poison or otherwise eliminate. Caterpillars and grubs are the preferred food of songbird nestlings, and there are now many areas where the parents can't adequately feed their young because the surrounding territory has been scoured free of such "pests", or taken over by imported (usually invasive) plants that are inedible to most of the local bugs. Lush green lawns appear beautiful to realtors and civic boosters, but theirs is the beauty of a sterile monoculture, pretty as a well-embalmed corpse.

We've got to save wetlands and wildlands, or risk killing off so much of Nature.