Rain and Smoke

We’re wet, and we’re rolling. The fields are drenched outside the window right now. There’s standing water in the carrot beds. Puddles in the driveway. Mud in the living room. It traveled a long way to get here – from on the coast of Brazil or somewhere, and it took its own sweet time in coming, but glorious rain has been falling from the sky all day, and things are greener already.
It comes just in time to loosen the soil a bit, because the other momentous event of the day is the resurrection (again) of the tractor. New pistons, new fuel pump, new about everything else, and it started right up. We’ve been about tractorless since a certain little fire incident a while back, but we seem to be rolling again.

Heart of Darkness

Just when I was starting to think, once again, that all modern science is a sham, the United States Geological Survey has renewed my faith. I am about to begin a journey to the very center of the Earth, for reasons that need not be explained here, and I depart with the utmost confidence that my destination has been accurately charted. Years ago, before computers, before GPS, surveyors with the United States government, pasted a map of the U.S. on a piece of cardboard, cut out the outline, and balanced the result on a pencil. And thus was determined the geographic center of our country.
There are those skeptics who say that science does nothing more than whistle in the dark. There are those that liken scientists to Neolithic shamans, desperate to find a suitable explanation for every observable phenomenon, no matter how far fetched. The scientists cannot turn out the lights at night, it is said, without feeling as though they have a plausible explanation for every creak and chirp. They invent elaborate mythologies for the origins of thunder to allay their fear of the unknown.
Balderdash! Science plods forward with reason, driven by rational thought and sober acceptance of all known facts.
The Earth revolves around the sun. Maggots do not spontaneously generate from putrid flesh. And if you wanna find the middle of something, get out your paste and scissors.

The World, It Turns Out, Is Not Ending

Things are happy in the insect world, if no where else. The bumblebees are insane this year, what with their buzzing and their nectar gathering. They are on every conceivable blossom, flower, puddle, water bucket and peanut butter sandwich to be found on the farm. They’re even on the salt lick.
Right when I was beginning to feel as though there was doom and gloom all around me, when all hope was lost and the dark ages again about to beset, there is this little bumbling glimmer of hope. Native insect populations are not only still extant, they are thriving! They’re everywhere, acid rain and deforestation and genetically modified foods not withstanding. Shopping centers are being built left and right, we’re about to run out of oil, a fifty year drought has just begun, but the bumblebees are dancing. I’ve counted as many as five in a single squash blossom.
Where they come from I don’t know, and why there are so many more this year than in any other year, I don’t know. It matters not. What matters is that the bumblebees do not read the papers. They’re supposed to be dieing but they are buzzing. They are flying. They are feeding. And if the experts are wrong about the demise of native pollinators, I, for one, can only conclude that they are wrong about everything else.

Dog Days

I've been wondering, as have you, since January 24th of this year, just what would get me back to the New Post page. What, indeed, would be so pressing, so urgent, so demanding as to add another page to this little blog.
The answer should have been clear all along:
My soul burns with the following query:
Do green cotton square borers turn purple when they eat purple beans?
I await an answer. I myself, have been unable to find a satisfactory answer. I need your help.
But that's not why I'm posting.
I'm posting to send a shout out to Kent, who gave me this computer.
Yeah, I'm posting from my house. I've got a computer again. I can post again. The gods are smiling. Kent is a helluva guy.