View from the North 40: Nature beats statistics when there's too many bugs to count

In statistics, the term mutually exclusive refers to two or more related things or events that cannot exist or happen simultaneously.

Common real-life examples of this state include that war and peace cannot coexist at once; the result of flipping a coin can’t be both heads and tails; and you can’t turn right and left at the same time.

But all this does not mean that two opposite, but related, things can’t both be true at the same time — especially when dealing with that loose cannon Nature.

Nature cares nothing for statistics or analysis of states of being. Nature is the ultimate existentialist and its existence this year is all about growth.

With so much moisture and warmth, a welcome relief from years past, I am reminded that I can count the passing of time through spring and summer by the blossoms in my pasture.

It starts with the color yellow — with dandelions, golden currants and sweet peas.

The yellow blossoms will continue through spring and summer with mustards, salsify, sweet clover, prairie coneflower, prickly pear and common sunflower with a handful of weeds like curly-cup gumweed in the fall. But before we these yellow blossoms head out, the white blossoms come on strong.

Chokecherries take a well-announced lead, with an abundance of blossoms and sweet scent, accompanied by the wild onion hiding in the grass and not smelling like a thing until you pluck it. Then comes the two white weeds that I haven’t pinned down the identification on, but in my mind they are known as the spindly one and the stinky one. Unfortunately it’s a good year for the stinky one.

The yarrow will be coming soon.

Until then, the red-tinted blossoms have started.

None are actually red, but if I were to paint them, I would add red to some other color to create the look.

These blossoms run the gamut from pinks to purples, oranges and yellow-oranges.

Though three years of grasshoppers have wiped out my one lilac bush, the wild roses are widespread and plentiful, and already in bloom. The scarlet globemallow, with its orange, not red, blossoms are doing better than normal, and the alfalfa, with blossoms in every shade of purple, is lush and tall.

To balance out the wild flowers and edible forage, I’m fighting all signs of Canada thistle and African adder’s mouth before they bloom, but I’ll welcome the fuzzy sunflowers with the orange centers that should be coming soon, along with the showy milkweed — which is its name despite that it’s an understated plant with simple puffballs of pink blossoms. And I have my fingers crossed this will be a year for purple prairie clover, but it’s a fickle summer visitor here.

I had fully planned to write more about the bounty of vegetation we’ve had this year and more about the flowering plants than a simple list of what grows when, but then the miller moths showed up this week

Those herky-jerky, flappy intruders have ruined my happy feeling and reminded me that I could just as well track the calendar days by what bugs show up to pester me.

First come the house spiders of all ilk with the first hint of warming at the tail end of winter, along with their cohort wasps or box elder bugs, flies or mosquitoes that snuck into the house the previous fall and found a well-protected hiding space in the walls where they could wait out the cold.

Next, on some sunny day in spring the shiny, bronze dung beetles will swarm the sky until they find a nice pile of manure to settle into like they’re breaking their winter’s fast with an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Then come those sneaky no-see-um gnats and the flies emerging in proper style. Along the way an array of benign winged bugs arrive, but I admit that they are the purview of fly fishers, so fly in under my radar, so to speak, while I’m preoccupied with the wild honey bees showing up and having enough to eat.

Then, of course, the domestic honey bees are shipped in, their homes stacked together in a huddle, waiting for more flowers that will feed the honey-making process which pays for the conversion of their boxes into high-rise apartments.

Now there’s miller moths. Possibly the most annoying benign bug on the planet.

As I type, I can count 12 miller moths on the wall above me, sitting in the glow of light from my desk lamp, plus one that is flapping across my computer screen. I am not happy.

From this week forward, it’s just an overwhelming swarm of mosquitoes, fat gnats, grasshoppers, spiders like the banded orb weaving spider (which eat grasshoppers, thank you very much) and box elder bugs and wasps joining the party by autumn. Of course, at any random point we can throw in some ticks if you think we’re short a bug or two.

And while it would seem, after that list of biblical-level pestilence, that my point is that there is a reason to look forward to the long, cold, death-to-bugs winters, my point is that all this is how Nature proves two related, but disparate, ideas can be true — not mutually exclusive — at once:

Nature is so pleasing it gives me peace. Nature is so annoying it fills me with dread, and the creepy-crawlies.

——

I think I’ll just stick with counting my flowers as they bloom at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .