Raiding Our Neighbor’s Yard at Midday

 

Desiree and I raided our neighbor’s yard at midday yesterday. Armed with only plastic bags, we swept through an unlocked gate and swarmed—as efficiently as two people can—a plum tree drooping with sweet, ripe plums.

“Jeez, this tree is loaded,” I remarked while lifting a branch sagging down to face level under the purple weight of dozens of plums.

“Where do we begin?” Desiree asked.

“Just dig in, I guess.”

After a little assessment, I plucked a larger plum from a cluster of fruit within reach and then tore into the soft flesh with my mouth. A lovely, complex flavor profile, this: sweet, with a tart flag wavering at the fruit’s outer skin.

The tree was not tall—maybe twelve feet at the top—and virtual explosions of plums were within our reach. Within only a few minutes, we filled two plastic bags with a season of full sunlight and sweet water.

Amazing how much a modest tree can produce.

I’m sharing a few photographs of our raid, including a final shot of our plunder posed with a Cold Smoke beer as proper scale for size reference.

Reaching In

Desiree Picking Plums

Desiree’s Face in the Tree

Our Plunder with a Cold Smoke

—Mitchell Hegman

Thank you, Carmen and Jim, for letting us harvest plums (and more).

Red Ants

We’re not finished with our discussion about our ants. The red ants near my lakefront are thatched mound ants, and they are way more impressive than most of us imagine.

Formica obscuripes, the western thatching ant, is a native species of ant in the family Formicidae. It produces large mounds covered by small pieces of plant material. I have several such mounds on my property. One of them is nearly two feet in height. The number of adult workers per colony may reach up to 40,000. Most remarkable, some colonies can survive 50 years or more. This happens because they often have multiple queens (a polygynous system) and, over time, their mounds can expand, split, or even merge with nearby colonies. In this sense, a single mound can remain “alive” for generations.

The colony I mentioned in my blog yesterday is something near 20 years old. I believe it is actually the continuation of a mound that existed only ten or twelve feet away and thrived through the 1980s and 1990s. I recall on several occasions having to shoo away young boys who were pestering that colony with sticks.

Bit by bit, the ants raise their thatched mounds, weaving needles and twigs into a fortress. Within, they tend the queen, while workers spill out to forage the nearby earth. They survive our long, harsh winters cozy within their compound and then march on again in the warmer months, ignoring any and all turmoil around them.

Thatch Detail at My Anthill

Red Ant (Wikipedia)

—Mitchell Hegman

The Dead Bird Problem

What do you do with a dead bird that rolls in from the waves onto your lakefront, tangled among the requisite blunted sticks and plastic whatnots?

In this case, the bird was pretty ripe.

So—what to do?

About fifty yards up from my lakefront, there’s an interesting red anthill. Some fifteen or twenty years ago, the ants started their pile alongside a prickly pear cactus. All these years later, the cactus has grown freakishly healthy within the anthill. Me being me, I regularly walk up the hill just to watch the ants teeming over the pile.

What if I could give nature a boost in a strange way? What if I scooped up the bird with a shovel and placed it beside the anthill? Would the ants—along with flies and beetles—scavenge and repurpose the bird?

I’ve posted photographs of the bird and the anthill.

Let’s see what happens.

—Mitchell Hegman