Jack Burns Lives!

Homeland Security

Early morning is my favorite time of day, when it’s quiet and still. No cars, tee-vees or other blaring contraptions, only the welcomed stirrings and sounds of a few local inhabitants.

Today, I’m visited by a pair of Carolina wren and their cheery song as they hop about the garden collecting nesting materials. They’re joined by an uncommon and shy visitor, a brilliantly colored White-breasted nuthatch. Not so uncommon to this bioregion, but not often seen in my garden.

Soon, our southern spring sky will be a brilliant blue, and the yard will be filled with blooming Indian strawberry (Duchesnea indica) and wild violets (Viola nephrophylla) and Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) butterflies.

Indian strawberry and wild violets are considered undesirable weeds by most of my suburban neighbors, pests that need to be wiped out by chemical cocktails provided by criminal organizations like Trugreen. But organizations like Trugreen don’t just kill weeds. They poison ground water and are a direct contributor to the decline in urban amphibian populations. Every time I see their truck pull into my cove, I go into Homeland Security Advisory Level Red. I’m tempted to reach for my lever action rifle, John Vogelin style, but don’t, despite the fact I’m confronted by terrorists that “hate my way of life.”

Most folks prefer that “perfect lawn,” a monoculture of non-native grasses propped up by poison and not found anywhere in nature. But not us. We like it wild at Casa Burns. Our world is a world of wonder, a phenomenally complex and beautifully interactive system filled with hundreds of interacting, living species in an area only 1/4 of acre large. It’s a magical place with chickadee, woodpecker, possum, raccoon, mourning dove and the rulers of the nighttime sky, Nycticeius humeralis,(Evening bat) and Bubo virginanus (Great horned owl).

Welcomed friends, all, and I believe it’s our patriotic duty to protect their freedoms and way of life.