Future of entomology could be secure

I’m not a fan of spiders. I know spiders are essential to our environment. I know I’m much bigger than the average spider and I know most spiders don’t hurt people. I still am not a fan of spiders.
Being afraid of spiders is a common thing among girls. I remember children’s stories when I was small and the spider was always the bad guy, sneaking around and scaring children in the woods. Spiders are silent creatures and good at sneaking andpopping out when you least expect them.
There is one person I know who is not afraid of spiders, my four-year-old, budding entomologist granddaughter Wren. Wren revels in anything creepy, crawly, slimy or jumpy. Spiders rank right up there with fairies in Wren’s world. And fairies rank pretty high.
I had the chance to view the world from Wren’s eyes this past weekend when she and my sister Linda came to visit. Our first adventure was taking Wren for a tour of our new farm.
We started in the back yard and proceeded through the woods to the creek, looking for frogs. Our frog hunt presented only one find, a dead frog lying belly up on the creek bed. Most children would shy away from such a stinky, slimy specimen, but not Wren. Wren reverently sniffed the dead frog and touched the smooth skin, then allowed us to give it a final resting place near a rock.
Our next find was a slug, crawling on a leaf in the tall weeds. Wren picked the entire leaf, and carried it and the slug along until we got back to the house. The slug was given a new home in an old pickle jar, along with the leaf.
On Saturday, Wren, Linda and I packed into my car to enjoy the South Shore Pottery Tour. Wren’s first experience on the ferry to Madeline Island seemed fun for her, but there weren’t any creepy things involved. However later that day, Wren found the black cricket which had been living in my car for several days. It took her only a few minutes to catch the cricket and deposit it into an empty water bottle, also with a leaf to feed on. Wren carried her cricket through the rest of the pottery tour.
At home, the slug and the cricket took up residence, each in their own jars, in the kitchen. I’m not sure where the dead bee Wren picked up later ended up and I’m not asking.
My husband came to me that evening and asked, “how long do they need to stay in the house?”
“Until Wren goes home,” I said.
Luckily, we didn’t find any of Wren’s recent favorite spider, the Black and Yellow Garden Spider. She has them near her house and revels in seeing these patterned beauties which can grow to be over an inch long. The most we could come up with were a few Daddy Longlegs, and a small house spider making a web on my hedgehog fruit (which is supposed to repel insects.)
Luckily, Wren took her slug and her cricket home and my kitchen is now bugfree once more. It was probably a better deal for the cricket who would have ultimately died of starvation or heat stroke in my car.
For Wren, entomology isn’t a chosen profession yet. She doesn’t even know the meaning of the word, though we are trying to teach it to her. At present, entomology is more like an obsession for Wren, or a lifestyle. Her house is filled with bug boxes, jars and a dead bug collection. She’s been known to carry dead crickets in her pockets.
Hopefully, entomology is an obsession she will continue to foster as she gets older. I see her studying everything that moves, crawls, or slithers. She is a bright child, and if she continues to enjoy the world of bugs, she may grow up to be an internationally renown expert on these smaller specimens of wildlife.
I would be glad if this happened, because even though I know insects and bugs are an important part of our ecosystems, and need to be cherished and preserved, I still don’t like spiders. So, I’m glad there is someone out there who does, even if she’s only four years old.

Add a little salsa to your life

Fall is the time of harvest, bringing in the bounty of the summer’s labors. Though the first hints of the chilly weather to come have been felt, I’m still waiting for all my tomatoes to ripen.
This spring, a friend gave me several heirloom varieties she grew in her greenhouse. I planted them in our newly tilled garden and watched as the spring rains nearly drowned the fledgling plants. My heirloom tomatoe plants withered and drooped through most of the summer, until I thought there was no hope. For safety, I planted a few other varieties in a separate bed.
But I’ve found these heirloom tomatoes to be a hardy lot. Perhaps that is why they have survived over the many years it takes to earn the moniker of ‘heirloom.’ My tomatoes decided to grab on to life during August and now have sprouted up to tall plants with green leaves and green tomatoes. Slowly, they are getting the first blush of ripeness. Meanwhile, my other tomatoe plants, who showed better signs of survival through the summer, aren’t any further along.
I examined the heirloom plants and found three slightly orange tomatoes with black and brown lines and spots on them. Not being familiar with the variety, I thought this meant fungus or insect infestation so I picked the less than ripe looking tomatoes to prevent further damage. I took them into the kitchen to see if I could cut off the offending parts. With paring knife in hand, I sliced through a thick skin to find brilliant red inside. These tomatoes were not only ripe, but delicious, with a thick, sweet inside.
They were the inspiration for the first batch of fresh salsa of the season.
I am horse-sitting for a friend who also asked me to water her tomato plants while she is gone.
“Go ahead and take home the ripe ones,” she said.
My salsa recipe is the kind you make up as you go. Whatever tomatoes you have go in and the more varieties, the better the batch. I mixed my heirloom jewels with some small orange tidbits and cherry tomatoes. Romas went under the knife with Better Boys. My favorite addition are the yellow, bell-shaped tomatoes and I was able to find several ripe ones in my garden.
My onions didn’t fare very well this year (probably due to the weeds I didn’t get around to pulling every day), but I was able to find about ten small heads hidden in the weed bed. I added in some yellow and green peppers from the grocery store. My pepper plants are all leaves and no peppers.
The one abundant thing in our garden is summer squash. I had three large, yellow specimens on the counter.
“I wonder what salsa tastes like if you grind up summer squash,” I asked my husband.
I ground and he tasted, finding the squash did not have much taste on its own. We decided it might add texture to the salsa and I needed to do something with the squash so into the bowl it went. Finish up with some cilantro, salt and lemon juice, and stir.
The result was quite colorful with reds, greens, oranges and yellows. The onions, though small, were powerful and the squash added a light crunch. My husband is the taste-tester for salsa and he proclaimed it, “the best batch ever.”
I will take this compliment, even though he says it about every batch of salsa I make. Perhaps it means I’m getting the recipe perfected. Or perhaps he just loves fresh salsa. That’s a good thing because if all the green tomatoes have enough warm weather to ripen before frost ends the garden season, I’ll be making many batches of salsa for the freezer.