Sister Mary Hroscikoski
June 3, 2020
In deep south Texas, water is precious. More so as recent years have been a worsening drought time. Even in a “normal” year (if there is such a thing), water comes as feast or famine – stretches of being drenched and flooded interspersed with longer stretches of dusty, throat-choking dryness. And droughts are amplified by the overabundance of thirsty, non-native plants brought in over the past 150 years to serve as food for the country and as garden beauty for the locals.
My training as a Texas Master Naturalist taught me the value of native plant species: to provide plants that can withstand and even thrive in our extremes of moisture and temperature and to provide food for insects. Most insects, I have learned, are specialist eaters rather than generalists. Pizza every meal, thank you, and don’t bother me with a buffet of varied soups, salads, main dishes, and desserts! In this Rio Grande Valley and globally, scientists think that loss of native habitats through human activity for agriculture, urbanization, and pesticide use are major reasons for the observed worrisome decline in insect populations everywhere.
Why worrisome? Only because they are the pollinators for most plant species and the base of the food chain for most animal life.
“Plant native species in your yards – create Noah’s Arks for the native wildlife in the area!” urged some of our Mater Naturalist teachers. So I began to do that, first with plants I received as gifts for volunteering at the National Butterfly Center native plant nursery and from friends’ yards, then adding a smaller number of purchases at native plant sales.
Three years later, the plants are thriving and hanging on (depending on seasonal rainfall!) and drawing a new abundance of insects to our yard. In the warmth of sunshine, hundreds of small and some larger butterflies nectar on the flowering shrubs and groundcover. Host plants for some species serve as egg cradles and larva nurseries –getting eaten up in the process and leafing out again when the hungry larva have become nectar-drinking adults. More varieties of bees, friendly flies, spiders, lizards and little night-chirping frogs than I can name are now here. Slowly, more birds are in the area – hummingbirds, mockingbirds, doves, thrashers, red-crowned parrots and green parakeets. A pair of cardinals and black-crested titmice have kept me company outside my bedroom window during this pandemic time.
Recently nourished by a modest abundance of much needed rain, the plants are as lush, quickly growing and flowering as we’ve ever seen them. Yes, the weeds too! As the pandemic shut-down time showed, our Mother Earth is eager to heal and to be healed.
In a world so crying out today for tenderness, care, community and justice, the beauty of a little Noah’s Ark offers one small corner of healing.
