Thursday, May 10, 2012

A Tale of Two Species

or The Boneyard

(Warning:  Nothing but creepy crawlies ahead.)

They're beginning to haunt my dreams, those lines of gray marching across the pecan shell mulch, oozing out from under the bug bath's pebbles when I replenish the water, or protesting at the sudden sunlight when I move a sheltering pot.  I wouldn't call the dreams nightmares, because it's hard to be too haunted by roly-polies.  (Try it sometime.)  They aren't even anxiety dreams, really, just minor irritants bumbling across the fertile ground of sleep and pausing to nibble on an image here and there, in the way that real roly-polies bumble around among the growing things in the garden. 

A typical scene of late.

Roly-polies (or pill-bugs, Armadillidium vulgare) are mostly useful, harmless creatures that munch on decaying matter.  But there are so many of them this year.  They're everywhere.  Every time I turn over the tiniest bit of earth, there they are.  When I water the new plantings, the roly-polies climb the house walls, turning them in places from terra-cotta to black.  When I loosen the plastic pots from not-so-recent nursery purchases, the bottoms of the root balls are covered with roly-polies.  Established plants that were sending up good spring growth have withered away, and when I dig into the soil to investigate why, all I find are roly-polies.  Dozens of roly-polies.  Not content with the mulch, they're beginning to feed on the roots.  They're beginning to haunt my dreams.  Or have I mentioned that already?

The thick layer of mulch is probably the culprit, the extra moisture and organic matter making it possible for the 'polies to breed and feed beyond what the land would normally allow.  Otherwise the mulch has been good for the garden.  The soil beneath the biggest sand cherries, where I've let the leaves lie every autumn (another culprit) before covering them with pecan shells in spring, has almost become "woodland" soil after four years.  It's loamy, friable, and dark brown.  It's a pleasure to dig.  It holds moisture beautifully.  The decomposers are doing their work, and even earthworms make themselves at home there.

Digging into the gravel-mulched beds, on the other hand, is like digging into brick.  The soil is pale sand and clay with bits of decomposed granite, suited to the more rugged plants growing in it.  It doesn't attract roly-polies, but boy, does it attract ants.  They, too, are useful; their tunnels keep the soil aerated, and their appetites account for many a grub and miller moth.  They push soil out onto the patio, and I sweep it back into their nest; they push it back out onto the patio, etc.  We all get a little gentle exercise.

This year some of the ants have made their home in one of the big urns of licorice mint.

"Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."  Unless you're an ant.

Very busy they are, climbing the steep outer sides of the urn and under its lip to bring their heavy loads to the top.  I have a front-row view of them from the Adirondack chair, and see more of their struggles than is perhaps absolutely necessary.

Some of the struggles are jaw-droppingly epic.

Many a roly-poly has been carried up the side and disappeared over the rim.

But then the ants abandon them on top of the soil in the urn.  Why?  Why have they gone through this enormous labor, defying gravity the entire way, only to change their minds?  I suspect that they do bring the pill-bugs into their nest at first, where they eat or store the tasty parts and then spit out the "bones," leaving the inedible chitin to decay elsewhere.  The rounded hulks slowly fade to white among the equally hollow hulks of pecan shells.  Their skeletons serve as...warning? decoration? mulch? in the ants' front garden, until the little decomposers decompose, gradually disintegrating into the soil where they feed the roots of the agastache.



In a desert garden pecan shell mulch and gravel occupy different worlds, the former belonging to (comparative) moisture, broad-leafed greenery, and partial shade; the latter to aridity, feathery gray-greens, and scorching sun.  In a very small garden, I wonder sometimes whether those worlds can live side by side and be at peace.  The mulch loving roly-polies concern me when they get out of hand; they're a sign that maybe I've skewed the balance too far toward moisture and greenery.  But then, the gravel loving ants are still here to keep them in line, more or less.  Maybe the balance is working.

Pleasant dreams, everyone.

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In case you can't get enough, Donna has an entertaining post on ants over at Garden Walk, Garden Talk.

23 comments:

  1. Your window on your world makes me realise I too have a woodlouse (rolypoli) habitat, and an ant habitat, and a termite habitat. They seem to rub along OK together.

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    1. Diana, it's surprising (to me) what a small space it takes to create a habitat. I could see Rest & Be Thankful, Paradise & Roses, the Sun Circle, etc. in your garden all being home to creatures from different climate zones. I'm mostly concerned about the roly-polies getting out of hand because it suggests I'm making the garden too water-friendly for the desert. My water use is less than half of the per capita goal the city has set for water conservation, but that's no excuse for skewing the garden toward thirstier plants and animals! I'm beginning to look into a gray-water system of some kind.

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  2. I find roly-polies to be gentle things that remind me of my childhood where we would play with them. The ants, on the other hand, I hate to find in my garden. I hadn't thought about them being good for the soil. If your garden is out of balance, I think the roly-polie filled dark, beautiful soil is a good non-balance to achieve!

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    1. Holley, my garden was visited by a 9-year-old this afternoon who was thrilled with the roly-polies and enjoyed having them tickle her hand as they trundled across it. (She named one of them Stan.) I'd be more inclined to enjoy them like that, too, if they'd leave the garlic chives in peace! I'm really thrilled about the good soil, but it does suggest that I'm being a little too generous with the water out here...

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  3. You forgot the moths!

    Last year it was so dry instead of finding ants in the cracks in the concrete, there were anthills in my flowerbeds.

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    1. Urg, GirlSprout, I always try to forget the moths!

      I had some of those anthills pop up in flowerbeds, too, and definitely made some gardening decisions around them. Some places you just DO NOT want to dig.

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  4. I laughed at your gentle battle of wills with sweeping ant soil back off the patio (they will win eventually, I'm sorry to say). I have a similar struggle with blackbirds. They scatter leaf mould and mulch onto paths ... and I sweep it back. They fling it off beds onto the lawns and I mow it up. They too will win in the end.
    I once lived in a house with a small patio garden. One evening we turned on the exterior lights and stood mesmerised as thousands of pill-bugs streamed away from the light - across the flagstones and up the walls. Like the parting of the Red Sea. An incredible sight - not quite wildebeest thundering across the Serengeti but amazing nonetheless. And incidentally the pill-bug shells are arranged by the ants as decoration. Obviously. Dave

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    1. Dave, isn't it funny how some losing battles one just shrugs one's shoulders and walks away from, and yet we can sweep soil and leaf mould back into garden beds for no particular reason, day after day.

      Before this year I would have had trouble imagining pill-bugs being epic, but now I can really picture the scene you describe and understand its force. They may look like sadly painted VW Bugs, but they have the hearts of wildebeests. Decoration, eh? I wonder if I should try arranging some shells for effect inside the house.

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  5. My veg garden is an ant bed on one side and many lie out int he garden...I leave them be since they will be pollinating and killing pests....I also find roly polies around although not right now...I actually think it is too wet at the moment.

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  6. I have ants on one half of a veg bed and they bury the seeds too deep sometimes...and there are other mounds of ants in many parts of the garden...they pollinate and kill pests so I leave them be...the roly polies have not shown themselves but I think it is actually too wet for them right now.

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    1. Donna, I hadn't thought about how ants could move seeds around in the vegetable beds. I agree that on balance they're good to have in the garden. Boy, do they make me feel lazy, though! Totally the grasshopper in the grasshopper and ant fable.

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  7. Pill-bugs... what a lovely name for a woodlouse. In these parts we call them "slaters" and they are in our garden in abundance. Fascinating little creatures especially when they fall out of something onto their backs.

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    1. Janet, woodlouse just seems unfortunate. I like slaters, though--like roofing slates? They do need some better way to turn themselves right side up again once they've fallen.

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    2. Stacey, hi

      I grew up calling these portly little creatures "cheesy bugs" - it's the name my mum used, but does not seem a common moniker for them. Woodlouse is the norm in the UK. Your descriptions of them, and discussions about their names, take me right back to my childhood. I think I would somehow have been fonder of them if we had known them as roly-polies, a term I've learnt from you today.

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    3. Cheesy bugs... I'm trying to picture how that one came about, Jill. Maybe like a wheel of cheese? So far roly-polies is still my favorite name for them. As a child somehow that made it all the more fun to encourage them to roll themselves up into balls (poor stressed-out little things). I don't think I'd have found it nearly as compelling if I'd known them as woodlice.

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  8. Stacy, I can just picture you sitting in your garden, camera in hand, watching the antics of the ants and wood lice! I just hope that one day I can enjoy sitting still long enough to enjoy the same. Seems to me you have a much better 'balance' in life than I do.

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    1. Karen, I don't know how people ever managed to be happy before Adirondack chairs were invented. One of the perks of having a very small garden is that there's only so much work you can actually do in it, and then you might as well sit and enjoy it.

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  9. For some reason I'm more comfortable encountering garden creatures with an exoskeleton. Maybe because it's like a barrier between me and them.
    At least you can be grateful that you don't get slugs.

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    1. An exoskeleton is a mighty fine thing, b-a-g. Trust me, I am VERY grateful not to have slugs. Or snails, no matter how edible they might be when purged.

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  10. Funny you write about roly polies. I just found pots full of roly polies when I transplanted some plants. I decided to let them be, even though it looked like they might be eating roots. I think one of my failures as a gardener is that I'm more interested in the creatures in the garden than the health of the plants. I also have a belief, perhaps unfounded, that nature does a better job of creating balance than I do. I am trying to teach myself not to worry so much about what seems out of control in nature. It's not my job to control, but to observe and appreciate what is.... Seems that that's what you're doing in sitting still and watching long enough to notice the ants' feeding on the roly polies.

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    1. Sheila, it sounds like you might describe yourself more as a naturalist with a garden than anything? I tend to agree, also perhaps unfoundedly, that nature will create balance, as long as you're willing to accept a few plant casualties in the process. I was just out at my favorite open space park where the yucca was blooming. Some of the plants were thick with aphids, absolutely covered, and some were completely clean, and boy were there lots of hoverflies and wasps dining on aphids... It's certainly worked in the garden overall. I think with the roly-polies that my gardening may have been the thing to throw the balance out of whack, though. We wouldn't normally see quite so many of them here!

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  11. When I began developing my garden beds, I saw no pill bugs. Seven years later with all of the organic matter in all of the beds I have them everywhere. After a rain, they sometimes cover the sidewalk. I have noticed that the birds have found them. They move the mulch away from the soil in the garden beds and take nibbles. Sometimes I wish there were not so many of them, but at other times I feel they are reflecting the high organic level of my garden and they feed the birds. If there is an imbalance, I wonder what it could be...

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    1. Michelle, that sounds just right for an eastern garden. What an accomplishment, too, to have improved the soil so well. Western soil and organic matter don't normally go together in the same sentence, so a lot of plants that thrive out here don't actually care to have so many nutrients floating around.

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