Feeding the Bugs

    It is Friday morning. I have been commended to clean up and organize some things inside. Our house. The home is modest by many standards, but decent by many others. I have papers, books, a few other assorted items to re-arrange. There are always shoes and footwear. I am not the most tidy of people. This is not part of my world, the antiseptic and pristine house where there are only scant vestiges of living or thinking remains. When you come to my place, of my abode, you see parts of me. An Army helmet, perhaps. Or a note pad. Certainly maps of prime parts of our earth. A book. A magazine. A romantic squirrel or a Wookie from the 1980s. He has not had his bandolier for many years: he is a pacified Wookie.

    Ahh, the bugging things within!

    I like maps. I like footwear. I like books. And assorted papers. Not to mention, Star Wars.

    But, this is supposed to be about bugs. Insects and the outside world. I suppose I am a type of bug in my own environment. But this is more about the outdoors and the earth environment. And bugs.

    As we speak, my oldest daughter is trudging, traipsing, hiking and camping in the outdoor world. I wonder how she is doing with bugs in Maine? Other animals? It all boils down to insects, in the end, because they are the ground blocks of our outside ecosystem, the ecology of our planet. Or is it plants and trees? It is an interplay of all of the above. So, the interconnectedness of life, our planet, has a cement foundation, so-to-speak, of insects and small life forms.

    I took the compost bucket, where we dump many of our rotting or soon to rot biodegradables, to the wood line, which conveniently lies at the bottom of our owned property, going past a shared easement that is owned by our neighborhood community, to a little forest by a creek. Now in the summer, this little woods is fully vibrant with trees, shrubbery, thistles and wildlife, which includes foxes, likely turtles, small rodents, and of course the insects. 

    We count on them. We need them. They need us. It is, as we learn in books and biology, a symbiotic relationship. Life counts on all parts the food chain, from the giants like whales and whale sharks, down to the bacteria and prokaryotes, or whatever other microscopic life forms abound on our ever-living and evolving planet, spinning around our particular star. Makes me want to spew some poetry, thinking of this beautiful construct, really.

    I fed the bugs. The compost bucket contained a good share of spoiled sour cream, from a good sized container from our main refrigerator (I thought of our turtle: will feed her old tomatoes!). Sorry for the aside, another lifeform feeds on our detritus. Leftovers, excess, food and waste, all of it going somewhere.

    I do not want my house's contributions and waste feeding and growing the piles, mounds, and giant trash heaps that I see passing on Virginia highways. But I know that we do. The trash trucks come every week, we pay for the leftovers to move and circulate throughout our environs. Am I fighting a worthless battle? Are these crumbs and marginalia that add up to so little that I (or anyone) should not be concerned?

    In the fight for personal wealth and savings, I put little amounts of money at stake. I pay attention. I filled up my car last Saturday at 2.71 per gallon instead of over 3.00 dollars. I bought about 9 gallons, therefore saving approximately three dollars. A day later I drove further (for work), and added another three gallons or so at 2.93. Maybe I saved 30 or 40 more cents? I try to put savings into a few accounts where the interest can work in our favor. I spend on my credit card, summing up points that translate to future money. As well as maintaining a better credit rating. Do all the small things add up? 

    Maybe. Is it too much brain power expended on too little utility? Making mountains of mole hills/

    To many people, these amounts of change mean little or nothing. We live in a world of famous billionaires, and even more millionaires. Granted, a millionaire is not what that meant even twenty years ago, or before the turn of the century.

    Marginal amounts of money, small amounts of food waste. We are living in our own micro-economies, part of the vast ocean of wealth and finance, power and security, where all these items and amounts can seem so trivial that it is not worth worrying about.

    Does it all combine to little or nothing? 

    Do the bugs truly benefit from our compost, thus helping out the greater ecosystem? Could it harm it? 

    Do any of things matter in the long run?

    Maybe not. But I am part of this thing, feeding the bugs. 

    I am at the margins, I am only a mere slight observer of the greater planet and ecology around me.

    Garbage in, garbage out.

    To our bugs.

    La Chaim! To life, at all levels.

    To prosperity and good health.