In the Heart of the Country (My Home in Pevely)

April, 2026
by Don Bauer

Here in the Heart of the Country we're doing what we can to help insects to thrive.

We mow less, and string trim sparingly The first year I took over the care and feeding of our grounds I bought a zero turn mower so I could tear through cutting the grass. I guess I was mowing 5 or 6 acres weekly. Weed eating the shore of the lake almost weekly, leaving nothing behind. Then one day I noticed I was about to cut a milkweed with the trimmer. I started paying attention and now I trim around a lot of wildflowers, Iron weed, thistles and lots of milkweed. When I'm on the mower I'll mow around some patches of flowers, penstemon, bee balm or spiderwort right now. I mow less than half of that weekly. Maybe three quarters monthly, the rest not at all. I guess I'll have to learn how to use fire without burning down my woods eventually.

My first year or two I'd barrel through the leaves and break them down as small as possible in the fall. Now I put the mower away when they start coming down. Time off I can use for taking pictures and I love having the leaves in the background or getting pics of birds tossing leaves to find the goodies hidden in the litter.

I've known a bit about what light pollution does so we've been limiting our participation but yesterday I worked a Dark Sky booth at the Earth Day Festival and learned quite a bit more. Another problem with some pretty simple solutions if we can just care enough about the other residents of our planet. How simple are the helpful solutions? Maybe change some bulbs to a warmer light, the packages of bulbs have a scale on the back, try to stay to the 2000 end. Doesn't change the lumens, the brightness, just the spectrum of light. Try to keep our lights low, put hoods on so they don't go up, where we don't need them anyway. And really, turn some off, I'm amazed at how bright some houses are lit all the time. I think the best I can do with Dark Sky is try to spread the word so I hope to get involved a bit more. Yesterday I stood back and watched the experts in our over manned booth spread the word. I absorbed a lot and believe I'm ready to jump in! The thing for me to remember is those booths are placed among people who want to learn how to help, so approaching them is why they're there.

Bluebird Pair. Mom and Dad bluebird with breakfast

Here's a great example of why we should all care about insects. No insects, no birds. Bird populations have shrunk by the billions, yep billions, since I was a kid. They don't have to disappear. I'm pleased to hear that monarch numbers really were up last year, a fluke? We don't know yet but we do know there are a lot of reasons for such things and we have been promoting native plantings and such to help. If we care we'll make it better.
Here's 2 bluebirds in the Heart of the Country, each with a bite for the young in the nest box below. These guys do this all day. Find the food, bring the food, feed the kids. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Let's help them out!