b'THE ORME OASIS UPDATEISSUE #6G reetings from the Garden,W hy stop a good thing? Ryan agreed to keep doing this, so Im in. Ill keep the content svelte so that it feels like read-ing the summer breeze, or something like that. Thank you for your support and your readership! F or the past two weeks, a subtle change has been happening all over campus. It isnt the greening of the grass or the unfurling of sycamore leaves, nor the uptick of avian activity or the mesquite tags turning into blooms (though those things are certain-ly happening). The change is the addition of hundreds (thousands?) of perennial plants into the mulched planting beds dotting campus, the garden, and faculty homes. Perennials are the plants that come back year after year like trees, bushes, bulbs, and cacti. In Latin, per means through and ennial means year. If you speak Spanish you can think that perennial= por aos, or for years. Annuals comprise most vegetables and grains that we eat. They grow from a seed, produce flowers and fruit, distribute their seeds and die within a single growing season. Both types of plants are important, but perennials are special for their staying power. These donations were secured by Ms. Bull through Anna Ball, remember her? After her Vespers talk the two made a spe-cial connection, horticulturist to horticulturist. Their common love of flowers allowed Ms. Bull to make a wish list of plants that was granted in its entirety by fairy godmother CEO Anna Ball. The magical package arrived and the abundance was overwhelm-ing. Future flowering plants were popped in some of the areas that had been mulched by students last year around campus and in the garden. There were so many that they were offered up to the faculty and staff where they are now beautifying the whole community. This donation will be appreciated for many, many years and seen by thousands. We are so grateful!S omething else that I am thankful forof sadness and guilt that haunts me with and is very vogue in the agricultureevery one. Fortunately I have a helper owl world right now is Integrated Pest Man- who gets the majority of the gophers before agement or IPM. We talked about it beforeI can. Every owl pellet, whatever the owl in the realm of ladybugs vs. aphids andcouldnt digest and spits back out, gathered encouraging a healthy diversity of insectsfrom underneath the pine trees on the west to keep the balance between predator andside of the garden where they nest has bits prey. Another example was featured prom- of bones in it, some obviously gopher. The inently in the film The Biggest Little Farmbones make me giddy knowing that theyve (highly recommend, 10/10). Their massivesaved me so much heartacheand that future new orchard was getting annihilated bystudents may be able to dissect them (surely gophers. After exhausting themselves trap- Im not the only one excited by this?)! This ping, they purchased owl houses and placedIPM example reminds us that everything in them all around the property. Soon the owlsnature is ruled by a delicate set of checks came and began to decimate the rodentsand balances. Human intervention is often and the trees began to thrive. We have athe cause of imbalance, like too many tasty similar problem here. One gopher chewedroots bringing in too many gophers for not through an entire bed of lettuce roots. Theyenough predators, but by using the tools we also love to eat the bottoms of my onionshave to help mitigate the negative aspects of and are notorious in our orchard. So I trap them, but I hatethis we can build better systems. Using nature to cure nature of it. The devices kill the rodents instantly but there is a pangan unnatural problem=supernatural?O k, ok, Ill end it there. I could wax on about the squash starts my mom gave me and the generosity of gardener people, how giant my dog Cholla is now, or the perfect way the peas I picked brightened my quinoa last night, but youre probably on to other things. My hope is those things are *safely* enjoying the sunshine, helping your parents around the house, or perhaps building an owl house.M any thanks,J . Wolfe'